Sales, marketing have changed – companies have not

I got the opportunity to sit down with the Sales As A Profession (SAAP) duo of Lyndon Brathwaite and Jarrod Best-Mitchell to talk about the sales and marketing landscape in Trinidad and Tobago.

It’s no secret that here in TT we have been slow to adopt the new ways of doing business for a multitude of reasons. I asked the team about the challenges they have seen in the sales and marketing and they responded that customers' buying habits have changed over the years and drastically since the pandemic, but companies haven’t changed how they reach buyers.

I asked them to give me a simple sales flow that companies should be striving to achieve to reach the 2022 buyer.

SAAP broke it down like this:

1. Customers have a problem or desire and to fulfil. They ask their friends for recommendations and/or take to Google to begin their research about the problem/need.

2. In the research phase, they are reading articles and watch videos online to fully understand their problem/desire.

3. They start to research on Google the companies that can service their needs or provide the products they are looking for.

4. They make a purchasing decision based on the research they find

5. They evaluate their purchase and the experience of making that purchase. They will leave digital reviews, good or bad, on social media or Google.

I asked for an example of bad practices that companies continue to use that may be hurting their sales. Jarrod gave an example using the insurance industry. The unit managers in all of the insurance companies are still forcing reps to use outdated scripts, cold-call random people and spam users on social media.

Practices like this turn prospective customers off and give a bad name to the entire industry.

They said rather than spamming individuals with scripts, adopting the approach of an inbound marketing strategy would greatly help not only the agents but the overall industry.

SAAP describes inbound marketing as the methodology that attracts customers to your business by creating valuable content and educating your clientele on your channels. This will create a more informed buyer and release the anxiety of buying from you.

Creating content allows your buyers to do their research on their own time without any pressure, qualifying themselves to see if they are even a fit to do business with you, so that by the time they reach out to you, they already know what they want and that you are the person/company they want to do a deal with.

I asked Lyndon to give me some insights on why he feels companies haven’t adopted more of an inbound strategy, given that, according to Statista.com, 68 per cent of sales interactions start with a Google search, Lyndon put it like this:

“Companies want to gain business, but the key problem is that organisations inherently are disjointed in their three revenue-generating areas of business: marketing, sales, customer service.

"Marketing represents lead acquisition, sales represents lead conversion and customer service represents customer success and revenue retention.

"Since companies have not brought these three areas up to speed in 2022, they struggle to gain, close and retain business.”

One thing that drives the SAAP team crazy is that the demand is there in almost any industry, but they constantly get called into meetings with their clients and watch them struggle to convert the business.

I asked the team to give me a few skills they believe companies should be investing in for 2022. They gave me five skillsets:

1. Inbound marketing/social selling.

2. Learning how to empower personal brands within their companies to grow the overall business.

3. Learning how to use customer relationship manager (CRM) tools and the strategies.

4. Learning how to use platforms like their website and Google Business to bring in leads, generate sales and educate their clients.

5. Invest in search engine optimisation, because clients are searching for your products/solutions and you are not showing up on Google.

The SAAP duo has an upcoming conference called ReveNew on June 15 that is going to show companies they need to change, show them how to change and address the key gaps in generating sales for your business in 2022. They have 14 speakers from across the Caribbean and diaspora, headlined by Liz J Simpson, who is recognised by LinkedIn as a top sales performer, an under-40 honouree by the San Antonio Business Journal, and is an author.

We know companies are looking to generate leads and close sales better in 2022, so the content provided from SAAP and its conference is a step in the right direction for companies.

To learn more about building your digital presence and monetising, visit Keronrose.com and check out the Digipreneur FM podcast on all podcast platforms.