B2B leaders face turbulent times as economic headwinds intensify

Matthew Flug Evangelist at Outreach & Mary Shea, PhD VP, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach

With two consecutive quarters of declining growth in the United States behind us, a global economic downturn is rapidly becoming a reality. The war in Ukraine, China’s ongoing 0-COVID policies, Europe’s natural gas crisis, and rising inflation and interest rates in the U.S. will have far-reaching implications for all businesses. As these economic headwinds intensify, every growth leader will need to understand, calculate, and close their Sales Execution Gap.

Revenue Heroes forge the path forward

True heroes rise to the occasion during the most challenging times. As we face what will likely be multiple quarters of slower growth, B2B sales leaders will need to identify Revenue Heroes in their organizations who can help them uncover and remediate efficiency and execution gaps across their entire revenue system.

Revenue heroes lean into go-to-market innovation and push the envelope on their own professional development. They seek opportunities to drive organizational transformation and understand that status quo approaches don’t always work in complex times.

Sales leaders must now operate with fewer resources. For most organizations, this means reduced headcount. Revenue Heroes understand that reality, but also know how sales technology can minimize the negative impact of having a smaller team. Sales execution technologies dramatically increase efficiencies and help balance the equation by making all remaining sellers exponentially more productive.

Weather the storm with Sales Execution Technology

Today’s sales leaders must achieve their revenue goals with fewer resources than before. Yet the most successful leaders focus on controlling what they can control. They lean in and close efficiency gaps throughout their revenue system to mitigate the external events they can’t control.

To succeed today and in the future, the best sales leaders will focus on closing their Sales Execution Gap. By optimizing go-to-market (GTM) processes and arming their sellers with sales execution technology, these leaders will get higher quality pipelines and better win rates with a smaller and more agile team.

To set their organizations up for success, revenue leaders must familiarize themselves with best-in-class Sales Execution Platforms. These platforms leverage embedded automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate mundane administrative seller tasks and derive insights from buyer and seller behavioral activities.

The automated data capture of buyer and seller interactions ensures the organization has a robust, complete, and accurate data set. Machine learning algorithms identify at-risk deals and provide real-time coaching to sellers.

Sales Execution Platforms work in concert with the customer relationship management (CRM) system enabling the organization to derive more value from that investment while allowing GTM teams to operate on a seller-friendly platform.

So how do you get started? First, identify the Revenue Heroes within your GTM team; empower them to identify process efficiency gaps. Then, conduct an audit of your sales technology stack; identify gaps and redundancies. Finally, learn how a Sales Execution Platform can make every member of your revenue team more effective and productive.