The Modern Selling Environment
The Reality of Selling Today
Sales hasn’t stopped working. The world around it has changed.
For many businesses, the glory days of sales feel a long way behind us.
Healthy margins. Full order books. Customers calling you. Established relationships that lasted for years.
Today, many good businesses are simply working harder for every order.
Costs are higher. Margins are tighter. Targets haven’t disappeared.
And the people you’re trying to sell to have become considerably harder to reach.
- Unknown calls go unanswered.
- Emails are filtered, ignored or never seen.
- People work remotely.
- Businesses restructure.
- Job titles change.
- Decision-makers move.
The contact you spent ten years building a relationship with can disappear almost overnight.
Times have changed enormously.
I was talking to a business recently about their sales team.
They told me their last three salespeople had been lazy.
- “They spend all their time on LinkedIn.”
- “They’re more interested in strengthening their own position.”
- “They’re nothing like the salespeople we used to have.”
So I asked a simple question:
When did you last personally go through your old customer contacts and start calling the companies that no longer spend with you?
The answer?
They hadn’t.
They then told me how they’d built their business 25 years ago.
They picked up the Yellow Pages and started making calls.
And it got me thinking…
How lucky were we back then?
We didn’t think so at the time.
But imagine having that now.
Almost every business you could want to contact, with a telephone number that actually worked. Someone answered within seconds. You asked for the owner, MD or decision-maker — and more often than not, you were transferred.
Then personality took over.
Conversations happened. Relationships developed.
Businesses were built on personality, trust, loyalty, cooperation and sometimes genuine friendships.
But that was then.
Try doing it today.
An automated switchboard doesn’t care how charismatic you are. It won’t have a conversation with you. It won’t be persuaded to put you through to the MD.
Instead:
- “Please send an email to info@...”
- “Please complete the enquiry form on our website.”
No name. No direct number. Sometimes no email address.
Now do that 50 times. And do it using contacts from your own CRM that haven’t been properly updated for years.
It’s exhausting.
So before assuming your salespeople aren’t trying hard enough, sit alongside them for a day. Pick up the phone. Show them how it’s done.
You might discover that the problem isn’t your salespeople.
The way we reach businesses has fundamentally changed. Finding the right person can take weeks or months. Getting that person to engage can take even longer.
That’s where Reading CRM Intelligence comes in.
We’ve learned the hard way too.
We research the companies you want to reach, identify the people relevant to your business and update the company information your sales team is working from.
We do the research so your salespeople can concentrate on what they’re actually good at: building relationships and selling.
- Everything changes.
- People move.
- Businesses restructure.
- Telephone systems change.
- Contacts disappear.
- Databases age.
The businesses that succeed adapt with them.
Don’t judge today’s salespeople by yesterday’s sales environment.
Give them today’s tools.
Your Database Was Good Once
There may be absolutely nothing wrong with your CRM.
And there’s probably nothing wrong with your sales team either.
Your database was good once.
The problem is that businesses don’t stand still.
- People leave.
- People get promoted.
- Companies are bought and sold.
- Departments change.
- Responsibilities move.
- Decision-makers change.
But unless somebody does something about it, the information in your database stays exactly where you left it.
Three, five or even ten years later, an experienced salesperson can find themselves working through information that was perfectly accurate once — but isn’t anymore.
Flogging an Old Database Harder Won’t Change the Outcome
When sales slow down, pressure naturally increases.
- More calls.
- More emails.
- More activity.
- More targets.
- More meetings.
But there’s a point where additional pressure achieves very little.
You can’t pressure a salesperson into getting an answer from somebody who left the business three years ago.
You can’t build a relationship with a decision-maker you haven’t identified.
And making another twenty calls from the same outdated information doesn’t suddenly make that information correct.
The problem isn’t necessarily the salesperson.
It may simply be what you’ve given them to work with.
Cold Calling Isn’t What It Used to Be
When did you last make a genuinely cold call?
Not an existing customer. Not someone expecting you. A completely cold call to somebody who has never heard of you.
It’s different now.
- Getting through is harder.
- Finding the person who actually holds the responsibility is harder.
- And establishing a new relationship in an increasingly hands-off business environment takes time.
For an established salesperson, that’s frustrating.
For a new salesperson trying to prove themselves, it can be considerably more serious.
They need to build relationships. They need to build a pipeline. They need to start producing.
But they can lose weeks — sometimes months — simply working out who they should be speaking to.
Those months cost money. And that can be the difference between somebody proving themselves or being written off before they’ve really had the opportunity,
We’re Not Saying Your Salespeople Aren’t Good
Quite the opposite.
We’ve spent enough years in sales ourselves to understand the value of a good salesperson.
They’re good at:
- Talking to people.
- Understanding customers.
- Building trust.
- Recognising opportunities.
- Developing relationships.
- Negotiating.
- And closing business.
That’s where their value is.
But before they can do any of that, they need to find the right person.
And that has become a job in itself.
You Could Find It Yourself
We’re not going to pretend the information we supply is secret.
It isn’t.
Given enough time, your sales team could probably find much of the same information themselves.
But that’s the point.
How much time do you want them spending finding it?
- Searching different sources.
- Following people who have moved companies.
- Working through changing job titles.
- Finding conflicting information.
- Deciding which source is current.
- Cross-checking what they’ve found.
- Finding another route when the obvious one leads nowhere.
- Then doing it all again for the next company. And the next. And the next.
It takes time. It costs money. It causes frustration.
And while they’re doing it, they’re not selling.
That’s Where Reading CRM Intelligence Comes In
We have years of experience in sales and in finding new ways to identify the right people when the traditional routes don’t work.
You give us the companies you want to understand. We do the digging.
- We research what’s changed.
- We identify the people who appear relevant today.
- We cross-check the information we find.
- And we deliver that intelligence back to your sales team in a clear, usable format.
- No access to your CRM.
- No new software.
- No subscription.
- No disruption to your sales operation.
- And no ridiculous promises that we’re somehow going to make your sales team sell.
That’s their expertise.
Finding the people worth selling to is ours.
We Don’t Replace Your Salespeople.
We Give Them a Better Place to Start.
Your salespeople build the relationships.
Your salespeople understand the customer.
Your salespeople close the business.
We simply help them get to the right people faster.