Why I Created Skaled - Part Two

The love of sales: What it means to be a sales professional today

Last week I opened up the conversation about interaction of CEOs and other senior executives with Sales VPs, and the response was amazing. Many VPs and CEOs commented and gave their input, admitting that this was an important issue. This was one of the fundamental beliefs that led me to create Skaled. So what’s the second reason? I love sales and am pretty good at building armies of people who are good at sales too. Read on…

I genuinely love sales. I deeply care about sales as a profession and I want to use my skills and passion to help others demystify the science of sales. Sales is one of the most important functions in our society, and it is one of the last jobs left where your efforts directly affect compensation and your ability to be successful. I’ve always liked that.

I started Skaled so that I could be at the bleeding edge of what the most innovative sales organizations were doing throughout the world, and use that information to partner with companies to support their struggles in sales training, operations, and enablement. Today, this involves not only learning best practices from others and distributing that to clients, but also helping setting a new path.

What does the forefront of sales look like today??

The modern salesperson is smart, really smart, and not the used car salesman type that has stained the reputation of all salespeople. Most “used car salesmen” are the old school types, regardless of age, who think sales is purely a job that pays more, so they hop from role to role every year, chasing a payday that will never happen for them. They go into sales because their uncle said they would be good at it, or they played sports in high school/college so they are competitive, and therefore they think they’ll be successful. Sales has always been more complicated than that, and with the emergence of transparency and technology in the B2B sales process, it is a completely different game.

Not only has the the modern sales persona and organization changed, but most importantly, what the buyer wants and expects from organizations has changed too. I’ve seen the reports that 70% of the buyer’s process is done now when they reach the inbound rep and I challenge you to ask an inbound sales team if that is really the case. Do they have more information? Sure. Is it the right information about what you actually do or how you compare to the competition? Probably not.

Although buyers have access to more information than ever before, their internal decision making process has never been more confusing. This is true not only for the salesperson to try and navigate, but for the buyer to actually purchase. Today people don’t usually make decisions for others that often and rely more and more on consensus-building, meaning that the number of the decision makers in the buying process has increased. What makes a good sales process is becoming more complex as the complexity increases on the buy side.

Modern sales organizations incorporate traditional strategies such as the Challenger sale, SPIN selling, consultative sales, and more, but also realize that new skills are needed. Skills such as project management and advanced problem solving now come into play, as we see companies looking for less traditional “sales” skills in their hiring profiles. They look for an ability in salespeople to execute plays that work with customers and help move them through the buying/selling process.  Many “sales” activities are being replaced by technology and more specialized junior roles, making “what is sales?” a more interesting question than ever.

If you can’t tell by now, I created Skaled because I love sales and believe that sales needs its own version of a marketing/PR agency: a partner who can leverage expertise across hundreds of clients to give sales teams the right training, process and materials to meet the modern buying process.

This is why I do what I do: to help upgrade sales skills in the organization and breed the next generation of sales professionals.  If we can do these things at Skaled every day for our clients and partners, then we are living the vision.

Read Part One of the blog post here.

Thanks for reading!
Jake

Jake Dunlap is the CEO & Founder of Skaled, which helps b2b companies generate more meetings and close more deals. As a C-level sales leader and entrepreneur with more than a decade of experience, he has developed and led high-performing sales and operational functions for both global 2000 organizations and start-ups, specializing in building out repeatable, sustainable processes. Since launching Skaled in 2013, Jake has been a highly sought-after industry thought leader, quoted by Forbes, Inc., Huffington Post and Venture Beat.