Portuguese sales sector needs to innovate

The Portuguese sales sector needs to innovate with new techniques to meet the challenges of today’s competitive sales market.

This is according to the CEO of Lead-Results, Helga Stewart, from the company that organised the Sales Shaker 2019 conference held at Nova SBE on Thursday which was dedicated to innovation in business to business (B2B) sales .
In an interview with PME Magazine, Helga Stewart said that the world of B2B sales has changed significantly over the past 20 years, particularly over the past decade.
There have been various reasons for this, principally developments in technology and ease access to information, as well as the increasingly important role of the purchaser which are all drivers.
“The best performers in sales around the world have been able to adapt to this new reality and adopt a new mindset and best practices which communicate and represent value to its prospect and those that differentiate them in their markets,” she said.
“In Portugal, as in many parts of the world, sales personnel have not been able to keep up with these trends and identify their value, start conversation with prospects that capture the attention of their potential clients and truly make themselves stand out from competitors from the point of view of what is most important to the purchaser,” she adds.
Stewart says that finding and securing new clients is the greatest challenge in sales and is fundamental for growing business. Without developing the techniques that work in their target markets, sales teams are going to find it increasingly difficult to create new opportunities to clinch more deals.
Speaking about the “Next-Generation of Finding and Procuring New Clients” is a mindset approach based on value and know-how that sales teams should offer their prospective clients and which will help them to win: creating new opportunities for them, reducing risk, eliminating barriers and overcoming difficulties.
“A good relationship with our prospective client is no longer the objective, but rather the starting point of a journey embarked by both together. If the purchaser does not see any advantage is speaking to a salesperson, this individual will sooner or later lose the business. The purchaser is not loyal to the company or the product, but rather what is behind them,” he explains adding that many professionals do not recognise this fact or do don’t know what alternatives to use.
Therefore, they continue to open up prospect conversations by listing the characteristics of their product or service and don’t look beyond this approach.
Concerning sales techniques in Portugal, Stewart says that there is a lot to learn. “The feedback that I’m getting paints a picture of a lack of support and capacity. Selling is an art and a science and the sales team is a powerful and knowledgable ally which creates value for its prospective client and helps them to create opportunities in the ‘noisy’ world in which they live,” says Stewart.
“Sales Shaker aims to inspire sales personnel to keep up with the rate of innovation in the more competitive and sophisticated markets,” she says.
Lead-Results helps sales professionals and managers to generate more sales from their prospecting activity through innovative perspectives, actionable best-practices and know-how delivered to make them flexible to handle any situation in sales and when faced with the modern, informed and digitally driven buyer.