It’s comforting when others validate the subtle trends you’re feeling in your business and market (the agency and B2B services space in our case).
These votes of confidence tell you that you’re not alone and/or going crazy.
It’s next level when multiple people you respect do this independently of each other within a week, which is exactly what happened to me recently. It’s like being dropped into the rag tag alien-hunting gang in John Carpenter’s 80’s classic They Live.
Below are a few trends we are experiencing, some of which I wrote about in Relationship Sales At Scale (newly available on Audible! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XRD71P3).
- Trust recession.
Mass skepticism in general, especially to any business you can start via laptop plus wifi.
- Longer sales cycles.
”Let’s give it a shot” is replaced by months of rumination.
- The death of the Predictable Revenue model.
A lowly SDR trying to set up meetings with C-level executives is no longer realistic, especially in the upmarket B2B space.
- The death of cold outbound.
Spray and pray fails, and AI-fueled fake personalization will not turn the tide, and it may make it worse (more on that here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-reasons-ai-overhyped-b2b-outreach-dan-englander-pnmoe/?trackingId=TzrKDqlirsntP2ep4vG6Aw%3D%3D). At Sales Schema, we see this one up close.
But it’s not all doom and gloom!
After all, at the end of They Live the gang expels the aliens (sorry for the spoiler, you had 30 years to experience this classic).
Below are a few ways we see agencies and B2B service companies kayak over these rapids, all while enjoying the ride.
The healthiest agencies and B2B service companies:
- Specialize.
They solve specific problems for specific groups of companies and people.
- Prospect to those likely to trust them:
At Sales Schema, we help agency sales teams do this by finding prospects who share meaningful business and personal commonalities.
- Leverage copy that de-risks conversations.
They accept that closing a deal from a one-touch email is insane in an upmarket B2B context, and instead they focus on building a relationship through a value-giving conversation.
- Focus on offers and products.
This means going from a reactive stance of “what services do you need?” to a proactive stance of “here is how we help people like you.”
- Leverage salespeople who can add value.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be the owner, but it shouldn’t be a day-one SDR either.
Are you feeling these trends in your agency or B2B service company? How are they playing out for you?
