The data has been very clear about buyer motivation for working with sales professionals or companies. Buyers want trusted advisors and not another sales rep.

A recent Demand Gen report found 88% of buyer reported that they will only buy from trusted advisors. So, are your sales professionals seen as a trusted advisor or just another sales professional?

Who are the parrots?

In this digital age, companies has looked for a lot of ways to provide content for sales reps to share with prospects. Most of these tools are in the form of sales enablement platforms. But, most sales enablement tools are built upon traditional sales methods applied to the Internet. Examples are content repositories for brochures, PDF or slide decks that a sales person may be personalize and share with their prospects.

Sharing company content in the form of employee advocacy (sharing company social posts) to a personal social account and sharing brochure materials are OK. But, they are not activities that create a trusted advisor status in your buyer’s minds. Mostly because they are not acting like someone who knows the industry and the buyer’s challenges. Their behavior makes them look like someone who knows how to share the company content only.

Because that is all they are doing. There is a BIG difference in how buyers’ respond to someone who writes content, shares their thoughts and consistently has information, that they create, with their prospective customers and industry.

Trusted advisors, or micro-influencers are individuals who share content they create based on their own experiences and what they have learned, observed or researched on their own.

Normally, this is the part of the conversation when many business leaders start to create reasons why this WON’T work for their company. Please resists that temptation. Hitting your sales numbers in 2022 depends on it.

Remember, 88% of buyers look to trusted advisors ONLY for making their purchases. And, buyers don’t perceive sales professionals who share company content as trusted advisors. They simply see them as sales professionals who parrot their company information.

Anyone can do that. But, that is not who buyer’s choose to work with or purchase from.

If you are thinking…

• We can’t allow our sales team to create their own content. What if they say the wrong things?
• We don’t want our sales using their time to create content. That is marketing’s role.
• Our team will never create their own content nor do they know how to create marketing content.

Will all respect, you are thinking about the modern sellers role totally wrong. Please resist thinking these or using any of these as reasons to stop reading this article.

Modern sales training must be very different that previous sales training because modern buyers behave so different than previous generation of buyers.

Modern buyers have access to all the research and information they need or want.

Older generation buyers relied on sales reps for their information.

Buyers block, unfollow, unsubscribe and ignore sales reps who send them unwanted emails or phone calls. Because they don’t need them.

Buyers follow, accept connections, respond to calls, respond to emails and engage with people who they see as trusted advisor and who can help them make better buying decisions.That is why your sales professionals need to become a modern seller.

If we can train sales professionals how to make outbound phone calls for 8 hours a day, then we can train and equip them to create and share content. Do you want buyers to perceive your sales professionals as parrots or trusted advisors?

The difference will make or break your sales numbers.