Unveiling the Key Challenges Facing Sales Leaders in 2023 and Strategies to Overcome Them

The results are in from our largest ever research project designed to shed light on the top challenges faced by Sales Leaders in 2024 and beyond. This comprehensive study delves into the realms of talent management, building trust with customers, customer retention, social selling, and effective use of technology.

Whilst it would not be fitting to summarise the complex challenges Sales Leaders face into a short-form article, this author has decided to do his best to do so…

Talent Management: The Top Challenge

According to the research, a staggering 67% of respondents identified talent management as their number one challenge for the next twelve months. This includes aspects such as recruitment, productivity of existing staff, training, managing and motivating the sales teams, and overall team engagement.

To overcome this challenge, many are acknowledging the importance of developing emotional intelligence (EQ) alongside technical and management skills. Building a micro-focus on individual team members' drives is crucial, fostering a detailed understanding of what motivates each member.

Additionally, focusing on sales leadership strategy, and involving the team in target setting, strategic planning, and celebrating achievements are helping to grow engagement, and therefore improve performance and extend tenure within organisations.

Engagement surveys, or pulse surveys, are recommended tools for assessing team engagement and making necessary adjustments rapidly – before a short-term problem becomes a systemic business issue. Recruitment challenges can be addressed through personalized assistance, leveraging resources like Culture Amp or SurveyMonkey.

Building Trust with Customers

The second major challenge identified by Sales Leaders is building trust with customers, a concern expressed by 42% of respondents. As the dynamics of customer interactions evolve, Sales Leaders face the task of effectively communicating value and influencing decisions in a landscape where multiple decision-makers are involved. Gartner's findings indicate that 70% of Sales Leaders encounter significant roadblocks in connecting with customers virtually.

Strategies to overcome this challenge include simplifying the sales process, aligning the team with a clear strategy and playbook, involving the team in goal-setting and strategic planning, and utilizing engagement surveys. Building a wide network across an organization, leveraging LinkedIn, videos as icebreakers, and personalized communication are highlighted as effective trust-building techniques.

Customer Retention and Key Account Management

Customer retention or key account management emerged as the third major challenge for Sales Leaders. Retaining customers in today's competitive landscape, where decision-making involves multiple stakeholders, requires a multi-faceted approach. Across our research we are seeing successful stay involved throughout the customer's journey, conducting post-project check-ins, and implementing a Key Account Management (KAM) framework.

Ensuring salespeople are engaged during the delivery phase, checking in post-project, and having a defined KAM framework are essential components of retaining customers. The podcast emphasizes the importance of incorporating customer retention techniques into training programs, ensuring that high-performing sales teams are well-equipped to manage and retain accounts effectively.

Social Selling: Navigating the Digital Landscape

Surprisingly, social selling emerged as the fourth major challenge, with Sales Leaders expressing difficulty in getting teams to embrace social media for sales purposes. 78% of social sellers outperform their non-social media-using peers. This underlines the significance of leveraging social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube for building relationships and trust with customers.

To address this challenge, ensuring salespeople create content for preferred social media channels, collaborating with marketing teams for content creation, implementing a content calendar, and identifying each salesperson's preferred content creation method are proven steps forward. Acknowledging that whilst the landscape is constantly changing, creating content that is most suitable to the listeners within the platform (i.e. educational for Linkedin) and engaging with the platform community is the key to building networks on social media platforms.

Effective Use of Technology

The fifth and final challenge identified is the effective use of technology, an area where 32% of sales reps feel overwhelmed by available AI tools. Where sales leaders can integrate the human experience with digital tools to ensure teams are not only compliant to business processes, but also maximizing the potential of their tech stack is where we are seeing team success more consistently.

Strategies to improve technology usage include encouraging the use of video for relationship building, incorporating automation for lead nurturing, upskilling sales teams on existing tech tools, and providing ongoing support to nurture tech-related habits.

Listen to the podcast: Key Challenges Facing Sales Leaders in 2023 and Strategies to Overcome Them

Conclusion:

In summary, Sales Leaders face a myriad of challenges in 2024, ranging from talent management to navigating the digital landscape. As the sales landscape evolves, adapting to these challenges and implementing strategic solutions is essential for building high-performing and engaged sales teams. 

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About the Author

Hi, I’m Ben

I’m a builder of incredible sales teams, trainer, coach and an avid believer that the best sales leaders are constantly sharpening their tools to achieve an ‘edge’.

[email protected]