For veteran sales leaders such as Dale Taormino, the generational shift means much less time working the phones and wooing a few executives at a prospective company. Instead, she operates like “more of a quarterback,” she says, coordinating large teams of players on both the seller’s and buyer’s sides. “ There used to be a perception that sales is not that hard of a job— you just have to have a great per-tougher. sonality and be good at building relationships,” says Ms. Taormino, who as vice president of sales at Chicago-based Vistex Inc. leads the revenue-management company’s enterprise sales for North America. “ The profile of who’s going to be successful in sales and what kind of skill
set or acumen they have has definitely changed.” In her first job out of college a couple of decades ago, as a temporary worker helping sell subscriptions to industry research, Ms. Taormino says she was tasked with finding titles of people at target companies to cold call with product information and fax brochures.
Now the process of building a funnel of prospective clients has flipped, she says. Marketing and sales at many companies are working more in tandem than they used to. Many prospects find Vistex and its software products through online searches and software review sites like TrustRadius. They then contact Vistex on their own. If the company’s sales staff contacts buyers first, Vistex has already gleaned a lot about what they are seeking, based on visits to the website. Deals take longer and involve more people, says Mary Shea, who leads sales-technology research at sales-software company Outreach.io. In a recent Forrester survey of more than 200 business-to-business directors with purchasing power—49% of whom were millennials— at least half said they typically researched the supplier’s business and client reviews before ever accepting a meeting with them. Most also said they expect to meet, in person or virtually, with a supplier’s senior leaders and existing customers before signing the dotted line. In turn, 75% said the cycle for buying decisions had gotten longer over the past 24 months. Some sellers say that is partly due to pandemic-related disruptions.
Sales professionals say the more complex, protracted process of closing a sale has made the job Among 900 sales professionals surveyed by market-research firm Gartner last winter, nearly 90% said they had work-related burnout. One of the top reasons they cited was having to seek multiple approvals for deals.
Jessica DeMay, 35, sells software, but her “solutions consultant” title reflects the shift in the job. Buyers in her age range typically arrive at their first meeting armed with detailed research about her products and those from her competitors. They often want to see a product demonstration before talking at length to her or her team, which means there is little or no chance to customize the demo to their specifications.
The sales profession is grappling with other challenges, too. Big layoffs decimated the field early in the pandemic as companies slashed sales budgets. Since then, many businesses have struggled to fill open sales positions. Recruiters say many younger workers assume sales work means glad-handing and persuading customers with high-pressure tactics rather than the product-consulting role it has evolved into in recent years. Stephen Pacinelli, chief marketing officer at video-messaging service BombBomb, started selling software in 2000. The 45-year-old would often travel unannounced to the offices of real-estate brokers and agents to try to snag an appointment or to woo them with snacks.
ANDREA AREVALO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ( 2)
Today, that would be just as bad as sending an unprompted LinkedIn message with zero personalization, he says. Instead, he says, customers want to learn from peers at other companies.
“ That openness is more unique to millennials,” he says. “ You have to be the antithesis of a webinar.” Presenters and attendees at a recent Women in Sales Summit discussed how to sell to millennial buyers.
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