Rethink Sales Podcast: 2023 Predictions

2023 Predictions

Michelle Seger
Hey. Welcome, everyone. Hi Mark.

Mark Donnolo
Hey Michelle.

Michelle Seger
So this is that exciting time of year where we talk about the things that we believe are ahead for the next year. So we’re talking about 2023.

Mark Donnolo
Our predictions or otherwise known as what’s going to happen unless the world gets its act in order.

Michelle Seger
Ouch. Yes.

Mark Donnolo
So it’s going to.

Michelle Seger
It’s need a couple of years, hasn’t it? Well, I can say this much. I would say that we do a pretty good job on our prediction.

Mark Donnolo
I know, I know.

Michelle Seger
I hate to say it.

Mark Donnolo
But yeah, you know, last year we did the recap of the prior year’s predictions and all the kind of look back harp music and which ones we got right. But there was so much of that we’re not going to do it again. We’re just assume that we got the majority of them right.

Michelle Seger
All right. So let’s get to it. Mark, one of the first things that we wanted to talk about was the war for talent, because we’re still hearing that there’s a shortage for those really good hot rolls out there. There’s still is some positions that aren’t being filled. So let’s let’s discuss what we think is happening with that and what it looks like ahead.

Mark Donnolo
Yes. So we think the war for talent is actually going to be a bunch of skirmishes and battles. Right. So the war for talent is actually going to be a short run type of situation. And that’s one thing that’s amazing is how we look at things kind of like, well, this is the way it’s going to be is kind of like remote work and hybrid work.

Mark Donnolo
We’ll talk about that later. But it’s like, Oh, this is the new world. This way it’s going to be the war for talent. This new world, the way it’s going to be. Well, actually, what we have, Econ 101, we have a short run disequilibrium between supply and demand. So what does that mean? So we’ve got too much demand from companies related to the supply of labor, right?

Mark Donnolo
So that drives price up when you shift those curves, that drives price up, but then it falls back to an equilibrium as other things happen, right? So as you have like new entrants into the workforce that can drive price down or if you have less demand from companies from, say, a recession or layoffs that can drive demand down and they’ll drive price down.

Mark Donnolo
So we’re going to start seeing that shift happening and companies are going to realize that they’re actually overpaying and they’re overcommitting in a long term way to a short term problem. So that whole, you know, increase in in salaries. And, you know, one of our recent surveys, we saw that to acquire new talent, 50% of companies are offering higher based salaries.

Mark Donnolo
39% of companies are increasing incentive opportunities, 22% doing both this for sales organizations. Well, the ones that are increasing salary, that’s a long term commitment. Right. And so they’re going to find themselves sitting there with increased costs as things start to settle down.

Michelle Seger
Well, and what we also believe is that we so we do believe that things are going to start settling down a little bit. And we’re starting to hear that already. And, well, gosh, it’s in the paper, the lay out layoffs that are happening and more are on the way. And so what we also believe is that it’s not necessarily going to be last in, first out, but we believe that they’re going to be really looking at the talent that they have and the skill of that of that talent and make the determination on the layoff around that.

Michelle Seger
Right. Right. So they may have hired some people in, let’s say, Mark, that might be a little over market, but they’re highly skilled. And I don’t believe that those are the ones that are going to drop out. But if you remember, when we looked at the pandemic, when the layoffs were vast, the logic that so many companies were using was last in, first out, right.

Mark Donnolo
LIFO.

Michelle Seger
Mm.

Mark Donnolo
Now it’s going to be LTFO low talent first out.

Michelle Seger
Low talent first out.

Mark Donnolo
Yes, yeah. Because yeah, because when you get this, this increase or this inflation in, in the price of labor inflation and salaries, I think you’re getting a lot of people in there that when the tide starts to pull back, they’re going to have to be able to prove their value. Yeah. Or else they’re going to be out. Yeah.

Mark Donnolo
Right. So and yeah. So all that jobs, which is actually going to produce people that are going to be standing there are probably back out on the market and maybe the demand is not going to be where it used to be.

Michelle Seger
Yeah. So can we talk for a second about the employee employer relationship? Mm hmm. One of the things that we saw through the pandemic was, oh, that whole battle around being back in the office. And it really has become an “us them” mentality between, you know, the big the big company that’s forcing me to do something that I don’t believe I need to do.

Michelle Seger
Like, it really made a lot of headlines too, and I’m really concerned me because I see this amazing opportunity for people, particularly look at where we live in Atlanta to avoid having really big commutes five days a week. Right. But then this whole clash on, let’s not even sit down and talk, I believe that that’s going to go away and that companies are going to that’s going to settle down and that companies are really figuring out what jobs make sense, that they can be partial, hybrid, remote or in the office.

Michelle Seger
Right. Right. And that people that are well-suited for those jobs will probably also be the best suited for how that job works. And so whether it’s virtual or remote or I’m sorry, virtual hybrid or in office full time.

Mark Donnolo
Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, I think it did go from that big us versus them situation. You remember that one survey we did where I think it was something like 60 something percent of employers I’m sorry, employers thought that 60 something percent of people were going to be back in the office full time. Right. But the employees thought that only like a third of them thought they were going to be back in the office full time.

Mark Donnolo
So there’s a big difference in expectations and we heard all these phrases like, you know, well, once you give people something, you can’t take it back. You know, like we, you know, companies gave people the ability to work remote and it was like, well, no, I think that was a pandemic. Yeah. So, so but now it’s kind of rationalizing, right?

Mark Donnolo
People going a lot more rational. And I think it’s like you said, people are understanding that there are a lot of benefits to to remote work or hybrid work.

Michelle Seger
Something else that I believe is that smaller companies could have an advantage in this whole thing about hybrid work because for big, think about these big cities that are still a lot of office spaces not fully occupied and it feels empty when you go work there. I mean, I think the value proposition going to work for a company where people are not in an office is kind of a poor environment to be in.

Michelle Seger
Right. And I’ve heard that a lot from clients and others and leaders that are working together, people in the office just a few days a week. But when it’s empty, it just feels, you know, it just doesn’t feel so good.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah. So you’ve talked about this idea before of of intentional collaboration. So coming to the office, when you need to come to the office, don’t come to the office to put your headphones on and kind of, you know, focus in on the spreadsheet, but be there to work with everybody and you want to create that environment, right? So right some clients we see, they’ll be like, oh, it’s, it’s an in-office day and you know, the place is bustling or they’re going in and it’s not an office day and the place is like a ghost town.

Mark Donnolo
So I think we’re going to start to yeah, I think we’re going to start to see an, you know, an equilibrium there. I think we’re going to start to see that settle down and and hybrid work is going to become the the norm. And as we know and you were talking before hybrid work is that’s the fastest or a hybrid sales roles or the fastest growing sales roles beyond inside sales, which used to be the fastest and of course fields.

Mark Donnolo
So that’s going to become, I think, the new majority type of sales role.

Michelle Seger
Yeah. So let’s explain what hybrid sales role means to everyone here. So when we think about it, we’re we’re thinking about a salesperson that spending 50% on average about half their time or so in front of clients and the other half of their time virtually connecting with them and doesn’t mean that they’re hybrid in an office it we’re referring to really their interaction with their buyer or their client.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah. They’re matching the customer, right? So the customer’s not in the office. They’re not going to show up at a in an empty office park.

Michelle Seger
And yes.

Mark Donnolo
So by definition, they’re hybrid because they’re trying to, you know, to match the needs of the customer. Yeah.

Michelle Seger
So now that that is basically here to stay, we’ve been saying all along, but there is going to be new skills and different skills required for that hybrid sales role. Mm hmm. Okay. So let’s talk about Mark, something you and I have been discussing a lot about consumer spending. Slow down. Right.

Mark Donnolo
All right. Yeah. Okay. So I think the big trend we’re going to see here is slower consumer spending. And consumer spending is what drives the economy. Right. And and that’s going to be slowing down. It’s going to be challenged by lower savings and shifting more on to credit cards and more onto debt, which is going to, in turn, slow down company purchases, which in turn kind of a domino effect will slow down company hiring, which will settle back the war for talent.

Mark Donnolo
And if that.

Michelle Seger
Right, that is all related.

Mark Donnolo
To decreased GDP growth, and that’s going to, you know, continue us into recession. So here’s some interesting stats to consider behind that. Right. So what we know is that consumer spending has been funded over the past few years by personal savings and pay increases from the war for talent. So check this out. Peak savings during the pandemic in 2020.

Mark Donnolo
In total United States, $6.4 trillion. But that was the peak. Yeah, it is. Now at the end of 2022, down to $581 billion. That’s down about 90%, if my math is right. So that’s the lowest savings level since 2009. That’s kind of scary. So consumers have been eating through their savings, right? Yeah. And how do you what do you what do you do when you start running out of savings and you have, you know, the same spending habits?

Mark Donnolo
Because they always say don’t bet against the American consumer or you start putting on credit cards. Well, the thing is, our habit is we buy everything on credit cards anyway. So what we start to do is we just start to pay off less of our balances and that increases the debt. So the consumer debt now in the U.S. is at almost $1 trillion.

Mark Donnolo
That’s the highest level ever just. And then you take the increase in interest rates with what’s going on in the economy and then it gets more expensive to service that debt. So things have to slow down at a certain point here pretty soon because there’s limited roadbed for consumers to continue that spending. And and the only way out of it is if, you know, they continue to take on debt, which is not sustainable or there’s some other source of demand outside of consumers, which I don’t know what that will be that could replace that.

Mark Donnolo
So I don’t know how you can avoid this slowdown given those numbers.

Michelle Seger
If you’re a global company, what do you think you’re doing? Do you think that there could be, what, a concerted effort looking at economies that are not impacted or are they going to be doubling down in a country like the U.S.? I’m sure you’re referring to the U.S. right now.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s a broad number. Right. So that doesn’t that’s representing everyone. Well, we know there are certain segments that are spending more than others, right? It’s true. Yes. So, you know, higher income segments are continuing to spend and they will continue to spend. So maybe, you know, shifting targeting there. So so I think it’s just showing us a general slowdown so that that’s going to, again, leading to recession.

Mark Donnolo
Interestingly, you know, recessions defined as well roughly the kind of the accepted definition is two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth. Yeah. And so we had two quarters in Q1 and Q2 and Q3, we had a GDP increase at an annual rate of 2.9%. So that actually came up. So, you know, we did have a little a little of a recession dip, but I was doing a research on this recently and I thought, this is interesting.

Mark Donnolo
So that is kind of a commonly accepted definition of a recession. But really a recession is designated by this committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research. And they look at a number of things to say, whether we’re in a recession or not. So, you know, maybe we’re not in a recession. Maybe it’s just a flesh wound, right?

Michelle Seger
Oh, stop.

Mark Donnolo
So so a recession can basically be whatever we want it to be, you know?

Michelle Seger
Well, at the end of the day, the recession is what the the buyer and the consumer feel.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah, that’s what we feel. And it’s like when when things start to slow down, it’s like, hello anyway. So so we see that coming and I think everybody, you know, kind of commonly agrees with that in the financial and the financial sector as well, but that will cool off the war for talent.

Michelle Seger
So let’s shift a little bit and can we talk about omni channel because one of the things that we talked about was given everything that happened through the pandemic, there was so much chat pre-pandemic about omni channel and omni channel becoming, you know, companies were exploring, bringing that experience in B2B sales. Omni channel just means that me as a buyer, I can buy any way that I want to, whenever I want to, and however I want to engage.

Michelle Seger
And then the big question became like, well, who gets paid for the sale? You know, which we have good answers for that. But one of the things that we believe and that we’re seeing is that omni channel, I mean, it’s here to stay in B2B and B2C and it’s not a trend, it’s just the way it is.

Mark Donnolo
Right. We could say omni channel is omnipotent.

Michelle Seger
Yes, we can. You were dying to sat that. Yeah. So little creepy podcast. You know.

Mark Donnolo
Didn’t say omnipotent like at least I got that right.

Michelle Seger
No, no, you didn’t. So that’s good. That’s good. You’re enunciation works.

Mark Donnolo
So so yeah. So omni channel. It’s going to it’s going to be the norm. Right. And so companies have to figure out how are they going to serve the customer, however that customer wants to buy because their competitors are going to do that. So if I want to find information online, if I want to buy online, if I want to go to the store and then actually go home and buy online, or if I want to go, you know, talk to a salesperson, right?

Mark Donnolo
So however, I want to get information, however I want to make that decision. And I’d say most companies have not figured that out yet. They haven’t figured out that seamless sequence and they haven’t figured out how to get the sales organization, whether it’s virtual or hybrid or remote or in-person, how to get them to all work together smoothly and without any kind of preference one way or the other.

Mark Donnolo
So if you’re in the store and you say, Hey, I love this, whatever this item is, can I just go home and buy it online? The salesperson needs to be able to say, Oh, of course, right, right now.

Michelle Seger
Here’s my coupon, here’s.

Mark Donnolo
My here’s my coupon on my code. Right? So I can.

Michelle Seger
Do that because. But the other thing is, so in B2B, though, when we think about that, what we believe that means is inside sales is not dead and we built a model. So we’ve got this is available at SalesGlobe.com, but we have a model that we built and it talks about how the sales organization can work together, the sales structure.

Michelle Seger
Right, and what the selling motion looks like. And one of them we talk about the highest end on this teaming concept where you’ve got hybrid teaming with inside sales right to end or field teaming, but it’s a team that could be customer success inside sales, field hybrid, whatever that looks like, but that can contribute to that omnichannel experience, right?

Michelle Seger
Those rules of engagement and how they work together, including how they ultimately get paid. Yeah.

Mark Donnolo
Compensation critical, right. Because that’s what creates or drives a lot of these behaviors.

Michelle Seger
Right.

Mark Donnolo
So you have companies are not if they don’t have omnichannel figured out, they’re going to have to do that relatively soon.

Michelle Seger
So what I’m going to predict is that there’s going to be a growth in teaming sales roles together.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Michelle Seger
Okay. So let’s move on to this job switchers settling in.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah, well, that’s another thing that’s going to.

Michelle Seger
Switch.

Mark Donnolo
Settle back. Yeah, it’s going to be settle back. The the war for talent again. It’s another one of those factors that how has the war for talent driven up prices of labor. It’s because people are jumping jobs to get higher paying jobs in other places, right.

Michelle Seger
Yeah.

Mark Donnolo
Then you start getting these layoffs happening and people are like, Oh, okay, maybe I need to hold back a little bit and kind of see what’s going on. So there actually is less job switching. The pay increases for job switchers over the past 12 months, this according to Atlanta Fed jobs, which saw average pay increases of 7.3% versus 5.3% for non switchers.

Mark Donnolo
It doesn’t sound like a big number, but. But job switching has paid off, but job switching actually is down. So it’s come down from 3% to 2.6%. Now, again, that doesn’t sound like big numbers, but those are those are that’s movement in a direction. Yeah. So the less job switching you have again settling back to the competition in the war for talent.

Mark Donnolo
Hmm.

Michelle Seger
You know, I just wonder if let’s let’s talk about something. You made me think about this when you were talking about the pay increases. So a lot of times pre-pandemic, let’s talk about people would leave the job at a big company because they are you know, they get a little stuck. Right. You’ve got this band of increases every year or so, maybe 1.5% or one point, you know, 2.63%.

Michelle Seger
However, it’s so, you know, granular when they figure that out because they budgeted how much they can given increases and and that causes people to leave a company and then they even hear they may hear from their leader or manager. Well, but the band in this job, this is the way that it is. And we can even go beyond this particular, you know, amount or whatever.

Michelle Seger
So what it I’d love to understand how you think that could be impacting sales roles. I have an idea for what I think where you want people to stay, you don’t want them to leave, but that, you know, if if pay really does settle down and if we really are in an inflationary environment for any particular, you know, length of time, it could take years to get out of the recession, inflation, whatever you want to call this thing, how do you get people to stay without giving them increases that may not even coincide with how, you know, prices are increasing and that reward them for their efforts?

Mark Donnolo
I mean, I think sales has one big tool to play with that a lot of most other organizations don’t, which is the incentive pay.

Michelle Seger
Yes.

Mark Donnolo
So when we talk to clients, when they’re increasing base pay for salespeople, we know salespeople value base pay at about double the rate that they value incentive pay. So that carries a lot of weight, obviously. But if you’re constrained on base pay, being able to do something with the incentives can help. What can that be? That can be how you’re setting up your pay curves, particularly if you want to keep the good people.

Mark Donnolo
You can tip up your payout curve so you can perhaps do something in more of a cost neutral fashion of that reverse Robinhood principle, which is paying, you know, taking from the underperformers and paying the older performers, the high performers. So there’s that tool that’s available. Certainly how you’re setting quotas can make a difference. So, you know, you don’t really want to soften quotas just to be able to deliver more pay to people, right?

Mark Donnolo
So there’s that lever. And then I think there’s the big one that a lot of companies overlook. And and we’re seeing this with clients right now, Michelle, which is the employee value proposition. So when they’re playing right now on the idea of we can increase base pay or we can increase incentives, they’re missing a lot of other opportunities.

Mark Donnolo
So those other opportunities are about job content. So what somebody does, companies are playing into that a bit in terms of offering up more remote work, that type of thing. So you’ve got job content, you’ve got a career path. Where can you go with us as an organization? You’ve got affiliation with a great company, a great brand, you’ve got a culture.

Mark Donnolo
You certainly have benefits. Yeah, so we’re seeing this all over that everybody gets caught in the game of the pay increases and it’s like, Wait, you have a lot of things that people value and why they want to stay here market that.

Michelle Seger
That’s right to.

Mark Donnolo
The to the to the market.

Michelle Seger
Yeah I’m also going to predict that we’re going to see more aggressive pay mix. And what that means is I believe that we’re going to see more pay at risk across roles. We already we’re starting to see that when we were looking at the hybrid role. So we did that survey this year and we understood what pay mix was.

Michelle Seger
Field sales roles and hybrid roles and hybrid roles were more aggressive and meaning that there was more pay at risk. And we believe that that’s because those roles did not exist before. And you could easily do that. Right. But I’m going to predict that as companies are looking at managing their cost of sales instead of increasing base pay, they will add more on top of the incentive opportunity to at least get some value back right to at least offset the additional expense in pay.

Michelle Seger
Instead of it being something fixed where they’re gambling a little bit, they’re going to put it in incentive. And so to your point, I think we’re going to see more of that reverse Robinhood happening. You know how many companies market that we go to and they’re they’re now coming to us and saying 80% of our people were at or above quota or 90% and they know that that’s just too high.

Michelle Seger
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Donnolo
And and in this whole conversation, I know we talk about this in other podcast, we have to remember those big three things that if you’re increasing your costs and especially fixed costs like base salary, you got to do one of three things, which is you either have to increase productivity to go along with those costs, meaning bigger quotas or people producing more.

Mark Donnolo
You’ve got to lower cost in some other area or you’ve got to raise prices. Otherwise your margins are going to go down, right? Yep. And I know there are others beyond those three, but you kind of get yourself in a spot there that you have to do something if you’re going to be raising your costs.

Michelle Seger
So I’m looking at your predictions and right we’ll talk about this one. The new achievers will nudge out the great resigners.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah, this is my this is my flashback to the eighties, guys. And you know what? I’m passionate about this one. I know because I’m passionate about the the great designers and the silent quitters, right?

Michelle Seger
Yeah.

Mark Donnolo
I’m passionate. Not in a positive way about about them right now. So it’s like exit stage left because make room for somebody else. Okay, well, you don’t have to because somebody else is going to make room for themselves in this situation. So what I mean by that is the new achievers are going to look at what’s going on in terms of the people that are the silent quitters or the resigners are the people that aren’t coming to the office or not engaged with the organization.

Mark Donnolo
They’re yeah, I’m just going to work remote and it’s like, okay, well, I see opportunities for my career path as a new achiever because I want a career path. I’m going to show up, I’m going to be there working with a team, I’m going to be there working with a boss. I’m going to be working, working with the customer directly.

Mark Donnolo
Right? And so I think that’s going to open up opportunities for a group of people. And we don’t know how large they are, but we know they’re out there because we see them, right? We have them. Those people are going to see opportunities and they’re going to step in. Now, it may not be enough to tip the scales in terms of the overall labor market, but what it’s going to do is it’s going to start to nudge out a lot of people that think they can just coast.

Mark Donnolo
Right. So so watch for that. And, you know, that’s not, you know, may or may not be popular with the status quo or whatever. But I think it’s happening.

Michelle Seger
Well, I just think it’s really exciting for people that might be new to the workforce and others even more mature in their careers, but they haven’t really been able to stand out even if they’ve done super, really good work. I think there’s an opportunity. I think that employee, the employer is looking at people a little bit differently and they’re looking at, you know, people’s results and work effort.

Michelle Seger
And, you know, I don’t know. I think that you’re right. I think there could be a really good opportunity today.

Mark Donnolo
And the reason I say it’s a flashback to the eighties is I you know, I came up in the in the eighties and nineties early in my career, and we were all new achievers back then. When you got out of college, you went to went to work. It was all about what can I do to advance? And there was just a drive.

Mark Donnolo
Maybe it was because I started my career in New York, but it was all about that, right? It wasn’t about leisure. It was about I’m going to bust it so I can get ahead and do it. So I see a lot of people doing that now.

Michelle Seger
Balance. But a little balance is good.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah, of course.

Michelle Seger
Of course. You know, because you’re. Yeah. Your high drive in like the Wall Street movie. Right.

Mark Donnolo
Well, you know, it’s like.

Michelle Seger
You know, not everybody wants that frenetic pace.

Mark Donnolo
Balance is for later in life, though. You got to make your bones and then you can have balance. Right. But that’s the eighties flashback.

Michelle Seger
Oh, boy. Okay. So I believe what’s going to happen is that people that really want to advance their career, younger people, they’re going to figure it out. They’re going to figure out how to have a good balance that it’s not about. I agree. Oh, I can’t have a great job. You know, I’m either going to live in my van and travel the country or, you know, I don’t know, take out jobs.

Michelle Seger
I think they’re going to figure it out. Yeah.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah. And I know you have.

Michelle Seger
A better life.

Mark Donnolo
Oh, yeah, you’re right. Yeah. I mean, there’s young people now that are going into sales and they go they come through the junior sales rep program and they’re ready to go out to the to the market. And they see how the company treats the reps that are out in the market. They just burn through the new reps, right?

Mark Donnolo
They’re transferring them to different, different territories or different geographies and they basically burn them out. And a lot of those people I’ve I’ve seen them, they, they’re like, you know, I don’t think I want to do this or I don’t want to do this for this company. So that balance is going to play.

Michelle Seger
Yep. Okay. So what about this generation of less developed sales professionals that you’re talking about? Do you really think that’s going to happen?

Mark Donnolo
That’s already happening? Yeah. This is the great irony in the whole thing is okay, again, flash back to how we all grew up, right? How did we learn? We learned by being there and working with the team and working with the customer and working with our bosses. And we learn from the bumps and bruises that come with like, you know, an in-person meeting that fails.

Mark Donnolo
And you were the and you were the cause of it or something. And so you learn from a lot of those hard knocks because you’re on the field of play, right? And you sharpen your skills, you sharpen your talents. And so it’s not easy. It takes a lot of work. You know, you’re getting on planes, you’re going places, right?

Mark Donnolo
There’s a lot of that machismo in there. Right. But we don’t have that anymore. But but that’s how people learn, right?

Michelle Seger
Right.

Mark Donnolo
And now you’re getting this next generation of people who are the younger ones that are really comfortable with technology. Right. And that’s great. And then you’ve got some of the older generations that are just not as comfortable with technology, but the newer generations are younger generations more comfortable with technology. You’re like, Hey, I’m totally fine working remote. I don’t I don’t know why I have to come to work.

Mark Donnolo
Why do I have to go to the customer location? I can just do it all on Zoom or teams or what, you know, whatever your platform of choice is. And so their development is kind of limited. Like it’s like playing a video game versus really being out on the field, right? So they’re playing, you know, Madden video games in their careers versus they’re out there on the field getting hammered.

Mark Donnolo
Right. And they’re not going to develop to the same degree. So they’re going to miss those people that are the younger people that say they’re totally fine with technology. They’re the ones that are hurting themselves because they don’t realize they’re going to miss something. And so you’re going to have this generation of people that just hasn’t developed to the level of people that have been out there in the field.

Michelle Seger
And to be clear, you’re not saying every single young person is like that.

Mark Donnolo
No, because you guys are.

Michelle Seger
New.

Mark Donnolo
Cheevers. Right. You’ve actually.

Michelle Seger
Been.

Mark Donnolo
Coming along. They’re going, no, I’m getting out there.

Michelle Seger
Yeah. And they’re still comfortable with technology and those that, you know, that that’s the hybrid seller that I believe will have the advantage moving ahead and could have a really wonderful career for them.

Mark Donnolo
Yes. If you want to you want to shift your career development over to, you know, be in a video game. You got other people out there that are playing, you know, full contact.

Michelle Seger
Yes. So unless last but not least, we’re going to talk about technology for a moment, because there’s always been this big thought process around, oh, my God, my my job as a salesperson, I’m going to be made obsolete. I’m going to be obsolete because of all this technology and self service. But what we’re seeing is that people really do want that connection and what we’re seeing and what we we know.

Michelle Seger
And I’ll let you I’ll let you give the big, you know, big news. But what we’re seeing and what we know is that buyers want that contact with the you know, that with their salesperson. But what they talk about and what they do is a little bit different. Yeah. What are they doing.

Mark Donnolo
Well. We know we know with with technology and with automation customers can get information earlier themselves. Right. So just being a sales representative and representing the company and providing information is no longer enough because.

Michelle Seger
Customize this and features and yeah, that doesn’t matter anymore.

Mark Donnolo
I mean they’ve already gone through all those steps in their process by the time they see a sales person. And I know you’ve had stats behind this, but you know, by the time they see a salesperson, they’ve been through a certain number of cycles and they’ve already made a lot of decisions, right?

Michelle Seger
Yes, they have.

Mark Donnolo
So when they asked the salesperson for something, you know, the salesperson has to take on a different role. So the the AI, you know, the automation, the the offshoring that can replace a lot of what salespeople do now. So what’s the last frontier or the next frontier? It’s the ability to solve the problem for the customer.

Michelle Seger
Yes.

Mark Donnolo
Okay. We so we haven’t seen that yet. And yeah, you could say, well, we can see how to solve a problem. Well, you can’t you know how do you create a problem?

Michelle Seger
But do you.

Michelle Seger
Right. A linear problem.

Mark Donnolo
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So so I think I think that’s going to be the next frontier for salespeople, the ones that are successful in their careers. And that’s the best way to protect their careers, is become a better creative problem solver. And that’s going to differentiate you and that can’t be offshored.

Michelle Seger
Or I’d know, and we are hearing more and more of that. We’re hearing that from sales leaders. We’re hearing it out of the mouths of the sea level that is saying we need people and we want people that can solve problems, not that can sell a product.

Mark Donnolo
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a whole host of things that goes go behind that in terms of of how to how to go through the problem solving process. And if you’re not a creative person, that’s fine, because there are methods that you can use. And we go into that in other podcasts and in.

Michelle Seger
You just need the SalesGlobe playbook.

Mark Donnolo
That’s right.

Michelle Seger
Just need our playbook, right.

Mark Donnolo
So so that’s I mean, if I were if I were a salesperson at any stage of my career, that’s the thing I would invest in, is how do I become a better problem solver? And, you know, the relationship is important as well. But yes, but that has to go along with the problem solving.

Michelle Seger
Yep. That’s how you become really that trusted advisor. You know, we talk about trusted advisor, almost like cliche, but the more that you talk to sales leaders and the c-level like, you know, there’s really something to that. It means something and solving problems is really a good path to get there. Yeah. Yeah. So the problem solver wins out.

Michelle Seger
So those are just a few of the things that we see ahead. Yeah. In 2023. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Yep. And Mark, I think you and I are going to have a lot more to say on these topics and more as we get into 2023.

Mark Donnolo
Awesome. Thanks for joining us.