B2B IT services seller? The game’s gone mate!

If you’ve been in B2B IT services sales for any length of time you’ll know that technology has fundamentally changed the roles of both buyer and seller.

It’s an environment I know well having spent most of my career alongside business leaders, innovators, and clients who have delivered this transformation.

We will each have our own reasons for celebrating, or bemoaning, what has changed, and thoughts on why many of yesterday’s rainmakers would struggle with the tools, behaviours, and disciplines necessary to compete in today’s game of sales.

Search and sequences replace the Rolodex

Although being in sales typically meant playing a ‘numbers game’, success often hinged on knowing the right people, or moving in the right circles, and working out how to ensure you were at the centre of every discussion. The archetypal seller guarded their contact book like state secrets.

Today, relationships remain critical but how we build and nurture them, and what qualifies as a relationship, has fundamentally changed. Over time, professional groups, business platforms, virtual events, and now AI based dialogue, have developed to fundamentally change the way networks are built.

Sellers today create, or put their name to, what they believe to be relevant and visible content and speak in terms of connections and profiles rather than relationships. In a world where everyone has a megaphone and imitation is virulent, we could argue‘ access’ has been democratised but it has also increased the noise level made it harder to build trust and protect the investment made in genuine relationship building.

From product pushers to business problem solvers

Through the nineties and noughties technology advances captured the imagination of business leaders; the language of speeds and feeds and the promises of cost reduction carried great weight. There had always been progressive texts on the art of persuasion but selling IT services was often a reductive affair relying on technical features and challenging the CIO to deny s/he wanted to be seen as modern and innovative.FOMO was a viable selling tool.

Today, that approach is obsolete for any product or service that requires a seller largely because the buyer is likely to be as well informed as the seller; maybe even better. The sellers’ role has evolved into one of consultative partner, capable of understanding industry context and economic pressures, mobilising the right people at the right time, and translating complex IT capabilities into tangible business value. The buyer wants a business consultant with expert knowledge who can improve their team. Nota glossy avatar with something to sell.

The data-driven salesperson

Where sellers were once comfortable with a name and address and relying on relationships or instinct to succeed, today’s top performers expect to be spending large parts of their days managing CRM dashboards, intent data, and sales enablement tools.

Sellers now work hard to generate and confirm relatable data to rise above the noise and:

• Identify ideal prospects
• Personalise outreach
• Track engagement
• Forecast accurately

Gartner reports that users of sales analytics platforms deliver 20% more revenue versus those reliant on legacy processes. Investors and boards know this and demand that sellers are held to account for the rigor, transparency, and evidence of pipeline and effective ‘goto market’ activity, as well as results.

Technology itself has created an arms race

Traditionally, procurement activities were led by buyers who invested heavily in maintaining personal networks and engaged in time consuming research projects which typically necessitated direct engagement with vendors as well as peers, industry bodies and supply chain contacts.

Sellers benefited from the time this took (the window of opportunity to intercept a buyer’s activity could belong) and the reality that current information was dependent on vendor engagement from an early stage. Every discussion with a buyer was an opportunity to change the course of a project in your favour.

Today, an array of web based tools remove the need for sellers to carry (or learn!) product data, presentation materials, samples, even paperwork, but, surely, the buyers are the winners in this arms race. They can research, validate, and compare an infinite amount of data and opinion before deciding the best course of action and who, how, and when to engage.

Mad Men’s Don Draper would challenge his Sterling Cooper account guys to ‘get me in the room’ believing he would bend any prospect to his will. Today, that is not enough. Even He would be too late.

The enablement of remote and hybrid selling

Traditional sales activity happened face-to-face with huge time, effort, and cost tied up in travel, especially when plans had to be adjusted or repeated. Deals were struck in boardrooms, over dinners, and on golf courses, and the seller’s often heroic hunter/gatherer persona was only reinforced by the primitive tools available.

Territory management would often involve a company car with a fuel card and your territory loaded on to a Nokia hand set calling by arrangement, or not, on customers and prospects. This might sound like David Brents’ Wernham Hogg sales team in The Office, and provoke howls of eco based protest, but all parties were complicit in this practice –buying and selling was an ‘in person’ activity.

Today, while the fundamentals of selling remain unchanged, the rapid evolution of video platforms, content creation, collaboration, and automation tools have replaced much of the traditional field sales playbook, the sales operating model is driven by new methods and economics.

Better sellers embrace the possibilities of remote engagement and work hard to develop their storytelling, content creation, and familiarity with the tools.

ContinuousLearning is Non-Negotiable

In an ‘analogue’ world sellers worked with a consistent pitch, familiar relationships, and a repetitive playbook, although the term ‘playbook’ might be a stretch through today’s lens.Learning would focus on product updates and industry events (think Basel II in banking) that would trigger a new reason to call a prospect.

The pace of change in IT risks information overload and ‘time poverty’ for sellers but staying abreast of specific use cases and the relationship between them has become table stakes.Buyers also expect sellers to understand not just how solutions will be bought but how and when value will be realised.

Human skills take centre stage

We could argue hard work and relevance opens doors, technical knowledge holds them open, and emotional intelligence (EQ) gains permission to move from room to room.

Modern sales is as much about reading – and influencing – today’s complex, often dispersed, decision making environment as it is about knowing your solutions. Sellers with high EQ are better able to:

• Navigate complex group dynamics – roles, behaviours, and cultures
• Identify and respond to unspoken objections
• Make connections and build trust
• Naturally adapt communication styles

This isn’t just about the buyer/seller dynamic. The norms of remote work, the proliferation of tools, the time poor reality for most teams, mean human skills are a critical asset for those who want to influence priorities and outcomes both internally and externally.

Marginnotes

While much has evolved, sometime less truths remain. Relationships still matter. Trust is still currency.Grit, resilience, and the ability to handle rejection are still vital.

The winners embrace data and modern workplace tools, speak the language of business, and continually sharpen both their technical and human skills. Those who cling to outdated methods, salesresist learning, and underestimate the empowered modern buyer will be left behind.

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