Automation is the enemy of strategic sellers! Here's why.

Hi, Reader

Increasingly, B2B companies are using cadence tools (backed by AI and Machine Learning) to automate customer engagement. For strategic sellers, this automation will damage your results rather than improve them. Here's why!

First, let's appreciate why these tools are typically introduced. Managers introduce them to improve their team's productivity and sellers request them to make life easier, reduce effort and, they hope, deliver instant results.

SaaS providers will explain that they will give you an ROI that runs into hundreds of per cent. As an app provider myself, I get the marketing intent here.

Automation and cadence tools will, most likely, allow sellers to send mass messages faster and with less manual interaction. They can improve your time management, using reminders and guidance to prompt your next customer intervention. They could help you be more efficient and even improve your company's responsiveness to simple questions a 'bot' can answer. After all, how often do Amazon call you to be able to transact millions of transactions every week?

These tools are, most likely, a great option to explore for high-volume, transactional sellers and order-takers.

However, this is not the case for strategic sellers.

My experience from the other side highlights the problems. As a business owner, I am frustrated with the volume of SPAM-like messages I receive once I hit someone's list. I feel like I am being talked at rather than talked with.

Sadly, too many companies are trying to play a numbers game. Lots of automated emails, poorly targeted, sometimes well scripted, slightly personalised (name at least), but ultimately focused on ‘buy me’ messaging. Buyers are increasingly ignoring such messages, and the whole sales industry is being tarnished as a result.

If you sell paper clips, where price/delivery are the determining factors for a purchasing decision, trust is earned through reviews and experience. But, for strategic sellers offering bespoke solutions to complex needs, customer intimacy is critical for building trust with buyers.

In this situation, automation is the enemy of intimacy!

Sequences [today] lack the ability to listen, empathise, challenge, think or maintain an engaging conversation. No conversation means no trusted relationship.

Without trusted relationships, a company cannot sell consultatively. It cannot understand a customer’s complex business problems deeply enough to align the value associated with its offer.

In the end, you will be selling commodities and differentiating on price and delivery. This is not a good spot for most B2B companies that want [need?] to stand out in their competitive marketplace.

I am not knocking sales tech and AI tools per se. Tools will play a huge role in the future success of strategic sellers. Remember, though, that there are no silver bullets, and you must consider your approach to your strategic selling activities.

In the world of so many automated email cadences, how will you achieve the intimacy required to stand out?

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Best, Garry Mansfield | Linkedin​ ​ ​ MyAcumen, Halstead, Henley In Arden, Warwickshire B95 5JL | Unsubscribe ​

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P.S. If you want to understand the 10 guiding principles of strategic selling, try this.