Zombies are the hottest thing right now in the world of fright – movies, TV shows, books, you name it. Zombies make everyday life seem scary, but if you think about it, B2B sales is even scarier.

While customers might not eat salespeoples' brains, they are cutting suppliers out of the purchase process. On average, customers are 57% of the way through the buying process before they engage suppliers. This trend is forcing sellers to shift away from responding to customer needs. Instead, the best sellers, Challengers, are creating demand by teaching customers about an unknown problem or opportunity.

But that’s not the only scary part.

Challenger™ selling emerged from dramatic changes in buying, not selling. And the latest big change in B2B buying is consensus decision-making. Today, more than 5 different people get involved in the average B2B purchase decision. And as you can imagine, the more people who get involved in the decision, the less likely it is for ANY decision to be made at all. 

So what can sellers do?

Get a game plan for tackling these challenges at the CEB Sales Summit at Dreamforce. Hosted by the Sales Cloud team, Matt Dixon (my co-author on The Challenger Sale) and I will lead a day-long series of sessions for senior leaders of sales functions, where we'll:

• Dig deeper into the troubling trends with our view on how they are evolving
• Discuss how the best companies are succeeding now
• Talk specifically about selling skills, sales culture, sales processes, the role of Marketing, and more

We hope you’ll join us – you can register for all of our sessions here or at the button below.

Brent Adamson is Managing Director of Advisory Services for CEB’s Sales & Marketing practices. Brent is a sought after speaker and facilitator. In his 10 years at CEB he has worked with tens of thousands of sales leaders all over the world to redefine what good looks like when it comes to commercial excellence and to further the professionalization of sales as a function. Brent is a frequent contributor on sales topics in the Harvard Business Review as well as CEB’s Sales blog. Brent joined CEB from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, where he received his MBA with distinction. Prior to that, he served on the faculty of Michigan State University as a Professor of German and Applied Linguistics. In addition to his MBA, Brent holds a BA with distinction in political science from the University of Michigan along with MAs in political science and German, and a PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Texas. Twitter: @brentadamson