Intelligent SME.tech Issue 08 | Page 51

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Half of B2B sales professionals saw their workloads increase during the pandemic , new survey reveals

G roove , a leading sales engagement platform for enterprises using Salesforce , has unveiled the results of a new industry survey examining the impact of remote work on B2B sales teams in the United States . The survey of 765 sales professionals found that the impact of COVID-19 has created long-lasting challenges for revenue teams , including increased workload and fears generated by an uncertain economic outlook .

Forty-two percent of respondents indicate that customer churn from organisations impacted by COVID-19 is the biggest challenge facing their revenue team in 2021 , followed by impacted sales budgets . To compound matters , it is clear that most sales teams won ’ t be returning to a pre-COVID selling environment anytime soon . Less than 6 % of those surveyed are taking in-person meetings today and over 60 % of respondents indicated that they won ’ t resume in-person meetings until the fourth quarter of this year or 2022 and beyond .
“ One year into our nationwide shutdown , it has become apparent that widespread remote work is here to stay ,” said Chris Rothstein , Co-Founder and CEO of Groove . “ The B2B sales landscape has changed dramatically , with industries that have been slower to adopt technology embracing Digital Transformation as a result . Companies are leaning into the uncertain economic outlook and are embracing the reduced costs and productivity gains that they ’ ve achieved over the past year with automation .”
Over 50 % of respondents said their workloads have increased post COVID-19 , while only 2 % have seen a decrease in their workload . With this shift to remote work and increase in workload , nearly 50 % of respondents have increased use of sales automation technology to help with this ‘ new normal .’
The top three sales technologies used by respondents to work more effectively are : CRM systems ( 87 %), web conferencing tools ( 84 %) and sales engagement platforms ( 75 %). These three areas outperformed all others , including sales enablement platforms , conversational intelligence , data sources , sales readiness platforms , social networks and remote collaboration tools .
As a result of this accelerated Digital Transformation , over 55 % of respondents said that they are more productive with remote working , with over 81 % indicating they have either delivered or outperformed on their goals as a result . �
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