Ed Barrett is the VP of Sales, EMEA Partner at HubSpot. He is an MBA graduate with 20 years of experience in commercial and people management across many different products and markets.

In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Ed and Will dive into the recent HubSpot 2021 Sales Enablement Report and look forward to how sales professionals can have success after COVID.

Resources:

HubSpot Report: COVID-19 Marketing And Sales Benchmark Data

HubSpot Report: 2021 Sales Enablement

Ed on LinkedIn

Transcript

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

 

Ed Barrett:

We can’t compare 2020 with, say, the recession of 2008, because a recession typically will bring down the whole economy and every segment of the economy, and that impacts sales, of course, and purchasing. This is different because we’ve seen some industries, some verticals actually explode. A lot of the way people think about this is themselves, and I’m working remotely, therefore how do I engage? But as salespeople, we’ve got to first think, “What’s the customer doing?” And if a third or a half of the customer… people were talking with them, engaging, are not going to be physically in the office, then face to face goes away, and you’re not going to be rocking up to their home and saying, “Hey, it’s me.” That’s not going to happen, so I think that’s a significant change.

 

Will Barron:

Hello, sales nation. My name is Will Barron, and I’m the host of the Salesman Podcast. The world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, we have the legend that is Ed Barrett. He is the senior director over at HubSpot for EMEA partner sales. And on today’s episode, we’re getting into the HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey, which showed that 40% of London sales reps are failing. And Ed joins me on today’s episode to share what we can do about it and how we can turn this around. Everything that we talk about is available in the show notes of this episode, over at salesman.org. And with that said, let’s jump right into it.

 

58% of Sales Reps From The HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey Are Finding it Difficult or Predicting That They’re Going to Struggle Hitting Targets in 2020. Why Is This The Case? · [01:40] 

 

Will Barron:

On today’s show, we’re going to dive deeper into, and we’ve touched on it in other shows and in other episodes, the HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey. And we’re hopefully trying to answer the question and add a bit of value to the audience by answering the question, “Why is 40% of London’s sales reps failing?” And we’ll touch on what they should do about it, but let’s start with one data point and then we’ll see where we go from there. So, if 58% of sales reps from this HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey are finding it difficult or announcing that they’re going to find it difficult to hit target this year, how much of this is down to we’re just in an economic downturn, and how much of this is perhaps COVID laid on top of that, and how much of it is just sales is changing as well?

 

“We can’t compare 2020 with, say, the recession of 2008, because a recession typically will bring down the whole economy and every segment of the economy and that impacts sales and purchasing. This is different because we’ve seen some industries actually explode.