Arktic Fox has published its ‘Sales in Focus ‘24’ report, revealing that sales teams still heavily rely on traditional outbound sales methods to generate leads, even though 60% of buyers now initiate their purchasing journey online.

The research, which is a comprehensive study on the Australian sales landscape, is based on 28 in-depth interviews with sales leaders across a range of industries and organisational sizes.

According to the report, more successful sales leaders and B2B sellers are embracing customer-centric strategies and leveraging initiatives such as Account Based Marketing to more effectively prioritise and target prospects.

Data and analytics are becoming increasingly crucial for informed decision-making, optimising customer experiences, and enabling personalisation, with more than one in five sales leaders highlighting the need to improve in harnessing insights to demonstrate value to customers.

Meanwhile, as the role of the sales representative is evolves due to digital influences, there’s a growing emphasis on enhancing sales team literacy in data, digital tools, business acumen, and foundational selling skills.

Over half of the sales leaders who participated in the study rated their relationship with marketing teams as moderately effective or less. Their priorities for investments in sales technology over the next 12 months include CRM, sales enablement, and customer intelligence. However, the integration of technology must be balanced with the risk of overwhelming sales representatives.