One danger in running a business post-pandemic – alongside massive supply chain issues – is that we’re overwhelmed handling critical HR challenges (such as hybrid workplaces and new virus variants) while swatting away supply chain problems project-by-project.

Naturally, we’re so busy reorganizing, restructuring, and reacting that we’re leaving little-to-no room for strategic, planned sales growth, either by way of new business acquisition or intentional existing client growth.

What’s suppressing our sales strategy even more: Most of us are back in growth mode simply because the economy is taking shape again. Organic economic growth always gives us the false illusion that we are strategically growing sales.

Complicating this further, some say we (distributors) are not really salespeople, we’re order takers. It’s not entirely true, but there’s enough truth there to impugn virtually everyone. Where the truth stings a little is that, on average, we spend 90% of our time taking care of existing business that comes to us and about 10% of our time thinking about new business or strategic client growth. Granted, the pandemic forced many of us to rethink our efforts and we saw a renewed focus on biz-dev by some.

Bubbling beneath the surface of all of this is a massive paradigm shift ready to break open and one that is barely getting noticed: Sales has changed. Sales is no longer about lead-gen. It was. Once upon a time. Sales is now defined as advancing the client relationship.

Lead-gen is now driven exclusively by marketing.

What’s changed? And why is marketing now the driver for new biz and sales the passenger? Here are 8 disruptions that now make marketing the new sales: 

1. Prospects now come to your business through the digital-first doorway (thanks to the pandemic changing our buyers’ behavior, it’s more true than ever). 

2. Millennial and Gen Z buyers (your largest percentage of buyers) prefer digital as their primary form of interaction. 

3. The death of the tradeshow, the cold call, and the networking event as the core lead-gen source.

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Bobby Lehew is the chief content officer at commonsku, this article is courtesy of commonsku, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more visit commonsku.com.