Two years into the pandemic, 91% of the companies in the US report that their workforce hasn’t fully returned to the office and 46% of the companies aren’t ever planning a full return. 

While 51% are concerned that the Omicron variant will delay return-to-office plans, 33% of enterprise sales teams are currently hybrid vs 22% pre-pandemic. 

These are the findings from a “Return to Work and the Modern Seller: 2022 B2B Sales Trends” industry survey by Groove, a sales engagement platform for enterprises using Salesforce.

The survey, that gathered responses from more than 1,000 B2B revenue professionals at companies throughout the US during a one-month period concluding in January 2022,  signal a more permanent shift in B2B sales that relies more heavily on remote and hybrid sales teams and reveals new insights into how sales organizations are equipping the modern seller to be successful in remote and hybrid-selling environments. 

“When the pandemic shuttered our offices, we quickly realized the importance of seamlessly transitioning our reps to remote work without losing productivity or focus. The sales engagement capabilities played a big role in enabling management to stay connected to daily activities and team performance. By enabling our teams to easily collaborate cross-functionally in a remote environment, we boosted productivity by 30% and generated millions of dollars in efficiency gains," says Matt Mullin, senior director, Global Marketing Operations and Technology at Tenable. 

Remote work creates new challenges for B2B sales teams 

More than half of field sellers are back on the road visiting customers, but they continue to face challenges with critical sales activities like preparing for meetings, scheduling follow-ups, and keeping their customer relationship management (CRM) up to date. 

As many as 53% of enterprise field sales teams are back on the road visiting customers. Field representatives cite updating CRM platforms (48%), inputting account notes (46%), and scheduling follow-up meetings (45%) as top challenges.

“Now that representatives are working in a hybrid role permanently, revenue teams need to focus on maximizing the value of their CRM. Extending the power of CRM to remote teams makes them productive and effective while also providing leaders with the visibility and insight needed to manage them effectively,”  says Chris Rothstein, CEO of Groove.

Increasing investment in CRM, sales engagement platforms and data sources 

The shift to remote work is driving companies to increase their investment in sales and revenue technologies like CRM, sales engagement, and data enrichment platforms to meet their revenue goals. 

As per the survey CRM (52%), sales engagement platforms (50%), and data sources (44%) are top targets for increased 2022 budgets.

More than 90% of companies either increasing and maintaining sales tech budgets in 2022 and growing revenue (73%), hiring talent (57%), and expanding existing business (56%) are top revenue initiatives for 2022, the survey adds.

Sales technology will see increased investment this year according to a Gartner Survey. According to Gartner, after protecting technology budgets in 2021, Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) continue to prioritize tech investments moving in 2022. CSOs plan to increase investment in sales technology, prioritizing pipeline generation, CRM data, and training and coaching use cases.