If you haven’t done so lately, please take your sales staff out to a nice lunch. Overall, technology has made life easier — both personally and professionally. Now everyone has a personal assistant, of sorts, in their pocket to take care of their scheduling. Businesses can communicate with customers across the world at the speed of light. But there has been one task that has become immensely difficult across the board, and that’s selling. Over the past 20 years, there has been a massive knowledge shift from the salesperson to the customer. Now to be clear, this is not a bad thing; it’s just something that has made your sales staff’s job harder. Customers have most (but not always all) of the knowledge available to them now before they even reach out to a company to purchase something. That sliver of knowledge that the customer doesn’t have can be anything from the financial stability of your company, commitment to delivery times, or any one of the technical facets of your product or service. Today, a sales staff must be well-versed in all aspects of a company’s dealings. The increasing number of decision-makers involved in a sale can complicate the process and potentially hinder fully educating the buyers. So you can understand why, at times, your sales staff may be sweating. Here’s how you can help: Take them out to the best lunch place in town and let them know that you understand what they’re up against. You can take that one step further and also support them with a sound marketing campaign to help their job of growing your company’s revenue — when a company has a strong brand presence and/or a series of educational advertisements, it can make things easier. Get your future customers the information they need now, prior to a customer ever talking to your salespeople. This, in turn, can accelerate the buying process.