Recently, I was called in to fix the proposals desk for a large company. The proposals team wrote $24 billion worth of proposals every year, but weren’t winning business. Everyone was concerned why. I asked to see some sample proposals. Now my eyes hurt from all that scrolling.

The average proposal was 150 pages long. Even for small value bids, the proposals were routinely more than forty pages long or more. I ask you-- who reads long-form documents these days?.

My friend's team was working on this sweet digital technology deal, and the team had done everything by the book. It was all perfection, and the proposal and orals were dream-like too. There’s nothing they didn’t do right.Results week came, but the emails didn’t come through. The client didn’t respond to emails and voicemails. A week later, they heard they had lost the deal. They were flabbergasted. This friend’s relationship with his client was strong, so he drove up for a coffee meeting to find out what actually happened.

Early in my career, when I was new to sales, I had a surreal conversation with a recent client I had just won. This was a hard-won deal, and we were all chuffed that our pitch was perfect, the pricing just right, and surely the five-page executive summary would have knocked their socks off. It was a proud moment. At the celebratory lunch, I asked the client, “So, what made you pick us”? I’m glad I asked.“Your campus landscaping. It’s perfect”.

Last month, I spoke with a CEO who was struggling with his sales team. He had such a low opinion of their ability to have a client conversation that he had bought an iPad pre-loaded with their demos, and had told the sales teams to just shut up and play the iPad video to the clients. Any prizes for guessing if the company was making any sales?

“Words are things...Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you”.

Digital disruption is all around. Every product, software, and services company has jumped onto the bandwagon, promising digital nirvana, whether they understand it or not. But telling isn't selling. There are serious gaps in the sales organizations when it comes to "selling digital," especially in tech companies that are supposed to be at the leading edge of this change. There's a separate problem with how sales itself is being disrupted by digital, a class of problems we should call "digital selling," which will be the topic for another discussion.

I have a friend in India whose father had a sudden heart attack and they had to rush him into the hospital. The hospital insisted on money in advance to admit him, so he swiped his card. It was a high amount, and at 11:30pm, exactly thirty minutes after his Dad was admitted, he gets call on his cellphone. It’s the bank. They wanted to know if the transaction was legit. He said it was.

Digital Selling is transforming the process of selling. Sales teams now need to handle themselves very differently from even five years ago, and the next few years are going to be a turbulent time to be in sales as new patterns emerge. The old way of selling isn't going to be enough.

Like sitting at a coffee-shop, whether reading alone, meeting friends or sharing amazing stories with strangers you just met. Do Loop's website is a seamless space for spirited storytelling. The website is an interconnected space that could be experienced as doloop.io, on LinkedIn, as a Twitter handle, or as a Facebook fan page. The connection across these mediums is seamless, and the storytelling adapts to the medium that’s chosen. Our voice is spirited— always fresh, energetic and enthusiastic. As the host of this coffeeshop experience, we’re always ready to greet our customers, whether potential clients or employees or peers from the industry, and we’re ready to engage them with our unique take on the world. We love what we do, and it shows up in everything. This isn’t about building a bigger pipeline of clients and employees. It’s about having a bigger heart to hold everyone our lives touch.

Things won’t change with your positioning overnight. You can move forward by rewarding the right behavior, but not reinforcing the older behavior by starving it of attention. Its a Jedi mind trick. A modern proof of evolution by human selection (domestication) came up in a surprising place. There is a fur farm in Siberia that systematically shot foxes that were aggressive, leaving only the tame foxes to breed. One out of line growl. Bam! Fur jacket. Only gentle purring? Love shack, baby! In a space of 40 years, 10 generations and 45,000 foxes, the fox became tame, domesticated and available as house-pets.

Body language makes all the difference. If you’re reintroducing yourself to your clients, you need to be comfortable displaying a new body language with your clients. A singular feat. Flash back to 2007 and the launch of the iPhone. Steve Jobs has just done his thing, launching the iPhone in his iconic style while taking the audience through a storytelling journey that went through humor, drama, tension and magic, and then he calls over a few industry CEOs to talk about the iPhone from their perspective.

My Mom still thinks I’m a cute cherubic kid with the sweetest smile, while my kids think I’m a cultural relic, not plugged into the latest apps. Just pick up your phone and look at your iTunes top 25 plays. If you have more Beyonce and less Madonna, you’re likely more current in your selection of Pop. If your iTunes playlist has nonstop 90s, it’s likely that you’re out of sync with today’s musical tastes. (Some might argue you have no taste at all in music but, hey!, the 90s were dismal).

We’re discussing how your company needs to reintroduce itself to your clients frequently to avoid being put into the “friend-zone” that might prevent access to new business opportunities. There are six steps, discussed in my post here, and we’re on the second step.

Once you have recognized the need to reintroduce yourself to your clients, there are several steps to follow. In this series of posts, I will explain what the sequence is, and how to DIY your reintroduction. This note is addressed to company CXOs, but account managers and executive sponsors can use the sequence as well.

If you just have a team of sales superstars, they are not going to make it. They just cannot do it alone. A sales team isn’t a modern growth rocket. We meet companies every week, and this is the conversation they have just had (again). Maybe you’re about to have this too.

B2B sales has changed dramatically. Sustained growth needs a well run growth rocket. Do-Loop is here to help. Truth is, your old sales funnel served you well. But it’s time to get rid of it. Replace it with the Growth Rocket. Also throw away your separate marketing funnel, and whatever it is that you’re using to track customer success and account management.

Anthropologists are looking carefully at signs of evolution, caused by changes to the fitness landscape brought about by the digital revolution. Right before our eyes, we can see a new species emerge. The new species of the salesperson is outselling the older ones. Move over, Homo Salesii. Make room for the Homo Digitalis Salesus.