The times they are a changing, as Dylan would say.
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Even in the world of B2B solution selling, things are changing -- and quickly.
Or at least it seems so in some of the articles we've been seeing recently. We thought we'd share some of them with you and get your thoughts.
The Harvard Business Review just published a very good article by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman summarizing the new role of sales professional; “A recent Corporate Executive Board study of more than 1,400 B2B customers found that those customers completed, on average, nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision — researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, and so on — before even having a conversation with a supplier."
Tip -- You need to create relationships with an organization before the customer requirements are set. You need to get ahead of the RPF to win the deal.
According to Rick Reynolds, co-founding partner and CEO of AskForensics, a sales consultancy focusing on customer retention and growth, “Seeking new sales without strong account management and operating teams is like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. Identifying and fixing the holes — the gaps in customer satisfaction — can help your company retain existing accounts and increase new sales.”
Tip -- 1 -- Improve Training for Frontline Staff; 2 -- Provide Timely Responses; and 3 -- Offer More Proactive Ideas
Ray Wang notes that the future clearly lies in trying to engage customers before they have pinpointed a problem. “While overall corporate tech spending is up by 17 to 20% in our latest data, spending by IT departments is flat at best,” says Ray Wang, CEO of analyst firm Constellation Group. “It's business leaders, not their IT colleagues, who are driving purchasing decisions."
Tip -- Ensure your solution is… simple, scalable, safe, secure, sustainable, sexy. (Yikes, sexy content management solutions?)
According to a global study of sales rep productivity among 6,000 reps across nearly 100 companies by the Sales Executive Council, every sales professional falls into one of five distinct profiles;
- Relationship Builders
- Hard Workers
- Lone Wolves
- Reactive Problem Solvers
- Challengers.
Tip -- Challengers dramatically outperform the other profiles, particularly Relationship Builders. Challenger reps are defined by three key capabilities: 1 -- They TEACH their customers; 2 -- They tailor their sales message to the customer; and 3 -- They take control of the sale. According to research, the biggest driver of B2B customer loyalty is a supplier’s ability to deliver new insights.
A 2009 HBR article by Geoffrey Moore, Philip Lay, and Todd Hewlin recommend solution providers to provoke customers in a downturn to find new opportunities. Sales professionals need to become domain experts to provide insights and challenge customers. This will help them identify and qualify new business opportunities.
Tip -- Follow these steps to provocation-based selling
- Identify a Critical Problem
- Formulate Your Provocation
- Lodge Your Provocation
- Pave the way
- Rehearse
- Deliver
- Get approval for a diagnostic study
References:
- Source: http://hbr.org/2012/07/the-end-of-solution-sales/ar/1
- Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/to_sell_more_focus_on_existing.html
- Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/coming_to_terms_with_the_consu.html
- Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/09/selling_is_not_about_relatio.html
- Source: http://hbr.org/2009/03/in-a-downturn-provoke-your-customers/ar/1
If any of the above intrigues you, ping us and we'll set up a short 15 briefing to brainstorm it a bit. You can contact me (John Mancini, johnmancini [at] aiim.org) or my colleague Atle Skjekkeland, at askjekkeland [at] aiim.org).
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A related area to all of the above is your content marketing strategy. If you haven't seen my , check it out.
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