According to CSO Insights’ recently published annual sales performance optimisation study, the number of sales people making quota and the percentage of sales organisations achieving their revenue targets both declined faster in 2009 than at any time during the past 16 years.
B2B sales organisations around the world report extended sales cycles, declining win rates, and a growing number of promising opportunities deciding to “do nothing”. They see prospect budgets shrinking, more players involved in the decision making process, and increasingly risk-averse buying behaviour. They struggle to stand out from the crowd, create urgency and accelerate buying activity. Could it be time to re-architect the B2B sales and marketing process?
Selling and marketing harder was never going to fix this...
We’re not trying to turn a drama into a crisis, but it seems clear that “selling and marketing harder” isn’t going to fix this. So we’re all having to learn how to sell and market smarter – in a way that matches the changing priorities and preferences of an increasingly well informed prospect community.
Perhaps you need to cross the chasm into mainstream markets... increase sales productivity... improve marketing effectiveness... make partners productive... or launch new products or services? Whatever your priorities for 2010, they will only be achieved if you can develop a profound understanding of your most valuable prospects, their most urgent issues, and how and why they choose to buy.
Listening to the voices of your customers and prospects...
There’s a consistent pattern to what your customers and prospects would tell you about their search for solutions to their most urgent business issues. They are keen to learn, but hate being pitched to. They want to do their own research before approaching suppliers. And they expect potential vendors to be knowledgeable and respectful, and to create value in every interaction.
They look to potential suppliers and the sales people who represent them to help them simplify complex issues, ask thoughtful questions, offer valuable insights and to give them the confidence they can help them solve problems and manage the consequences of change. They have raised their expectations and are demanding that current and prospective vendors respond.
Evangelise, Elevate and Eliminate...
Our observations have convinced us that to be successful in this new world, B2B vendors – and particularly those who are offering innovative solutions, creating new markets or trying to displace entrenched competitors – are going to have to do three things particularly well:
- First, they will need to evangelise a better future for the markets and prospects they address, and to articulate a clear and compelling vision of the role that their organisation intends to play in helping them achieve it. Companies that accomplish this will emerge as the thought leaders in their markets and generate a magnetic attraction that draws potential prospects towards them. Read more...
- Next, they will have to elevate the prospect’s need for their solution. Useful or important needs might help to get a vendor considered or evaluated, but only urgent needs will get them bought. This ability to identify or create urgent needs makes all the difference between successful and unsuccessful sales people, and between companies who lead their markets or struggle as also-rans. Read more...
- Finally, they must systematically eliminate the common barriers to buying. The B2B buying decision making process evolves through several distinct phases, with each phase transition being marked by a significant checkpoint. The top performing vendors will be the ones that have taken pains to identify how and why their prospects choose to buy, and what they need to do to remove the roadblocks that might stand in their way. Read more...
How we help...
Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners help promising B2B organisations to realise their full potential by equipping them to build scalable sales and marketing machines that reflect the way their most valuable prospects prefer to buy.
We like to think of ourselves as practitioners, rather than consultants. We can point to decades of collective experience in achieving demanding revenue and profit targets, quarter after quarter – and of helping organisations stand out from the crowd and be acknowledged as market leaders.
Our systematic, evidence-based market leadership methodology helps clients to bridge the gap between strategy and execution by enabling them to identify their most valuable prospects, understand their most urgent problems, and know how and why they make buying decisions.
We apply this learning to help our clients to craft compelling visions that resonate strongly with their prospect’s concerns, to implement practical programmes which serve to facilitate their prospect’s decision making processes, and to re-architect and re-align their sales and marketing processes in line with today's buying behaviour.
To find out more please contact us here...