In a Sales 2.0 world, it's clear that the role of the sales person has shifted from driving the sales process to facilitating the prospect's buying process.
And yet, according to research conducted by the Customer Message Management Forum, up to 90% of the messages and materials created by marketing go unused or are ineffective. Why? Because most of these tools are poorly aligned, at best, with the prospect's decision making process.
What Really Matters to Your Prospects?
The same can be demonstrated for many sales activities - the actions conducted by the sales person fail to facilitate the prospect's buying process, or to increase the chances that the prospect will choose to move forward to the next stage with the vendor.
So - if so many sales and marketing activities fail to add value to the prospect's buying experience, or encourage them to move towards a decision to buy our solution, what's the purpose of these actions? And how much more productive might we be if we were able to focus on the the things that really matter to our prospects?
What Do Your Prospects Truly Value?
We've already introduced the idea that the B2B buying process is a complex journey involving multiple stages and stakeholders, and pointed out that your prospects have choices at each stage along the way - and needs that have to be satisfied before they are going to be prepared to move forwards with you.
The key to aligning the selling and buying journeys lies in anticipating what your prospects are likely to need - and would truly value - at each stage of their decision making process. It's a skill that your top-performing sales people probably perform instinctively, but incorporating that understanding into a sales process that every sales person and business partner can master can bring dramatic performance improvements.
Getting Your Prospects to Want to Take the Next Step - With You...
Complex buying decisions can take months or years to come to a conclusion. There's little value in adopting an "always be closing" approach - your prospects won't buy until they are ready. Pushy, aggressive approaches are only likely to put them off.
But you can do a great deal to facilitate their buying process by anticipating and satisfying their needs at each stage in their buying decision journey - and by making it easy for them to take the next step forward in the process with you.
How we Help...
We work with clients to help them align their sales processes with their prospect's typical buying decision journey, and to develop the tools and programmes that can help them facilitate their prospect's buying process.
We could help you apply Sales and Marketing 2.0 principles to achieve the same. To find out more, please call us on
+44 118 975 0595, email us at
info@inflexion-point.com, or
contact us here.