Traditionally, the B2B customer acquisition process is perceived as a two-dimensional, linear workflow: the mad scientists in product development cook up a brand-new iteration of the solution in their dark laboratory; product marketing launches a revolutionary messaging campaign in the newest, coolest medium; field marketing runs ads, events, and promotions to develop a pile of net-new leads; and then the sales team…closes the deals the same-old, same-old way they always have. Just like that – as if the proper order of things dictates that all content-based creativity and flexibility ceases to exist, once the white-hot leads are passed to sales, whose reps merely have to collect another signature in order to generate the revenue stream. If, however, enterprise sales reps are only expected to perform repetitious, uncreative, end-of-cycle tasks, why do we pay them so much?
The inherent problem with this model is obvious to all of us who have carried a bag, and a quota, but less so to the persona of the “celebrity CMO” who too often rides their white horse into town to fix things, but doesn’t spend enough time interacting with real prospects or customers to truly understand whether their content is resonating where it counts. In reality, B2B sales leads are becoming an anachronism.
We’re all becoming familiar with the well-documented, current theme around the “hidden sales cycle” or “buyer’s journey,” in which the need to customize a sales conversation is enhanced by the fact that buyers are able to conduct so much homework before engaging with a live rep. Indeed, the leading corporate strategy adopted by 52% of end-users in Aberdeen’s Sales Enablement research is to “Improve positioning / differentiation in messaging and sales presentations to tell a better, unique story.” Sales is rapidly becoming a buyer’s market.
We need to acknowledge that yesterday, sellers held the power over their buyers, whose knowledge of products and prices was limited to which commissioned individuals most effectively got through their front door. Today, buyers leverage user-generated content and the infinite resources of the web to make all or most of their decisions prior to receiving the sales pitch. Actually, one could argue that the sales pitch itself is dead and buried; even in the ultimate sales environment, the purchase of a new car, most of us now walk into the dealership expecting nothing more from the rep then the processing of paperwork. We know all the options, prices, and angles before we meet them.
This allows me to usher in the concept of contemporary sales professionals as micro-marketers. If our face time with buyers is going to be constricted, and pushed farther down their path of discovery, it is absolutely essential that these conversations not consist of us blabbing about product features, advantages, and benefits. Rather, it’s all about the needs, hopes, and aspirations of our buyer. Contemporary sales reps thus need to be supported with sales enablement platforms and practices that allow them to hold more intimate, one-to-one interactions in which they are proactively empowered to select, adapt, and deploy pre-positioned content, assets, and messaging as they see fit on the real-time battlefield of professional selling. In our research, these assertions are proven true: find additional details here.
Peter Ostrow
Vice President and Group Director
Sales Effectiveness
