B2B SELLING, IT'S A DIFFERENT GAME THESE DAYS

Business solutions selling - it’s a different game these days.?

Customers’ expectations of how their vendors serve them have undergone quite the change - gone are the days of a linear sales process; now, purchase decisions follow a much more fluid process in which purchasers prefer to complete most of their journey in a self-serve fashion.?

• When they do interact with vendors, customers want straightforward, on-demand engagement centered around their specific needs.

• They expect to have informed conversations with vendors who are able to demonstrate expertise and - really - confirm everything they’ve found during the course of their sales research; otherwise, they’ve no problem moving elsewhere.

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Despite this, so many brands - though they may talk as though they are - are failing to embrace the sort of customer-centric mindset this reality requires.?

• The things they’ve always done to drum up more revenue - such things as acquiring new sales technology, reformulating sales sequences, or increasing the volume of their outreach - are producing decent results.?
• Why - then - change what works?

Because - for years now - people who dedicate their days to thinking about these sorts of things (those in the backrooms of such places as Gartner, Forrester, and McKinsey) have been saying the same thing - we’re on the cusp of sea-change, driven - in part - by the aforementioned changes in customer behavior.?

If you consider top-performing vendors - they’re not adhering to “what works” - but are pushing forward into this “new normal,” placing their customers at the center of everything they do.?

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Here’s - in short - what this looks like.

• Using customer intent preferences in conjunction with data-driven prescriptive insight for where to engage, what to offer, and how to message.?
• Capturing customers’ attention with content specific to them - not to the persona, but the account itself.?
• Delight customers by paying attention to their readiness to purchase and delivering consistent experiences across the entirety of their purchasing process.

It’s much easier to say this than to actually do it - but that's what today's reality requires of us.?

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TLDR: business-solutions selling - if the customer isn't at the very heart of the process, you're doing it wrong.

WORTH YOUR TIME:?

• PODCAST: “How to build an actionable journey atlas,” with Angelina Gennis (Senior Analyst), Martin Gill (Director, Research) - both with Forrester - and Susan McNulty (Consultant, Customer Experience): https://www.forrester.com/cx-cast/320-how-to-build-an-actionable-journey-atlas/?
• ARTICLE: “How to map the needs of the decision-making unit in business-solutions sales,” by étienne Garbugli (Founder and Lead Instructor, Lean B2B): https://leanb2bbook.com/blog/decision-making-unit/?
• ARTICLE: “Questions sales teams should ask after losing (or winning) a deal,” by Lisa Earle McLeod (Founder, McLeod & More, Inc.) and Ian Gross (Director, Strategy and Planning, UiPath): https://hbr.org/2023/07/3-questions-sales-teams-should-ask-after-losing-or-winning-a-deal?

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That's a wrap on this week.

Cheers, everyone.