The Day The B2B Sales & Marketing Funnel Broke!

I set about my journey in sales 30 years ago after realising I did not want to repair cars for the rest of my life.?Knocking doors, retail, recruitment were all careers I tried before beginning my B2B sales journey in May 2000.?The world had not ended after Y2K.? At the time I was working in IT recruitment with IT Manpower and for the last 4 years it felt everything I was doing was leading up to that single second in time, when the clocks struck midnight and computer systems around the world were expected to crash.? And of course they didn’t, as you know.?Then came the dot com bubble which soon burst and not long after that the 2008 financial crash where financial institutions around the world were bailed out by governments (feels like times' about to repeat itself). ?

Between 2000 and 2007 I was busy learning my trade as a B2B salesman which had its challenges.?Seven jobs, eight managers, I suffered depression in 2004 and lost my job in 2006 for poor performance.?Until 2007, it was like a switch turned on in my head.?All of my training and self learning began to work the moment I cared more about myself and what I needed rather than giving to those around me.?I subsequently went on to outperform most of my peers for 6 years running, moved into sales leadership and proudly won 5 president club awards across three different companies and three continents. ?

Anyway, whilst this was going on buyer behaviour was changing, buyers started doing their research behind closed doors, they would rather speak to a friend or colleague for recommendations or even take advice from an impartial stranger rather than a salesperson, for the most part. ?

Today, the B2B buyer closes deals, not sales reps. ?

• Sellers get access to less than 6% of the purchase process, when there are three vendors on the short list. Less time if there are more, according to Gartner.?

• There are at least 12 stakeholders influencing the decision for complex B2B purchases and with the economic uncertainty there are even more stakeholders, more hoops to jump through and steeper budget approvals to climb. ?

• Cold calling is obtrusive and is cited as the number 1 reason a buyer will not buy from a vendor, according to TrustPilot.

• Cold emailing and nurturing campaigns have lost their mojo with 3,500+ tailored emails needed to be sent to book one meeting! ?

• Sales people are no longer trusted with 72% of buyers wanting a rep free sales experience, they want experts to advise and guide them through the purchase process. ?

• Buying, particularly building consensus to purchase software and services is harder than selling itself, with more than 50% of decisions stalling because the buyer cannot successfully articulate the differentiating commercial value of solving the problem with any certainty internally.?People are more scared of messing up than missing out.?The Jolt Effect. ?

• Pipeline quality fell significantly in the last 2 years however according to SBI, CRO’s report pipeline strength returning.?Is that true or has qualification criteria relaxed due to sales teams not having enough deals to work on?

• Content creation is at an all time high, with marketing teams and insight being forced down peoples throats and with the continuous rise of automation vendors can choke buyers, at scale! ...oh great!!!

• Close rates have dropped more than 40% according to Winning By Design and whilst WbD put that drop down to the economic uncertainty, granted part of it is, I think the underlying problem swirling around like a rip tide, is the ongoing changing buyer behaviour and that decision makers are getting younger therefore don’t believe the same crappy insight and ROI analysis thats been spurted out for years. ?

Collectively, this is putting so much pressure on the traditional sales funnel and the concept of putting more crap in the top and being happy with less and less coming through the bottom, has to change. The entire system is predicated on waste!

"Partnerships and existing customers will save us" I hear you cry. No, they won't. Not if you keep treating them like buyers instead of people, too.

It reminds me of the horse manure crisis of the late 1800’s.?In 1894 The Times wrote an article about the streets of London being buried under 9 feet of horse manure if drastic action wasn't taken to avoid it. ?

The problem was that 50,000 horses trotted the streets of London ferrying travellers and tourists around the City.? Londons economic growth relied on the horse and carriage and so many families and businesses were part of that bustling ecosystem, so how could this problem be solved?

Several years had gone by and it felt like the city of London was heading for a slow and painful death as this entire ecosystem still flourishing, walked towards it, with many unaware of the consequences - which were disease and ultimately certain death.?

It took one man to make a difference.?In 1908 Henry Ford designed the first ever affordable production motor vehicle called The Model T.?Henry wanted the Model T to be affordable, simple to operate and durable and like London, every major city in the US also felt the same pain from horse manure littering their streets. ??

1910 was the year automobiles outnumbered the horse and carriage as cars became cheaper than keeping horses.?By 1915 the horse and carriage was on its way out and in the 1920’s freight haulage was the last bastion of horse-drawn transportation. ?

So why did it take almost 30 years to make the full transition from horse to car, after the crisis to humanity was highlighted in black and white by a leading publisher??

No-one likes change, ESPECIALLY when so much is riding on it.?(Forgive the pun!)

The traditional marketing and sales funnel and all of the effort we put into it, is based on building awareness, searching and qualifying someone to buy your product.?Everyone competing for the same slice and treating each person like a buyer of your product or service as opposed to building meaningful relationships (forgive the generalisation).?

What if we flip the funnel on its head.?Still maintain our revenue generating operating models, some may be familiar with the bow tie, and empower each team, each individual spanning the operating model to develop their personal brand, activate and grow their existing network (we all have them) and teach each person how to create content that makes them stand out, look different, like the authentic human beings we are, which will encourage your target audience to walk towards them, and therefore your company. ?

We must concentrate this effort to build networks, collaborate digitally, grow communities of customers, prospects and partners around our people, amplifying our beliefs and values as a business, appealing to people as humans in the ‘emocratic’ era. ?Competitive advantage is no longer about knowledge and insight where the dominant logic is the buyer.?Competitive advantage is about emotional attachment, values and beliefs and the dominant logic is co-creation - we live in a society where networking and collaboration will win.?

Social Selling & Influence is not about sending a sales message or the employee supported posts on a social platform.?It’s a lot more than that.?

To find out more or to have an interesting chat on these topics or more, drop me a DM. ?

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