The Game is Changing, Are You Changing With It?

After joining as an early member of the team to build the marketing and growth engine at PersistIQ, the bittersweet moment has come to move on. As Ray Carroll can attest, it’s tough to move on from a company when it still holds a special place in your heart. But it’s time to embrace the future while paying homage to the past.

I’m honored and excited to be joining the team at Engagio as the Director of Growth.

But this post isn’t about my transition, or even my future. It’s about something bigger. This post is about the future of selling in B2B markets, and how business is done. This post illustrates what I’m excited to tackle at Engagio.

The Cause of Change

In a world of more technology, more sales methodologies, and more confusion, it’s apparent that the game is changing. But what’s the real cause of this change? What’s the cause of this innovation?

It’s the customer.

Value is one of the most overused and misunderstood terms in the sales, yet salespeople continue to romance prospects with its allure. They vastly overestimate the prospects’ capacity to understand the value of solutions. After all, perception is reality, and people will only pay for the value that they can clearly see.

As Jeff Thull explains in his book, Mastering the Complex Sale, “Value clarity is achieved by connecting specific aspects of your value to the relevant customer performance metrics that your value impacts, and quantifying such impact in a number that your customer believes.”

The old way of selling is plagued with foundational problems of content, timing, audience, and process. Salespeople have a propensity to present too much, too soon, to the wrong people in the wrong manner.

• Content: How much of your content is focused on you, your company, and your product? How much of your content is focused on your customer, their problems, and how they evaluate and make a purchasing decision?
• Timing: Do you collaborate with your prospects during the selling process and ensure they understand every step of the way? Or do you go through the stages like checklists, racing through as quickly as possible?
• Audience: Does it feel like you’re selling to only one person in their organization? Or do you have a team behind you, orchestrating “Plays” and connecting with all the stakeholders across the table?
• Process: Do you have cookie-cutter templates you use everyday? Or do you have truly personalized messaging for each prospect?

If you want to close bigger and more complex deals, you have to demonstrate, translate and quantify value to each stakeholder. This means being able to figure out what each person at the table cares about, and speaking his language.

Let’s take a look at the old generations of sales.

The Ghost of Salesperson Past

The old generations of sales doesn’t cut it… not even close.

Cold calling, presenting and closing with a “smile-and-dial” approach gets you nowhere.

Even consultative selling won’t withstand the wear and tear of a complex sale. I know I’m going to get pushback here, but let me explain. Image a doctor leading a patient down a series of questions to self-diagnose the illness and self-prescribe a medication or a procedure. Then, the doctor tells you the price and offers a discount. It sounds absurd, but that’s what we’re doing with consultative selling. It just doesn’t work in large B2B sales with long cycles and many moving parts. Buyers are not knowledgeable enough to make these decisions because they often have incomplete or inaccurate information. They were never trained in understanding the problem, quantifying the impact, and choosing the solution.

This is the definition of a complex sale — the prospect needs your expertise on marketing, your solution, and their business. Yes, you must become an expert on their business. I didn’t say is was going to be easy.

To be successful in this selling environment, you must have the skill and discipline to orchestrate human connection and deliver value to the customer.

Why the Rise in Complexity?

First off, let’s define the complex sales. Again referring back to Jeff Thull, he writes, “A Complex sale is one in which the customer is not fully equipped to make a set of high-quality decisions around the nature of the problem, what to buy to solve it, and how to implement it to realize the solutions value.”

Approval levels have migrated higher in the organization, raising the hurdle for the salesperson to get in front of a decision maker.

There’s just as much demand on your buyer to increase their performance with fewer resources as there is a demand on you to increase your sales. More pressure means more people are involved and bigger problems. Bigger problems mean bigger and better solutions. Better solutions mean a more complex decision.

Research by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) confirms this. They found that there are several reasons for the increase in stakeholders at the table.

• Risk aversion: No matter their rank, key players must get a buying consensus with his/her team.
• Technological complexity: They now have to include IT and operations in the decision.
• Globalization: Geographic and cultural implications are now at play.
• Regulations: More and more requirements lead to more restrictive protocols from legal and compliance teams.

As the complexity grows and evolves, so too must your sales process.

The Future is Here

In the short span of the last 24 months, the “account based” movement has taken off like a rocketship. According to TOPO, a leading B2B research and analyst firm, a staggering 80% of all sought-after advice from their clients falls into the bucket of “account-based topics.” The mighty Google is here to confirm, as its search volume for “account based marketing” has risen almost 10x over that timespan.

It takes a village to close a large complex sale. Think of it as team selling. In hockey, they’re allowed 6 players per side (5 skaters and a goalie). Why would they only suit up and send out only one player? If you’re an Account Executive and need your CEO to email their executive sponsor, achieving that should be easy. Yet how many times has that small task got in the way and stalled the deal?

As you can see, it’s not just about Account Based Marketing. It’s not just about Account Based Sales or Account Based Sales Development. When we use these labels, it only perpetuates the misconception that only one department is responsible for thinking and acting at the account level. For complex B2B sales, nothing could be further from the truth.

That’s why it’s leaders in the space, like Jon Miller, David Brock and Craig Rosenberg (to name a few) call it Account Based Everything.

The team at Engagio defines Account Based Everything as: “A strategic go-to-market approach that orchestrates personalized marketing, sales and success efforts to drive engagement and conversion at named accounts.”

Let’s unpack that.

• Strategic go-to-market approach: It’s a long-term plan that takes a methodical, thorough, and calculated approach to stay competitive in today’s selling environment. Devote the time, energy, and resources to do it right. You can’t try ABE for one month or on one account and give up if you don’t see the results.
• That orchestrates: It’s not a linear process. A complex sale requires true professionals and expertise. You may have 30+ meetings across numerous contacts at one account. You can’t use the steps in a traditional buying process to measure and predict the outcome of the sale. Every deal is going to be different.
• Personalized: Your conversations must be based on relevant, contextual messaging; not one-size-fits-all templates. That means it’s more targeted and researched outreach. When your focus is on quality over quantity, you’ll get better results and have a larger impact on your bottom line.
• Marketing, sales and success efforts: Again, this is a team effort. No silos allowed. It’s an organization-wide initiative where alignment is not suggested, but required.
• To drive engagement and conversion: Metrics remain a critical facet of business, but the way you measure ABE effectiveness is different. Selling at the account level means measuring success at the account level. Measure quality, but make sure it compliments your traditional sales development metrics.
• At named accounts: These are high-value accounts hand-picked by your team that have the greatest revenue potential. Your entire strategy hinges on how well you select your named accounts. These are the proverbial whales. Go big or go home.

Research by TOPO reveals companies that employ an Account Based Everything strategy acquire a significant increase in engagement rates, pipeline per account, and upsell/cross-sell deals.

But here’s now I see it. Account Based Everything is a sales methodology or a sales process. It’s a mindset, one that companies must embrace.

This is why I’m excited to join Engagio.

At its core, it allows for the orchestration of relevant interactions that span multiple players in the account. It enables channel diversification for communication. It makes possible targeted, research and personalized human interaction. It empowers selling teams to utilize assets in all departments from marketing to sales to customer success.

This all means more value is created for your customer.

Welcome to the world of Account Based Everything.