Selling with Data #20 - Multithreaded Engagement

What are sales leaders to do when 43% of B2B buyers prefer rep-free experiences??

Many of today’s buyers spend only 24% of their buying time meeting with a sales rep, and even when they are in contact with a sales rep, they continually refer to digital channels. Adding to that challenge, buying groups now have an average of 11 or more individuals — a number that can flex up to 20 for complex deals — involved in buying decisions and those individuals have their own buyer journeys, often uncoordinated to the buying group.

Enterprise selling has become more difficult, and every indication is that with more information publicly available and more tools for customers, enterprise selling will only become harder. This is especially the case for sellers who do not investing in learning how to embrace digital to supplement their traditional selling approaches. Don't worry, though, there is hope. Keep reading.

In the article, Why Multithreaded Engagements are the Secret to Accelerating Revenue Growth, Gartner unpacks the traditional often individual focused buyer journey to provide a recommendation on what sellers can do around multithreaded engagement using intelligent coordination.

A multithreaded engagement, as defined by Gartner, is a buyer-centric commercial strategy that aims to engage buyers how, when and where they choose. This strategy, sustained by digital interactions and technology, orchestrates the engagement of distributed buyers through intelligent coordination. Harmonizing messaging and anticipating the needs of individuals on self-directed journeys means each stakeholder receives contextualized support.

If you have been a returning reader of Selling with Data, this idea should be familiar. Bill Stinnett 's book The Digital Selling Handbook, emphasizes using digital assets to supplement traditional selling, in the same way Gartner talks about multithreaded engagement. Using digital assets to supplement traditional selling approaches is similar to "digital interactions and technology, [which] orchestrates the engagement of distributed buyers through intelligent coordination".

Consider the difference between a traditional customer journey versus todays customer journey.

In the traditional customer journey the people involved in an enterprise purchase, such as business users, IT, and finance, mostly received their information from the same source - the enterprise seller and the vendors website. By being the primary source of information, the seller was in a better position to coordinate the information, expand the buying group, and connect different people who all shared common interests but all had different motivations and agendas.

In todays customer journey the seller is not longer the primary source of information and often isn't engaged by default in the customers journey. As Gartner says "There isn’t a singular buying journey. Instead, each individual takes a self-directed path to meet their unique needs." For example, the customer's end user is interested in a marketing campaign they were targeted for and visits the website. The IT team does their own research, independently of the end user. Finance completes their own research and evaluation independent of the end user and IT. Even though all three functions are in a buying group, the coordination and knowledge that someone else in the buying group is researching the similar topic happens with little coordination. The outcome is often more confusion, misalignment, and complexity with individuals putting their own self interests ahead of the buying group’s motivations - all things that are not good for the customer or the seller.

In a coordinated multithreaded engagement, the seller's value is adopting the traditional method of awareness and coordination using digital clues. The seller needs to be aware of the individual activity that is largely happening digitally and provide value through awareness and coordination of the different customer personas who are evaluating the same topic in the buying group. The seller is aware of the entire buying group, especially who is participating in the buying group, and provides "intelligent coordination" to support the end user, IT, and finance teams in their research and evaluation. In this approach, the buyer is supporting the customers’ buying group through improved visibility to their own efforts and can identify key pain points, obstacles, and confusion to assist versus letting it go unserved. The outcome is an improved experience for the customer and a higher probability of a sale for the seller.

Sellers can enable intelligent coordination and multithreaded engagement by doing the following:

1. Pay attention to customer marketing, trial, and other top of the funnel activity. The first step of intelligent coordination is being aware of the activity that is happening at the account, and not just at the individual level but more importantly with the buying group. This can be accomplished by regularly viewing client interest and other marketing activity and looking for signals at the account level around a common topic.
2. Identify signals at the buying group level. Today, 10 people doing the same one thing is more important than 1 person doing 10 things. Sellers and marketing need dynamic analytics to identify patterns and trends that are happening across a buying group. For more read "Selling with Data - #5 What is a Better Signal - One Person Doing Ten Activities or Ten People Doing One Activity"
3. Make connections in the buying group. Sellers shouldn't be afraid to connect with the individuals in the buying group to make them aware of activity across the buying group. Instead of just targeting individuals to respond to the activity of just that person, the better action is to share that you noticed that multiple people from their company have shown interest in the same area and to ask why. The key is not to close the sale, but to understand the context so you can engage and support their research and evaluation. The objective is to connect people in the buying group, to enable intelligent coordination, and reduce the friction of the sale.
4. Align the buying group with relevant messaging. Once engaged, sellers should ensure alignment of the buying group and harmonization of messages. Buyers will continue to explore the website or complete a trial while they are talking to the salesperson. Sellers, and especially technical sellers, can support the various individuals of the buying group by supplementing curated content targeting individual interests in the context of the broader buying group’s mission. For example, sharing a new competitive win for the business user, sharing the details of a new product release that is important to the IT individuals, or sharing a third party ROI study for the finance individuals.

Gartner research suggests that by 2026, B2B organizations that unify commercial strategies and leverage multithreaded commercial engagements will realize revenue growth that outperforms their competition by a whopping 50%. The same applies for sellers - sellers who adopt and understand how digital can support the traditional way of selling will outperform sellers who do not.

Share your comments on how you use intelligent coordination and multithreaded engagement.

Special Note: This is the 20th article of Selling with Data. Thank you for all the support and messages of encouragement. My favorite are the messages sharing how some of the tips in action have helped in the field identify and close more business. Please consider subscribing, if you haven't, and please share any ideas for future articles.

Good Selling.