Why Sales is part of the Value Chain
Have you ever tried to sell someone a product you firmly believe in, only to be shot down - and walked away with a feeling of disbelief: "How could they not want to buy this? Don't they see how great it is?"
Or have you ever sat through an enthusiastic sales pitch that was a waste of your time, regretting you agreed to take this call or meeting in the first place - and dreading having to explain why you will not be making a purchase?
There is a reason these mismatches between sellers and buyers are a common occurence. The reason is that sales and marketing are often not treated as part of the value chain, but rather as a mere addendum, a way to "monetize" something others have built: "Here's the finished product, make those calls and get it out there!" This approach is rarely feasible anymore today - especially not in B2B scenarios where sales cycles and product lifecycles are frequently many months or even years long.
Last year I met a representative from a company that builds large manufacturing equipment; machines that sell for millions of Euros. She confirmed that active selling is incredibly difficult in such an environment: How far do you expect to get when you're cold calling companies, trying to sell them an an item that is usually bought/replaced only every 15 years?
In these scenarios it becomes apparent why product quality extends to sales quality:
A good product that's pushed where it's not needed or when it's not wanted isn't a good product - it's a nuisance.
So sales teams would be well advised to tune down their much lauded "killer instinct" and instead develop a "matchmaking instinct:" The competence to identify and address the right audience at a time in their buyers journey where your offering makes sense to them. One way to do this is to let suitable leads come to you:
Every B2B company has a website; some also have customer platforms/extranets or mobile apps. We use these digital touchpoints to build an audience: "Here's our offering, come take a look!" And marketing teams invest a lot of time, energy and money to generate that audience. The weird thing is: Once we have an audience in the digital space, we don't bother talking to them!
We've been conditioned to view "traffic" or "active users" as the holy grail of online business development; maybe we even extend that to "conversions" - but why are we content with that? Why do we not push for personal communication in the digital space, for two-way realtime connections to interested buyers? It just seems weird to me:
Imagine you have a booth at an important trade fair. Your sales team gets there, you get out your roll-ups, blow-ups and all the brochures you could carry: The booth is packed with info about what makes your company/product great. Now, just as the doors open to visitors - you leave. And you don't bother coming back until it's time to pack up and go home: Because if anyone passes the booth and is interested they can call your number or write to the email address on the brochures, right? No sales team would ever do this - so why do we routinely behave like that online? Why do we not bother to reach out and make real connections with obviously interested buyers that visit our websites and apps?
If your product is something people don't buy every day it's now more important than ever for your target audience to actively seek you out when they're in the market for what you're offering. Inbound Marketing, SEO and SEM do a great job at that - but that's not where it ends: You need to make a connection that is more than just a browser cookie. Turn traffic into conversations, don't settle for anything less than personal communication online if you wouldn't do so offline!
If you want to discover how easy that is, check out our integrated messaging solutions that boost your digital media with the capability for real dialog at smoope.com - or let me know here on LinkedIn: We'd love to have a chat!