IS SOLUTION SELLING DEAD? SELLING IN THE ERA OF THE EMPOWERED BUYER PROF DR DEVA RANGARAJAN

Transcription

1 IS SOLUTION SELLING DEAD? SELLING IN THE ERA OF THE EMPOWERED BUYER PROF DR DEVA RANGARAJAN

2 ONE MILLION B2B SALES JOBS ELIMINATED BY 2020 Forrester Research, Prof Dr Deva Rangarajan

3 THE WORLD OF THE B2B EXECUTIVE TODAY 77% % of B2B buyers said they did not talk with a salesperson until after they had performed independent research. Before being ready to speak to a sales rep, B2B buyers: Consume on average 5 pieces of content Complete...% 57% of the buying decision 3 Source:

4 THE WORLD OF THE SALESPERSON TODAY Experienced salespeople can expect to spend 7.5 hours of cold calling to get one qualified appointment 69% of sales executives believe that the buyer process is changing faster than organizations are responding to it. 5.4 people seems to be the number of people in the customer s DMU Source: 4

5 THE EMPOWERED CUSTOMER

6 CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 1. No more solutions

7 CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 2. Managing strategic and operational costs

8 CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 3. Internal compliance/waste management

9 THE SALES CHALLENGE

10 CURRENT SALES CHALLENGES 1. Differentiated offering per Decision Making Unit Member

11 CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 2. Longer sales cycles/cost of sales

12 CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 3. Managing the Go-to-Market Strategy

13 RESOURCE ALLOCATION

14 Mutual value Creation CUSTOMER PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS High Value Realization Co-creation Low Transactional Development Low High Selling Complexity Prof Dr Deva Rangarajan

15 Mutual value Creation RESOURCE ALLOCATION BASED ON CUSTOMER PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS High Value Realization Order Taking E-commerce Account Based Marketing Co-creation Knowledge Brokers Open Platforms Account Based Marketing Low Transactional Order Taking Marketing Automation E-commerce Development Knowledge Brokers Lead Nurturing Marketing Automation Account Based Marketing Low High Selling Complexity

16 ROLE OF MARKETING

17 USUAL PERCEPTIONS OF MARKETING Marketing is a blackhole: Money goes in, nothing useful comes out Marketing is about selling air Marketing spends all the money that we work so hard to bring in Marketing is about making promises to the customers that the rest of us cannot deliver on

18 WHAT CAN MARKETERS DO IN THE DIGITAL ERA 18 Prof Dr Steve Muylle

19 MARKETING/SALES DILEMNA

20 Ending the war between Sales and Marketing - Philip Kotler Harvard Business Review 2006

21 SALES & MARKETING COLLABORATION 1. Common vocabulary 2. Process Knowledge 3. Shared metrics & rewards 4. Experience sharing

22 Too simple Too complex for most SIMPLIFIED DEMAND GENERATION PROCESS Source: Pascal Persyn, CEO Perpetos- 22

23 Sales Marketing handshake BUYING CYCLE SALES ACCELERATION SUPPORT Interest Tension Market Research Evaluation Hesitation Negotiation Source: Pascal Persyn, CEO Perpetos-

24 RESEARCH FINDINGS

25 VLERICK SALES BAROMETER List of 40 questions Focus on procurement trends, structuring the sales effort, role of marketing, sales force enablement, sales force performance management

26 DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS SME Multi-National Other

27 WHAT ROLE SHOULD MARKETING PLAY Lead generation and qualification 3,87 Mapping customer journeys and pain points 3,95 Customer segmentation 4,01 Track and monitor customer activity on digital channels 4,08 Developing customer specific content 4,14 3,70 3,80 3,90 4,00 4,10 4,20 Averages on a scale from 1 to 5 27

28 WHAT DO SALES PEOPLE NEED Easy to access call management tools We have tools to deliver latest content at customer s premises Lead generation by marketing department 3,2 3,2 3,2 We have an easy to use CRM tool 3,1 We have an education system in place ot train us on hi-tech tools 3,1 Qualified leads are put in the CRM system 3 Easy to implement account planning processes Internal support team to create customer value propositions 2,9 2,9 2,7 2,8 2,9 3 3,1 3,2 On a scale from 1 to 5 28

29 CONCLUSION

30 SUGGESTIONS Take opportunity selection out of the hands of the salespeople Involve marketing and marketing tools in opportunity selection Persona based sales enablement tools is the way forward Develop clear strategies to manage multichannel marketing efforts Upgrade the sales enablement efforts

31 THANK YOU! LINKED IN: BE.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/DEVARANGARAJAN WEB: