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

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

ONE MILLION B2B SALES JOBS ELIMINATED BY 2020 Forrester Research,2015 2 Prof Dr Deva Rangarajan

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: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-10-sales-blog-postsfrom-2014-jeremy-boudinet?trk=object-title

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: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-10-sales-blog-postsfrom-2014-jeremy-boudinet?trk=object-title 4

THE EMPOWERED CUSTOMER

CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 1. No more solutions

CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 2. Managing strategic and operational costs

CURRENT CUSTOMER CHALLENGES 3. Internal compliance/waste management

THE SALES CHALLENGE

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

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

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

RESOURCE ALLOCATION

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

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

ROLE OF MARKETING

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

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

MARKETING/SALES DILEMNA

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

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

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

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

RESEARCH FINDINGS

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

DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS 18 85 35 SME Multi-National Other 32 15 70 26

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

THANK YOU! EMAIL: DEVA.RANGARAJAN@VLERICK.COM LINKED IN: BE.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/DEVARANGARAJAN WEB: HTTP://WWW.VLERICK.COM/SEC