1. Hard Workers show up early, stay late, always go the extra mile
2. Relationship Builders: advocates across the customer organisation
3. Challengers: use their deep understanding of the customers’ business to push their thinking and take control in the conversation. Challengers share even potentially controversial views and are assertive with both customers and bosses
4. Reactive Problem Solvers: perceived as highly reliable and detail-oriented by customers
   (e.g. strong focus on post-sales follow-up)
5. Lone Wolves: sales cowboys who do it their way or not at all

One of these profiles consistently seems to outperform: the Challenger. In The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson show that while most companies focus on building customer relationships, the challenger pushes customers’ thinking, introducing new solutions to their problems and illuminating problems they might have overlooked.

Can you say that your sales team is exclusively staffed with challengers? You might be lucky but chances are small … most companies have one or two on board, but the majority of sales reps on average tend to perform moderately.

What can you do to turn your sales force into a Challenger team?
It is not impossible to lift average sales people to a higher level in a short period of time. If you want your team to act like Challengers, it will be crucial for them to gain insight into the customer’s buying process. One of the ways to get there, is the Buying Clock ®. Here are some capabilities you might need to implement additionally, if not yet present:

1. Define your company’s DNA and replace traditional ‘competence-based hiring’ by ‘DNA-based hiring’
2. Align your sales cycle with the customer’s buying cycle
3. Introduce pain-based segmentation
4. Develop buyer-aligned and sales-ready messaging deliverables
   These support Sales to have consultative dialogues with customers
5. Have sales reps interacting with real decision-makers
6. Upgrade reporting to reflect the customer’s buying process and stop pushing your actions based on a sales process
7. Introduce sales coaching and mentoring as part of sales management practices

As a reference: one of our clients reported these results 1 year after implementing the above mentioned capabilities:

• 37% revenue growth, compared to 12%-18% in the previous years
• Profit grew 10% faster than revenue
• Added value per employee increased from less than 150K€ to 208K€
• 81% conversion rate from pipeline to contract
• Time to productivity for new employees decreased from 13 to 7 months

Do you see opportunities to replicate the lonesome Challenger in your team after reading this post? Or do you have any doubts about the feasability? Leave a reply, looking forward to your comments

It is amazing that sales and marketing rarely ask themselves to what extend prospects are able to perceive competitive difference. The main question they should be asking themselves is:

Can prospects who never bought our product (or used our type of product) understand the difference with competitive offerings?

Is your organisation, like many companies today, struggling to quantify the difference of your product in value for the customer? Then here are 5 tips to help you turn the tide:

• Divide your strengths in presales and post sales features,
  depending on whether or not your customer has previous experience with similar offerings
• Link those strengths to situations in the customer organisation, which lead to quantifiable problems
• Surface who is the most impacted player in the customer organisation by the above
• Talk to existing customers and get quantified information on their situation before and after using your solution
• Convert all of above in sales ready, lip loading deliverables
  Take it further than productising this information; also explain whom to ask which questions
  (beware: if you provide ‘arguments’ to sales, they will use those instead of asking questions!)

Marketing will keep your deliverables up to date, in interaction with sales updating on new experiences in the field. This will allow you to building a true cross departmental, learning organisation. Taking the information into account in your product road map, will create a lasting perceived differentiation for your product.

Let us know how above is improving your impact in the market.

However, I have recently seen a multitude of pseudo scientific approaches to the sales and buying processes. Sales methodology and marketing automation providers, consultants and software suppliers are trying hard to translate the buying cycle into a sales process, and synchronize both.

However, there some big disadvantages to this approach:

• A buying process per opportunity does not exist. Every person involved has his/her own dynamics and insights
• A sales process keeps sales focused on their own process, pushing actions and forgetting all about the customer
• It doesn’t help sales adapt their speed, messaging or language to maximise their influence on the buying cycle
• Any sales process limits coaching opportunities
• It lowers forecast visibility because the process is driven by what sales think (like ‘I made a proposal, thus …’)

The most important disadvantage is that it adds unnecessary complexity to the sales and marketing organisation.

Research shows that everybody is going through the same mental process when taking a decision. That includes ‘buying’, which is a decision like any other. Moreover, the mental process is independent of nationality or gender. Hence, the buying cycle is predictable and understandable and should be the centre of the universe.

Does that mean we don’t need sales people any more?

On the contrary! However, sales should first of all find out in which phase of the decision making process his prospect finds himself. In a second step, they should synchronise their sales behaviour with the prospect’s ‘mental readiness to buy’ and thus create maximum influence. In other words: they should align their activities with the buying readiness.

This knowledge allows to explain certain funnel friction problems, ‘unwanted’ reactions and closing issues. Many of these exist because sales are pushing actions, while not taking the buying readiness of prospects into account. Think of:

• Shifting decision dates
• People not willing to respond to certain questions
  E.g. current way of working and according challenges when entering late in a buying cycle
• Losing control in complex sales because actions are focused on the main contact
  Main contact will move through the buying cycle much faster
  Lack of synchronisation in buying readiness among all DMU members leading to relation frictions
• Deals suddenly lost in the closing phase or request for an adapted proposal
  In our perception the customer changed his mind, whereas he has simply not yet come to a decision

Conclusion: get rid of your sales process asap and make sure your way of working, reporting and coaching are aligned with the individual ‘readiness to buy’ of all people involved in the decision making of each opportunity.

Good luck with optimising your hit-rate at a lower cost of sales.

Forecasting is in general defined as a prediction of future events, based on historical data, opinions, trends, events or known future variables. The purpose being:

• To prepare Sales and other budgets
• To determine resource requirements
• To provide a basis for business planning
• To establish targets and plan investments
• To forecast cash flow and profits

And thus, forecasting becomes the corner stone for decision making.

Some common pitfalls in forecasting
The process of  forecasting is often based on trends. And typically, this is the most recent trend experienced. Forecasting is a very cumbersome process and above all: a number of events tend to make the results obsolete even before the process is fully accomplished. This becomes a big challenge in a highly dynamic future environment. It becomes even more problematic when, as in many cases, we build backwards to a plan that justifies a predefined outcome.

Some companies have been combining this scenario with a bottom up approach by Sales, in order to define individual targets as well as a final budget. Yet, Sales is mostly starting off from historic numbers. Or worse: include their bonus and management expectations in their considerations.

Forecasting as a backbone in dynamic market conditions
How can we now improve our visibility? And even more important: can we use forecasting as a backbone to become more agile to the ever increasing dynamic market conditions?

The answer is scenario-based forecasting. This has recently been acknowledged by the Vlerick Leuven Gent management school in their study “Strategy execution in the aftermath of the financial crisis”. This bottom up approach is of course using all knowledge and experience as mentioned above. But it results in 3 different scenario’s: worst case, most realistic and best case scenario. Companies using scenario-based forecasting and planning can easily test their operational plan on an ongoing basis, instead of once or twice a year. A sensitivity analysis of the business can be stated in terms such as “what is the impact of …”

5 must-do’s in forecasting

• Use a rolling forecast instead of a yearly process
  Divide your forecast in periods which take the typical buying cycle length into account.
  You can use quarters but it may be appropriate to use 4 or 6 week cycles for more transactional business
• Test and compare with your ongoing operational results and upgrade/ add periods to your scenario’s
• Work on a fully transparent basis with Sales
• Make sure remuneration and bonuses are in line with operational expectations
  Use a motivating and uncapped bonus system by e.g. using an accelerator for over-achievement.
  You will thus avoid sandbagging and Sales undermining your visibility covering their own interests
• Make sure your pipeline is used on a daily basis for (self)-coaching purposes
  Read my blog: How to improve your forecast accuracy for more details on this topic

The next time you work on a forecast, remember to ask yourself : “How can I use forecasting as an ongoing process that will allow me to manage pro-actively”.

The Internet has a much bigger impact on B2B sales than most of us realise. It is an evolution taking us off guard and bringing along a negative impact on our control and visibility. Hence, the B2B buying process has switched from a sales-driven to a buyer-driven process and requires the traditional sales cycle, pipeline, activities and who needs to be involved when, to be revamped. Companies need to look at Buyer Aligned Collaboration™ if they want to create breakthrough performance enhancements and stop the erosion. 5 important questions you must ask yourself:

• Do I know my customer?

The conversion from product to solution selling has been going on for over 15 years. Yet, a study from Mc Kinsey shows that 75% of all attempts fail. Many companies make the mistake to think that repackaging products with services makes a solution, but forget that services are products too. ‘Real solutions’ can only exist if the entire organisation understands the challenges the customer is faced with because of not having your solution in place. Do you know and can you quantify these challenges? Is your sales and marketing organsiation capable of explaining the impact of your solution and the changes in his way of working when using your solution (all of this of course without even mentioning your product)?

• Have I packaged differentiation in a way that is directly linked to customer impact?

Is sales capable of influencing decision criteria before the customer is asking for a demo or quote? And this in such a way, that it kills competition even before the real comparative battle begins?

• Do I take buyer experience into acount in my approach?

To what extend is your messaging adapted to your customers’ challenges in relation to their experience with your product? Challenges and buying critiera will be different for a customer who is unhappy with a similar solution in place, compared to someone having no experience what so ever in buying your type of solution.

• Are sales & marketing supporting one another along the entire buying cycle?

Is marketing measured on the amount of revenue they are generating? Is sales involved in the lead generation proces? Is marketing building lip loading deliverables for sales? It’s simply impossible to create a good operating sales & marketing organisiation without the prior way of working in place.

• Does management walk the talk?

It’s amazing to see how little time management is spending in the field, talking to prospects & customers as well as supporting the sales organisation. There is always plenty of work at the office as an excuse for not going into the field. Yet one has to set the priorities right. A couple of recent cases showed that it’s possible to free up management time up to 25%. A couple of tasks to evaluate: time spent with sales in the office, analysing reports, developing management reports and powerpoints or being part of the escalation path instead of managing it. The last one is by far having the biggest negative impact on field presence.

Take action before it’s too late and let me know what works best.

• Visibility on pipeline and forecast
• Centralised database of prospects and clients
• Marketing searching to add value and better understand the market
• Streamlining pre-sales, sales and marketing activities

Above all, managers were looking for a repeatable process to improve their hit-rate and decrease the cost of sales.
But most of these companies have been facing a couple of negative implications along the way:

• Inward looking organisation
  The ‘process’ forced people to compare and analyse which actions led to deals won or lost. To create a successful repeatable process, companies started pushing actions that presumably have a positive effect on the sales cycle. But those companies who already measure pipeline velocity and decision date visibility, know that the opposite is true in complex buying cycles. Sales will eventually loose focus on the prospect.
• Subjective status and success probability
  I sometimes see implementations where ’sending a proposal’ is being linked to the degree of probability to win the deal. Could anyone explain why sending a proposal after a demo will increase chances, let alone give an indication of the prospect’s decision date? This is another myth created over time by people designing processes.
• Unreliable management reporting
  You only have to look at the amount of deals expected to be closed the last day of a quarter according to CRM data to see what I mean. A CFO recently told me that he is typically using between 22 and 28% of the sales forecast for his budget ..
• Sales management increasing pressure on their team
  Opportunities being created upon or just before closing, is only one of the many symptoms I see time and time again. Sales are hiding opportunities: they are afraid of what full openness might do tho their targets and/or pressure from management.

The sum of all the above is that co-workers in many organisations are:

• Managing spreadsheets and reports
• Managing the end of the pipeline instead of the entry
• Under pressure for unrealistic hit-rates because of a starved pipeline

I will come back with some simple remedies and solutions for the above issues in future blog posts.
What is your experience?

How does the quality of content impact your business

Traditional patterns have changed, sales no longer being the primary source of information to your prospects. Information today is everywhere and buyers go looking for it out there. It is precisely Marketing’s role to make sure that suitable and catchy content is available for potential customers in every phase of their buying cycle, right at the places where they expect to find it. Educate the market through contagious content and make sure your company will be top of mind as soon as potential clients get ready to buy. How will engaging content impact your business?

• Become a thought leader
• Drive web traffic

But most important:

• Lower your lead generation cost and boost the amount of qualified sales leads
• Improve the activity rate of sales
• Increase the hit-rate

Creating value content: where to start

A few guidelines to get started creating demand through content:

• Contagious content is in no way commercial
  Don’t write about products and features, nor about yourself. Educate your market and start a conversation
• Write on topics that the greater part of your prospects will embrace
  Focus on challenges that your target audience will find interesting, skipping niche topics
• Write as an advisor
  Make sure all content will provide actual solutions to your prospects’ business challenges
  Put yourself in their shoes and feel your buyers’ pain!
• Prove the case
  Make sure to prove your point through customer references and statistics
• Keep in mind that buyers go through different phases when buying
  No shop owner will be interested in the looks or features of your pay terminal before he even considered he needs one! Make sure potential buyers find content to suit their needs in any of their buying stages

One of our customers saw a 28% increase in qualified leads over a period of 6 months after changing the way they comunicate. Looking forward to reading about your challenges and results with content driven demand creation!

The way people buy has changed dramatically

Sales & Marketing can no longer afford to operate as departments that happen to work for the same company. Whereas many organisations have been trying to create alignment for the past 15 years, I have seen very little improvement. Here are some continuing statements, despite all efforts:

• Marketing is not delivering sales-ready leads, says sales. Sales is not following up on leads, says marketing
• Marketing is spending a lot of money but does not measure ROI
• Sales has very little impact on marketing spend and vice versa
• We are unable to sell value over price. We are unable to differentiate ourselves in the market

Let it be clear that sales-marketing alignment has failed. So it’s more than time to start looking at a new approach of Buyer aligned collaboration. What does it take to implement Buyer aligned collaboration?

• Convert your marketing campaigns into continuous conversational marketing
• Take control by marketing a vision (in role and pain-based messages) for each of your segments
• Adapt your language to readiness to buy and use lead-scoring based on the same foundation
• Involve sales to double check on readiness to buy & let them decide when time is right to take over from marketing
• Measure and benchmark all activities along the buying cycle and implement incremental improvements

In practice that means: increase revenue performance by making the buying cycle the centre of your corporate universe. Apart form synchronising Sales & Marketing targets, here are a few tips to make a start maximising Lead Development in your company:

• The buying cycle is key for every action taken by Sales & Marketing!
• Marketing develops sales ready deliverables synchronised with the readiness to buy
• Implement a tool to help track your prospects’ readiness to buy (assuring company wide acceptance)
• Product input is problem based, not feature based
• Use CRM to track the above, as a pragmatic cross-departmental tool. Correct information is more vital than lots of it.

Just remember: you can no longer neglect the buyer if you want to make a difference in today’s market!
Looking forward to reading your comments.

But interestingly, Leavitt points out that instead, Marketing should focus on four engines that all B2B firms need to have running smoothly to ensure short- and longer-term Business success. Indeed, the role of marketing has changed dramatically and I couldn’t agree more with him. Here is a summary of Leavitt’s 4 engines:

1. The Content Engine. Leavitt explains the importance of  ‘consistently producing compelling content for every stage of the buying cycle’, through (among others):

• Thought leadership content to help build reputation and interest
• Educational content to support lead generation
• Solutions and customer-success content to support sales

I fully agree that these are the most important types of content to fire up any company’s marketing engine today. Synchronized as I am with The Buying Clock™, I would like to highlight the importance of all above mentioned types of content to be aligned with the buyer. Buyer aligned messaging allows to load the lips of sales with customer ready, value based messages adapted to prospects’ readiness to buy.

2. The Relationship Engine. B2B marketing rises and falls on the strength of the company’s relationships with stakeholders:

• Suspects and prospects
• Customers
• Partners
• Market influencers

From my experience, building and maintaining relationships with suspects and prospects is most cost effectively achieved through a consistent flow of educational (non commercial) content. Again, don’t forget to tune your messages on the readiness to buy. Aim to reach all stakeholders by working across areas such as account development (not management), events, trade fairs, web activities, etc.

3. The Lead-Development Engine. No longer can we focus on just the early stages of generating leads and then throw them over the wall to sales. More and more, we need to stay in the game with longer term programs to develop and sustain opportunities in close coordination with sales.

Indeed, marketing needs to develop leads until they become qualified. But most important to oil the lead-development engine is sales and marketing integration. Both teams must work closely together towards common targets and learn to speak the same language. For example, sales and marketing need to agree on the criteria for a qualified lead. Sales from their side must learn to qualify leads in an early stage, at disqualification rendering them back to marketing for further development ‘in an overall system for lead development, including qualification, scoring, nurturing, and assessment’ as Leavitt puts it.

4. The Solutions Development Engine. The result is a need for higher value solutions that respond more specifically to individual customer needs. Marketing needs to:

• Guide and support the field in determining top priorities for new offer development
• Craft the right value propositions
• Routinize the process with the right stage gates and metrics

As to reinforcing the strength of their unique value propositions, I advise customers offering cross industry vertical solutions to implement pain-based segmentation. Industry vertical solutions are better off with product-market couples.  And as Leavitt points out, measuring and continuously improving effectiveness of the Solutions Development Engine is key for boosting effectiveness and results.

These 4 B2B Marketing Engines for sure don’t cover all aspects of B2B marketing but will definately boost results.
How are your marketing engines running?

For Senior Management, it is often difficult to quantify the impact of poor alignment on corporate performance. But let’s face the facts: what does a stop to the battle between Sales & Marketing have on offer?

• Sales cycles get shorter
• Market entry cost goes down
• Lower Cost of Sales

Apart from considerable cost decrease opportunities, working together as a team directly impacts revenue. Think of aligned brand and product messages enhancing the company’s reputation in the market. Or increased profits when Sales follow up Marketing campaigns more effectively.

Everybody will agree that Sales & Marketing are supposed to work towards a common goal: maximising the company’s potential. Now what to do to close the gap between the 2 departments? Here are a few tips to get started:

• Introducing a common language is an absolute must

A common language enables development of goals and messaging that will be shared over departments and which every individual agrees upon. Also, it will become much easier to introduce aligned quantification and qualification criteria, e.g. for leads and campaign goals/results. Sales & Marketing will be able to correct and enhance each other’s work, and work together to achieve shared business goals.

• Aligning Sales & Marketing with customers’ readiness to buy

Most often, Sales & Marketing are driven by internal processes rather than the customer’s buying cycle. They will be giving company and product presentations, demo’s, sending proposals, etc … too often without any result. Sales & Marketing should learn together to understand the mental phases your customers are going through to come to a buying decision. These common insights will support Marketing to deliver sales-ready materials and Sales to better perform in the field.

• Introducing an experience sharing platform

Sales will learn from each other and Marketing will get a better grasp of what is really going on in the field. The platform consists of a small set of sales-ready deliverables which are kept up to date per segment and key-contacts in the buying process. Regular sales meetings with best practice sharing and assisted by marketing are the starting point. Ask your sales to send a blackberry style email with the summary of meetings (especially on pains, challenges and capabilities) and make sure marketing has access to that information in order to keep the best practice up to date.

Curious to learn about your experience with Sales & Marketing battles!