The other day one of my colleagues made a strong point about sales. He said, “I don’t want someone to call me about products and services. I do my own research.”
He is not alone. Today you see stats like 70% of the selling is done before the salesperson is even engaged. As you might guess, this came from a marketing automation vendor. Even so, we do live in an opt-in world. Customers are empowered by the enormous amount of data at their fingertips.
I live in the world of complex corporate sales -- where sales, marketing and the empowered customer combine to create a Solution Cogeneration Team. They engage in a partnership that is the new sales process, a trifecta that requires all three participants.
In this world, 70% of the selling is never complete before I get there. Complex sales involve multiple stakeholders, various options and persuasive communications from vendors that don’t always lead the prospect down the best path. I spend most of my day working with multi-functional teams (customer and selling company) educating, learning and developing in the business cogeneration effort. We have to discover the business and technical needs that our solution must meet to improve the customer’s performance. Often it is the customer who defines the best solution.
“Through study of 1,193 commercially successful innovations across 9 industries, 60% came from customers.” — Eric Von Hippel, study about lead users
What can we do to best engage sales, marketing and the customer as a Solution Cogeneration Team?
Recognize that customers want to opt-in
Customers and prospects want to be educated, not sold. When you recognize that the customer is your partner, not your prey, you can turn your hunters into collaborative educators.
One of our nonprofit clients was deploying a CRM solution to help manage donations. To learn more about their customers, we held a strategy session with millennials, a target donor population. Our client wanted to engage prospects and start gathering information about them ASAP. However, the millennials made it very clear that giving information up front was a total non-starter. If we hadn’t gotten customer input, the client could have missed the mark with this important group.
Build multi-stage customer journeys
With marketing automation technology, organizations can provide valuable content to move leads along a self-directed journey to sales. After a series of interactions with marketing, leads become “marketing qualified leads.
These leads have gone through qualification steps, received targeted content along the way and built a profile that both sales and marketing can use. The marketing team can settle on the right transition point and complete the journey before adding the leads to CRM for sales, ensuring that the marketing programs are executed and used to best advantage. This approach gives rigorously vetted leads to the sales team and makes better use of their time.
Create a sales/marketing partnership
Traditionally, sales and marketing have worked separately, not as a team. If your sales force complains about the quality of leads or if your marketers feel that their leads are being wasted, they probably have a traditional relationship. There is another, better way: when sales and marketing jointly agree on the approach to customer journeys.
A small division of a large company wanted to create an integrated solution that combined marketing and sales automation technology. After we, sales and marketing, discussed a number of potential investments, one came out on top: developing collateral around specialized content that was by far the most successful approach in attracting new business. With the joint decision and commitment by sales and marketing, the solution is off to a strong start.
Learn from your customer
Don’t depend on the analysts to tell you about your market. Although analysts can be insightful, each customer you engage provides first-hand information about the effectiveness of your selling process and the relevance of your value proposition.
During our strategy and vision workshops, we convene stakeholders to review the overall business, the interactions and the pain points. Almost every time, the teams have “aha” moments when they learn something unexpected. These can be small issues or significant disconnects with the market.
In one session with a multinational manufacturer, we were reviewing the roles of various buyers in complex sales in a mature market. It became clear that market changes had altered the dynamics of the buying process. Their end user customers had transformed from influencers to decision-makers. Since our client had strong relationships with end users, this was an opportunity to capitalize on the transition and take market share from their competitors.
Pay attention to the “end” in end-to-end marketing
Marketing can provide value at all stages of the sales cycle, from relevant content upfront through sales and post-sales to alumni training and recycling prospects.
One manufacturing client wanted related divisions to share leads and build the business without having to generate prospects from scratch. The larger division, with a well-established customer base, was to introduce the smaller division that sold add-on technology. The solution used the existing CRM and automated the exchange of leads. With all the elements in place, the program rolled out. However, the results showed that desirable activities were taking place but sales goals were not met. With an end-to-end focus on ultimate results, the program was adjusted to achieve its initial goals.
Effective selling requires a strong Solution Cogeneration partnership that includes sales, marketing and the customer. With their input, agreement and commitment, technologies such as marketing automation and CRM can help improve the productivity of the marketing and sales teams and lead to increased revenues.
