The moment of truth arrives when a prospect is engaged in a meaningful interaction with your organization.

For B2B marketers that key point is the response generated from a marketing effort through direct, online or social media marketing.

For sales, it is the sales conversation: that defining moment when a prospect is engaged, qualified and profiled through a dynamic dialog.

The sales conversation is being shaped by a number of strong forces:

1. Buyers increasingly prefer online and telephone discussions rather than face-to-face discussions.  By necessity or due to communications and online research preferences, buyers have moved away from face-to-face meetings.   For more on this, read the post: Selling to the Digital Buyer.
2. Buyers don’t find value in sales discussions.   Surveys of buyers identify a crisis in the sales conversation:  McKinsey found that the two most destructive sales behaviors were inadequate product knowledge and excessive customer contact. In IDC‘s 2010 IT Customer Experience study, over 50% of IT sales reps are showing up to their prospect and customer meetings ‘unprepared’.   Forrester Research reports that only 15% of executives believe that sales meetings live up to expectations.
3. New offerings lower buyer risk and the need for face-to-face meetings.     Buyers can take lengthy free trials and upgrade to a fully functional solution later (i.e. the freemium model).    Products can be purchased is small quantities (i.e. online data) or rent, rather than buy, a solution that is hosted off-premise (i.e. SaaS, hosted solutions).
4. The weak economic outlook is causing organizations to economize on sales models.    Creating less resource intensive selling models is a priortiy for many organizations.

The nature of the sales conversation changes depending on the type of sales: inside sales, outside/field sales and hybrid sales – a combination of both inside and outside sales.

One of the largest beneficiaries of changing nature of the sales conversation is the inside sales function.   

CSO Insights,  a B2B sales researcher, recently released their 2010 Telemarketing Inside Sales Optimization survey. 

According to Barry Trailer, Managing Partner for CSO Insights.

There’s a great deal happening in Inside Sales and it’s all very exciting.  The adoption of enabling technology, higher percentage of leads being generated by marketing, and anticipated growth in telesales teams this year all suggest this is going to be an increasingly important segment of companies’ overall revenue mix.

The research indicates that one in seven firms plans to increase telemarketing/inside sales reps by more than 20%.

Last year, in a brief entitled ‘The Rapid Rise of Inside Sales’, SiriusDecisions, a provider of B2B research and advisory services in sales and marketing, is bullish on the prospects for inside sales predicting a doubling of the revenue contribution of inside sales to overall corporate revenue.

For buying models that require face-to-face interaction, the opportunity is not to eliminate face-to-face but  judiciously mix telephone and online dialog with face-to-face meetings as the buying cycle dictates.

Stuart Armstong, in a comment on my earlier blog post, pointed out some research from Forbes Insight indicates that the majority of business owners and CXO level executives prefer face-to-face meetings (albeit that the research brief is slanted to appeal to the hotel industry and seems to fly in the face of the analyst research listed above).  One of the conclusions by Forbes Insight drawn from the research is that:

Web-, video- and teleconferencing have their role, but the executives in the survey do not expect them to make the need for face-to-face meetings obsolete. Rather, many see the ideal as a mix of face-to-face and technology enabled meetings and conferences.

Question:  How do you perceive sales models and the sales conversation changing?    
 

Related Posts
Selling to the Digital B2B Buyer
Destructive B2B Sales Practices
Insights on the Outbound Renaissance

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New research from McKinsey & Company identifies destructive sales practices and prioritizes what customers want from B2B sales organizations.

The research is focused on end users and is statistically significant: McKinsey interviewed 1,252 purchasing decision-makers of high tech products and services at small, medium and large business in  the US and Western Europe. 

Research on end users and on this scale is relatively rare in the B2B world.   

Here are some of the key research findings from McKinsey:

1. The buyer’s experience with sales and product or service features were the most important factors in a purchase decison – not price.        (All the more interesting given that the survey was conducted during the recession).
2. A high performance sales force can boost share of customer by an average of 8 to 15 percent.
3. The two most destructive sales behaviors were inadequate product knowledge and excessive customer contact.

In my mind, there are a number of considerations for a B2B sales organization:

1. Quantifying the Impact - For a sales organization to change, the impact from poor sales practices will need to be defined.    The impact of an 8 to 15 percent customer share increase (per McKinsey) is substantial, especially for high ticket, complex B2B solutions.     Prospect and customer surveys (e.g. Win/Loss) on their sales experience can be used to quantify the impact of the sales experience.
2. Better Sales Training - Training on solution knowledge and how best to engage customers are two key training areas for sales.    McKinsey calls for a centralization of content development and creation of compelling value propositions.    This seems to be a call for marketing and sales to align their efforts better on messaging.   Rather than grand training programs, it’s interesting that McKinsey calls for experiential training and on-the-job training.
3. Raising the Bar on Sales Personnel -  Customers are empowered by online information sources and social networks.      Knowledgeable sales reps who bring a consultative approach and value to customers are a much better fit to today’s customer.      This heightened requirement should help to raise the bar on the calibre of B2B salespeople.
4. Innovative Sales Methods & Tools - Innovative approaches to sales and lead generation enable sales to be smarter and faster.     Done right, sales can be more proactive and more meaningful in touching customers.    The risk is that customer concerns on the frequency of contact could increase should sales not add value or act smarter with that contact.

There are a number of events that could perpetuate rather than reduce destructive sales practices:

1. The Sales Funding Squeeze- According to IDC’s Tech Barometer, in 2010 investment in sales will again outstrip IT investment.    This gap between revenue and costs will pressure sales organizations to scrutinize training expenditures.   
2. Unrealistic Quotas- some of the comments on the McKinsey research pointed out that unrealistic quotas and short term horizons create destructive B2B Sales Practices.   According to CSO Insights, in 2010 sales quotas continue to rise even though attainment of quota was lower in 2008 versus the prior year and sales resources are less.
3. Tech Mergers & Acquisitions - In Q1 2010, $68.8 billion of tech deals were announced versus $19.2 billion for the period a year earlier (source: Reuters).      More sales forces will be merged and rationalized consuming resources and creating distraction .      A recovering economy will create more opportunities for salespeople.   In this environment, sales education will be adversely impacted.

Comments Are Welcome

Are we on the path to resolving destructive sales behaviors?     What action will it take to be successful?

Resources

Blog Post on the Sales Renaissance
Webinar on the Sales Renaissance featuring LivePerson, Ariba and TriNet

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