Great insights from Hugh Alford and TACK International, UK and International business training specialists, who published their 2010 Buyer’s Views of Salespeople (Free Exec Summary here) this month. The study captures the views of UK and International Buyers about their purchasing behaviour and what they think of salespeople.
Much of the study addresses ‘the art of selling’ and the things that sales people should or should not do to annoy corporate buyers. All perfectly noble and certainly worth a look for that reason alone. Useful suggestions on when to call, where to meet and the tools to use are all contained within the study.
For those of us working to improve sales and marketing alignment there a 3 important trends the study picks up on that B2B Marketers need to note. Here they are;
Trend #1: Corporate Buyers preferred channel through which to source supplier product information is the website.
Top 5 Channels for Corporate Buyers are:
- Supplier Website
- Personal visit from salesperson
- Search engine (Google)
- Telephone call from salesperson
- Literature in post
Meaning: Corporate buyers want a website that answers their questions. Sales visits that follow must complement and be consistent with the website. “Robust processes need to exist between marketing and sales to enable swift sales follow-up” says the report. So Corporate Buyers expect sales and marketing alignment. Investing in appropriate web-site content will be a better investment than one more cold-calling campaign or another sales head running up a huge phone and travel bill in the pursuit of business. Work on fixing existing processes. If sales don’t like you and your marketing efforts that’s your problem not theirs. The situation won’t change unless you initiate it.
Trend2# Corporate Buyers are giving less face to face time to salespeople. They don’t need to see your salespeople for as long – they’ve already made up their mind about the products and services from their web research a while ago.
Meaning: Marketing and web-site needs to do more selling. The website, social media and other communication channels need to condition buyers with the consistent messages repeated by sales. This is sales and marketing alignment again. By the way many B2B sales people are trained in sophisticated selling techniques (e.g. Miller Heiman or SPIN selling). Put down the Seth Godin’s latest offering and read one of them. Talk the language of sales; problems, implications, needs, progression. That’s sales and marketing alignment.
Trend #3 Buyers are ever more demanding and ‘critical’ of their suppliers
64% of b2b buyers are rating salespeople’s ability to match their solution to their customers needs as fair or poor. At the same time they rate the overall selling skills as good or excellent (74%).
Meaning: Salespeople are struggling to find the right customers or putting themselves in front of the customers who are not ‘sales-ready’. However, once in front of the customer they are doing a professional job. B2B Marketing needs to support sales people by matching the solutions to the need. Solve the right problems, pick the right markets, target the right customers and pass over sales ready leads to the sales-team. It’s all about focus. Another reason to ring the bell for sales and marketing alignment.
Conclusion
The way B2B buyers buy today is changing. B2B Marketing needs to be responsible for more and more of the selling process. Sales has less time and opportunity to use traditional selling methods. The role of sales is changing too. A buyer is able to acquire information about your products, your competitors products, customer reviews and prices before they meet sales. Sales has to go into meetings with a new mindset. The sales and marketing disciplines need to work more closely together to figure all this out. The case for sales and marketing alignment is made by ‘Buyer’s Views of Salespeople’.
PS: I will be interviewing Hugh Alford, TACK International, author of the Buyer’s Views of Salespeople 2010, in a forthcoming podcast. Details will be published shortly.
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