Blog #2 of 5 in our Peter Ostrow guest blog series
Traditionally, the B2B customer acquisition process is perceived as a two-dimensional, linear workflow: the mad scientists in product development cook up a brand-new iteration of the solution in their dark laboratory; product marketing launches a revolutionary messaging campaign in the newest, coolest medium; field marketing runs ads, events, and promotions to develop a pile of net-new leads; and then the sales team…closes the deals the same-old, same-old way they always have. Just like that - as if the proper order of things dictates that all content-based creativity and flexibility ceases to exist, once the white-hot leads are passed to sales, whose reps merely have to collect another signature in order to generate the revenue stream. If, however, enterprise sales reps are only expected to perform repetitious, uncreative, end-of-cycle tasks, why do we pay them so much?
The inherent problem with this model is obvious to all of us who have carried a bag, and a quota, but less so to the persona of the "celebrity CMO" who too often rides their white horse into town to fix things, but doesn't spend enough time interacting with real prospects or customers to truly understand whether their content is resonating where it counts. In reality, B2B sales leads are becoming an anachronism.
We’re all becoming familiar with the well-documented, current theme around the “hidden sales cycle” or “buyer’s journey,” in which the need to customize a sales conversation is enhanced by the fact that buyers are able to conduct so much homework before engaging with a live rep. Indeed, the leading corporate strategy adopted by 52% of end-users in Aberdeen's Sales Enablement research is to "Improve positioning / differentiation in messaging and sales presentations to tell a better, unique story." Sales is rapidly becoming a buyer’s market.
We need to acknowledge that yesterday, sellers held the power over their buyers, whose knowledge of products and prices was limited to which commissioned individuals most effectively got through their front door. Today, buyers leverage user-generated content and the infinite resources of the web to make all or most of their decisions prior to receiving the sales pitch. Actually, one could argue that the sales pitch itself is dead and buried; even in the ultimate sales environment, the purchase of a new car, most of us now walk into the dealership expecting nothing more from the rep then the processing of paperwork. We know all the options, prices, and angles before we meet them.
This allows me to usher in the concept of contemporary sales professionals as micro-marketers. If our face time with buyers is going to be constricted, and pushed farther down their path of discovery, it is absolutely essential that these conversations not consist of us blabbing about product features, advantages, and benefits. Rather, it's all about the needs, hopes, and aspirations of our buyer. Contemporary sales reps thus need to be supported with sales enablement platforms and practices that allow them to hold more intimate, one-to-one interactions in which they are proactively empowered to select, adapt, and deploy pre-positioned content, assets, and messaging as they see fit on the real-time battlefield of professional selling. In our research, these assertions are proven true:
Figure 1: Top Performers Deploy Stronger Knowledge Management Capabilities
Source: Aberdeen Group, November 2014
Best-in-Class companies (the top 20% of all survey respondents) are 59% more likely than under-performers to understand that when it comes to content, one size does not fit all. Situation-specific asset libraries enable the front-line sellers to be more than just signature monkeys, and empower them to think on their feet as micro-marketers. Top performers also report a 56% rate of creating fully cloud-based access to marketing content, while Laggards clock in at only 32%. We'll discuss sales mobility further in the final blog of this series; suffice it to say that if you’re not empowering an "anywhere, any time, any OS, any device" field sales environment, you need to make some immediate and substantial changes in how you support your salespeople.
Furthermore, under-performers are one-half as likely as the Best-in-Class to provide marketers with a clear line of sight into content utilization and consumption. I admit freely that the “mad scientist” and “celebrity CMO” references above barely disguise my personal disdain for big-picture marketing professionals. You know the type, who still believe in the toss-the-leads-to-sales mindset, and that if we build a product or message that is pretty enough, buyers will come. Fortunately, most contemporary marketers now understand that their job security hinges on results, not activities: Best-in-Class companies improve their year-over-year “percent of sales forecast contributed by marketing" by 8.0%, compared with 1.6% among Industry Average companies and an awful decline of 5.3% among Laggard firms.
Understanding which of your campaigns, messages, and assets are being used, and actually working, is a must-have for any modern-day marketer. This is especially relevant, considering the title of the next blog: What Do You Mean, “Margin Matters”?
Peter Ostrow
VP & Research Group Director
Customer Management, Sales Effectiveness
Peter Ostrow Vice President, Group Director | Sales Effectiveness & Strategy
Peter Ostrow is the VP/Group Director, Customer Management and Principal Analyst, Sales Effectiveness at the Aberdeen Group, a leading provider of fact-based research focused on the global technology-driven value chain.
Peter has been focused on sales and marketing best practices for 25 years, beginning with a long-time stint at advertising firm JWG Associates. As JWG’s third employee, he participated in every aspect of the company’s sales growth, from $1M to $135M, until its acquisition by Monster Worldwide’s TMP AdComms division. At TMP, Ostrow deployed additional CRM, pipeline management, lead generation and competitive intelligence practices as VP, Global Sales Administration. He then spent five years as VP, Business Development with MarketOne International, a global provider of lead lifecycle management services to technology sales and marketing executives.
At Aberdeen, Peter oversees research consumed by end-users in Marketing, Sales and Service management roles. He also leads the Sales Effectiveness practice, covering the technology, service and consulting enablers that enterprise sales forces deploy to become best-in-class organizations. His research is widely publicized and covers topics such as sales training, sales intelligence, CRM/SFA, sales performance management and integrating technologies around customer acquisition and retention.
Peter holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Brown University.
