2 Ways to Beef Up Your B2B Sales Process
McKinsey just released a study that examines the results from a new survey of 1,200 purchasing decision makers in SMBs and large companies in the United States and Europe. Among other things, the report reveals what salespeople are doing to sabotage the process of B2B sales.
The study found that customers will normally cite price as being the single most influential factor in their decision. But upon closer examination of how customers rated a vendor's overall performance, product features and the sales experience were valued as being the most important. Sales manages a critical role, but a timely and intelligent hand off from marketing is paramount.
Of the many habits that undermine the sales experience, two that are relatively easy to fix accounted for 55 percent of the behavior customers described as “most destructive”: failing to have adequate product knowledge and contacting customers too frequently (exhibit). Only 3 percent said they weren’t contacted enough, suggesting customers are open to fewer, more meaningful interactions. —McKinsey report, The Basics of business-to-business sales success
Marketing Automation Makes Sales More Successful
Given the facts that:
- salespeople have the nasty habit of pestering customers too frequently, and
- buyers crave more information about product and service features
it makes perfect sense that vendors spend time coming up with a way to harness the reach and frequency of marketing automation.
Marketing automation software, like Eloqua, Marketo, Genius, Silverpop, allows vendors to creatively design lead management flows that meet customers where they're at. A well designed marketing automation flow is respectful of a buyers' time, delivers appropriate, well-written, and consistently presented information, all leading to a more appropriate hand off to sales. Too often, sales is given a "lead" before the buyer is ready to begin interacting with sales. By using marketing automation, buyers are methodically delivered information until they reach a pre-determined threshold where the hand off to sales occurs.
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