Enabling B2B Sales & Marketing

Even then, our research indicates we're leaving 70% of sales opportunities with existing customers on the table!

For all the talk about so called SMarketing – sales and marketing alignment – there’s a dearth of easily implementable programs where the two teams can successfully work together, generating warm leads in the short term.

“Content marketing”, HubSpot, the “inbound methodology” and all the other latest approaches are great – but they usually come with a disclaimer: “WARNING – it will take 6-12 months before you see the results of your inbound efforts!”

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s an example of a real world content effort that sales teams followed up – literally leading to instant success.

2017 has been a big year in sales and marketing. We've seen massive interest in our live events around Disruptive Selling™, buyer engagement, and aligning the sales and marketing processes. 

We thought you might like to check out our list of the 5 most popular posts from the last year, in order of popularity:

Would you be shocked to know that, if you're anything like most organisations, then around 10% of registered users that can access your business computer network no longer work for your company!!!

Would hearing that insight make your prospects sit up and take notice!?

If you're asking yourself which sales methodology or process you should be using in your business - chances are you're asking the wrong question!

2017 is well underway. Depressingly, it's not difficult to see what HASN'T changed when it comes to B2B sales practices.

But if we can all agree on what's wrong, at least that gives us an agenda of what to fix! The usual suspects are all here in this list of 7 deadly sins: engaging the customer too late; selling the steak and not the sizzle, and thinking that "relationship building" is the holy grail of sales, just to name a few. 

Here's a full list of what we're seeing that's wrong in B2B sales - what we're calling the "7 Deadly Sins of B2B Sales" - and how to fix them...

In our last article, we celebrated those wonderful sales prospects who are brave enough to tell us the truth and reject a sales proposal if it’s not for them.

They don’t lead us on to avoid confrontation, or waste our time by requesting a quote that they’re never going to read, let alone accept. Their honesty means we can both move on - but unfortunately, all too often in sales this is not how it goes.

I just had a prospect politely refuse to have a follow-up meeting with me.

Am I sad? Hell no! I'm rejoicing - if only some other folk I call on were this upfront and honest!

This may sound a little strange coming from a business owner whose role includes "sales" - surely rejection is never a good thing? We’ll actually, sometimes it can be. Let me explain...

As buyers continue to change how they buy, sales people need to keep evolving.

But how - and why?

In short - the salesperson of the future will be the one that adapts his/her selling processes to match the new way in which buyers buy.

There are lots of disrupting influences in the B2B marketplace at the moment - the move to the cloud, social media, globalisation, etc. These issues are disrupting commerce - but the accompanying change in how buyers buy in particular is disrupting and making irrelevant the "old ways of selling"..

You might have heard the analogy about sales (including social selling) being like a cocktail party.

The person at the party people want to talk to is NOT the guy talking about how great he is. Rather, it's the person who's doing active listening - responding to and engaging with what others have to say. 

Sales is the same. Successful salespeople are not those who yammer away at the prospect with a megaphone, talking incessantly about their products and services. Instead, it's the person who listens to the prospect's pain points and challenges, showing understanding by articulating the problem and painting a picture of a solution before ever mentioning their own product.