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The Past and Future of B2B Selling

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The End of B2B Selling As We Know It

B2B selling has changed—forever.

In times past, Business to Business (B2B) Sellers relied almost entirely on their sales teams to generate revenue. Marketing was primarily for branding, as few Sellers understood how Marketing could be used in other ways to grow their businesses. Today, B2B selling has changed drastically.

The bigger the sales organization, the faster the company grew—or so everyone thought. Cost of sales were expected to fall within the range of 20% to 40%; no one really seemed to know how much it should be.

Sales reps were taught how to present their products, how to “get in the door,”, get past the gatekeepers, handle objections, and always be trying to close. That was all they were taught or expected to know.

There were always one or two great sales reps that made the effort to study their customers’ businesses, competitors, and changing demographics and regulations, making it their business to be experts on their market space. Their customers valued them and regularly gave them business because they trusted their judgement. And although these sales reps brought in the lion’s share of sales each year, they didn’t seem to know much about the features of the products they sold. Still, B2B sales continued to revolve around aggressively getting in the door, taking charge of the sale situation, and focusing on features.

Buyers hated this process and thought it was a colossal waste of their time, but their options for getting information they needed were limited. They would entertain a parade of sales reps in hopes of finding the one who truly understood their needs and could help them. At the same time, Buyers learned to screen and keep out the time suckers.

Then the Internet—and Google—happened. That changed everything. Buyers no longer had to see sales reps to find information—they just googled it. And while Sellers struggled to adjust, The Great Recession occurred and changed the future of B2B Selling.

Companies enacted stringent procedures to control purchasing, which put the Head of Purchasing in a strategic role.

There was no longer a single “decision maker.” One person would sign the contract in the end, but only after significant input and buy-in from many stakeholders—as many as 17, according to research by IDG. In addition, 77% of Buyers now conduct more detailed ROI analysis prior to a decision.

Today’s Buyers fully control their own buying journey:

  1. Senior management identifies some key initiatives and assigns one or more execs to head that. That exec then assembles a team, breaks down the initiative, and assigns portions to individuals or team members who are to conduct research and report back.
  2. In almost all cases, those tasked with researching and reporting back are younger—typically under 40—and immediately go online to conduct their research.
  3. These young people don’t care about the older, established brands—they just google and begin reading and organizing their findings.
  4. Then they report back. Their boss works with them to assemble a short list of potential solutions and asks one or more to reach out to the vendors and arrange a meeting.
  5. Part of the seller requirements is analysis on ROI and payback period. Sellers that provide that information have a strong chance of being invited, while those that don’t likely won’t make the cut.

What this means for you is that if you don’t have sufficient, mobile friendly digital content  that helps these digital natives answer their research questions—including ROI—you practically don’t exist for them. Your brand will no longer guarantee success.

And if you are not found by these digital natives, then you are not on the short list that your target “decision maker” sees.

It doesn’t just end there. If the “decision maker” reaches out and asks, “Hey, do you know these guys?”, the answer has to be, “Yeah, I read something interesting about them…” to get further up the list.

That is how Buyers now want to buy. The question is, what is your strategy for aligning how you sell to how your customers want to buy?

The Future of B2B Sales: Content Driven Account Based Marketing

As we have seen above, Buyers today manage their own buying journey and want to engage Sellers by invitation only. To get invited, Sellers must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the Buyer’s situation. The best way for Sellers to demonstrate this is through comprehensive digital content that the Buyer can easily find and review.

The right B2B selling process today is one that fully aligns with how Buyers want to buy by facilitating their journey, rather than attempting to control the process.

The Account Based Marketing strategy considers this a top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel content strategy that naturally invites the Buyer deeper and deeper into your content world.

Different types of content address different needs and appeal to different types of stakeholders. Remember that today’s Buying team can consist of as many as a dozen or more stakeholders, each with a unique set of concerns, needs, and issues that must be addressed.

White papers provide a holistic understanding of the changes occurring in the industry, what they mean, and how to mitigate the risks of these changes while taking advantage of the opportunities. Videos provide a different but related narrative.

Even with white papers, you want to distinguish between a C-level and a Stakeholder paper. The C-suite white paper must be a business paper that shows how your product can cut costs by automating an otherwise labor intensive business process, or how it can increase revenues by helping operations managers identify assets that are not fully utilized.

Your technical white paper informs technical stakeholders such as CIO, CTOs, or Directors of DevOps on how your product integrates with existing systems, is highly secure, and provides software to facilitate installation and integration—things that these folks care most about.

The key is to cover your intended audiences’ concerns and needs in a variety of formats so that they all come to the conclusion you want—contacting one of your sales reps for a meeting.

CampaignAssets usedGoal
Top of FunnelWebsite; LinkedIn; White papers; videos; blogs;Provide useful information to the reader to intrigue, interest, and begin the engagement as a trusted source of useful information
Middle of FunnelTargeted articles; webinars; product videos; ROI analysisProvide deeper information to win the position of a trusted thought leader
Bottom of FunnelCase studies; pilot studiesIncrease the prospects trust and commitment level by providing additional evidence of effectiveness of solution.

Click here to read about the four critical steps of content driven ABM.

Account Based Marketing Best Practices
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