Remember when we used to talk about our Sales process?
Especially in Business to Business environments we talked about the sales funnel, the “getting a meeting”, writing a proposal, and follow up process.
There are whole CRM processes designed around that sales funnel - and we’d better keep that very visible.
Brad Jeavons, author of Agile Sales, emphasises the need to keep the whole process visible using principles taken from the continuous improvement and enterprise excellence world.
Brad Jeavons, Author of Agile Sales, leading a four field mapping process
The danger is we focus too much on OUR process. What have we forgotten? As much as we have a sales process, our prospective customers have their own journey.
They may not define it as clearly as a process, but it is one nonetheless. And of course our job is to make their buying process as easy as possible.
There are a number of critical success factors that make that happen - some blindingly obvious (in hindsight)
Really understand the buying journey from start to finish (not just the bit where you do your selling)
Recognise the buying journey is different by segment - but also different for a new customer and an established (repeat) customer
Explore how this buying journey is changing. In particular, in COVID world, the role of meetings, conferences. events and even basic relationships is changing out of all recognition.
Recognise with points 1,2 and 3 that Marketing - the customer engagement before the direct 1 to 1 correspondence occurs is not just an important step, it is the most critical one.
On October 1st we are having a Joined-Up conversation with Grant Leboff, UK author of “Sticky Marketing” and the critical role the changing Buying journey will have on the balance between sales and B2B marketing. We discussed some of this in the video below.
