GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Fourquadrant.com/Marketing-Resource-Blog

GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Close more deals, faster and at higher price points

GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Close more deals, faster and at higher price points

Go-to-Market Sales Challenges for B2B Organizations:

§  The inability to communicate the unique selling proposition in a relevant, compelling, confident and actionable way.

§  Competitive differentiation is not clear to the B2B sales rep, there is no way for a prospect to be convinced

§  A lack of qualified leads

GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Challenge #1 – Compelling, Relevant, Actionable & Consistent

Communication

Best-in-class organizations have a compelling message ingrained throughout the company, especially in sales and marketing. All employees should be able to communicate the unique selling proposition and it should be at the heart of every customer-facing conversation. While every employee needs to be able to convey that message, the sales team must be extremely confident in their delivery of a compelling and consistent message to customers and prospects.

A huge mistake is to rely on PowerPoint presentations where the sales rep reads each slide. B2B Sales reps need to understand relevant business concepts so they can describe what is on the slide with a meaningful and relevant narrative on a white board for maximum impact. Sales reps need to feel ownership for knowing the market, business, technology, competitors and solutions. Research shows that persuasion is a function of confidence, and that other people unconsciously can sense a lack of confidence.

GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Challenge #2 – Enablement

§  B2B organizations typically make significant investments in product training for the sales staff.

§  The usual format is that the entire team, consisting of people with various backgrounds, skill levels and tenure, gathers in a huge conference room.

§  Over a few hours or days, the subject matter experts provide as much information as they know in a time slot that was reduced to “fit” the schedule.

§  Once this “data dump” has been completed, the next mandate is for each sales rep regurgitate what was presented the next morning in a 15 minute presentation to their peers.

§  Emailing the presentations after the meeting or posting it to the sales portal is more of a conscious clearing effort than it is an effective sales enablement process.

§  There may be good content but if the process is not focused on transferring knowledge – i.e. changing the behavior of a sales person to be most effective—then there is a great chance that the desired outcome will not be achieved.

§  In the end, sales enablement falls short as it is merely focused on content creation and a forum to disperse information.

GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Challenge #3 – Assessment & Measurement

Assessment & Measurement

The Challenge

§  It’s difficult to gauge the intangibles of why a salesperson isn’t successful.

§  Sales managers can’t go on every single sales call, nor can they review all the information on contained in the sales force automation system to answer this question.

The Diversity

§  Sales reps have different backgrounds, come from different industries, company cultures and are versed in different sales strategies.

§  As a result, each rep has their own experience and expectation of what they should be doing, when they should be doing it and how they should be doing it.

§  The number of companies with a sales process that indoctrinates the sales team during the first three months (or more) of employment have gone by the wayside.

GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Fourquadrant.com/Marketing-Resource-Blog

GTMS - Sales & Marketing Resources Close more deals, faster and at higher price points