6 Factors Transforming B2B Sales in 2012
Donal Daly, CEO TAS Group
Big topic. Both B2C and B2B consumers have changed how they engage with vendors and buy products. “B2C behavior is a predictor of B2B behavior.”
Mobile has had a huge impact. There are only 315.5m people in the US, but there are 327.6m mobile devices. Between Dec 31st 2011 and Jan 31st 2012, the number of tablets doubled in the world, growth driven by the Apple iPad.
Flash is dead. Mobile (infrastructure) is the needle, and Social is the thread weaving the tapestry. Collaboration is key.
Customer Lifetime Value is superseded by Customer Network Value. In the social network, people give first and obtain what they need later. People get info in their own time in their own space. Companies must adapt to how clients want to buy.
TAS Group has a tool providing a sales effectiveness health check, Dealmaker Index. It ranks opportunities and provides advice to move the deal forward. One of the main ideas is to ask “If you’re going to lose the deal, what is the #1 reason?” Donal’s advice is be proactive and address the risk before it happens.
Intelligence only has value with Knowledge, Data, Context, and Reasoning.
Predictive Sales Analytics levers to pull: # Deals X Value X Win Rate = SALES VELOCITY
Intelligence
^
| Prescriptive Analytics
| Predictive Analytics
| Situational Analytics
| Data
——————Time—————->
Sales reps spend 2.5 hours EVERY week working on inaccurate sales forecasts. Pipelines are padded with false opportunities. Using principles of Sales Velocity, expose the false opportunities in order to develop accurate forecasts.
The impact on a customer of a bad buying decision is greater than the impact on a sales person of a lost sale. Create an org chart around the business problem broken into modules. Your solution will be attached to the affected component(s). Your interactions become more relevant to the customer. They make better decisions since problems are often complex and no single solution may meet the entire set of requirements. The entire solution needs to be modular and integrated to maximize effectiveness.
Donal closed talking about Gamification. It builds competent, motivated and confident sales teams. TAS Group suggested building a game around moving sales opportunities forward. Within the sales funnel, segment by sales stage, and assign red and green color coding to the stages. In greater context, spiffs, sales contests, etc have limited value. Gamification of the sales process allows development of Sales Thought Leaders and achievement recognition among peers. Sales teams gain confidence as skill mastery is attained, and that self assured presence is reflected in all customer facing interactions.
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