{"id":7905,"date":"2012-09-10T14:09:28","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T14:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=7905"},"modified":"2014-10-06T01:21:12","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T01:21:12","slug":"like-it-or-not-b2b-sales-is-changing-are-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=7905","title":{"rendered":"Like It Or Not &#8211; B2G Sales Is Changing.  Are You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anneke Seley, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sales-2-0-Innovative-Practices-Technology\/dp\/047037375X\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1345046896&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=sales+2.0\"><em>Sales 2.0<\/em><\/a> recently posted an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sales20book.com\/wp\/2012\/06\/mckinsey-on-sales-growth-five-proven-strategies-author-interview\/\">interview on her blog<\/a> which she conducted with Jon Vander Ark, a co-leader of<strong>McKinsey\u2019s<\/strong> Sales practice.\u00a0 (Vander Ark is one of three McKinsey co-authors of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_12?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=sales+growth+five+proven+strategies+from+the+worlds+sales+leaders&amp;sprefix=Sales+Growth%2Cstripbooks%2C451\"><em>Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World\u2019s Sales Leaders<\/em><\/a><em>.)<\/em>\u00a0 Part of Anneke\u2019s interview addresses an important change occurring within the practice of professional sales; this change is commonly referred to as the \u201cScience of Sales.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the interview, in response to Anneke\u2019s question on the <strong>\u2018science vs. art of selling\u2019<\/strong> debate, Jon makes this observation.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201c\u2026 the best organizations are investing heavily into the science of selling, adding deep analytical capabilities in sales ops and building more quantitative skills into their sales force.<\/em><em>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Jon adds this clarification in response to a visitor\u2019s supplemental question, <em>\u201cSuccessful selling absolutely involves a mix of science and art. I couldn\u2019t agree more. The relationship part of selling is extremely important. It is also not enough. The current state is that many sales forces are strong on the art and relatively weak on the science. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In the B2B world, Sales has lost ground with Purchasing over the last 20 years. Purchasing has invested in TCO, LPP, Clean Sheet, and a host of other scientific tools. Unfortunately, Sales hasn\u2019t kept pace.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Now is the time for Sales to complement the art of selling with more a scientific approach, allowing it to win new customers while staying out of the commodity trap.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>For CEOs and Sales Leaders reading this post, there is a clear takeaway for you, which is to prioritize the transformation of your company\u2019s sales model.\u00a0 This means focusing (at a minimum) on these core areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Demand Generation<\/li>\n<li>Prospect Targeting<\/li>\n<li>Messaging \/ Value Proposition<\/li>\n<li>Selling Process<\/li>\n<li>Opportunity Management<\/li>\n<li>Performance Metrics and Measurement<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>CEOs \u2013 Recognizing a Failing Sales Model<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Listed below are five examples of an old-school, \u201cthis is the way we\u2019ve always done it\u201d approaches to selling.\u00a0 If you find these kinds of behaviors in your company then it\u2019s time to get proactive, start asking smart questions of your sales leadership and begin prioritizing the things you need to change.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>If you continue allowing Sales to wing it, i.e. escaping personal or team accountability, you will fall further and further behind your numbers.<\/li>\n<li>If your approach to addressing poor sales results is swapping out one short-term, recycled sales leader for the next one, you will keep loosing ground.<\/li>\n<li>If your sales reps continue to function as franchisees \u2013 self selecting targets, refusing to prospect and ignoring the CRM and basic reporting requirements \u2013 you will not reach your revenue goals.<\/li>\n<li>If Sales maintains distance from the rest of the organization \u2013 particularly marketing, finance and delivery \u2013 you don\u2019t have a team and these individual units will never reach full potential.<\/li>\n<li>Unless your sales leader is demanding investments in sales analytics, sales operations, marketing automation, process and selling methodology, and training, your team is all about <em>old school selling<\/em> and they are falling further and further behind.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Now, what to do about it?<\/strong>\u00a0 Recognizing you have a problem is step number one to recovery, as they say!\u00a0\u00a0 If you see signs that your sales model is weakening and increasingly dysfunctional \u2013 <em>and you are ready to do something about it <\/em>\u2013 here\u2019s two suggestions.<\/p>\n<p>First, spend time on <a href=\"http:\/\/3forward.com\/old-school-new-tools\/\">3FORWARD\u2019s Insights<\/a> page.\u00a0 We post daily links to information by the best B2B sales thinkers, strategists and experts around the industry. \u00a0Invest in your education on the trends, best practices and strategies and you will start getting a sense of where your gaps are the greatest.<\/p>\n<p>Next, <a href=\"http:\/\/3forward.com\/sales-optimization-review-contact\/\">talk with us about your situation<\/a>, your goals and your challenges.\u00a0 We are always glad to be a sounding board for CEOs and Sales Leaders trying to improve their results.\u00a0\u00a0 With no office politics to deal with, we will give you an unbiased and objective assessment on where you stand compared to the best in class and suggest steps you can take to begin improving your results.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The only cost is the time you invest in the discussion.<\/p>\n<p>As Jon Vander Ark says, \u201c<em>Now is the time for Sales to complement the art of selling with more a scientific approach, allowing it to win new customers while staying out of the commodity trap.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anneke Seley, author of Sales 2.0 recently posted an interview on her blog which she conducted with Jon Vander Ark, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8161,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905\/revisions\/8161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}