My early sales experience in media advertising sales taught me a valuable lesson: to be vested in the success of my client. When I engage a potential and/or existing client, I build into each communication the opportunity for followup and because I make it my business to care about the success of their business, this is as natural as conversation with a friend. This approach requires that I go in prepared and with industry knowledge specific to their area of expertise or any related concerns they have expressed in addition to having superior knowledge of the services I am selling, and most important, the value these services will add to their business. This methodology keeps the door wide open and business sales thriving! That old saying “people don’t care what you know ‘till they know (you demonstrate) how much you care” is true!

I do not agree about “over contact.” This is a false excuse. Those who get mad at being contacted probably never buy. Those that might buy welcome contact. Lots of examples and heard most myself. The best approach is to over-contact to be in their face when they might finally make a decision.

In previous jobs I have seen sales reps go out and actively sell products to customers that have no business owning those products. This is a waste of sales talent and product management time when the sales managers, VPs, etcetera, push unrealistic quotas and goals onto their teams. EVERY customer doesn’t need to buy EVERY product that a company offers, and knowing the true value of the product is only half the battle. The new pool of salespeople needs to be true consultative resources for their customers and effectively identify when to sell each product, as opposed to just why.

What we find, in many complex sales situations, are clients that have a somewhat good grasp of the problem they are facing but have little idea how the problem can be resolved. The stage of “uncovery” takes time, and many exchanges, for both parties to fully identify grasp the root problem and the effects on an organization. If both parties begin this exchange understanding that open and honest dialog will lead both parties to the answers, success will result. In way too many cases, the true value a vendor brings to the table is a deep understanding of the steps needed to resolve the issue, implement the process, and so on. Too many vendors fail to communicate this to their prospects and rely on the goods alone to convince the buyer.

Enterprise sales is definitely becoming a PULL from the customer. Salespeople need to be almost McKinsey-like in their value add as advisors to differentiate. That said, this value add and dynamic breaks down when a great advisor/salesperson is passed on to procurement. Most procurement functions are a Pleistocene artifact of a world where companies are used to thinking of purchases as commodities—and then the whole process and history gets erased as the conversation and value-exchange becomes about price. I have yet to see a procurement professional who had any idea what their real customer, the business unit, needed.

35% “too much contact”; indicates that these particular company buyers were still very much in the sales 1.0 “old school” world. In my humble opinion, sales managers are to blame here, not the reps. Most reps have a good sense of ‘when to follow up” or when to “just check in”—one time too many. [groan]

“Familiarity breeds contempt”.

Command and control sales managers or VPs—who are one to two steps removed from the client and who are frequently former sales reps themselves—can’t control their urges. Thus sales reps, especially juniors, can be pressured to “call back” or “get another meeting.”

Sales managers who are pressuring the reps to call and to close existing prospects in the funnel have a funnel problem—i.e. not enough new leads at the top.

Proof: 50% of all reps last five years and have never made quota (per CSO Insights and Sirius Decisions studies, www.csoinsights.com)

Not knowing your product, in my opinion, really means “not being able to identify how the product or service can add real business value to that buyer and to the business unit of the company.

Interesting article, with a clear and compelling message: understand your customer’s business, enhance your sale team’s knowledge of your product offering and develop a contact plan to manage customer interaction. The good news is that while sales representatives compete in a fast changing, dynamic environment, the basics elements of an effective sales effort never go out of style.

Some very interesting viewpoints and all certainly relevant. I do believe selling contains very simple and fundamental tasks not only at the POS but also and more importantly the “residual” factor.

First and foremost, this includes knowing your customer. A simple Google search does not apply if you expect to develop and maintain a mutually beneficial relationship. Specifically, research would include data gathering regarding the prospects B2B operation and sales cycle. Analysis is necessary to determine soft spots where your product compliments their core operation. Next, it is vital to present solutions that will be interpreted in terms of predictive modeling that affords the client the ability to develop and sustain forecasting.

Sales should be approached as a partnership rather than a bee who can sting only once, then dies. If you build a socially-dependent relationship, where these elements exist, lack of knowledge may be more tolerable and multiple contacts would be entertained and even welcomed.

The bottom line is that customers want more of the right information and experiences “when” they want it—they have moved into the world of “PULL” selling and marketing. We currently live in the world of “PUSH” selling and marketing. They are telling us to stop.

Social media are becoming more and more of the answer to augment both the sales and marketing programs in organizations because it is a “PULL” approach, giving customers the vehicles to stay connected with you at a level they need without having more stuff shoved at them just because it is part of the “sales cycle” we use.

The customers today all have a microphone in their hand and as such are finding many tools available to use it. Companies that can’t leverage this to their advantage will lose market share and eventually be gone.

While I agree that the best sales people are educated in the product they provide and possess a broad understanding of their competition, the most important key to success lies in their ability to ask relevant, open-ended questions about the prospect’s business and then have the patience to listen and understand the answer without any preconceived notions about how their solution fits. Only then will they have fully put themselves in the customers shoes and experienced their ‘pain’.

All of this, if done correctly, can lead to a satisfying sales experience on both sides. This is just a small part of a successful sales process. I still see price as a major issue. I have seen plenty of examples lately where the aforementioned process is done perfectly and then the entire purchase is put up for auction or pushed to procurement, where the only issue is price. Having the best solution becomes invaluable. To ignore or minimize this fact, is a big mistake.

I have worked over 5 years in Western Europe as Sales Manager in home textiles and before this job, I worked in production for over 5 years. I experienced a huge advantage of knowing production processes and the product very well. Being able to answer most of a customer’s questions is a big advantage that saves time for you, but mainly for your customer. Otherwise, you will call or send e-mail for the answers of questions you noted during the interview. For the customer, this means spending more time on the same seller.

As a sales manager, I heard many times from my customers about how my production experience has led to their satisfaction. Because we were able to solve many of the problems, including product developments, on the table at once. And my chance was to be a man from production while my competitors’ sales managers were just sales people “experienced” in sales.

A prerequisite to be in sales in general is to be able to fully understand the product and manage relationships with the customer and the overall experience in order to sell it. If the sales person is to sell high-tech products and/or services, there are two additional things that are very important:

1. Analytical ability to understand and address integration questions and concerns customers may have.

2. Ability to address technical support questions and concerns (long-term business is entirely dependent on this).

The sales person does not have to be a genius to actually solve them. But at minimum they have to have strong communication ability to interpret the issues and source an answer back from the HQ that accurately solves it in a timely manner.

My experience these days is that even with simple products and services there are multiple buyers. In the staffing world we first need to be “on the list” which means selling to purchasing (was this the surveyed group?) Then we get to sell to the people that actually “value” our services (the hiring managers).

It would be interesting to see what types of buyers responded to the survey. Were they primarily purchasing professionals, technical buyers, or others?

Two thoughts: First, I am skeptical about the conclusion that while buyers claim price as a key driver of decision making, it’s then not the primary driver of satisfaction with a vendor. I think there is an inherent bias in the research—post purchase buyers are simply more likely to prioritize product/service performance rather than price.

Second, irrespective of the fact that sales forces continue to struggle to quantify and articulate the value that their product/service delivers, and so too often resort back to price as a an easy-to-understand but expensive diferentiator. The ability to sell value rather than price will always distinguish the great sales person from the the average.

Overall, these behaviors reflect misalignment along two distinct dimensions: misalignment among the functions within the subject organizations and misalignment between the subject organizations and their customers.

Our global B2B experience suggests both strategic- and tactical-level causes for these symptoms of misalignment. At the strategic level, there must be understanding and acceptance throughout the organization that as a B2B supplier, your principal mission is to be the preferred long-term solutions provider for your customers. At the tactical level, these behaviors result from a lack of customer intimacy, which is integral to commercial excellence.

What I understand is that the sales cycle goes in 2 major phases.
Phase 1 is when the customer does not look for good things but for the bad things. This phase is what I call the ‘Rejection Phase’. The article talks more in perspective to this phase, when the bad product knowledge and poor sales representation can cause failure of the deal going through. Since this is a rejection phase, the focus should be on these “non-product requirements” which play a crucial role.
I call Phase 2 the ‘Acceptance Phase’. This is when the customer chooses the features and functionality to suit their needs. The focus in this phase hence shifts from just the sales representative to many more product-related requirements.

Lack of product knowledge is simply unacceptable, and is nothing to do with the customer, large or small, profitable or not. What contributes to it is lack of proper capability building and training of the sales force. What it needs a sales leadership who will actively pursue a continuous training agenda with his/her team on the basics.

On the “too frequent contacts” point, I find it almost a normal rule of the game to be in constant and frequent “enough” contact of a sales rep with his/her buyer. However conflicting it sounds, today’s supplier/retailer relationship requires “joint value creation” to generate sustainable good profits. And joint value creation best works if the two parties work together, genuinely. One of the most common reasons why contact management creates disappointment in any party, I found in my customer management career, is the unconscious intransparency between the buyer and the seller of their understanding, expectation, and intention of the contact management between themselves. It is therefore very advisable by experience to align right at the beginning of the relationship the supplier’s need and expectation of the frequency of contact with the customer’s capability and need.

Early on in one of my first sales jobs I asked one of my best customers if I could shadow him for a few hours during a time of day he typically would use my product. I explained that I wanted to better understand how he was using the product and where it could be improved so that I could provide better support to him. He graciously invited me to spend half a day with him and took the time to explain how my product helped him do his job and where the weaknesses were. The exeprience was invaluable and after 10 years we still keep in contact.

As a buyer of products and services I feel that the sales person should be sensitive to when the decision to buy is taken. Once I have decided to buy, then the sales person should focus on completing the sale and proper handover. Quite often I find that since the sales person is not alert to when this point is reached, he wastes time in selling the product. I agree what is said in the article that the number of contacts should be few but meaningful.

Business-to-business sales is one of the most dynamic and innovative forms of sales which allows both types of people to participate in the sales process—people who do sales just like any other function, and the others who love meeting people and take the sales process to such a high that customers feel eager to meet these reps every time.

Unfortunately, the people of first kind dominate, expecially in commodity industries, and today most of the products are getting commoditised rapidly. That’s where the second set of sales people are really needed. Basic factors of second types are: eagerness to learn from every transaction, improvising and customising every sales pitch, effective competitive knowledge in terms of products and capabilities, segmenting customers in terms of needs (price, lead times, features etc.), servicing the clients in terms of each needs and helping customers in other areas also. The last step adds to the knowledge of every sales rep and also allows him to command respect from each of his customers. This also aids in gaining trust from customers which is vital for B2B consumables business. In the B2B capital equipment business one has leeway, but consummable businesses need a level of trust between purchaser and seller to make the relationship lasting.

As the author of the recent best selling sales book, Selling to the C-Suite, what executives told us was most important to them is that “salespeople listen before proposing a solution.” What I have found in selling to executives is that executives buy not when they understand, but when they feel they are understood.

The findings are not representative of the entire buying community. There are plenty of customers who consider only price, assuming they will get a bare minimum from all vendors.

The above findings apply only to a particular segment of the market.

The key is not just customer satisfaction. It is engaging customers emotionally. And this requires meeting your sales person’s most basic needs to the most advanced ones so that he/she is psychologically committed to work. This will enable him/her to form lasting customer relationships.

It’s valuable to review the results from a survey of this size especially in helping to quantify the benefits of a sales force that better addresses customer needs (i.e. 8 to 15% increase in customer share).

First, With tech mergers and acquisitions substantially up in 2010, it will be interesting to see if sales force rationalization takes precedence over sales force education.

Second, unrealistic quotas continue to be set by sales organizations, according to CSO Insights. This will perpetuate destructive sales behaviors.

For more details, please see my blog Acquiring Minds and my post from today: http://bit.ly/ImproveSalesExperience

Thanks for sharing the research.

Let’s make a diagnosis why a sales rep would follow up with a customer more frequently than is required,
1. Competition: As most of the businesses face immense competition it has become mandatory for the sales force to be more aggressive since we don’t actually know when a competitor is closing the deal with customer.
2. Competence: As products or services from different companies are not making much difference with other, Sales reps are not confident that they will sell. So they will put extra effort to push the undifferentiated product which is quite visible to the customer.
3. Pressure: Companies give excess pressure to the front force which makes them act more aggressively rather than smartly.

Hence, products or services have to have niche markets, have to be well differentiated, and companies have to apply intelligent pressure to solve this issue.

I fully agree with Anil Goel (Key Account Manager, India Business Accenture, India). When a customer starts hearing NO from consultants, that customer knows that the consultant is not looking at a short-term business relationship, rather the consultant is looking for a long-term business relationship, a relationship that is sustainable, collaborative, and value adding.

A great sales experience incorporates a good product or service at a good price. In the B2B space, most transactions are conducted by knowledgeable people on both sides of the table. The parties don’t even get to a sales experience if either the product or the price are not competitive. Concluding that the sales experience is more important than price is mis-representing the raw data.

To understand and to develop your own and your company’s quality performance, you need accurate feedback on how your customers experience you and your sales performance/delivery—while they are in contact with you or your company!

You therefore need a business tool that can measure your sales performance continiously and not only once a year. Your measurement score from your real customers gives you accurate feedback on which areas of your sales performance you have to develop to get more happy and more buying customers!

Don’t assume how your customers experience you, be sure!

I would like to point out a difference between private and governmental companies. I have experienced that some government agencies tend to be price conscious, all the way from start to finish in the decision making process, and weight business and customer understanding of less importance. The reason for this can of course vary, but it seems like many governmental agencies are extremely aware of representing taxpayers and their perceived interest of low prices.

I wonder what is the percentage of procurement department decision makers from the “1,200 purchasing decision makers”. If this is not high, than the vendors might seriously look into invest in highly skilled salesforce.

I certainly feel that some sales reps might come across as being too pushy, but they do exactly what is expected of them.

The job of a sales rep is to generate revenue for the company and that will happen only if they happen to increase the number in sales. So eventually it just falls on whether they deliver the target or not and on time. Target has to be delivered whether you act pushy or you give a subtle hint to the customer that this product might be of some interest to them or not.

Our best sales experts are extremely skilled at helping clients and prospects better understand the true nature of the problem they are trying to solve. Our clients tell us that too many sales reps are too quick to jump to solution mode without helping them develop a more thorough understanding of the problem they are facing. Universally we hear “don’t trust us to have a complete understanding of the challenges we are facing.”

Our best value exchanges before, during, and after any selling cycle are focused on helping clients identify problems they may not even be aware they have.

Our experience is that businesses that only focus on “driving the number” (be it for the quarter or year) certainly generate a maelstrom of damaging behaviours, including unwanted and aggressive contact and nakedly supplier-centric dialogue—both of which destroy trust rather than build it.

What seems to go unremarked is the extent to which a “driving the number” culture also undermines the confidence of sales performers and actually serves to disengage them from their employers, thereby incrementally reducing the ROI per employee—hardly commercially intelligent behaviour!

The most significant factor we find, however, is the challenge of understanding and articulating value. When sales performers assert that their biggest challenge is price, we can be near certain that they can’t describe what it is about their product and/or service that their clients value.

Product knowledge for most sales performers means feature and advantage and they tend to love overdosing their prospects with this. Getting them to communicate in concise terms the benefit and value of their offering is a different game altogether.

Examining my experience as both a buyer and seller at different times, I would suggest that we need to look at two situations: a) Selling to a customer for the first time, and b)Subsequent selling similar or different product/solution.

In the first case, a clear understanding and articulation of the benefits expressed in monetary terms, placeholders and ability to form a relationship and thereby generate confidence, is important. In the second case, the after-sales service experience—either in helping manage teething problems or simply acting as a guide—and product performance become the most important factors. It is useful to remember that a B2B customer makes a purchase decision “laddering-up” from benefits, which need to be delivered by the product.

I think Researching your prospect is really important for delivering a good sales experience. Knowing your products/services and your competition is equally important too.

Courtesy plays a huge role in making your sales pitch stand out of the crowd. Those Thank You emails, acknowledgments, and most importantly getting back to people as promised (especially after you realize that your product/service can’t really deliver the value the prospect is looking for) shows your respect towards their time and business, it also shows your keenness in being a vendor who thinks in the best interest of his customers.

SUMMARY OF MY 35 YEARS EXPERIENCE IN B2B SELLING

1)Building trust, trust, and more trust, is the number one requirement in face-to-face selling. We are selling to human beings, not to machines.
2)Brand gives you a head start.
3) Selling solutions to customer problems, not products.
4)Telling a customer something he does not know but would like to know in his field. (Being perceived as a consultant.)
5)Intelligent honesty
6) Humility

Negatives
1)Agressiveness.
2)I know it all. Let me tell you.
3)Desperation to meet targets at any cost. Customers see it.

We are an IT solutions provider in the domains of banking, finance, hospital and facilities management, among others, globally. The survey results bring quite a realistic picture. Our experience with repeat clients over a decade and a half suggests that industry and business knowledge and effective customisation are the key, yet post sales offerings ensure a long-term relationship.

I think customers start trusting you when they also start hearing ‘no’ from you.

If you find yourself in a situation where you tell a customer, ‘No—if that’s what you are looking for I don’t have the capability today. We have XYZ things in this area and I’ll send you some materials in case you want to go down that route but given the criticality of your requirement I don’t think we are there yet’ you are setting a tremendous basis for building trust.

If the customer does not find a better alternative, of finds an alternative that is not significantly better, chances are he will start considering you over whoever was offering the alternative. And take my word for it, even if there is nothing to be won from this one—and you don’t want to win what you can’t deliver in any case—the next time the customer has something to offer to a vendor, he is going to pick up the phone and call you.

The apparent flip side is undermining your capabilities, but I think in most cases, especially when you are working B2B but not in a niche area, customers are looking for credibility more than capability. They want people who they trust will build the capability if they dont have it rather than people who seem to have the capability but may not.

If you can, in principle, cross over the table and look at the proposition alongside the customer rather than across the table, you might find you retreat from the pitch but end up winning much more, sooner or later.

The writings here are bang-on, but perhaps too generic. It does not account for cultural biases in relationship building and GDP-related sensitivity to value addition.

Will look forward to more details especially relevant to emerging economies.

Interestingly, I’d assume that while the sales reps might have commendable knowledge about the company’s and competitors’ products, customers would seek a) accessibility b) responsiveness c) empathy—contributing towards the overall experience.

I have 12 years of experience in sales, let me share my experiences and learnings.

Success in sales is faster when one focuses on externalities like what needs are being met, what value are we creating for the customer, how much are we acceptable to the customer, reliability, consistency, etcetera. Let me elaborate on these.

1. What Customer needs are being met

The most succesful step is in being sensitive to the customer needs. For if I want to sell an environmental reporting system, I can sell it as an EHS tool, a compliance reporting system, a sustainability reporting system, an environmental management system, etcetera. But when the sale is made—if the right questions are asked and we narrow down to the need—then the right product is sold. Very often it’s tempting to talk more and more on what we want to sell and narrow down with assumptions while arriving at the needs. What’s is missing is the listening part. I believe in listening twice as much as I would love to talk.

2. Value Creation for the customer

Customers have or will eventually gain knowlege of similar products in the market. Hence creating value and communicating the same is essential. What value creation to sell often finds its root in the step 1 . This is also a way of differentiating ourselves from competing firms. For we will be remembered when we deliver beyond expectations. One example of value creation can be to tell the customer as to how the product/solution is scaleable or changeable to the changing condition the business is into, for no companies exist in status quo.

3. How much are we acceptable to the customer

Offering a few honest “don’t knows,” is better than lying. Any sale involves people first and money later. So being genuine and keen to solve customer needs and issues should be reflected the body language, thereby being accepted by the customer. Our urgency must be more in solving the customer problems than on thinking how fast we can sell to this customer.

If we understand steps 1, 2, and 3 , then the need for excess contact gets settled on its own.

4. Reliability and Consistency

Steps 1, 2, and 3 - are we repeatedly doing them correctly? Needs keep changing. When tested by the vagaries of the market, do we hold good?

Relationships are built on trust which in turn is built when companies consciously work on steps 1 to 4. Selling or buying is not often resticted to products but extends beyond to the depth of relationships, credibility, and reliability. My experience is that customers are willing to pay a moderate premium to suppliers who can meet the aforesaid criteria.

Innovation is the key word leading to growth, and customers are keen to know what innovations are happening at their suppliers’ premises. Sales people have the reposibility to share with their firm the changing needs in the market, new opportunities, etcetera, for success in sales is through a customer-centric approach.

I am surprised that the lack of understanding of the customer’s business does not appear as the main reason for failure. It is my understanding that a customer is more likely to buy from us for what we know about his business rather than what he knows about us. It is also my understanding that senior level management is interested in knowing how we can support his business objectives and strategies, as well as address some of his business challenges. The business fit there is between two organizations and elevates the discussion from a pure product fit to a more strategic approach. But then it is just a question of choice: do I want to be perceived as a vendor or as a strategic resource?

Having 30 years of experience in selling capital equipment, I find that many current-day sales organizations are more interested in building databases in place of relationships, and this is a recipe for disaster.

Partially because of this we now have a huge amount of “sales professionals” running around to every Tom, Dick, and Harry trying to squeeze the customers foot into the wrong size shoe, only because that is the only size shoe that the rep carries or knows.

I fail to see what benefit or real understanding the rep could possibly have of the customers requirements if the rep has not had experience in the clients industry, or is unable to place himself in the clients position. This understanding is critical whether you are selling pineapples or power stations.

I firmly believe that it is better to have an excellent relationship and be friends with a small, focused number of customers rather than just having random sales contact with hundreds of customers.

A good all-around result in a sales transaction starts when the client is fully aware of all the pitfalls as well as the benefits of your product. The customer can then move into the role of leader in the transaction and is doing the buying instead of the sales person having to do the selling. This is a clear indication that the buyer is very comfortable with both the sales person and the product or solution.

A sales relationship never finishes, regardless of it being a good transaction or not and in many cases the sales representative is only required for the initial transaction, how the supplier, equipment, product and/or service performs after the initial transaction is what establishes the grounds for contiuing business.

Not how many people you have on your database.

Great rebuttal to dropping margins as a B2B strategy. One way we address your findings is by understanding what our customers want to know and not just what we want to tell them, and using that learning to build strategic nurturing programs. This addresses the too-many-contacts concern by increasing their value to the prospect.

This is an interesting article on an organizational function too much neglected by management and still so central to any B2B sales organization. I have over 10 years of B2B sales and marketing experience and cannot agree more that lack of product knowledge is a real weakness in the profession. Sales reps still think that smooth talk and hard sell can do the trick. Worse still, managers still hire based on looks and ability to ‘sell me this pen’. I think that sales reps must be tertiary qualified, technically strong, commercially aware, and have a willingness to learn.

I would want to know who your survey respondents were. You say “purchasing decision makers.” From the results, I’m guessing that was purchasing department people that were surveyed. I can’t believe these were the results from surveying senior executive decision-makers.

Customers today want measurable results from their vendors. We continually find that if you can’t document it, you can’t prove it, so the first task we perform is to establish goals and objectives with our customers. This minimizes the questions later and maximizes the level of success for our customer’s initiative. It also does something else—it helps SPRYTek to exceed our customers’ expectations and to create “raving fans.”

We are not perfect, but we strive to understand the customer’s business reason(s)for the initiative, and frame a solution that addresses incremental steps of a bigger project. This does two things: it affords both parties to more quickly review for adjustments to the original project plan, and helps the SPRYTek team to constantly focus on the customer’s priorities and not our own. I have found if you do that—my company doesn’t have to worry about new prospects—our customers will go out of their way to recommend our services to their peers and business associates.

I have worked for many companies in my career, and most of them focus on the short-term goal that centers on sales objectives, when if you focus on the needs of your customer your organization will succeed in a variety of ways.

I couldn’t agree more with these findings. The struggle lies in improving sales performance across these identified areas and across management expectations. I find that when management is seeking to hit a number (for the quarter or year) that they often initiate unwanted, overly aggressive contacts.

The key take-away is to have a robust pipeline of opportunities that enable attainment of sales goals. This will better allow the sales organization to deliver the growth required by management by not depending on heroic sales efforts at one large account. Sales executives can direct less time per account (because they’re spending too much time now) as they manage a broader pipeline.

This survey should hold no surprises in that it reflects the lack of training that most companies invest in their sales forces.

Buyers today, like all of us, are overwhelmed with many different types of media and therefore have short attenton spans, making them even less tolerant of illinformed vendors. They are also better informed and able to access a wide range of information to assist their purchasing decisions. Effective selling must combine:
1. Strong knowledge of one’s own products and those of competitors.
2. Understanding of the customer’s business objectives.
3. An ability to link the business benefits of one’s own products to solving the customer’s objectives.

Such a combination demands sales management to lead by example, by doing this themselves, and execute structured learning programmes across these disciplines. When this is successful customers actually want to meet sales people as the interaction delivers value and does result in business.

One of the main contributors to destructive sales rep behaviours is contacting customers too much. Far too often sales reps employ hard-selling tactics. B2B customers, particularly, find this unfavourable. Most B2B customers want only the necessary information to augment the decision making process (DMP). Also, they always want time to process this information so that they can make well-calculated decisions about the product/service being presented by the sales rep. Because many sales reps employ hard-selling, they sub-conciously barrage customers with information and over-zealous behaviour. A B2B customer translates this as a sales rep that just wants to sell, rather than a sales rep that is concerned about the progress of the customer. My opinion is that sales reps should research their customers before beginning the selling process. Doing this will help them to target each customer individually. Thus, information will be organised specifically for each customer. As a result, fewer customers will complain about lack of information, and customers will also be able to make decisions faster; resulting in less contact required by the sales rep.

No matter what I relearn about sales I often come back to SPIN selling as the most successful method I have learned over the years. SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implications, and Needs payoff questions. The concept is that buyers hate answering situation questions because they can be discovered before the call. Problem questions are boring coming from the sales person and the decision maker does not want to spend a lot of time on those type of conversations. Implications on the other hand are where the sale is won or lost. It takes as you say in your article a great deal of knowledge for the sales person to dive into implication questions. It is not what lies on the surface that is so interesting it is what it means to the buyer subsurface. Lastly the Needs payoff questions are simply getting the buyer to tell you why they need your product or services.

Thanks for surfacing such a meaningful article in a time that all of our customers are looking for an edge.

They forgot to mention being down-right rude—or culturally inappropriate. As a Southerner, the quickest way to lose my business is to call me up, use my first name, talk over me, forget to say “ma’am” after yes, interrupt me, and act like you’re my best friend when we’ve never met. But, I also acknowledge that out of the South, saying “yes, ma’am” can be considered just as rude as failing to say it here. I suppose it all goes back to knowing your audience.

Also, this article doesn’t say anything about not caring about my needs. It does mention not personalizing your pitch, which is close, but not the same. When I come in as a prospective customer, you should listen to what I need before you start trying to sell what you have. How do you know what to sell me if you don’t know what I need? Salespeople that talk without listening lose the sale.

I guess it’s all variable. I’d really be interested in learning more about how this survey was done—where geographically the respondents were, if they chose from a list of options or supplied their own answers, etc.

My consulting practice focuses on helping companies implement best practice sales and marketing strategies and tactics. Product knowledge is one of those keys (there are a total of five). Too many companies just “throw their new sales hires” into the deep end and hope they swim. Precepting, coaching, required mastery and testing of marketing material are all relatively inexpensive ways to get new hires up to speed. I have even helped clients develop spaced repetition memorization templates from their own marketing material.

As for contacting clients too frequently, there are two practices that mitigate becoming a nuisance. The first is determining whether the prospect is really qualified. If they are serious about buying a solution, they should readily agree to contact when necessary to move the project forward. Secondly, if they are indeed qualified, never, ever leave an appointment or call with a prospect without an agreed-to list of follow-up actions including the date and time for the next meeting/call. I call it “No Open Loops” with prospects. If a client is unwilling to agree to the next actions, you need to go back and determine whether they are really qualified.

Negatives:
1 - Sales reps who contact me by email (when I have not given them permission) and use BAD spelling and grammar;
2 - sales reps who personalize email, but get my name wrong;
3 - sales reps who offer me products I have no use for; and
3 - sales reps who have next to no knowledge of my business.

Positives:
1 - Sales reps who try to develop a relationship with me; and
2 - sales reps who send me info that’s useful for my business (without being “pushy”).

I’ve found brand often plays a very big part—the old story, no one ever got sacked for buying IBM—especially in big companies. I think a lot also depends on what you’re selling. If it’s a commodified item in an undifferentiated market then the sales experience is very important. I think the buying of knowledge-based, creative, and consultancy services is very different and the relationship between actual cost and perceived value is also huge.

After twenty years of b2b selling I’m startled by how much emotion and subjectivity there is in the purchase.

It’s also important to mention the role of purchasing departments which are bringing ever more emphasis on price/benefit and whittling away the personal touch of sales processes and relationships.

One interesting point is that procurement only provides one, narrow, siloed opinion, all too often focused on cost, and not part of a multiyear procurement strategy that is linked to brand, product, supply chain, and packaging strategy. Innovation and overall value are not important in their realm of responsibility. Research we have led with other decision makers in large companies shows that different functions express divergent views when asked what they are looking for from a supplier. Salespeople can get “bad” information from only talking to procurement, and procurement acting as that gatekeeper is not doing their company a favor. Of course, a few leading companies have very strategic procurement organizations, but they are the exception.

Your survey is a little misleading. Too much contact with the customer is only destructive when the contact is superfluous, irrelevant, or misleading. Every truly successful B2B salesperson knows that close contact with the customer is fundamental to their success. They also understand that the real art in selling is to ensure that every customer contact adds “real value” to the sales process. Of course “real value” has to be tangible as recognized by the customer. Poor sales people assume that they define value in the same way as their customers. Or worse still, that every customer’s definition of value is the same. It is under these circumstances that too much contact becomes destructive.

We provide Project Life Cycle Management Solutions to Engineering & Construction companies. In this niche segment, lack of domain and industry knowledge is the primary factor leading to poor sales experience for the customer.

As a past corporate buyer of services, any frequency is a problem without a value exchange. Lack of knowledge of competition really creates work for me. As a marketing professional, the same that goes for sales very much goes for marketing. The best B2B marketing virtualizes the early phases of selling and does so with the same experience values in mind.