Wendy Boyce
No sales cycle should ever be looked at from a cookie cutter approach, but this is especially true when examining the B2B sales process. In B2B transactions, there is no way to fully predict the decision-making hierarchy, as every organization has a different marketing or purchasing structure with unique buyer types. This can make your B2B marketing messaging a challenge.
The secret to a successful B2B sales organization lies largely on the toolset provided to optimize or enable the sales process. Having built sound analytic models for customer acquisition, cross-selling and customer retention, we embarked on a journey to aid one of our clients in jump starting their growing sales organization.
Knowledge of the client’s customer base was merged with our analytics models to create a personalized “playbook” for the B2B sales organization that enabled them with a sales approach to tackle qualified leads. This sales enablement tool was comprised of 4 key elements:
Personalized Sales Enablement
This “playbook” included a break down for each salesperson. Their personalized sales lead queue ranked the leads by importance, and provided sales strategies and value propositions for each. The importance of a lead was calculated on variables including factors such as likelihood to purchase, estimated value, and other business intelligence data points.
Industry Business Intelligence
The “playbook” also included industry information for the related vertical markets. Insights to help facilitate a sale were provided, including: industry trends, recommended communication strategies and statistics.
Sales Planning Tools
The “playbook” then wrapped all of this information up into a solution that allowed the B2B sales force to monitor and manage the sales process from pre-planning and lead identification, all the way through their call strategy and communication approaches. Web-based territory reporting for the sales force provided further status at scheduled intervals.
Ongoing Data Integration
The B2B sales enablement toolset outlined above was finally equipped to integrate with the corporate database, where all changes are loaded back into the data and refreshed at timed intervals.
Arming your sales force with the proper tools and information creates efficiencies in your sales process and methodologies. Real-time customer information becomes readily available, making customer insights more accurate and up-to-date. This sales enablement “playbook” can reduce the sales cycle time while also decreasing the learning curve for new sales force staff. Finally, having the right sales enablement tools in place, loaded with the right analytics insights, will create best practices for your sales organization with a complete feedback loop built in to measure successes.
Resources:
SIGMA Marketing Group Case Study: Increase sales force performance. Jump start sales.
Image Credits: http://menwithpens.ca/swipe-faster-communication-service
About the Author:
Wendy Boyce is the Social Media & Marketing Manager at marketing analytics company SIGMA Marketing Group. Connect with Wendy on , Facebook or .
Related Articles:
Heat Up Cold Calling with B2B Marketing Analytics
Why ROI Measurement Is So Elusive
Marketing Analytics Can Bridge the Chasm Between Marketing and Sales
