{"id":2843,"date":"2015-04-10T11:30:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T06:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/?p=2843"},"modified":"2021-11-07T14:27:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-07T08:57:38","slug":"what-happens-before-a-prospect-contacts-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/10\/what-happens-before-a-prospect-contacts-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens Before A Prospect Contacts Sales?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>\u201cB2B customers complete 57% of their purchasing decision before contacting sales.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is easily the most frequently quoted line in B2B sales and marketing in recent times.<\/p>\n<p>Ever since \u00a0CEB Marketing Leadership Council released this finding in its <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2012\/07\/the-end-of-solution-sales%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>HBR article<\/strong><\/a> in mid 2012,<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Some startup CEOs have questioned the need for sales<\/li>\n<li>A few have even publicly avowed to never hire another salesperson<\/li>\n<li>Some sales reps have stopped prospecting and started waiting for the prospect to call them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure CEB never intended any of this to happen, so its famous statement must also be one of the most highly misunderstood ones in B2B sales and marketing.<\/p>\n<p>The danger with these misguided actions is that you&#8217;ll lose the deal without even knowing about it because your prospect will call your competitor&#8217;s salesperson whenever they eventually contact a supplier.<\/p>\n<p>To understand why,\u00a0let&#8217;s look at the steps in a typical\u00a0B2B technology purchase process:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Have pain<\/li>\n<li>Acknowledge need to solve pain<\/li>\n<li>Explore alternative solutions to fulfill need<\/li>\n<li>Decide on one solution<\/li>\n<li>Create a longlist of 10 suppliers for selected\u00a0solution<\/li>\n<li>Carry out preliminary analysis of 10 offerings to arrive at shortlist of 3 vendors<\/li>\n<li>Conduct deep dive evaluation of shortlisted vendors<\/li>\n<li>Select one vendor and conduct negotiations<\/li>\n<li>Contract with selected vendor.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Before the Internet, the prospect would contact multiple suppliers at Step 3 and talk to their salespersons to learn about the various options available in the market and assess how the different solutions addressed their needs. (For the moment, I&#8217;m ignoring the small minority of prospects who used to employ consultants &#8211; think <em>Capacity Planning Group<\/em> of TCS &#8211; and complete Steps 3 through 5 without contacting a supplier <em>even in the good old days<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Now, in the world of Internet, prospects can access a treasure trove of information, and complete steps 3 through 6 by themselves. The empowered Buyer 2.0 will need to contact vendors only at Step 7 &#8211; and only the 3 shortlisted ones, not all ten of them.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, steps 3 through 6 have become a blindzone for sales in the world of Buyer 2.0.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/wpd01.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-2201\" src=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/wpd01-1024x325.jpg\" alt=\"wpd01\" width=\"630\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Suppliers\u00a0who get blindsided by it will get excluded from the prospect&#8217;s shortlist <em>without even being given the opportunity<\/em> to make their pitch. In other words, they will lose the deal without even knowing about it. As McKinsey warns sales reps in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/Insights\/Marketing_Sales\/Do_you_really_understand_how_your_business_customers_buy?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Do you really understand how your business customers buy?<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Customers may be \u201cliking\u201d or \u201cnot liking\u201d a prospective offer long before the sales rep has even presented it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To escape this fate, salespersons need to navigate the blindzone successfully. Waiting for the prospect to contact them is not a great way of doing that.<\/p>\n<p>One way to escape the blindzone is to <strong><em>reach out to prospects earlier than before<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>We know this approach works based on our experience of working with several B2B technology companies. Its efficacy is also supported by research:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>According to McKinsey, &#8220;two-thirds of B2B deals are lost before a formal RFP process even begins.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>CEB itself says,\u00a0&#8220;To win a deal, you\u2019ve got to get ahead of the RFP.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Rockstar sales reps used to engage with prospects very early even in the good old days. I know one veteran B2B sales manager who used to tell his team over two decades ago, &#8220;if you get an RFQ without knowing about it in advance, you&#8217;ve already lost the order&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But, in the new era of Buyer 2.0, <em>every sales rep<\/em> needs to engage with prospects earlier than before.<\/p>\n<p>CEB defines &#8220;earlier than before&#8221; as the stage when prospects have &#8220;emerging needs&#8221; i.e. when their requirements are not fully crystallized.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/17\/ensuring-that-buyer-2-0-contacts-your-sales\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">follow-on post<\/a>, I&#8217;ll walk through a case study of how a B2B technology vendor successfully navigated the sales blindzone. Spoiler Alert: The conventional &#8220;solution selling&#8221; approach doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cB2B customers complete 57% of their purchasing decision before contacting sales.\u201d This is easily the most frequently quoted line in B2B sales and marketing in recent times. Ever since \u00a0CEB&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b1-integrated-marketing","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6010,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions\/6010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}