B2B sales transformation faster than ever

Some companies claim that the global B2B sales transformation goes faster than ever and that it will be a real shake out of companies that doesn’t step up. Others, have a more pragmatic approach. Sales towards global companies is a long term engagement where you have to mirror and follow your customers development and be on the right side of the development curve, providing true value.

In the latest “Global Account Network Nordics” meeting, held last week, this was one of the key topics. It is clear from many surveys,  e.g. the SiriusDecisions Buying Study 2017 and  the DeLoitte Procurement Study 2018 that companies do much more research themselves prior to engage and contact vendors. The sales process might be equally  long as earlier, but the real vendor engagement starts much later than before, up to 50% into the buying process. In essence, it is,  as in the past,  extremely important that you are visible and “known” by the key buyers from the early phases. If not,  you risk to be left outside and then it is too late. 

 Of course, by eliminating vendor interaction in the beginning you get a higher  efficiency factor embedded which  make procurement more sharp but it is also interesting to make a reflection of who is buying today?. The impact of the millennials and their approach being brought up on the web, pose some real challenges for those wanting to sell their solutions and services also tomorrow. 

 The other side of this coin is the importance to strengthen strategic relationships with key customers. Joint business development is key when it comes to stay relevant. It gives the company a beach head to engage with other people in the customers organization, often including multi-organization representatives and senior management. It can also include more companies to deliver a solution. One of our member companies showed such an example in the area of sustainability where they joined forces with the customers customers to develop an offering that was more tuned to the real needs of the end customer, they created a platform for innovation and collaboration around a common challenge and today, they have also an internal momentum and show case which is acting as a change driver for the company.

 These two development trends puts an enormous pressure on the Global Account Manager, whose life is not an easy one. But it is a fantastic experience, being the spider in the web, orchestrating business development and in many cases when the customer has a centralized global approach, also executing the sales together with a “virtual team” out in the geographies. It is maybe the most complex sales job, since it is often done with limited, often unclear responsibility but with full accountability… How to navigate in this environment and develop the right competence was the third topic in  the Network meeting.

In the upcoming network meeting in May we will continue to drill into these and other hot topics, sharing experiences and creating inspiration.