Shade's Mills Group
 By Tom Fournier
I have spent a lot of time looking at sales processes and sales methodologies in the Business to Business (B2B) space. In a previous blog post I shared information on the changing B2B buyer and how they preferred not to interact with a sales representative and how they would rather do research on their own. How does a company or a sales representative stand out in this environment? You see companies building their capabilities around digital marketing and content marketing and you see sales representatives building their personal brand, establishing their credentials and developing their presence in online networking, chief of which has been LinkedIn.
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 Example of a Sales Process Sales Process vs. Sales Methodology.
Both are extremely important. Both are critical to setting your sales strategy. Both are often misunderstood, miscategorized or missing!  In my corporate life I had managed a Canadian business. I had three sales teams, a national account team and a national distribution account team.
The business environment was fast paced, intense and very consuming.  By Tom Fournier
I have grown fascinated by the shift to social selling, digital marketing and content marketing in the environment of Business to Business selling. One of the more active arenas for this activity seems to be LinkedIn. Once a job seeking/recruiting platform, it is now very much a business knowledge and networking platform. I will readily admit to experimenting on myself. I have been less selective around connection requests. I have signed up for interesting blogs/newsletters. I have requested and downloaded appealing articles and research papers. It has been really interesting to watch the types of responses that this activity motivates! I will happily share some of these experiences and classify them in some categories:  By Tom Fournier
LinkedIn had long been viewed as a place to match up prospective employers and job seekers. Perhaps that was once the case, but now it has also become a very active business community. There are interest groups that match up like minded individuals in specific industries or on specific business topics. It has also become a critical tool for connecting prospective customers with potential vendors. This comes into play with social selling, digital marketing and networking. It is an excellent opportunity for an individual to establish credentials as a subject matter expert and perhaps to showcase a portfolio of work. Sellers are checking out their prospective customers but customers are also researching their prospective vendors.  The development of approaches around Business to Business (B2B) selling has continued to progress and has evolved in its concepts, strategies and practices.
This sees closer alignment between sales and marketing with an emerging emphasis on content and digital marketing which in turn supports the shift from outbound to inbound selling. Buyers are now very proactive in doing their research online. They are also very resentful of disruptive or interruption selling efforts (traditional cold calling). Are you ready to jump in and be part of this shift? Is it time to train your sales representatives on social networking and social selling skills?  By Tom Fournier
It is strange how you gather a number of similar experiences and begin to sense a trend. For me, all of sudden I have encountered situations where sale representatives either do not like to sell or are not capable of selling! I will offer some thoughts but I would really like to receive some feedback to hear peoples’ thoughts on why this occurs.  Box of Donuts By Tom Fournier
Through years of working in business to business sales, many of these years as a sales representative and many out working with countless other sales representatives, I came across many sales representatives that considered themselves the relationship seller. They were the route salesperson who would regularly check in with their customers, with ready access to the customer’s store room to see what needed to be reordered, they always had time for a chat, they were quick to share a funny story or joke and for a really good customer they would bring in a box of donuts.  By Tom Fournier
Having a sales pipeline should be a given for any sales representative and monitoring pipeline health should be an absolute for any sales manager. It should be, but it seems it is not. It reminds me of the old joke/adage, “the problem with common sense is that it is not that common!”  By Tom Fournier
Now is the time to be thinking about your approach to sales! The world is rapidly changing and amongst those changes are shifts in how business to business (B2B) customers are looking at sales people. I share some shocking statistics from a study published by Forrester Research: 60% of B2B Buyers prefer not to interact with a sales rep. [1] 68% of B2B Buyers prefer gathering information online on their own[2] |
AuthorTom Fournier, founder of the Shade's Mills Group, history enthusiast and happy walker! Archives
June 2019
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