10 typical mistakes in complex B2B sales – mistake no. 2: “The focus of sales is exclusively on excellent solution development. Essential steps in the sales process are often neglected. What are the implications of this?
In our workshops, the question of how much our own solutions and products differ from those of the competition from the customer ‘s point of view is usually answered with “little” to “some”. Only very few companies have true USPs, that is, a solution that is so different from the competition that it is the only meaningful solution for the customer.
This is often frustrating, especially with highly complex technical solutions. You develop a solution in the high-end technological area and the customer treats it like a commodity product.
Often, the customer process is simply followed in these projects: The customer makes an inquiry with technical requirements and the first discussions start. Approaches to solutions are discussed, further requirements are identified and solutions are adapted. The customer changes his attitude and questions the solution. Hundreds of hours are invested. In the end, the competition wins and you get “the prize” as the reason.
But from our point of view, doing what the customer wants is not a sales process!
Especially when solutions are relatively comparable from the customer’s point of view, it is necessary to clearly differentiate from the competition in the area of the sales process. On the one hand, with the aim of offering customers added value in their decision-making process. This can happen, for example, through better questioning of requirements. But this can also be done by talking to more contacts at the customer, understanding their individual requirements and actively translating these into individual value propositions.
Secondly, there is often a lack of a systematic common understanding of how to develop the sales process into a Unique Buying Experience. Even to the simple question: “What is a decision maker?”, we often get completely different statements in workshops.
Interestingly, we can prove that sales reasons (e.g., no access to the decision maker, poorer customer relationship than the competition, lack of value-added presentation) were more often the decisive factor in lost projects than technical reasons.
Hence our recommendation:
– Treat the sales process level of your projects with the same professionalism with which you develop solutions.
– Verify that your company really knows what highly professional selling looks like.
– Make sure sales process issues aren’t the first to fall by the wayside during busy times.
– Make sales skills development one of your strategic action areas.
Contribution by Piere Martin,
Managing Director CEVEYCONSULTING GmbH
#sales #sales productivity #sales process #sales expertise #sales methodology
