You’re probably thinking the title of this article makes no sense. Well, I guarantee you read it right. I strongly believe that B2B marketing will take over B2B sales. I’ll explain why it makes sense:
Primary research by all major analyst firms (including Forrester, SiriusDecisions, and Gartner) clearly shows (and it’s not just a claim) that more and more buyers are relying almost exclusively on online and digital interactions in the buying process. In many cases, buyers go through the entire process without ever speaking to the seller. As consumers, we are all familiar with this phenomenon. For the majority of shoppers, the days of receiving a Sears or Lands’ End catalog in the mail and calling a toll-free number to place an order are long gone. In the consumer world, the buying process is nearly 100% online. Everyday purchases like cars and boats, and in fact, even homes can be bought and sold this way. The entire consumer experience now takes place online, and marketing rules this world. Sales takes orders and provides support. Why should it be any different in the B2B sector?
Recently, the B2B marketing and sales environment has become quite functionally divided. The marketing world operated on semi-annual, yearly cycles, while sales operated on quarterly cycles. Understanding how to hand off qualified leads generated through marketing to sales has always been a challenge. But in the B2C world, this isn’t the case. Why not? Because marketing controls pretty much everything, and B2C selling is all about order fulfillment and helping and supporting the customer. Sales support and customer support still includes building relationships and educating the customer about possible referrals and additional services, but it’s no longer primarily about closing the sale.
“But what about B2B selling?” “The B2B sales process is very complicated. How can we avoid having salespeople interact with customers? If you ask B2B buyers this question, most of them will answer that they prefer to do their own research until they are completely sure of who they want to deal with.” Larger companies may go through a more complicated Request for Information (RFI) or Request for Proposal (RFP) process, in which case the buying process is very different. However, for companies that directly evaluate what to buy and don’t need an RFI/RFP process, marketing alone can provide the information and support they need.
Yes, just marketing. Because if B2B marketing is done right, all the buyer’s questions can be answered digitally through online resources. These resources can be product overviews through datasheets, reference validation through customer success stories, or actual product demos in the form of recorded videos. Ironically, when we think of the traditional steps of the buying process (awareness, interest, try, purchase, repurchase), we typically think that marketing helps build awareness and maybe some interest, but the truth is that each of these steps of prospect/customer engagement can be digitized without the involvement of a salesperson.
So to succeed in today’s fully digitalized B2B sales environment, you need to invest in B2B digital marketing to build trust and educate buyers. This is where the majority of the investment will be spent, so it makes sense for marketing to make the decision. In the past, companies that sold to others invested more in sales and only incrementally in marketing, but now and in the future, the opposite is true. You can bet on it. I hope I have caught your attention here and that you are at least ready to consider the idea that B2B marketing should drive the sales process. It is not such a big leap to imagine creating fully digitalized engagement scenarios for a range of prospects, from those just doing their research to groups of stakeholders who are delving into what a potential solution can offer.
In these scenarios, salespeople are not absent. In fact, they are very much present, but their role is not focused on closing, but rather as solution advisors who introduce potential buyers to the right marketing and sales resources to truly enhance the buying experience. Incidentally, in this context, the buying process becomes much less urgent and stressful, as salespeople no longer need to constantly inform potential customers about next steps. Instead, guide your prospects through the entire buying process by making sure any questions they have are answered.
Will digitizing the buying process mean fewer salespeople? Probably, but that doesn’t mean the entire sales department will disappear. It’s more likely that some staff will move from sales to marketing. Previously, you might have had 10 salespeople and one or two B2B marketers, but in today’s digital sales environment, that investment could actually pay for itself. While it is true that there are still some print, billboard, TV, and radio marketing efforts that have not been digitized, it is highly likely that if these marketing tactics are not digitized and therefore cannot be closely tracked for the next decade, the investment will simply not be received. The old belief that “we know 50% of our marketing efforts work, but we don’t know which 50%” is completely off the mark. These days, there is little justification for investing in these tactics without solid metrics to show what is working. There are plenty of other reliable ways to evaluate success and ensure a proper return on investment.
According to Chiefmartec.com, there are around 5,000 marketing and sales automation companies pursuing innovation to fully digitize the buying and selling process, with the majority of these companies focused on the B2B marketing environment. This trend isn’t going away. B2B marketing determines the direction of the sales process and is responsible for its success (or failure). Salespeople primarily advise and, at least in some cases, close the deal. There are at least five main reasons for this:
Education vs. Selling – The great thing about this new digital world is that the customer is in charge. Not what the seller wants to say, but what the buyer wants. Among all the options available, there are some that make sense to the buyer, and they have to find them. Researching and learning is the first step in B2B buying, and this stage is where you build a relationship with your potential customer by showing them what is truly relevant to them. The smarter your digital engagement process is, the more relevant you can show them. Think back to your experience using Amazon’s recommendation engine. Being able to surface assets and content that truly apply to a buyer’s area of interest can be extremely helpful in their learning process, whether they’re a consumer or a business customer.
Build trust, not stress – Once they’ve narrowed their search to a few vendors, the question B2B buyers most often ask is: “Do you trust people, that’s all?” While salespeople may be able to answer the first two questions well, businesses often lose sales due to a lack of trust. That’s why it’s so important to respect buyer preferences and do your own research and find out. This may not eliminate the need for salespeople, but the engagement will be very different from what it is now.
Get a second chance – It’s important to remember that B2B sellers often don’t know what the buyer is thinking. Typically, 60%-80% of the airtime of the engagement process is spent by the seller explaining their core competencies, leaving little time to understand what the buyer really wants. If your pitch falls off or covers the wrong points, you won’t get a second chance. Digital content provides that second chance, and can significantly reduce the amount of airtime a salesperson spends on a sales pitch compared to the time they spend simply answering buyer questions.
Understand what’s important – Engaging with buyers digitally gives you a detailed view of what’s really important. While it’s impossible to record every sales conversation and decipher which questions are really important, you can experiment digitally, track the results, see which tools work and which don’t, and understand what you can improve. (This is a B2B marketing function, not a sales function.) The more you learn, the better you can optimize your efforts to achieve relevance and get on the buyer’s shortlist. It also helps if salespeople are not intrusive and focus on sharing information to help the buyer make the right decision. Take losses with grace – B2B sellers still measure success by closing the deal, but in today’s digitized buying environment, it’s also important to lose gracefully. Yes, you read that correctly. Selling is as much about losing gracefully and respecting the buyer’s decision as it is about winning when your solution is correct. No matter how good your solution is, there will always be cases where your competitor is better positioned and you win. In the old analog world, the feedback from salespeople when they lost was anecdotal. But in today’s digital world, you can digitally diagnose your sales pitch, pricing, and positioning and put together a forensic analysis that explains why you actually lost. Adding this analysis to the seller’s comments brings us much closer to the truth than we ever could before. We might even understand that losses have meaning and are not worth pursuing because they distract us from our ultimate goal. This is very important and useful information.
We could go even deeper into this topic, but we’ll take a break for now. We are entering the brave new world of B2B marketing and sales, where marketing sets the direction of the B2B sales process and is responsible for its success. Forrester predicts that nearly 1 million sales jobs will be lost by 2020, but I like to see it in a more positive light. It could be that B2B marketing can create more and better digital content and create as many jobs as possible to understand what really matters to buyers. In fact, this is already happening. As this trend accelerates, companies will no doubt be forced to rebalance their investments between sales and marketing. Sales teams will certainly shrink as marketing organizations grow and traditional and tactical sales needs change, but by learning how to sell solutions, they can retrain and redeploy many of these resources to better serve customers. Maybe you think I’m being too optimistic. Well, I am optimistic by nature, but I’m also a realist. I’ve been watching this shift in B2B marketing across multiple client accounts for the past five years. As an ever-increasing percentage of our client base becomes more digital and more marketing-led, the reality is that we’re on the brink of this brave new world that will create a better environment for everyone: marketers, sellers, and most importantly, customers.
