B2B COVID and Sales Growth for the Future

Advok8 Strategic Brief, October 2020 Part 2

By Steve A. Day, PRESIDENT OF ADVOK8, ©COYPRIGHT 2020, ADVOK8

As COVID sorts itself out, many companies are looking to recover or to grow their product and services sales organizations. This provides an opportunity to rethink how sales and growth are intertwined. Above Advok8 has created a matrix that looks at sales on a rating basis (5 stars is good and 1 star is poor), with respect to how sales match the market going forward. There are five perspectives that are important to consider.

• Cost of sales – How costly is the type of sales team in an environment where customers’ decision-makers may be working from home, using Zoom/Skype for meetings, and embracing process automation at a much deeper level?
• Risk of sales – Based upon the sales methodology, how can a company predict and assign risks in winning business via their sales (& marketing) efforts. Think of the transformation this year has brought to key customer decision-makers.
• Product match – For products and services, there is a wide range of situations. Fully custom product driven by the customer, proprietary product driven by the company, standard product defined by the 3 Ps, and integrated product defined by system engineering.
• Success factor – The ability of the sales process and talent moving the customer to close orders with the company.
• Post-Covid issues – The new reality and its direct impact on the type of sales methodology. This is factored in three ways. First, the availability of these people (who may have totally or partially retreated to their homes). Second, the idea that most businesses will have adopted a conservative, status quo mentality as they recover. Third, socio-economic and political fractures that will create years of bias in the workplace.

When exploring this, the first thing that jumps out is the negative impact that COVID has on executive relationship sales, regional territory sales, and contract sales. All are “high touch, high face to face.” Obviously, these teams are going to be dramatically impacted. Furthermore, regional territory sales teams have a high cost of sales. This is driven by the decision for large geographic coverage. In fact, the biggest recommendation Advok8 can make at this point is to discontinue geographic or regional sales teams. There are alternative ways to handle sales that will be more effective and less costly. Conversely, executive relationship sales still have benefits in both product matches and relative success factors. It should remain.

If executive relationship sales continue and the regional sales team goes away, what is left? There is a model that starts to make sense for the future. It is diagrammed below. The diagram may suggest a simple movement of the sales “chess pieces.” But it is much more than that. It is the ability to create a process-driven and seamless way to care for a customer who has changed dramatically. Almost everything that has been created to help a customer buy goods and services will have to be modified.

At the big picture level, these modifications can be described as follows:

• Virtualized customer experiences with products and services (pictures, videos, training).
• Universal customer date records including product data sheets, brochures and data records.
• Seamless flow of sales opportunities between all parties involved in the pursuit of customers.
• Continual demand and lead generation that creates pull through marketing (another Advok8 strategy).
• Sales coordination and restructuring that deemphasizes sales visits and emphasizes learning opportunities.
• Strategic and virtual events that replace customers physical and face to face opportunities with something tangible.

I will comment on this briefly. If the idea is to create a virtual trade show or virtual customer visit, and the marketing concept is to hand out brochures and create a few speaker videos; this is not what we are talking about. Taking a page from business to consumer marketing, they have for years allowed customers to play with on-line products. They have created highly effective product videos and PLACEMENT of these videos where consumers can experience them. They are the example of the future of sales.