The shifting B2B buying process means that reallocating sales and marketing budgets is a good idea for many companies. Where to shift resources and how to know if it’s working are two important questions to tackle.
“Seasoned executives and sales leaders often struggle to accept the reality that long-standing ‘truths’ about how to best serve customers no longer apply,” states a McKinsey & Company report on how business customers buy.
After mapping five customer segments, one industrial manufacturer found that nearly 70 percent of its marketing dollars and sales efforts across them were not directed at what mattered most to customers. For example, the company had invested heavily in customized demonstrations and made them available to all customers, but only those in two segments cared about participating in them.
The company began focusing its efforts more sharply on the activities that the most profitable segments liked best. It wasn’t so much an exercise in cutting the budget as it was redirecting it to work in ways that would increase customer engagement across decision journeys.
One company held debates among its marketing and sales teams to discuss findings from its decision-journey research. Leaders from finance, customer service, supply chain and technology organizations were called in to help bring objective rigor to discussion about what a new allocation of resources would mean for its performance and strategy.
“The exercise might have looked like a time sink when viewed from the outside, yet it proved crucial in creating the collective will to take the risk of trying new ways of serving customers,” the report states.
