We’re living at a crossroads, where two generations are in play in the logistics and supply chain hierarchy. Senior leadership is typically comprised of the experienced, steady hands that have safely piloted us through the ups and downs of the past two decades, while millennials are a growing force in the ranks of managers, directors and soon-to-be VPs.
Within five years, millennials become the majority of decision-makers at both levels of management, and I believe this is why we see conflicting sales ideologies. Every day I read the news feeds, or log on to LinkedIn and find two or three articles on why cold calling is dead, followed by another article or two about the importance and value of cold calling.
I’ve met with sales management leaders at various large, mid- and small-sized supply chain firms (who tend to be on the senior side) and find that they’re often focused on metrics such as number of meetings per week, which is quite a valid concern. However, I must challenge them to think further into what those meetings represent. Do they represent activity, or do they represent progress? In my opinion, all activity that does not create progress is working against revenue growth. My reasoning is that every sales meeting costs between $300 and $2,000 depending on your type of supply chain solutions and sales force design, and hosting meetings that are not creating forward movement effectively creates a massive cost center.
Where are the numbers really going?
One highly successful VP shared with me his experience with salespeople as well as recruiters that began their prospecting by phone as compared to those who began their presales engagement via social selling such as LinkedIn. The numbers showed that the traditional approach brought 10 meetings per week while the new school approach secured only four or five.
First, let me explain one huge gap: Many people are attempting to utilize social selling because they’ve seen the incredible results reported industry wide as well as across other verticals, but at the same time relatively few are successful. This is because presales is not really a sales function, it’s a marketing function…and while these are related, they are essentially two different skill sets. Sales is the Marines, who need to be gung-ho and first over the fence at all times. Marketing is the Air Force, carefully selecting strategic targets to clear the path and remove the mountain in the way so the Marines can reach that fence in the first place.
So, let’s say sales accomplishes the goal of 10 meetings per week. The next step is to look at what is happening in those meetings. Studies show that 90 percent of decision-makers refuse cold call attempts, so many of these meetings may be with key influencers (specialists and supervisors) rather than larger-scale decision-makers (managers and up). Then, sales wants to run in and tell them all about how great their service is, how responsive their support team can be, and how competitive they will be because they’re really interested in their business. This is all true and valuable, but it should be step six rather than step one. The windows in which we have conversations and the way in which we position the clients’ sales experience have driven the old “10 percent rule” — that only one out of every 10 active conversations leads to a win.
These are not sales skills, these are marketing skills
Marketing should more effectively be titled “presales,” as it involves the strategic positioning of the brand, the solutions, and the alignment of those solutions to target industries. Marketing also has traditional and new era schools of thought. We refer to these as brand marketing and account-based marketing.
Brand marketing is focused on brand awareness with an aim to create interest at the top of the funnel. This type of content talks about what services are available, how many regions we operate in, what equipment we bring to the table, and even how many containers, tons, or kilos of freight we move globally. Brand marketing talks about the company it represents.
Account-based marketing changes the game by producing content which talks about the customer first. It speaks to gaps the customer may be experiencing, how the operational teams are impacted by these gaps, and drives a demand and appetite for change. Traditional content speaking about the company only works with the 10 percent of customers that already have an appetite for change, so the strategy opens an additional 60 percent of the market to become possible for sales to close.
This presents an opportunity for the Challenger framework to get the ball rolling even before the salesperson has come in contact with the account. Marketing should be accomplishing steps 1, 2 and 3 so that sales can pick up at step 4. I’m simplifying of course, but you may get the idea.
So why is this important?
I started off by talking about the generational gap. Some folks like to speak to someone first and foremost, and some folks want to be able to do all their research online before they have to bother speaking with a sales guy.
The trick is that effective account-based marketing works in both scenarios. For those who work online, marketing can manage the top of the funnel to create far better-quality leads (10 percent odds of win vs 40-70 percent odds of win) and then hand off that same content, talking points and value props for sales to pick up and run. For those who want to work primarily through phone and email first, the same content applies.
Whether we’re dealing with a CEO that’s known as a rainmaker on the phone, or dealing with a young up-and-coming disruptor who’s changing the game around them, they ultimately want the same thing: bring me useful, insightful, actionable information that helps me improve myself, my team and my business. They just have different ways of qualifying for who is best equipped to bring them that information to avoid wasting their time.
This is why I say all sales teams need an appropriate marketing backline to support them. High turnover and unpredictable or spiky revenue flows are reduced or eliminated when proper alignment is created, and we allow customers and human beings to buy the way they want to buy, instead of selling the way we’ve always sold.
Ian Addison, GetLinkedInHelp.com Managing Director, has worked with both enterprise organizations like Schneider and UPS as well as tech startups like Shippabo to apply account-based strategies and The Challenger Sale that shortens sales cycles and improves your chances of closing by 75 percent. Join Ian’s LinkedIn group at http://tinyurl.com/beyondlinkedinleadgengroup
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