Digitalization provides an unparalleled opportunity for firms to better understand their customers and their buying journey. Yet despite significant efforts and investment, B2B companies have struggled to harness the power of digital tools in their sales and marketing efforts. At Growth Arc, we have identified five cultural norms in B2B firms that act as barriers to results from digital sales and marketing techniques.
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at blind spots firms encounter when breaking down their customers’ buying journey and planning tactics to increase conversion. Today our second cultural barrier looks at organizational dynamics in the selling process.
Barrier 2 - The Customer Belongs Solely to… Sales
In B2B companies, the sales process is traditionally handled by the sales function. Once a lead is generated, it is quickly assigned to a sales team, which recruits and coordinates contributions from other functions on an as needed basis. The organization is therefore dependent on sales to successfully convert the lead.
At first glance, this ownership role seems warranted, as the customer journey is unique and the sales team is best-positioned to nurture client relationships thanks to its strong understanding of the customer.
This delegation of duties, however, can result in three behaviors that impede or halt progress:
- Sales teams restrict the activities required to maximize the conversion rate, resulting in fewer tactics employed and protracted conversion times.
- Other functions must obtain permission from sales to implement their initiatives, hampering the contribution of others in the organization.
- Sales does not proactively compile and share the relevant customer understanding they possess, which perpetuates cross-function information imbalance.
The worst case outcome of these behaviors is that customer-facing functions are siloed. Because sales is isolated, sales teams feel burdened, while other functions are uninformed and feel underutilized. Conversion and top-line results can suffer as a result.
Breaking the Barrier
There are many more relationships throughout a customer buying decision beyond the ones that sales can develop or manage. Under the current model of sales-owned leads, these relationships remain untapped opportunities. Examples include:
- Regulatory approvals - around which Quality groups could engage
- Customers’ custom specification approvals - Product Marketing
- Piloting or trialing of products as customers scale - Operations & Technical Service
It is easy to see why these opportunities remain a blind spot. Many times, roadblocks are discovered too late in the process for sales to alter a given lead’s purchasing decision. Roadblocks often remain unknown until their negative consequences are felt, at which point it is too late. Reactive approaches to resolving roadblocks are limited, and any knowledge gleaned is bookmarked for the future but never acted upon. Effective long-term relationship building cannot occur reactively; instead, it requires a carefully planned systematic approach.
Digital technologies enable diverse customer touch points, which can be used to materially advance conversion. However, exploiting the possibilities requires all relationship holders to be involved in designing, testing, and connecting each activity to a conversion funnel. That means all customer-facing functions must share responsibility for the selling process and collaborate to design activities that contribute to conversion.
Coordination efforts should be owned by a cross-functional team, depending on how the organization is designed, and Sales should be a critical player in the process. Digitalization presents a tremendous opportunity for growth, but it is available only to firms which overcome the barrier of the sales-owned customer.
