Disrupted by the emergence of web marketing and social media, the sales profession is being completely redefined. Inbound marketing, content marketing, social selling are all terms that any business developer worthy of the name absolutely had to master in 2017. What should be remembered from these new approaches ? Sophie Panot, Sales Director at Webmecanik, answers.
Why is it urgent for companies to open up to other sales approaches ?
You have to understand that sales prospecting has entered a new era. In the 1990s, salespeople went door to door, or they picked up the phone book and made calls in every direction. At best, they followed up with loyal customers by mail. Today, thanks to social media and tools like marketing automation, we can implement new sales strategies that deliver much better results. I’m thinking first of inbound marketing, which consists of attracting prospects to you through interesting content. But also sales automation, which allows highly personalized mailings to be sent on a large scale. Finally, even though the practice does not really fall under marketing automation, social selling aims to identify profiles interested in your business, and then turn them into qualified prospects.
Do these new methods replace the old ones ?
In my opinion, we are clearly beginning a new chapter. Besides, salespeople today no longer want to go door to door or waste their time making “ cold ” phone calls. They want to use methods that are more effective and less intrusive. Among traditional practices, only trade shows still hold any interest in their eyes. For example, at Webmecanik, we split our sales activity as follows: 20% social selling, 10% sales automation (personalized emailing to databases), 20% from our network and 50% inbound requests thanks to our marketing automation / inbound marketing strategy. Roughly speaking, 70% of people come to us versus 30% of people we gently go out and recruit.
If canvassing is evolving, then the sales profession is changing as well…
It depends on how you look at things. For me, the profession is still the same : analyzing the market, identifying projects, qualifying them and selling the appropriate solution. What is changing is the arrival of new tools : marketing automation software, social media, partner events, webinars… Take inbound marketing, for example. The philosophy is to give something before receiving. First, you build interest among your cold prospects through valuable content, and take the opportunity to qualify them better by observing what they consume. It is only once you are sure of their maturity that the salesperson takes over. Some companies even use “ scoring ” systems. A certain number of points is assigned to the prospect according to their actions (opening a newsletter, downloading a document…). The salesperson only calls a prospect when they have just exceeded a certain score.
What mistakes should be avoided when starting out with this type of approach ?
You must not skip steps. One of the important points is to be vigilant about change management internally. Everyone must understand the choice of these new methods. You also have to clearly determine the customer’s decision cycle. In other words, all the steps required to convert a prospect into a customer. This means adapting to your market and not duplicating theoretical scenarios. For example, the salesperson does not always need to be involved right from the beginning of the process. It depends on the product or service being sold.
What is the level of maturity among your peers with regard to these new methods ?
We can feel a big leap forward. That said, there is still a lot of evangelization to do. Some managers of small companies remain very attached to their old sales methods. In the long term, I imagine the sales profession evolving toward 100% advisory work. It will no longer be about selling. All the information will have been provided upstream via all available channels. The focus will instead be on guiding the customer, building with them the best solution to solve their issues, and helping them make the right choice.
Okédito’s point of view
In B2B, when they create at least 3 exclusive pieces of content per month, companies generally see an increase of more than 50% in the number of leads generated.
While the effectiveness of a quality-content distribution approach to significantly boost the acquisition of new prospects is no longer in doubt, at Okédito we also advocate an essential prerequisite for the performance of new sales approaches: aligning that content with the sales process. An exercise that we summarize here in 5 key steps:
- Understand how your customers buy your products and services and describe the typical sequence of conversations (stages) that lead to closing the sale.
- With the sales teams, identify the stages at which they struggle to maintain contact and/or move the prospect forward in the process.
- For each stage of the modeled process, design, produce or adapt the premium content and messages that will increase the impact of conversations, whether oral or digital. Particular attention should then be paid to content intended for stages considered sensitive from the sales teams’ point of view.
- Train and coach sales and marketing teams in the use of the content bundle and the sales process that has been modeled. This concerns all the people who interact with prospects and customers, but also those who manage marketing automation and CRM software.
- Only then should you align the settings of your marketing automation solution, the scoring rules that characterize the maturity of your prospects, and your sales performance management system (CRM).
About Okédito:
Okédito is a Content Marketing / Inbound Marketing agency based in Paris and Lyon.
Its credo: premium journalistic content to attract the right audience and turn that audience into loyal customers and then ambassadors. A whole program that the agency deploys thanks to marketing automation and its Content-to-Business® methodology born of 7 years of experience.
Source of the statistics: Content Marketing Institute and Okédito
