The change in the B2B sales process was apparent several years back and HBR has been in the forefront of reflecting the shift. Not necessarily in these exact terms. Take for example the article “The New Sales Imperative” written by Nicholas Toman, Brent Adamson and Cristina Gomez of CEB. The shift is from ‘the customer purchase from us’ journey to a ‘proactive, prescriptive approach that guides customers through decision making’ journey
This is what they identified in their 2017 article:
1. The best suppliers help customers consider what and how of the purchase.
2. They do it by mapping the journey, identifying barriers, designing prescriptions and tracking progress.
3. They avoid focusing on Customers buying from ‘them’ – which is the first completely counterintuitive proposition and
4. They align their sales and marketing teams to ‘support the customer journey from start to finish’.
They build ‘consistent and relevant tools, messaging and guidance to shape and simplify the purchase journey, drive sales and ultimately increase customer loyalty’
In essence they ‘Make Buying Easy!’* Link to the article in the first comment.
*This is also the Pitch.Link motto.
The article uses real case studies to illustrate the points. If you can access it do read it and see how different your current process is – ahead of the curve or behind? The New Sales Imperative https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-new-sales-imperative
