Success in a Sales 2.0 World – a Marketing Viewpoint

To date, I don’t think that Sales 2.0 has gotten much traction in corporate marketing organizations. I don’t hear my marketing friends talking about it. I don’t see articles on the challenges to and benefits realized by marketing organizations that have embraced Sales 2.0. Yet, I believe that the goals of Sales 2.0 cannot be achieved without the equal, coordinated, and cooperative support of corporate marketing.

For those of you who are new to Sales 2.0, let’s start with a primer on Sales 2.0. In the Sales 2.0 “commercial “ video for this year’s conference, Sales 2.0 was defined as:

“A marriage between best practice methodologies and productivity-enhancing technologies to achieve two things. One to improve productivity and number two to accelerate the sales cycle.”

Indeed, the focus of Sales 2.0 over the past couple of years has been to encourage the adoption of a variety of technologies, products, and services in sales and marketing organizations. Some of these technologies help improve corporate intelligence about the prospective customer. Other technologies assist the sales person in communicating with the prospective customer. Yet other technologies help sales manage the internal sales process.

From the marketing perspective, it is not the technologies that interest me. Many marketing organizations, especially those in high technology, already use these technologies. Instead, I see two aspects of Sales 2.0 that I believe are essential for marketing’s success in today’s web-based business climate.

1. Focus on the customer’s buying process.


The truth is that when it comes to the buying process, the customer is in control. As the authors of the 2003 Harvard Business Review article “The Customer Has Escaped” put it, “customers act like their own ‘general contractor’.” Customers select the information, components, and purchase channel that meet their needs. Marketers and sales need to understand the customer, the customer’s needs, and customer’s buying process. Then they need to design a buying experience that facilitates that buying process.

2. Alignment of sales and marketing organizations.


The customer’s buying process crosses the boundaries that exist between marketing and sales organizations. Sure, there are problems of transferring information about the customer from one organization to another. But more important is the creation of a seamless buying experience that builds persuasive momentum from the first customer touch. That seamless buying experience can only be achieved when marketing and sales tackle the design and implementation of the buying experience together.

It is critical that marketing and sales understand the difference between the corporate sales process and the customer’s buying process. The vast majority of businesses today force the customer to fit into “the way they do sales”. What a frustrating experience that is from both sides. If marketing and sales don’t embrace the customer’s buying process, they will find it very difficult to consistently accelerate their sales process.