Welcome to the final installment of our Essential Ingredients series. We have covered a wide range of topics essential to maximizing the value of the Seismic Enablement platform, including Training and Coaching, Change Management, Content Strategy, Governance, Metadata Taxonomy, Modular Content, and Enabling Customer-Facing Teams. Today, we focus on the Modern Selling Approach, which forms the foundation for any go-to-market (GTM) initiative by mapping your customer’s buying journey and developing a market engagement strategy that facilitates this journey.
The Changing Landscape of Buying
The way buyers purchase has changed dramatically in recent years. Simply providing information about our offerings or following a traditional sales process is no longer sufficient. Today’s buyer wouldn’t even engage with you if they weren’t already aware of the value of your offerings. Modern buyers demand relevance and insight specific to their buying journey. They are likely at least 50% through their journey by the time you get involved.
Key Points About Today’s Buyer:
- More Informed: Buyers are well-versed in alternatives and can self-serve most of their information needs.
- Complex Decisions: More individuals are involved in the buying decision, making the process more complex.
- Overwhelmed with Offers: Buyers are bombarded with offers and information and regularly abandon offers that are potentially valuable to them. Every organization has more opportunities to invest in than they have the time or money to do so.
- Status-Quo Bias: Change is hard, and buyers are often inclined to stick with the status quo.
The Role of Revenue Enablement
In today’s world, the role of revenue enablement is to enable customer-facing teams to engage in, stay engaged with, and positively influence the buying journey. Teams must facilitate all the roles involved through this complex journey. Creating content and training solely about your product is no longer the path to success. You must provide customer-facing roles with the content, skills, knowledge, and direction needed when and where it’s required.
Steps to a Modern Selling Approach
- Map Your Customer’s Buying Journey
There are six strands to the Buying Journey DNA that impact success:
a. Triggers: Identify the activities, events, or experiences that initiate a buying journey.
b. Steps: Determine the specific activities by role that the buyer must go through and identify touchpoints where you should get involved.
c. Key Players: Recognize the roles involved within and external to the organization.
d. Buying Style: Understand defined styles that indicate how a customer will approach their buying decision. Refer to Chapter 7 of “How Customers Buy and Why They Don’t” for more details.
e. Value Drivers: Identify the motivations for the buyer to move forward in their journey, which differ by role and stage.
f. Buying Concerns: Identify inhibitors that could slow down or stop a buying journey, often the most critical strand in the DNA.
- Develop a Market Engagement Strategy
This strategy outlines how and when to engage, stay engaged, and positively impact the buying journey. It involves harmonizing the strands of the DNA with four key imperatives:
- Adopt a Precision Marketing and Selling Approach
Adopt an Outside-In™ perspective focused on the customer buying journey rather than your products or solutions. Develop a market messaging matrix that meets each key player where and when they are, delivering relevance and value at each point.
Conclusion
A modern selling approach is the foundation for Seismic success. It’s not just about the technology. By developing this modern selling approach and focusing on all the essential ingredients, you will achieve full value and realize the true potential of Seismic.
For more insights about how to establish a modern selling approach and to see how our Essential Ingredients program can benefit your organization, feel free to reach out to our team. Together, we can unlock Seismic’s full potential.
Contact Us:
Market-Partners Inc.
800 Shiloh Canyon, Santa Rosa, CA 95403
+1 707 575 4712
[email protected]
market-partners.com
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