You’re likely familiar with the idiom ‘it takes a village’. An ‘all hands on deck’ approach to a momentous challenge. Solution-selling takes a village. The target isn’t a singular prospect and the ‘road to close’ is often an evolving, circular process.
For a business to adopt a ‘solution’ that impacts the entire enterprise, multiple decision-makers, influencers and end-users will have contributed along the way.
The ultimate task for the ‘solution-seller’ is to line up the right targets. And critically important, approaching the ‘key’ target first. A strategy that will get you access to the decision-making metrics [the process] and eventually, to the other players.
This requires a unique focus on ‘demand-generation’ as a critical component of your business-development strategy. Business development and demand generation should be symbiotic.
Forbes Magazine (July 29, 2020), in their article “Demand Generation Playbook: Five Recommendations To Make Business Development More Valuable”, insists “business development is an indispensable part of the demand generation process”.
Forbes refers to “high-performing companies” as those who have a business-development (BD) strategy perfectly aligning with all sales initiatives.
The goal of all sales initiatives is to maintain a pipeline filled with revenue opportunities. If Business Development is aligned with that goal, it will require a Demand Generation strategy that incorporates Account-Based Marketing (ABM).
The ABM component ensures that the process incorporates essential market ‘identifiers’ in order to determine if a prospect is indeed a ‘qualified’ target.
Qualified targets are essential to a successful business-development campaign. It’s the ‘secret sauce’ of Demand Generation. It’s the process of separating ‘suspects’ from ‘decision influencers’.
Ultimately “qualified” opportunities begin to stream, mid-funnel, where your sales leaders take over the sales and nurturing process.
I’d like to share Forbes conclusion:
“There is no silver bullet for effective business development. It takes a synchronized effort and team alignment to gain trust. The truth is that you don’t need a silver bullet. There are methods that can help you align your organization. Eliminate that gap between BD and sales by creating a singular mission so that the pipeline overflows with opportunities that the team can close.”
Second Sight, as your Demand Generation partner, ensures seamless alignment with your sales strategy. Account-Based Marketing principals are the foundation at Second Sight for identifying and targeting ‘qualified’ prospects. Campaigns are then structured to produce meetings that will result in ‘qualified’ opportunities. It’s a selling solution for those selling solutions.
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