How Gartner Helps CSOs with the New B2B Buying Journey
Sales reps are a channel to customers, not the channelCustomers are largely channel-agnostic when seeking the information they need to get a job done. As a result, sales reps are not the only channel to customers, but simply a channel, and alignment across in-person and digital channels is crucial for supporting customers in the way they actually buy.
Supplier pipelines can’t speak the truthMost sales organizations organize activity around a linear pipeline, seeking to move opportunities from one stage to the next. For customers, however, purchase progress is far better defined in terms of job completion rather than stage progression. As a result, while pipeline reviews might indicate a preponderance of opportunities stuck in sales Stage 5, for example, there is no way of knowing through a linear, supplier-centric sales funnel where exactly customers are truly struggling to make progress in any given deal.
Sales and marketing must operate in parallel, not serial, fashionMost sales and marketing teams are organized in serial fashion: Marketing generates and nurtures demand early through digital channels before handing off the most qualified of opportunities to sales for in-person pursuit. Customers, however, don’t buy in a linear fashion. Rather, they use both digital and in-person channels with near-equal frequency to complete each of the buying jobs more or less simultaneously. As a result, in today’s world of B2B buying, there is no handoff from marketing to sales, or digital to in-person. It’s a parallel process, not a serial one. |
