There is no panacea for selling at scale in B2B enterprises. However, there are ways one can segment their approach to the market and optimize their selling strategy efficiently (low cost, effort, and time), based on the targeted segment. That’s what Selgine is all about.
There’s no shortage of “sales execution platforms”, CRM systems, and marketing campaign management and execution tools. So why consider yet another offer to help make your life easier? Because every now and again, a breakthrough approach to solving the same old problem comes along and radically changes the rules and economics of selling; providing an unfair advantage over alternative approaches being employed by your competition. Selgine is that breakthrough approach.
Selling B2B at scale is so much more difficult than B2C
Sales and marketing motions differ greatly between B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) scenarios. Specifically, B2C typically has a very specific and transactional goal: “get the customer to process an e-commerce transaction” or “get the customer to complete a survey”. In most cases the monthly value or lifetime value of an individual customer, for a given product or service, can not justify a dedicated or hyper personalized approach to marketing and sales. Given this reality, the focus is all about scale. For instance, with B2C e-commerce, the average conversion rate for email is 2.2% and the average form completion (survey) rate is 1.7%. How do you hit your numbers? Volume.
The graphic below denotes the typical B2C scenario of launching B2C email or survey campaigns using two very popular and effective tools. This works for B2C for sure.
B2B is a different beast. Once you inject a sales professional in between the customer and the product or service and gear marketing to support the sales professional’s custom sales approach to the customer the whole game changes. In general, in a B2B environment, marketers do not go “direct” to the customer with any detailed messaging or offers, perhaps some high-level “global” branding and awareness campaigns (eg. “Our annual customer summit is approaching, register now and save 10%!”), but really nothing of significant time-dependent value to drive a product or services deal this quarter. Why? Because a B2B sales representative is the company’s “CEO” at the account. The sales representative knows if the customer is in good standing and may be in the midst of a hot pursuit which can be derailed by non-complimentary or distracting messaging that was “lobbed-in” by marketing “over the head” or “around the back” of the sales representative.
Additionally, B2B is a high-stakes, high-cost endeavor. Sales professionals are expensive, and the better they are the more expensive they are in terms of quota payments – expensive reps is what every company wants 😉.
Challenging environment for Seller
Given this reality, there are a plethora of tools to track the risk and cost of pursuits and to manage the company’s expectations of sales representative performance. Of course, many of these tools are also designed for sales representatives to better prosecute their pursuits using automation to track and manage their activities. The image below denotes a typical B2B sales professional environment, as one can see it’s considerably messier than the B2C graphic above.
What’s worth calling out, in this image, is that the sales representative in the middle, flanked with a “dollar symbol” is captioned with “Ad-Hoc Sales & Customer Engagement” text. As this is the common reality, the sales representative aligns with their customer needs and then pursues a unique value proposition for their customer – compared to their peer sales reps their approaches are all custom or Ad-Hoc for their account needs.
In this world, Sales and Marketing need to be aligned. Oftentimes this is a major point of friction, since sales representatives are performing Ad-Hoc pursuits, and marketing is more geared to producing content and programs that are designed to be replicable, albeit somewhat customizable, tensions arise between these two front-office teams.
The goal? Get high-qualified deals into CRM and progress them through a sales funnel to closure. Hopefully, “Win” status before the end of the quarter.
The presumption of the graphic above is the concept of “perfect knowledge”. What is perfect knowledge? It’s the perception that a sales representative has perfect knowledge of all opportunities at the customer account and perfect knowledge of all products and services in his bag and how they may be an ideal fit for his customer. More often than not, these two “perfect knowledge” assumptions are completely wrong. Why? Well for starters, there’s about a 30% annual turn-over rate of B2B reps, so they are always coming up to speed on your products & services and their accounts. The average B2B deal has a 2.5-month deal cycle, so they are able to raise their heads, get training 3 to 4 times a year, outside those windows, new product and service introductions, new industry trends and innovations may allude them.
To compound the problem, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales; 68% of B2B businesses have not properly identified their funnel; and 65% of B2B businesses have no lead nurturing processes. These three realities pile on the burden a sales representative has to get productive in their account.
Why Selgine
Selgine addresses the very real gaps between perfect knowledge and sales representative performance. How can marketing and business development teams harness information to bridge the gap between perfect knowledge and the reality of lack of education and constant churn in the sales force to maximize sales performance? What data is needed to continuously improve sales performance? Selgine is your answer.
Selgine neither disintermediates your B2B sales force nor does it go directly to your customers. It is a personal concierge for your sales professionals that is managed and brokered by marketing, business development, or sales enablement to orchestrate highly curated, personalized sales motions . If ever there was a question “what value does marketing and business development deliver to sales”; Selgine is the answer. If ever there was a question “what is sales doing to drive up-sells, cross-sells, new product introductions, and attach rates for products, services and supporting marketing initiatives”; Selgine is the answer.
Selgine’s mobile and responsive user-experience is easy to learn and use. With nominal training and experience, you should be able to launch your first sales motion within hours. Need more help? We’ll set it up for you as a white glove concierge service – no need to hire, implement, and dedicate new skills. It's that easy and Selgine is that accommodating.
As the graphic depicts above, we’re not looking to replace your CRM, content management systems, email, calendar, training, and other support systems – we’re integrated with all of them. Two other call outs. First there are two Selgine Logos. Why? Because unlike B2C campaign and survey tools and all other existing CRM and B2B sales execution platforms, Selgine is the only solution with a double-trigger, multi-tier marketing process fully automated.
Engage and Relay
Leveraging your existing infrastructure, Selgine targets and emails a sales motion to very specific segments of your sales force – we call this the “engagement” stage. From there your sales force may “Relay” a pre-built, highly personalized curated email message or sales play to their account contacts. Why two stages? Because your salesforce as the “CEO” of their account needs to be “sold” first on the opportunity before they can accept to pursue the sales motion and relay it to their account.
The sales motion engagement stage provides all the insights and information that an internal sales representative needs to be effective at selling the sales play at their account. Including: a justification on why their account was selected; access to training material to become better educated; scheduling of subject matter experts that can help them more effectively sell; curated content (presentations, internal FAQs, brochures, pricing and commercial details, etc.); pre-populated links into CRM to rapidly create an opportunity; internal surveys; and the ability to opt-out with justification.
The sales play relay stage provides all the insights and information that an external customer needs to make well-informed purchase go / no-go decisions. Including access to subject matter experts, curated content like advisory reports and customer references, video overviews, and the ability to share with other parties.
This multi-tier, just-in-time delivery of training, subject matter expertise, relevant curated content, surveys, and ongoing nurturing is what Selgine calls “B2B2C” marketing or “Sell Smarter at Scale™”
In Conclusion
There are many sales motions that are relevant to sub-segments of your sales force and their customers that never receive the love and attention they deserve from marketing due to a lack of resources, skills, or budget. with Selgine: up-sells, cross-sells, new product launches, industry-based solutions, country and regional based solutions, etc., can be delivered at scale to targeted sales and customer segments simply and cost efficiently. Selgine delivers a breakthrough that radically changes the rules and economics of selling; providing an unfair advantage over alternative approaches being employed by your competition.
The goal? Get high-qualified deals into CRM and progress them through a sales funnel to closure. Hopefully, “Win” status before the end of the quarter.