You’re a major corporation with a track record of strong sales for your current product or service. You’ve worked long and hard to produce a unique offering that you know the market needs. It should have flown out of the warehouse, but sales tanked and it has hit the morale and commissions of the sales team. Why?
Alternatively, you are a nimble start-up with experienced founders, who have built their reputation on sales in previous large corporations. Again, you’ve developed a ground-breaking innovation and made some early sales. To really ramp up revenues you have decided to sell through the channel, or you’ve hired a hotshot salesman. But nothing is happening. The only sales are being made by the founders. Why?
It has long been understood that different sales techniques are required depending on the type and maturity of the product, the industry, size of customer, and the market. Some people think ‘sales is sales is sales’, and that any good salesman can simply change or morph their technique to suit the particular circumstance. But over 15 years of research into business-to-business sales has shown that this thinking is fatally flawed. These sales techniques or methodologies are fine-tuning. What really make the difference are engaging with one of the very four clearly defined ‘buying cultures’. These are described in the book with very real examples, and are:
The maturity of the product in the customer’s mind determines which of the four buying cultures is appropriate, and this is most stark in the purchase of technology or software. So, it is not surprising that there is a startling parallel between the buying cultures and the Technology Adoption Life Cycle principles that Geoffrey Moore made popular in his books Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado which focus on buying technology.
So to transform your sales performance you first need to understand where your product is on the maturity curve. If your product is disruptive or innovative it probably requires a Value Created sales approach to mirror the customer’s buying culture, and to “cross the chasm”. But this has a huge impact on your company’s operational culture, because the entire organisation needs to be aligned to that culture, not just sales.
The book paints a vivid picture of the operational culture of a company that is world class in selling innovation. It looks at it from every perspective; executive leadership, R&D, sales management and compensation, the ‘sales animal’, delivery and support. Each area is brought to life by interviews with companies ranging in size from the global corporates with revenues in the billions down to a start-up with two employees and a passion.
But the authors understand that most organizations firstly don’t recognize that buying cultures exist and therefore have little or no alignment. So, set out in a very practical methodology, are the actions that any organization needs to take to assess their current position, analyze the market maturity and then transform them to a proven business model.
The end result is an organizational culture which is aligned with your customer’s buying culture, and positioned for stellar sales growth. Got right, the results are staggering.