A venda no B2B

"The sales force is more important than ever. Regardless of which path customers take, or in which order they take them, they want to deal with people who can help them move toward a purchase decision, be the internal champion at the vendor, and bring it together for that customer. In fact, B2B buyers report that, compared to other sources of information, these interactions are the most influential in their decision making process:
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The source considered the least influential is social media. Don’t believe the hype. Sales people have not been replaced by digital, and providing relevant solutions remains key in most B2B buying scenarios.
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business buyers must justify a decision to others in the organization, especially as capital expenditures flow less liberally in many industries since the financial crisis of 2008. And you are naïve or spending too much time on your smartphone if you believe that a combination of economics, solution identification, product application, risk management, and political journey through the buyer’s organization is now handled predominately online in most buying scenarios and without knowledgeable and savvy sales help."

Trechos retirados de "What Salespeople Need to Know About the New B2B Landscape"

Relacionar estratégia e comportamentos

"To be successful, it’s necessary to ensure your employees fully understand your strategy and what you hope to achieve in the year ahead. Then you must translate a strategy into actionable behaviors to ensure employees are able to carry it forward. After all, business is a performance art: Saying is not the same as doing. But if you can’t say it, clearly and concisely, your people will only have more trouble implementing it, efficiently and effectively."

E na sua empresa, as pessoas sabem qual é a estratégia?
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Existe uma estratégia clara?
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As pessoas percebem que actividades e comportamentos estão em sintonia com a estratégia?

Trecho retirado de "Start Articulating Your Strategy"

E a sua empresa, vende tudo da mesma maneira?

"Any strategy lives or dies on the basis of its customer value proposition.
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Do we ultimately compete on the basis of our cost structure or another basis that increases our target customer’s willingness-to-pay?
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In other words, will we sell it for more or make it for less — and allocate sales resources accordingly?
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If you’re not clear about this, your sales efforts will run into problems.
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Depending upon your value proposition, sales will face different buyers and selling tasks and require different support processes to deliver value."

Em tempos trabalhei com uma entidade que fazia projectos de investigação com PME. Muita dessa investigação era convertida em produtos inovadores que tinham ... pouco sucesso.
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Nunca me perdoei por na altura, apesar de ter feito e comunicado o diagnóstico, nunca ter proposto uma parceria para abordar o problema, estava a trabalhar com eles num projecto interno.
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Muitos dos produtos inovadores não tinham sucesso, acreditava e acredito ainda hoje, porque as PME os tentavam vender da mesma forma que sempre venderam os seus produtos, usando os mesmos comerciais, com os mesmos argumentos e através dos mesmos canais.
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E a sua empresa, vende tudo da mesma maneira?
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Se tenta vender e comunicar acerca dos novos produtos da mesma forma que sempre fez para os clássicos, qual será a implicação mais provável?
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Não será que novos produtos requerem uma abordagem comercial e de marketing diferente?
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Não será que novos produtos requerem uma estratégia clara?

Trechos retirados de "Any Value Proposition Hinges on the Answer to One Question"

"habits that undermine the sales experience"

Frank Cespedes em "Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors that Drive Effective Selling" faz referência este artigo "The basics of business-to-business sales success".
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Alguns pontos a reter:

"These were the key findings of a survey we conducted of more than 1,200 purchasing decision makers in small, medium, and large companies throughout the United States and Western Europe who are responsible for buying high-tech products and services.
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We found a big difference between what customers said was important and what actually drove their behavior. Customers insisted price and product aspects were the dominant factors that influenced their opinion of a supplier’s performance and, as a result, their purchasing decisions. Yet when we examined what actually determined how customers rated a vendor’s overall performance, the most important factors were product or service features and the overall sales experience.
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Of the many habits that undermine the sales experience, two that are relatively easy to fix accounted for 55 percent of the behavior customers described as “most destructive”: failing to have adequate product knowledge and contacting customers too frequently."

Acerca da escolha do âmbito de uma estratégia

"the where-to-play element of strategy. Again, there are multiple dimensions from which you can choose: segments, geographical markets, product or service categories, or others. But choose you must: every firm is always making it easier or harder for certain types of customers to do business with it, and customer selection is a core strategic and selling decision.
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It's a decision that should not be delegated to sales. In many ways, salespeople lack the frame of reference needed to make good scope decisions. Their training, daily attempts to connect and build relationships with buyers, and often financial incentives predispose them to say yes to any need a customer expresses. ... Predictably, studies indicate that "loss of focus" is the most common reason that companies stall and strategies fail. A purely sales-driven culture will proliferate customer segments and services, increase the seller's cost to serve, and dissipate scope choices. Scope decisions require a delineation of the boundaries (e.g., the types of customers, products, or services) that we should not go beyond, given the current strategy."

Trecho retirado de "Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors that Drive Effective Selling" de Frank Cespedes.

Em quantas empresas que conhecem é que isto acontece?

Em muitos projectos de reflexão e desenvolvimento de uma estratégia numa PME, quando saio, a empresa identificou os seus clientes-alvo, formulou a sua estratégia e um conjunto de projectos alinhados com ela. Em parte interessante desses projectos, quando saio, entra o Marketing.
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Para muitas empresas é o primeiro contacto com o Marketing.
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Quase a terminar o livro "Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors that Drive Effective Selling" de Frank Cespedes encontro esta figura:

O Marketing fornece às Vendas "Pricing and promotion analyses, guidelines, programs"...
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Em quantas empresas que conhecem é que isto acontece? Em quantas empresas o Marketing fornece à Comercial o pricing?

Tecto de vidro? Uma hipótese de explicação (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.
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A mesma fonte da parte I, "Six Disciplines for Excellence" de Gary Harpst, também apresenta um outro número interessante:

"Remember that 96% of all business start-ups in the US fail within 10 years, but the failure rate of franchises is less than one third of the rate of regular businesses.Why is this so?
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A significant part of franchises' greater general success is because of alignment. The best franchises have thought through very carefully who their target customer is and what the promise is that they want to make to that customer. And they've thought through all the internal systems and processes to deliver on that promise in the most efficient and effective way. Franchises have learned to invest in developing and maintaining alignment of resources to mission."

A incapacidade de crescer as vendas, para lá de um número que se comporta como um tecto de vidro, julgo que reside nesta falta de estratégia, falta de escolha dos clientes-alvo e falta de alinhamento dos recursos.
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Quando o empresário de uma PME finaliza um ano propondo a ultrapassagem da tal barreira, do tal tecto de vidro, quase sempre faz o que Frank Cespedes resume com graça em "Aligning Strategy and Sales" com o grito de encorajamento:

- Ide e Multiplicai-vos!!!

Uma espécie de: vão para a rua e ganhem clientes. Clientes são clientes, são pessoas ou empresas que pagam pelo nosso produto ou serviço. Não interessa quem eles são desde que tenham dinheiro e paguem.
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O que é que Skinner tentou dizer-nos naquele artigo, "The Focused factory", de Maio de 1974?

""For example, if the company is currently involved in five different products, technologies, markets, or volumes, does it need five plants, five sets of equipment, five processes, five technologies, and five organizational structures? The answer is probably yes." [Moi ici: Convém ler o resto, para perceber o conceito pwp]

O que aprendi com a Electrolux em Novembro de 2006?
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O que aprendi com Terry HilL naquele Verão de 2008?

"the most important orders are the ones to which a company says 'no'."

Claro que as "Valbonas" que não pensam chegam à situação espelhada pelas bolas vermelhas:

A figura coloca as bolas vermelhas, que representam opções, escolhas conscientes ou não que uma empresa faz, quase sempre no meio onde não há compromisso forte. Aquele meio fez-me recordar um tweet interessante de ontem:

It's the middle that gets squeezed. To disrupt make the incumbent the middle. Come high or come low
— Rags Srinivasan (@rags) February 15, 2015

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Até que ponto aquele tecto de vidro intransponível deriva da falta de uma estratégia que alinha os recursos no serviço dos clientes-alvo?
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Oh, wait... e quantas PME definem quem são os seus clientes-alvo?
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Quantas PME estão disponíveis para rejeitar clientes que não se enquadram no perfil dos clientes-alvo?
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Continua.

Estratégia não é isto

"Success and failure in business are not only due to luck, timing, and effort. These things matter. But so does a strategy that makes coherent choices, effectively allocates available resources, and communicates to people in the field. So, what is and is not strategy, and what must you recognize before you can craft a coherent and communicable strategy for sales?
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Strategy is not the same as mission or purpose.
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[missions] are analytically useless for doing what any coherent strategy must do: specify where we do and don't play in this world, and how we propose to win in those places where we do choose to play.
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Strategy is not the same as values.
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Strategy is not the same as war or a battle plan.
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business, unlike a war or battle, is not primarly about defeating an enemy. Business is primarly about customer value: targeting customer groups and tailoring sales and other activities to serve those groups better or differently than others.
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"The purpose of a business is to create a customer." That's also the purpose of purpose and any business strategy. Make customers, not war." 

Trechos retirados de "Aligning Strategy and Sales" de Frank Cespedes.

Focalização e custo de oportunidade

"The notion of opportunity cost, central to economic profit (and, for that matter, to economics for over a century), is apparently not an easy concept for busy executives. I don't mean that it's an intellectually difficult notion. We all know the basic idea. Opportunity cost is the sacrifice you make related to the next-best alternative available; it's what you forgo when you make a choice for X rather than Y or Z. The issue is not IQ. Rather, as usual in business, it's living the idea in practice, because opportunity costs are not just financial; they also include the lost time, effort, and other activities associated with resource allocation." 

Talvez esta dificuldade ajude a perceber o porquê da dispersão, da ausência de estratégia em tantas PME.
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Sem noção do sacrifício incorrido, torna-se fácil entender como a pressão para a focalização é pouco eficaz.
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Trecho retirado de "Aligning Strategy and Sales" de Frank Cespedes.

A sua empresa, consegue ser clara?

Na linha de "Sobre a paranóia da eficiência e do eficientismo" e de "Aumentar o "producer surplus", o caminho menos percorrido (parte IV)" este texto "Any Value Proposition Hinges on the Answer to One Question":

"the key issue is always: what is the center-of-gravity in our approach? Do we ultimately compete on the basis of our cost structure or another basis that increases our target customer’s willingness-to-pay? In other words, will we sell it for more or make it for less — and allocate sales resources accordingly?
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Sell it for more. Here, your product or service provides better performance on attributes that are important to target customers and for which they are willing to pay a premium.
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Make it for less. Here, your cost structure allows you to sell and make money at prices that competitors cannot. Realities in many industries typically allow only a few firms to compete successfully in this manner. Once they do, moreover, their scale advantages make it difficult for others to duplicate.
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You must be clear with your people about where your business falls along this spectrum.
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If you’re not clear about this, your sales efforts will run into problems. Externally, there will always be someone out there who can beat you on cost and price, or someone else who tailors its operations and sales efforts to the performance and buying criteria of a segment better than you can. Depending upon your value proposition, sales will face different buyers and selling tasks and require different support processes to deliver value.
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Strategy requires choice, clear communication, and coherent performance management practices, not just stirring metaphors, with the people who deal with customers. A moment of truth is the customer value proposition. Clarity about that will help your salespeople (and everyone else) focus more efficiently, qualify customers more effectively, and allow your firm to allocate resources more profitably."

Um dos grandes problemas passa por isto "Subtrair é tão difícil". É difícil deixar alguma possibilidade de fora, quer-se ir a todas.

A estratégia continua a ser importante

Todos os dias encontro exemplos de quão importante é ter uma estratégia e ser capaz de a executar e de a respeitar, todos os dias. E muitas vezes vejo exemplos de desalinhamento estratégico, verdadeiro exterminador de valor:

"Strategy has shrunk. For many firms and even for some prominent strategy consultants, the concept is now nothing more than “just-in-time decision making” or “a few critical initiatives” or other variations on “adaptability.”
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Adaptability is important. To use a retailing metaphor: every strategy has a sell-by date and, despite the polemics of adaptability pundits, few have ever denied that. Stability is not a necessary assumption behind the notion of strategy as integrated choice.
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So consider why some in your organization might equate strategy with adaptability. Sometimes (often?) it is what people say when they’ve not done their homework about the market or don’t want to commit to tough choices that mean more and less resources for different functions and business units.
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Business today, like yesterday, requires choices and tradeoffs, whether or not you acknowledge that within and beyond the C-suite. As a guiding principle, however, adaptability is analytically useless for doing what any coherent strategy must do: specify where we do and don’t play in specific markets and how we propose to win in places where we do choose to play. If your firm doesn’t do this, then over time in a competitive market, one or both of two parties will choose for you: either competitors or (in voting with their feet) customers. Neither group necessarily has your best interests at heart."

Trechos retirados de "There’s No Excuse for Avoiding Strategy"