Excellent Business to Business Communication
When it comes to building valuable relationships with customers, sales representatives are critical players on the front lines. A major telecom company wanted both to reduce sales force costs and to maintain its revenue. It decided to cut back-office support and protect the frontline sales staff—after all, executives reasoned, salespeople make sales. The mistake that they committed were cut sales force costs across the board, on the theory that if frontline and back-office resources decline equally, the result will simply be to increase the work burden on the remaining employees. Cost cutting without regard to the profiles, importance, or potential of customers risks losing not only low-margin ones but also their high-value counterparts. Meanwhile, the sales force may be left without the resources needed to capitalize on opportunities once the economy recovers. Small changes can have large unintended consequences, so companies must walk a fine line between reducing expenses and maintaining resources sufficient to protect current revenue and future growth. The company’s response to this discovery was twofold. First, it moved all prospecting and account-management activities for smaller customers to telephone sales, with strong Web-based transaction support. That cut total sales costs by more than half and doubled the number of profitable customers in this segment, to 90 percent. Second, for larger customers, the company assigned a team of telephone sales reps to contact the purchasing staffers who control individual orders. This move ensured that the people who actually make the daily buying decisions receive intensive service and reduced the senior managers’ need for expensive face-to-face contact with procurement managers. First, the company made its sales process and reps more efficient by creating a model to predict the needs and spending of customers. Customers are becoming much more comfortable getting the information they need from sales resources over the telephone or through Web conferences and video conferences. While customers haven’t changed their criteria for making purchases, they have become more relaxed about and adept at basing decisions on a mix of interaction types. For people who have not been directly involved in B2B sales activities, the sales process looks simple. However, B2B selling is very complex because the product evaluation and purchase process used by B2B customers is complex. Because the purchase of many products is so complex, affecting many parts of the B2B Company, representatives from every department within the company participate in the product evaluation and purchase recommendation committee. Large B2B enterprises frequently have plants and offices scattered across the country ? and in other countries. This frequently means that sales activities need to be handled by a team of salespeople lead by an account manager who can draw upon resources from throughout the company. This also means that a great deal of information needs to be gathered and shared with the sales team and with sales managers. The software tools used by salespeople have gone under several names over the years, such as "contact management" and "salesforce automation" software. Today, these tools are called "customer relationship management" (CRM) products. When B2B sales was done by individual salespeople calling on a single location, standalone sales force automation products. One aspect of B2B marketing and sales that has not fully developed is the area of B2B ecommerce. While ecommerce for business-to-consumer sales continues to experience double-digit growth rates, B2B ecommerce requires different software and systems to fully satisfy B2B customers.
When it comes to building valuable relationships with customers, sales representatives are critical players on the front lines. A major telecom company wanted both to reduce sales force costs and to maintain its revenue. It decided to cut back-office support and protect the frontline sales staff—after all, executives reasoned, salespeople make sales. The mistake that they committed were cut sales force costs across the board, on the theory that if frontline and back-office resources decline equally, the result will simply be to increase the work burden on the remaining employees. Cost cutting without regard to the profiles, importance, or potential of customers risks losing not only low-margin ones but also their high-value counterparts. Meanwhile, the sales force may be left without the resources needed to capitalize on opportunities once the economy recovers. Small changes can have large unintended consequences, so companies must walk a fine line between reducing expenses and maintaining resources sufficient to protect current revenue and future growth. The company’s response to this discovery was twofold. First, it moved all prospecting and account-management activities for smaller customers to telephone sales, with strong Web-based transaction support. That cut total sales costs by more than half and doubled the number of profitable customers in this segment, to 90 percent. Second, for larger customers, the company assigned a team of telephone sales reps to contact the purchasing staffers who control individual orders. This move ensured that the people who actually make the daily buying decisions receive intensive service and reduced the senior managers’ need for expensive face-to-face contact with procurement managers. First, the company made its sales process and reps more efficient by creating a model to predict the needs and spending of customers. Customers are becoming much more comfortable getting the information they need from sales resources over the telephone or through Web conferences and video conferences. While customers haven’t changed their criteria for making purchases, they have become more relaxed about and adept at basing decisions on a mix of interaction types. For people who have not been directly involved in B2B sales activities, the sales process looks simple. However, B2B selling is very complex because the product evaluation and purchase process used by B2B customers is complex. Because the purchase of many products is so complex, affecting many parts of the B2B Company, representatives from every department within the company participate in the product evaluation and purchase recommendation committee. Large B2B enterprises frequently have plants and offices scattered across the country ? and in other countries. This frequently means that sales activities need to be handled by a team of salespeople lead by an account manager who can draw upon resources from throughout the company. This also means that a great deal of information needs to be gathered and shared with the sales team and with sales managers. The software tools used by salespeople have gone under several names over the years, such as "contact management" and "salesforce automation" software. Today, these tools are called "customer relationship management" (CRM) products. When B2B sales was done by individual salespeople calling on a single location, standalone sales force automation products. One aspect of B2B marketing and sales that has not fully developed is the area of B2B ecommerce. While ecommerce for business-to-consumer sales continues to experience double-digit growth rates, B2B ecommerce requires different software and systems to fully satisfy B2B customers.