Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

CHAPTER 14 STRATEGIC CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT AND THE STRATEGIC SALES ORGANISATION
Perhaps most telling in business-to-business marketing has been the dramatic escalation 
in the demands for enhanced service and added value by customers. As a consequence, one 
study calls on management to abandon their fixation of process compliance in sales (score-
cards, activity metrics and so on) and adopt a more flexible approach to selling driven by 
salespeople’s reliance on insight and judgement – ‘insight selling’ is one response to customers 
demanding new and better engagement with their suppliers (Adamson et al., 2013). Put this 
in the context of the Chally Group finding that nearly 40 per cent of business-to-business 
buyers say that they select a supplier because of the skills of the salesperson rather than price, 
quality or service features, to understand the importance of selling quality (Fogel et al., 2012).
Further, the H.R. Challey Group consultancy’s World Class Sales Excellence Research 
Report (2006) lists the views of corporate purchasers and their expectations for the relation-
ship with the salesperson from a supplier:
1 
Be personally accountable for our desired results – the sales contact with the supplier is 
expected to be committed to the customer and accountable for achievement.
2 
Understand our business – to be able to add value, the supplier must understand the 
customer’s competencies, strategies, challenges and organisational culture.
3 
Be on our side – the salesperson must be the customer’s advocate in their own organisa-
tion, and operate through the policies and politics to focus on the customer’s needs.
4 
Design the right applications – the salesperson is expected to think beyond technical 
features and functions to the implementation of the product or service in the customer’s 
environment, thinking beyond the transaction to the customer’s end state.
5 
Be easily accessible – customers expect salespeople to be constantly connected and within 
reach.
6 
Solve our problems – customers no longer buy products or services, they buy solutions to 
their business problems, and expect salespeople to diagnose, prescribe and resolve their 
issues, not just sell them products.
7 
Be creative in responding to our needs – buyers expect salespeople to be innovators, who 
bring them new ideas to solve problems, so creativity is a major source of added value.
These qualities characterise how world-class salesforces are distinguished in the eyes of 
their customers. They describe a customer environment that is radically different from the 
transactional approaches of the past, and that poses substantially different management 
challenges in managing business-to-business customer relationships. However, at the same 
time, business constraints in seller organisations suggest that in most companies there is 
considerable pressure to reduce costs and enhance productivity in the salesforce.