An article in the newspaper of “Financieel Dagblad” of Tuesday 12 April stated that regardless of the sector, companies are faced with higher cost increases and that these organizations, especially in the SMB sector, are increasingly absorbing the cost increases themselves and not passing them on to their customers. This is understandable, since after years of moderate price developments, companies are no longer trained in this. Sellers like to make deals, but not to tell customers that the price is going up.

"Impacted by latest trends the B2B buying process has changed, has your customer approach followed?" Not so long ago you could do very well in selling if you were good at asking questions to understand your customers’ needs and then tailoring your solution to these needs and presenting your solution in a compelling way. Times have changed. Buyers are much better informed through business tools like the internet. Sales is invited later and later into the decision-making process and customers are spending less time meeting with suppliers. Gartner research finds that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. Often customers have already identified their issues, defined their needs, and already defined their best solutions or solution criteria. They might just ask you to meet those specifications, at the lowest price possible and buyers then create price competition between different suppliers. There is a clear reason why more and more companies are issuing tenders for more and more of their purchases. Another trend is that there are more people involved in a B-to-B purchase decision than ever before. Latest research by Gartner indicates that the average number of decision influences in major B-to-B purchase decisions has increased to between 6 to 10 people. Often the next major challenge is determining how to help create consensus amongst the decision influences, to ensure that a buying decision will be made and made in your favor. This is key, as practice shows that in more and more buying situations your customer is prepared to postpone or even cancel major buying decisions. During the past Covid years the contact with customers has dramatically changed as before the Covid-19 pandemic most of the sales appointments were conducted face-to-face. In 2017, in-person selling appointments made up over 70% of the sales force, research by Xant suggests. People were accustomed to it. People are now used to seeing products through product demo videos and are open to the convenience of video calls. This is predicted to continue long-term or even never to go away. Gartner says that 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels by 2025. It will become even harder for sales to create the same connection with their customer, as it is more difficult to read the body language. The screen can act as a disconnector, so it is crucial to be organized to also be able to make an emotional connection virtually with the decision makers at your customers. As a result of these trends sales organizations are confronted with challenges which will hinder them to meet 2022 sales objectives: 1. Price pressure, 2. Drying opportunity pipeline, 3. Low conversion ratio and/or 4. Long sales cycles Do you recognize one or more of these challenges? I, as partner consultant with Hovingh & Partners, help people and organizations (internationally) to overcome these challenges by supporting the development of their sales organizations into the best performing in their markets. Best performing sales organizations do something different than their less successful colleagues. In the limited time they are given to spend with their customer they are very capable of challenging the customer's thinking process. They change their customer's view of their problems and are able to challenge the customer in their thinking. They are Masters in discovering latent pain, understanding the Critical Business Issues and are able to find a way to help the customer address them. They change and form the solution picture of the expected partnership with their customers. By doing so, they position themselves as an expert and trusted advisor with whom their customer likes to talk and trust. Their sales are able to make a personal connection as well through face-to-face as virtual contact. Please contact me if you would like to discuss your challenges within your market segment(s) and obstacles your sales team is daily dealing with on your road to success. What's needed to handle or take away these obstacles in the most efficient en effective way.  Please contact me through LinkedIn Messaging or mail (jordi.vanberkum@hovingh.eu)