CEO at Vivun, powering incredible buyer experiences.
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There’s a new reality in B2B selling as environmental conditions and market forces have drastically shifted over the past five years: Covid-19 has accelerated the digitization of B2B sales, product-led growth (PLG) is no longer just for startups and sales playbooks now reward consumption and usage rather than just a signed contract. Today’s winners in the modern B2B marketplace will take advantage of these new trends and not hesitate to throw out old playbooks.
Let’s take a deeper look.
Customer preference for digital B2B selling experiences has produced highly educated buyers and put a spotlight on products.
Buyers have never wanted to get hands-on more quickly with products, and they want to learn at their own pace without having to listen to long sales presentations or build a relationship with their account executive. According to Google, as of 2019, 94% of B2B buyers were conducting online research before they interacted with a sales representative, and this number has likely only increased. The shift in buyer education has yielded informed users who often interact with trials and freemium models well before the first sales meeting. When researching products, customer preference for digitally enabled self-service has jumped significantly since 2019.
When salespeople do finally have their first conversations with buyers, the dialogue is typically far more direct. Buyers don’t want to waste time and wish to stay away from stale, abrasive sales tactics that don’t take their needs and timelines into account. They want to get down to business and into the details with experts, and they’re more focused on finding a technical fit in the product than ever before.
Product-led growth is unlocked by the expertise of presales, not traditional sales tactics.
There is no shortage of successful PLG companies entering the public market; in fact, all of the top initial public offerings in 2019 were PLG companies. But the rise of PLG isn’t the whole story. The B2B buying process is led not by general value proposition but instead by actively demonstrating the benefits of implementation of the product, which drives the importance of presales team members, who are experts in product, identifying use cases and attaching capabilities to buyer pain points. Buyers also need to provide clear proof of value to secure additional budget and streamline expansions, and vendors need to show them high-impact outcomes. This can’t be done hands-off in the cloud—this is where presales comes in.
Buyers’ expectation of getting expert support and guidance during their entire evaluation has driven the demand for presales. According to our research, presales is growing healthily, with over 121,000 presales jobs posted on LinkedIn as of January. It’s hardly a surprise; at a time when many no longer view sales as a trustworthy profession, buyers want to collaborate with experts who build trust through total transparency.
In a PLG world, buyers want to run the sales process their way with experts guiding them—as opposed to being held at arm’s length from a product and unable to discover whether its capabilities meet their requirements. According to an article published by McKinsey & Company, “[selling] requires technical chops and often deeper vertical expertise…to win customer confidence.” Today, solutions must fulfill buyers’ critical use cases as quickly as they are identified and be useful immediately, delivering value faster than other options in the market.
Sales playbooks now focus on success over signing.
For many companies, a signed contract is no longer the end game for the sales team. Instead, we’re seeing organizations tying sales compensation to customer usage and success. One example is Snowflake, a client of ours that pioneered a new philosophy around enterprise sales where incentives are driven by successful implementations, not just closed deals. The company asks leaders to consider a fresh approach to how sales representatives are compensated to account for their new role: “You must incentivize sales reps to think about usage and how each customer can uncover more value. ... Pay should be based on the value that a sales rep helps a customer realize by using your solution.”
Aligning consumption and compensation ensures early in the sales process that the right technical fit is established for the buyer and that a smooth transition will be facilitated from technical demonstration to implementation. When presales and sales are paid the moment the buyer starts using the product, all departments touching the deal are incentivized to nail seamless hand-offs that drive renewals. Buyers who are successful and feel supported beyond the sale are more likely to renew with a team that continuously strives to improve, communicates value to their organization and supports them through the hurdles.
Shifting market tailwinds are changing B2B selling as we know it.
From Covid-19 accelerating the digitization of B2B selling to the rise of PLG and the growth of presales to drive tech wins and the product roadmap, the selling environment of today barely resembles the one that existed even five years ago. Technology is being built differently, the demands of modern B2B buyers have changed and leadership must be open to reimagining company culture and compensation. The companies that embrace these changes will see their sales teams continue to deliver incredible end-of-quarter results; the ones that don’t will watch in stunned silence as their deals continually slip.
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