I once read a quote that said something like “Clarify your purpose. What is behind everything you do? When you know this, it’s very empowering and the path is clear”
I could not agree more, especially when it comes to B2B sales.
Here at Flume, we talk a lot a lot about the three key steps to driving predictable revenue growth:
- Start with the right purpose – shift your perspective to the buyer’s view and what they can achieve.
- Agree what good looks like, and measure it
- Drive sales transformation one step at a time
I’ll explore each of these steps in depth in my new blog series, with a little help from Flume friends – Kate Philpot, Sales Enablement Lead at Getty Images, and Darren Loveday, Chief Growth Officer at Mention Me.
So, we will start here, let me ask you – what is the right purpose?
The answer to this question shifts the paradigm of sales success in your organisation. Because when you understand the right purpose the path to predictable revenue growth becomes a whole lot clearer.
The right purpose is one that is buyer-led. Here’s why…
The importance of a buyer view and why you need to shift perspective
Before we dive into the why and how, let’s start with a bit of context.
The global sales landscape is more unpredictable than ever:
- 69% of reps are missing targets
- Win rates have declined by 18%
- 44% of deals are slipping
- Deal values are down 21%
- Sales cycle has increased by 16%.
Why is it so tough out there?
Because buying is harder than ever. The B2B buying journey today is multifaceted, multi-stakeholder, highly informed, risk-averse, and incredibly dynamic. Buyers want sellers to help them avoid risk, build certainty, drive action, and demonstrate what’s in it for them.
But most of all, buyers want a great experience.
According to Gartner, 53% of why buyers buy today is not based on product, price, or brand dominance. It is based on experience.
If you don’t understand that your purpose is to put yourself (and everyone who works for you) in the shoes of the buyer, design processes with them in mind, and act in ways that consistently add value – how are you going to deliver them the great experience they require?
What do the high performers think?
Kate Philpot agrees. The buyer’s view is of the utmost importance at Getty. She believes that in many ways stepping into the buyer’s shoes is getting back to basics – understanding what the customer needs so you can provide them with the best solution. She explains that all too often sellers resort to transaction-based selling because the complexity inherent in today‘s buying process to just too difficult to untangle.
Kate believes it is vital for predictable revenue growth that sales leaders detangle these complexities for their teams. She says the biggest gift a business can give to its sales team is helping them take the complexity out of the sales process – by helping them understand the buying process. “Start lifting stones”, she says. “Figure out why it’s difficult for your buyers, why they’re not responding in the way you would like them to. Be hands-on and review calls, spot what opportunities are being missed, and importantly coach sellers on how to shift their perspective.”
Mention Me have achieved an astonishing 97% revenue predictability, and Darren Loveday puts a lot of this down to their laser focus on the buyer and adopting a buyer-led purpose. He says too many organisations and sales leaders fall foul of simply looking at key sales metrics and assuming they are representative of the customer experience being delivered. He agrees with Kate – start lifting stones.
“Don’t just look for the big issues, it’s the small cracks in performance across the whole go-to-market team that have the biggest potential to inject conflict into the buying process”, he explains. “We use a winning-by-design sales framework; our sales leaders are hands-on, they understand the buyers, they set expectations, and they coach their teams to achieve them. We are always learning from what’s landing with the buyer, and what’s not.”
Set your buyer-led purpose…
…and put yourself on the path to predictable revenue growth
Companies delivering great buying experiences typically grow twice as fast as those that deliver average ones.
Here are my top three tips:
- Focus your go-to-market team on making it easy for the right people and companies to buy more
- Focus your sales team on making it easy for the right customers to drive desired outcomes through:
- Personalisation -personalise their approach and tailor every interaction
- Education – add value at every stage of the buying cycle by being a strategic buying advisor
- De-risking – put confidence in the purchase with constant qualification of approach and reaffirmation of value
- Focus your sales leadership team on making it easy for their sales team to sell more by:
- Fostering a commitment culture
- Modelling high performance sales approaches
- Coaching the core (what does this mean?)
- Unblocking blocked deals
Join the buyer-led high-performers with the help of Flume
High-performing businesses prioritise behaviour change and invest in developing, embedding and continuously enhancing the right buyer-led sales behaviours. It works. Businesses prioritising the customer experience as part of a buyer-led strategy achieve revenue growth rates 1.8 times higher than those that don’t. And according to Hubspot data, a seamless buyer-led experience can drive a 27% increase in customer retention rates.
Watch our free on-demand webinar to hear from Kate and Darren and see the transformational impact of shifting perspective for yourself.
But if you need more convincing download a copy of our predictable revenue growth whitepaper and deep dive into the buyer-led sales behaviours your team needs in 2025.
Stay tuned for my next blog on how to agree what good looks like and measure it…
