The first step to selling is to understand the target market – and the competition. A systematic analysis can help getting the necessary clarity of mind.

‘The Customer’ does not really exist in B2B. You are not selling to a company after all, but to people – several different people, actually, with their own roles, drivers, motivators and problems.

Who has an impact on your sales process? Who influences? Who are gatekeepers? Who are decision makers?

The buying process starts long before a customer will ever talk to you. Understanding the steps, indeed the journey, a customer will take before he buys anything is crucial to define your engagement strategy.

Not all people are equal. Each of us has their own unique communication style – and a clash of styles can quickly terminate any sales conversation. Understanding yourself, and your counterpart, is critical for successful sales.

It is critical to really understand what properties of your offering provide value for which customer persona. And not in the form of an unstructured brainstorming, but in the form of a solid, quantitative analysis that immediately shows how valuable your offering will be to each buyer persona.

By comparing the value of your offering with what the competition is offering you can find your sweet spot – and make sure your value proposition is supreme.

Account based sales, or mass-marketing? Outside sales-reps, or inbound sales? And do I need a presales team?

More than ever, sales (and marketing) need to quickly adapt to changing environments. Set it up and continue doing the same thing does not work any more. Try something, test it, improve it – or discard it. Agile methodologies initially designed for development or project management environments have their own advantages in the sales arena.

Who are your channels? Do you know which market segments they actually address effectively? Do they have the contacts they should have? And how do you enable them?

Account Management is very different from e.g. a hunter making sales calls. What does it take? And how to you lay out an Account Development Plan that helps you make your business?

The customer buying journey looks at how customers make their decision – and when and how they will have touch points with you. Your engagement plan will leverage this understanding, and plan the engagement from you side – to maximize your impact.

Back to the basics: How do you plan to do you sales – or your go-to-market? What are the steps? Which tools can help, and which information should they contain? Ultimately, this is basically your stategic template…

In many large companies, sales and marketing hardly talk to each other. Which is a pity, given that this is a serious waste of resources – and revenue. Getting both silos connected is a worthwhile exercise!

Generative AI is creating a lot of attention in a lot of areas – and Sales definitely should be one of them. From researching and understanding your customers to building messages and creating storylines, tools like ChatGPT have the the potential to become indispensable.