B2B Selling Strategies and Tools

Survive the challenges of B2B Accounts!     

B2B account development and management of institutional, corporate enterprise and those accounts along the value chain is certainly very challenging. Bluntly put, it has one of the highest failure rates among selling tracks. Not everyone survives. Quite a few excel. Why? First, it is complex. Second, it normally means besting a salivating horde of competitors or beating an obsessed oligopolistic rival:  acquiring accounts, switching them from competition or defending incumbency.  Often, failure is unforgiving. Either you get the business or somebody else does.

Apart from starting with good sales talents (potentially or as a matter of the relevant track record) and ensuring that they have superior knowledge of your products and services, the major success differentiator is STRATEGY.  Add the right TOOLS to that and your company through your account sales personnel will have superior advantage over your competition.  After all, performance mediocrity is an expensive luxury that can hardly be afforded in B2B Selling, particularly when it comes to lost opportunities and lost accounts.

Perhaps you would agree that giving your B2B account personnel a couple of days off the field to learn Strategies and Tools of their craft, for a lifetime of career use, is a worthwhile investment. 

Key Benefits to Participants

The participants will gain:

• knowledge of B2B selling strategy development
• familiarization with B2B selling tools
• seed implants of B2B selling skills that are related to strategy development and the use of B2B selling tools
• confidence points that will serve to multiply effectiveness in this craft

Key Benefits to Companies

Your company will gain:

• eventually from sales, revenues and profits generated by better trained and more equipped B2B sales personnel
• from acquiring new accounts, switching accounts from competitors and defending incumbency in accounts won versus competition
• from avoiding handing over account opportunities to competitors because of strategic account development failure
• from positive ripple effects on other team members
• from the impact of a more productive and job-satisfied B2B sales personnel/team

Program Concept     

With the use of a creative parallel simulation, participants are unthreateningly engaged in problem solving of an initial case that will eventually reveal plenty of realities in account development of institutional, corporate and enterprise accounts, paving the way for raising their awareness level and eventual acceptance of the significance of strategy and tool usage.

The participants are then exposed to various situational archetypes where account development strategy options are discussed and the optimal strategy selected for application. Participants will be provided the scientific part of account strategy development (framework and process), which shall cover both the business aspects as well as systematic relationship development.

Stories, cases and examples are used to enable visualization of key learning points as well as the application end of the spectrum. A combination of methodology such as case work analysis, dynamic group discussions, facilitator-induced class discussions, case work processing and critiquing all confluence to solidify the participants’ grasp of the valuable strategies and tools. 

Program Overview

Activity 1: Parallel Simulation Case (will help illustrate the B2B Selling picture, components and realities)

• Group Case analysis and dynamics
• Presentation of strategy recommendations
• Class-wide discussion
• Realization extraction
• Activity learning summary

Module 1: Demystifying the Client-side Complex Organizational Psyche

• Client-Organization buying rationale frameworks
• People-role factor matrix analysis
• Buying action process analysis

Module 2:  B2B Account Situation Archetypes

• Account situation archetypes
  • New acquisition
  • Switching from competition
  • Incumbency Defense
• Situation archetype analysis framework
• Tools for situation archetype analysis

Module 3:  B2B Account Strategy Development

• Account strategy development process
• Account strategy dimensioned matrix of options (a lot more than just profit crunching price-cutting)
•  Matching the situation archetype with the appropriate account strategy
• Integrating people-organizational dimension into the account strategy

Culminating Module: Tool Use & Strategy Development Lab 

• Group case analysis and dynamics
• Situation archetype diagnosis and analysis
• Situation archetype-strategy matching
• Group Recommendation Presentations
• Facilitator-led class-wide analysis and critiquing
• Summary of case learning points

Case examples from the following products / industries may be cited:

• Advertising
• Automotive
• Agriculture
• Corporate Banking
• Construction
• Education
• Energy
• Food & Beverage
• Insurance
• Personal Care
• Professional Services
• Telecom
• Technology

Case examples of the following scenarios shall be discussed:

• Understanding the complex nature of account development of institutional, corporate and enterprise accounts
• Psychology of the buying organization
• Client buying activity process
• Roles count and not positions
• Strategic relationship development
• Various account development situation archetypes
• Strategic options for each situation archetype
• Go or no go for with respect to client business opportunities
• How to handle various account development challenges

Who should attend: This course should be required of every person engaged or about to be engaged in handling B2B accounts such as institutional, corporate, enterprise accounts or accounts along the value chain regardless of whether your company is selling products, services or a combination of both. It is suggested that account management team members from the head to the front liners should undergo this training program so that no one becomes a weak link.  Likewise, companies would benefit from sending to this program their account development support group members, such as those coming from finance, marketing, operations and even the technical side, for as long as they may have a say or are part of the critical process that enables or detrimentally incapacitates acquiring clients and client opportunities. After all, B2B selling is not only the responsibility of the accounts people, though they must hold accountability for it.