Bob Apollo is the founder and principal consultant behind Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, one of the UK’s leading B2B sales and marketing performance improvement specialists. Bob works with promising early stage companies to help them “Cross the Chasm” from early adopters to mainstream markets, and with established organisations to refocus their sales and marketing activities and revitalise revenue growth. Below is an excerpt from next weeks Business901 Podcast.
Joe: Throughout your work, I see the word process pop up time and time again, and could you explain that to me. Is it a list of sales activities, reactions or how should we look at sales processes?
Bob Apollo: Great question to start with and I’ll give you my perspective on it. You see, I think in a sales context, process is best thought of as a series of best practices that when performed enable organizations and individuals to more effectively target, engage and convert more of the right sort of prospects. But, in the sort of world of complex buying processes that my clients typically work in, it’s really important to think of these things as flexible frameworks, not rigid or prescriptive scripts, a skeleton, not a cage. I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that sales processes of its nature rigid. The art of selling, I think, in part is the ability to certainly approach a customer in a well-defined, structured, thoughtful way. But then, to be able to react, to adapt, to listen and to change tact according to what you discover in the conversation.
Joe: I’ve always struggled with the concept of a marketing funnel. I think of it as putting customers inside this funnel and putting your foot in it and trying to stick them through it. I struggle with that concept in sales.
Bob: Well, and not surprisingly and you should struggle with it. We use metaphors like a pipeline, like a funnel as if the thing was somehow a linear process. The truth of the matter is, of course, the buying journey, and that’s really what we’re trying to reflect when we talk about the sales process. Sales process really means nothing if it’s not thought of in the context of what a buyer does to come to a decision about whether they need to act what they need to change to and whom to change to and those buying process are very rarely linear. They involve multiple stakeholders. They can move backwards as well as forwards. They can take a short or long course. The traditional metaphors of funnel and pipeline aren’t really that helpful in illustrating. It’s an organic process, not a metaphor for the equivalent of a rigid manufacturing process.
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