European Reflections on a Rewritten Playbook

European Reflections on a Rewritten Playbook:

“Consensus isn’t particularly new here in Scandinavia – it’s a way of life! And by the way, what’s a playbook?”

This line from a member of the Sales Executive Council’s growing Nordic cohort during a recent conversation sums up the last few months quite nicely. Over that time, I’ve had the pleasure of joining three multi-member sessions in London, Stockholm, and Amsterdam and countless one-on-one discussions all over the continent to review our newest research findings on Rewriting the Playbook: How High-Performers Win the Consensus-Based Sale.

Initial reactions across the EU region have been remarkably consistent: yes, building consensus is a necessary “evil” in achieving favourable customer outcomes – especially in a region as culturally and geographically diverse as Europe – but is the need for consensus really increasing? Isn’t it all relative to the customers and markets we’re already selling into?

As we dug into that question at the Council and began to share our findings with members, the answer emerged as an unqualified “Yes” – the requirement for consensus really is on the rise. Consider the following:

• In a quantitative study of sales behaviours and attitudes this year, high performers (those consistently in the Top 20% of the performance distribution) reported that they interact with 4+ stakeholders in roughly 50% of all accounts, and that in 10% of accounts the number soars to 12 or more. (SEC Members, if you wish to see hard data on how the sales approaches of your high and core performers differ, the Sales Playbook Survey is open for participation through year end.)

• The most important driver of customer loyalty to a supplier (in terms of repurchase behaviour and expansion of the relationship), especially from the viewpoint of senior decision makers, is that the supplier has widespread support across the organisation – more important than conventionally expected differentiators such as company brand, product features & benefits, or even price.
• Anecdotally, sales leaders and professionals agree that consensus is on the rise. One European member recently shared with me that, “while most of my organisation is encountering an additional 2-3 stakeholders in their deals, I’m more concerned about the 4-5 stakeholders in the shadows that my reps don’t even know exist.” Another member commented, “Personally, I’ve seen that buying decisions at our company are involving more and more people, so why should my customers be any different?”

Which leads us to the somewhat uncomfortable conclusion articulated best by another European member in the Consumer Goods space: “We know that our customers’ power has vastly increased in the sale. Maybe we just haven’t looked at this consensus story enough,” to truly understand how that power dynamic has shifted.

At this point, the question then becomes “now what do I do about it?” Rather than have me tell you the SEC point of view, though, I’ve chosen a few key suggestions from your peers:

1) From the IT Services space: “Sellers need to find the right customer stakeholders” or they’ll never be able to execute against the account effectively.

• SEC Members: See how gen-i developed organisational maps that translated directly into account action plans

2) From the Consumer Goods space: “You need to ensure that your vision for an account guides stakeholders to your solution so as to not let the competition in.”

• SEC Members: Learn how to apply Commercial Coaching in an interaction with key stakeholders to guide them through the purchase

3) From the Transportation and Logistics space: We must better “map out the customer buying process” and “use [customer] verifiers to test for real commitment to advance the sale to a close.”

• SEC Members: See how ADP engineered a sales process entirely based off how their customers buy to better gauge commitment to a deal

All in all, a solid set of recommendations! Is there anything else that you’d add to the list? We’ll just have to tackle “what’s a playbook?” in a future post.