There is a significant change taking shape in business-to-business selling. As we see a fundamental shift to China becoming the World’s dominant economic power supplanting the USA, so we are seeing in business the rise of Marketing to supplant Sales’ dominance. It is a dramatic and rapid evolution changing the way suppliers and buyers initially contact, interact and then transact business.

Business sales are becoming simpler, easier to conduct, cheaper to manage, and more agile. Customers are demanding more of suppliers including giving less of their time to evaluate products before the sale and expecting the supplier to prove the value of the investment before closing a sale.

The utopian sale one in which the customer fully self-serves and self-sells. Most organizations recognize this utopia is unattainable today, but strive to achieve the vision of a zero-friction sale with no impediments, reducing time to close and increasing the value of sales.

A business buys products with a belief those investments will propel its own business. As each business strives to differentiate itself in the market, it acquires materials to help make its own products, and make them unique. This requires proof the product helps the unique requirements of the buyer’s business. Proving an understanding of customer needs, mapping these needs to the product, and explaining how the product performs better than the competition. This process requires some level of interaction, consultative needs matching, and the use of consultative sales processes.

To reduce friction we must take the best of the low-friction techniques from the business-to-consumer market where selling is a one-to-many relationship, and applying them in the business-to-business market of selling one-to-one. In business-to-consumer selling the one-to-many approach demands proactive articulation of a product’s benefits to as many people as possible. Actively reaching out to a buyer and providing the information required to make a buying decision. Driving this proactive approach into business-to-business sales, delivers dramatic and positive results.

Proactive + Consultative = ProSultative

ProSultative Selling requires an interactive dialogue and interaction between buyer and supplier across all channels of communication. Website, blogs, trade shows, sales team, support, customer counsels, social network marketing, and touch points which have yet to be conceived, every touch point must be integrated, consistent and proactive.

This is not the first dramatic shift in business-to-business sales and will not be the last. A ProSultative Business sells as proactively as possible while proving to the prospect their needs are being listened to and understood. The ProSultative approach benefits both parties in a sale by minimizing the interactions required to make a buying decision.

The lines between sales, marketing and product blur. The role of sales management shifts further toward process management and constant improvement. The role of marketing evolves to managing the messaging in a constant, iterative, consistent dialogue. Even the make-up of the sales team is changing with less focus on the road warrior and more on office-based teams. As with any change, some will feel threatened by these changes, others will embrace them.

There are significant gains waiting on the early adopters. ProSultative Selling is more than a sales process, it is a change in the way a business thinks, acts, makes and sells its products to its customers. In this new commercial model, the entire business orients around one common idea; that of every employee striving to make the business easy to do business with, and removing friction at every step in the relationship.

http://www.amazon.com/ProSultative-Selling-Death-Consultative-Salesperson/dp/0615224350