Go-to-Customer

Markets don’t write checks…

We have been researching B2B executive buying trends, while also studying the results of winning and losing “go-to-market” strategies for the past 10 years. There are two precise observations. Most Go-to-Market strategies fail to drive profitable, organic growth objectives… Because they fail to account for the dramatically changing buyer expectations Developing a Go-to-Market strategy is vital to streamline corporate resources, but with today’s complex buying environment and rapidly evolving buying dynamic, you need to work backward from your customers.

…Customers Do

When you sell to a business, you are selling to both the people authorized to make decisions and to the institution as a whole. This used to be relatively straightforward when the product you were selling fit the need for a specific stakeholder. That buyer was an expert in their field, would do the work to understand their requirements and work with a salesperson to discuss the solution. Today, most problems that exist within companies are cross-functional – meaning there will be many “specific stakeholders” involved in a purchase. To get traction, an executive sponsor will have to referee the disagreeing experts. Customers don’t know how to create requirements for increasingly sophisticated solutions, nor do they have plans to get their teams to buy-into a direction. To get a contract, salespeople today must navigate these increasingly complex agreement networks. This is why “no decision” rates are so high in most companies.