As a long-term marketing person with many years of direct and commissioned sales experience, I am aware that people buy from people – but then people really don’t like cold calls so getting these people together may be problematic.
There are good reasons for both – a personal relationship with someone is often the only indication of how the company will engage with us as customers – but we don’t like cold calls because there is a very high nuisance rate.
On the other hand, although face-to-face meetings were almost eliminated over Covid now there seems to be a resurgence of desire for them, if one looks at the renewed popularity of trade shows. There is a recognition that we all need human interaction as a part of life – even business life – because after all business is personal – and that it is often the most effective and efficient way to work.
It seems to me – although it may not be obvious – that prospective customers need to be approached. They may think that they can do their job effectively by having complete control of the conversation– a quick Google search then an email or so – “if they want to sell to me then they should come running” sort of thing. Actually it doesn’t work long term – they may think it does but it doesn’t.
Also in my experience sales engineers don’t like cold calling either – it is very time-consuming and time-wasting and stressful and dispiriting, they would much rather be talking to someone they know is interested.
So given that we all need to make new connections how can that be arranged?
At this point it is important to recognise the linkage between sales and marketing, although sadly they are often the subject or corporate turf wars. The time was when marketeers in B2B had few options – brochures, exhibitions, magazine advertising and/or magazine editorial content via PR.
Today we have websites (maybe brochures) blogs, advertising in magazines (printed and online) PR/Content marketing for printed and online magazines, exhibitions, social media, videos, and photo sharing sites.
So when there were fewer options life was easy (!) and it could all be managed at low cost and often in-house.
Now there are many more bases that need to be covered and that makes it much more expensive.
The other important aspect is the way that large retailers and retail/business catalogue companies have, probably inadvertently, overlapped into the industrial B2B marketplace with vast budgets and universally known brands. This has happened almost unknowingly as the internet has made it all one marketplace whatever the product. Market segmentation has become largely unrecognised in the industrial arena because it is conflated into the retail sphere so everything is smeared into each other and market differentiation is difficult because search engines can’t tell the difference and AI just believes what it reads like some naïve gossip.
Which all means that traditional industrial/technical market segmentation still holds value and there is still a place for product and supplier differentiation on the basis of factors like service, expertise, stock, delivery, product quality and features, niche design and stability, adaptability/custom capability, and so on plus the educational role of sales/marketing material about innovations or technology developments. Whether this information is delivered face to face or otherwise, sometimes things just have to be explained in a one-to-one conversation, complete with gestures, and diagrams on bits of paper. This is part of the process for an OEM specifier or buyer but probably not in the same way as a retail purchaser who makes up the vast majority of the internet.
It is important because these concepts matter to technical industrial OEMs – they help us find what we need efficiently and effectively and they help us to propagate the benefits of inventiveness and innovation.
So now the job of sales is no longer mainly to prospect – but to do all the other things a good technical engineer can do, like providing advice, supply side managing, buffering between customer and factory, resolving problems, dealing with emergencies, investigating new projects, consulting on custom solutions etc. So now prospects are fully in control – but they still have a need (to contact potential suppliers) and it is up to those of us with a sales/marketing role to ensure our company is easy to find across the available channels, with all the desired authority, and to painlessly lead a prospect to what they need, and to establish a positive relationship for future business.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the coming of AI to search engines has worked predominantly in favour of the big budgets as AI can’t tell the difference between a B2C or a B2B product/company and of course believes whatever it is told. So a widget is a widget whatever its application and if a copywriter describes it as the “best” or “top quality” then AI simply repeats this recommendation without analysis, reference to context or perceptive observation of photo images.
In truth of course there are many types and graduations of widget and application which qualified humans can discern and even better can spot possible anomalies and investigate to resolve them. AI is great as a tool, able to do quickly what would take a person very much longer and demand a high level of technical skill. This means that it is an excellent addition to the human toolbox. It will probably become absorbed just as the computer has been absorbed by humans rather than replacing them.
