By Jonathan Farrington, The JF Consultancy

It seems that most of the hype surrounding Sales 2.0 has been generated first by software vendors/social media evangelists and now by salespeople – but what do customers make of it all, has anyone stopped to tell them what’s in it for them?
 
Of course all of these tools (not necessarily new tools by the way) will help us find new opportunities, but will they really help us manage our existing client base, after all, CRM in one guise or another has been around since…well, I think I still had hair! [ed - we checked on this and Jonathan is referring to the 1980's]

We all know that a vitally important sales activity is that of managing existing customer accounts, to consolidate and grow the relationship. Yet unfortunately, when compared over time, the customers’ interest levels increase while salespeople’s interest levels tend to decrease. This creates a “relationship gap” and is due entirely to complacency. I happen to believe that “complacency levels” are increasing alarmingly, and this goes some way to explaining declining levels of sales achievement.

Another major issue is that too often the salesperson fails to expand his/her “contact base” as this next survey proves, which results in vulnerability and exposure to competitive activity.

Periodically, the Financial Times conducts a survey of British industry to establish how companies go about their purchasing. The survey is very comprehensive, broken down into many kinds of products and services – and I have no reason to suppose that results are exclusive to the UK or Europe.

From a Sales Director’s perspective, these are very worrying statistics

Customer size (Number of employees): Less than 200
Average number of buying influencers: 3.43
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.72

Customer size (Number of employees): 200 – 400
Average number of buying influencers: 4.85
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.75

Customer size (Number of employees): 401 – 1000
Average number of buying influencers: 5.81
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.90

Customer size (Number of employees): 1001 +
Average number of buying influencers: 6.50
Number of influencers visited by salespeople: 1.65

In essence, without a sustained approach to ongoing servicing and support activities, customers that took months to win are ultimately lost because there was a lack of interest from their supplier.

To-days clients/customers are looking for vendors who can be business-partners, who are willing and able to share risks and who are able to properly manage the entire sales process.

They are also looking for business partners who will sell to them how they wish to be sold to – and that may not include via a Sales 2.0 or a “Social Media” approach.

Fact: It now costs fifteen times as much to locate and sell to a new customer as it does to an existing one – compelling reasons to build brick walls around our client base, before  promiscuously chasing after every half-chance? It may not be as exciting, but be assured, it is a great deal more profitable.

“Dear Vendor, You probably will not see me on Twitter – now what?”