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Future of B2B Sales The Big Reframe
Future of B2B Sales The Big Reframe
A couple of years later and the state of sales is evolving at a rapid rate—and will only continue to do so.
Customers have become savvier and are demanding more, sales are increasingly becoming digital and
operating models more hybrid, and the “great attrition” is having a detrimental effect on talent. The current
recessionary environment only adds to the urgent need for change. The situation is challenging, yet exciting;
some companies are using the macroeconomic environment to their advantage to leapfrog competitors.
Leading companies are seizing the opportunity and taking action, with great success.
To understand the new era of sales, we spoke to more than 50 heads of sales experts across a range of
industries in numerous geographic markets. Their insights are enlightening and a wake-up call for those
wary of change. Five themes emerge from the research:
Capture your customers and build their loyalty and trust by offering them value propositions and
personalized experiences that suit their needs. This can be done with effective analytics and tailored
content that emphasizes solutions and expertise.
Single channel no longer works. Hybrid is the new standard—it offers powerful opportunities to connect
with customers in ways they want.
A successful sales organization is able to repeat its best practices again and again—leveraging data,
technology and agile operating models.
A new world of selling requires new sales capabilities. Talent needs to be reassessed as businesses face
both the attrition brought on by the pandemic and hyper-informed customers expecting more.
For transformation to truly happen, cultures, mindsets, and behaviors need to change. Leaders need to
inspire the change and guide the process.
We hope you find the examples of how outperforming companies have put these themes into practice
helpful; that it kick-starts discussions in your leadership team around how to deliver growth in these
uncertain times; and that it inspires you to achieve what is possible in this new world.
1
Future of B2B sales: The big reframe 5
Customers’ expectations of how their vendors success. In this new era, top performers are
serve them have changed dramatically—they want obsessing less about an internal view of their
simpler, on-demand, omnichannel engagement sales funnel (such as "introductions,", "proposals,"
that puts their needs first. They expect to have or"negotiations") and obsessing more about
informed conversations with vendors who can guiding customers on a personalized buying
demonstrate expertise on their industry, product, journey (for example, "awareness," "evaluation," or
and market challenges. Otherwise, they have little "purchase"). They might consider three customer-
compunction about moving elsewhere. More than centric practices here. First, find customers by
70 percent of businesses say they will happily harnessing comprehensive data on customer
consider other vendors if their core “must haves” intent preferences, and deploying analytics that
are not met during their buying journey or if the translate those insights into impact. Second, attract
experience is poor (Exhibit 1). customers by offering B2C-grade, personalized
content with tailored value propositions. Finally,
Despite this, many B2B companies are struggling delight customers by keeping a pulse on readiness
to embrace a truly customer centric mindset, and delivering consistent experiences across their
starting with the language they use to define entire buying journeys.
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit
Exhibit 2 of1 10
Changing customer expectations puts pressure on companies to adapt.
72% 72%
Source: McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Aug 2020, n= 602, Feb 2021 n = 562, Nov 2021, n = 602
Find customers by turning 360-degree Companies are therefore turning to analytics to help
insights into sales them predict more accurately who their potential
While forward-thinking companies are using customers are, their pain points and their next
analytical insights to find new customers, others moves, and then proactively engage with them as
are struggling to adapt to the current digital- early as possible. Outperformers—here defined
first engagement model, which has shifted the as companies that beat the average growth rate of
power from seller to customer. Customers—are their sector—already use analytics extensively and
doing their own research online and finding out successfully. Players with strong customer analytics
about a company or product before the seller has are 1.5 times more likely to grow fast, and can drive
an opportunity to pitch it, whether it concerns increases in earnings upwards of 15–25 percent
transactional items or complex systems. (Exhibit 2).1
1
Jochen Böringer, Alexander Dierks, Isabel Huber, and Dennis Spillecke, “Insights to impact: Creating and sustaining data-driven commercial
growth,” McKinsey, January 18, 2022.
3 out of 4 2 out of 3
outperformers apply tables-stakes outperformers apply analytics use cases
analytics such as sales planning to be more granular on deal and
(vs half of slow growers) account-level opportunities
(vs half of slow growers)
2
Ibid.
Future of B2B sales: The big reframe 9
Using internal data, external interviews, and focus this one-size-fits-all approach and taking a page
groups, they systematically defined customer out of the B2C playbook. Only 8 percent of B2B
segments, journeys, and buying preferences. They organizations are currently set up to deliver highly
hosted design-thinking workshops where they personalized marketing—but of that 8 percent,
translated these insights into a comprehensive list three-quarters report growing market share
of sales initiatives and campaigns meant to drive (Exhibit 3). And fewer than half of companies
specific business outcomes and articulate their surveyed grew their market share with little to no
unique value proposition. Among these were a personalization.3
new e-commerce sales channel and a customer-
experience hub that accounted for over 60 percent With a more personalized approach, companies
of revenues within six months of launching. Field can reach out to the right executive with the right
sellers, in turn, had greater focus and success message at the right time. In one case, a fast-
driving strategic growth opportunities, enabled by growth software company built a business around
new data and analytics flows. a new enterprise platform but recognized it had to
up its game when pitching to the C-suite. It tested
The company fed the results back into their analytics a content-personalization strategy that departed
engine to measure the impact of these initiatives; from its standardized pitches. After aligning on a
The result was $1 billion of revenue flowing through target list of industries, sub-industries, and specific
new digital channels, with churn three times lower accounts, it developed highly personalized value
than the traditional sales model. propositions based on a customer’s regulatory
environment, technological sophistication, recent
acquisitions, and publicly announced strategic
Capture customers’ attention with initiatives.
personalized content
Of the companies that invest in analytics, many Developing these tailored pitches took the sales
still bring their customers a “boring” laundry list of team weeks of training to understand their target
products. Leading B2B companies are abandoning accounts’ personas and market dynamics. Some
Exhibit 3
The more personalized the marketing, the better.
75
66
47 52
3
Auron Arora, Liz Harrison, Candace Lun Plotkin, Max Magni, and Jennifer Stanley, “The new B2B growth equation,” McKinsey, February 23,
2022.
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit
Exhibit 2 of410
Modern B2B GTM drives growth with digital and personalization end-to-end.
CIO,
RetailCo
Receives video
testimonial from a
friend about a Gets personalized message
Signs up for CloudCo’s from sales rep post event
CloudCo retail client exec event
Gets quarterly trends &
Head of IT,
RetailCo Sees CloudCo display Is directed to insights email for current
ad for retailers CloudCo white customers
Use personalized
paper for retailers digital tool on
Data CloudCo site to
Scientist,
build business Sees CloudCo sales
RetailCo Reads industry report
Finds CloudCo in case that they pitch and demo;
mentioning CloudCo
search results pitch to CIO negotiates contract
and signs thereafter
Marketers historically have focused on demand The advantage of the self-serve journey is that it
generation, making customers aware of their drives a sale without the seller being needed, even
products. Now, however, by creating and deploying at the moment of purchase—making every marketer
self-serve tools, marketing can play a role in not just a seller. And by using the customer’s data from that
generating demand, but converting and nurturing it. journey, sellers have a ready-made business case to
pitch to leadership.
For example, IBM’s hybrid cloud-value calculator,
Amazon Web Service’s migration evaluator, Google A customer-centric journey involves finding
Cloud’s pricing calculator, and Microsoft Azure’s the right customers through analytics-based
total-cost-of-ownership calculator are all self- insights and ensuring a personalized, consistent
service tools that offer personalization and empower customer experience. But to unlock value, it is
potential customers. By answering a few questions essential to address the siloed channels that hinder
about factors such as their company’s industry, transformation.
annual revenue, IT spend, and current cloud
maturity, prospects can get a customized, visual
business case for adopting the cloud solution.
2
14 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Traditional channel strategy has been upended. B2B Leading B2B sales organizations react to changing
customers now often use more than nine channels buyer behavior in three specific ways. First, they
on their buying journeys—from older channels adopt hybrid as the default approach. Second,
like email and phone calls to mobile apps and web to make hybrid work for customers, companies
chats.4 They have become so comfortable with this optimize the channel experience for each step
mode that many are happy to close deals in excess of the customer-buying process. Finally, leaders
of $500,000 without ever meeting the seller in find creative ways to complement traditional sales
person. Customers no longer think of channels; channels, thereby unearthing new sources of
they want intuitive, seamless, and personalized revenue.
experiences that satisfy their buying needs
(Exhibit 5).
Adopt hybrid as the default approach
The idea of allocating reps to accounts once a year It’s a reality: more than 65 percent of companies
and then reevaluating for the next planning cycle now prefer remote and digital interactions, a
is no longer effective. Companies that addressed trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
this change and sold through more channels grew Increasingly, they are investing more in hybrid
market share at a faster rate in 2021.5 roles—reps are no longer seen as “field” or “inside”
Exhibit 5
B2B buyers have settled into using an evenly divided mix of sales channels.
Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21 Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21 Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21 Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21
22 20 19
29 32 33 32 33 32 32 30 30
44 46
35 33 48 35 34 34 33 34 33
49
34 34 30 33 33 36 34 35 35 36 36
22
2 out of 3 buyers in 2021 opted for remote human interactions or digital self-service
1
Q: Currently, how do you split your time with sales reps from your company's suppliers during the following stages of interactions?
2
Traditional includes in-person meetings, direct mail, fax, etc. Remote includes phone calls, video conference calls, emails etc. Digital includes company web-
sites, e-commerce, chatbots, internet searches, mobile apps, etc.
Source: McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Aug 2020, n = 3,626; Feb 2021, n= 3,496; Dec 2021, n = 3,360, countries: Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germa-
ny, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, UK, US
4
Arun Arora, Liz Harrison, Candace Lun Plotkin, Max Magni, and Jennifer Stanley, “Rebalancing works: Omnichannel is more effective than
traditional sales models alone,” McKinsey, February 23. 2022.
5
Ibid.
Exhibit 6
Hybrid and digital are the fastest-growing sales roles.
70% 64%
43% 33%
Hybrid Digital Inside Field
1
Q: over the past year, how has the size of your company's sales force in the following areas changed?
Source: McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Nov 2021, n = 602
Meet your customers where they wish Before this, if a customer posted a query on the
to meet website, the digital-sales team referred it to the call
With customers wanting personalized buying center; staff there had basic technical and selling
journeys, approaches that are experience-led capabilities but lacked the expertise to land sales.
(looking at customers’ previous buying journeys The company’s data showed, however, that inside
and needs) and expertise-led (demonstrating sales can effectively follow up remotely by bringing
expertise in aspects such as customers’ industry in experts for guidance from a centralized pool in
or geography) could be the way to go. Too often, the commercial hub. The final negotiation and close
With the increased use of omnichannels, some capabilities to deliver that. This includes investing in
B2B organizations have found opportunities in analytics to predict customer needs and personalize
unexpected places. Some have chosen to (re) their journeys.
define their customer as the end consumer. This
has led them to embrace direct-to-consumer Possible problems with a DTC model include the
(DTC) business, without relying on intermediaries. risk of channel conflict, and antagonization of the
Research shows that DTC margins are typically customer base. It is critical to gain stakeholder buy-
8–12 percent higher than other channels. in. Deft organizations achieve this by communicating
upfront with retail partners, adjusting incentives,
Companies can operate at various stages of the maintaining price parity, and being omnichannel.
DTC journey, too: it doesn’t necessarily mean Most of the mature DTC companies McKinsey
just adding an e-commerce function to the surveyed do not view channel conflict as a concern.
website. Some companies focus on building brand
loyalty, others on education around their unique Although the DTC model may not work for all sellers,
value proposition, and others on direct top-line and creates the potential for cannibalization, it’s a
growth. Whatever the entry point, it’s important for trend that many B2B companies are exploring and
companies to be clear on the value they want to add adopting.
for the customer and prioritize building the right
More companies are realizing the power of a team created dashboards based on usage data that
customer-success team and that selling a product flowed back from installed products. These showed
and offering support create a deeper customer customers how they were using the products, made
relationship. For example, a leading technology- suggestions for improvements to support intended
services company had a new set of products ready outcomes, and recommended additional products.
to launch, though revenue was in structural decline.
It invested heavily in building a customer-success This data also helped the company identify
unit alongside its traditional sales channels—to customers at risk of churn and enabled it to act
understand how consumers were using existing to mitigate this risk, by tweaking the service or
products, assess whether they could use them more investing more time with customers to help them
effectively, and ensure that the new product range understand how the product could be used better.
was being deployed to deliver maximum value.
This approach is not limited to tech companies:
The company took hundreds of its transactional- financial-services companies, manufacturers, and
service people and moved them into customer professional-services players can all benefit from
success. These people undertook quarterly success the customer-success model. One large financial-
reviews to understand how the products helped services company built a customer-success
customers, which then had a meaningful impact on team as part of a much larger customer-focused
both new sales and retention. In this way, customer- transformation by empowering people to drive
success qualified leads became as important success outcomes such as usage, adoption, and
as the more traditional qualified leads, as the retention—critical business objectives for the
company realized the power that non-commercial organization. It created small, agile, cross-functional
conversations could have in driving commercial teams to understand customers’ underlying needs,
potential. answer their questions without many internal
conversations, and ultimately ensure that the
For smaller customers, where such intense financial products customers were buying enabled
coverage was not practical, the customer-success them to hit their strategic goals.
6
McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Aug 2020, n=3,626; Feb 2021, n=3,496; Dec 2021, n=3,360. Countries: Brazil, Chile, China, France,
Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, UK, US.
3
Future of B2B sales: The big reframe 21
In sales, what separates average performers from ebbed, and daily sales fell. To revitalize the business,
distinctive ones is not just landing the perfect deal the company set up a win room to shift the team’s
but being able to do it again and again. Leading mindset from reactive to proactive. Sales leaders
sales organizations deploy three tactics. First, they established a small cross-functional team with clear
use cross-functional “win rooms” (agile hubs where task owners, meeting structures, and dedicated
deals get solutioned and continuously refined to resources that were guided by working principles
fit customer needs) and constantly refine their (for example, that all decisions were to be made
solutions to fit customer needs. Second, they invest in win-room sessions). They also introduced an
in a narrow set of tools and technologies they accelerated approval process. The team focused
actually need, but double down to ensure thorough on increasing the rate of experimentation around
front- and back-end adoption, focusing on driving new campaigns and optimizing the conversion rate.
customer outcomes instead of solving technology It set up dashboards to track both campaign and
problems. Finally, they elevate the commercial sales-rep performance and incorporated frontline
operations function into a clear strategic role feedback into campaign design. In just four weeks,
and make it a true sales leader role in the overall the company had launched seven high-impact
business. campaigns that led to a 30 percent increase in daily
sales.
7
“Taming the sales tech mayhem,” Gartner.com, 2021.
8
How to boost adoption rate of new technology,” Bigtincan.com, November 29, 2019.
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit
Exhibit 2 of710
How an evolved commercial operations lifts performance.
100%= 14 18
36
50
43
38
14
7 13
Companies with Companies with full-suite
only sales ops consolidated commercial ops¹
1
Companies whose commercial-operations organization includes sales ops, professional services operations, customer-care operations, and marketing
operations. Figures may not sum to 100%, because of rounding.
Source: 2020 Commercial Ops survey
Many interviewees told us that expanding their commercial operations helped significantly to streamline
their processes.
4
in an age of uncertainty
As much as technology underpins the ability to Our research shows, however, that if equipped
execute at scale, sales remains a people-driven with the right talent strategy, B2B organizations
function. With the global resignation trend, how can can revamp their salesforce skills to address
sales leaders ensure that they hire, train, and retain today's needs. Three key levers stand out: leading
the best talent? companies are rethinking which sales skills are most
relevant, using analytics to craft unique training
More than 57 million people in the US quit their jobs programs, and breaking away from traditional sales
from 2021 through early 2022. As companies look incentive structures.
for new skills and capabilities in their commercial
function, and focus sharpens on meeting customer
needs, the need to attract and retain people has New sales reps for a new era:
become more important than ever. Rethinking talent
Today’s reps are no longer just agents who sell
Effective talent-development strategies tradition- a product. They need analytical, strategic, and
ally include competitive compensation, an excellent technical skills; they must be able to work with data
incentive structure, learning and development and derive insights, stay ahead of the customer,
opportunities, and a strong culture. A growing strategize on next steps, provide the best solution,
number of organizations are now also incorporating and keep an eye on the customer’s business
“purpose” into their talent messaging, as employees objectives and profit and loss. As one sales leader
value working for purpose-driven organizations. said, “If you can’t tell a customer what you’re going
Despite these efforts, hiring, retaining, and to do to enhance his profit and loss, then you have
replenishing talent remains difficult, particularly no reason to exist as a salesman.” Good sales reps
within sales: HubSpot reports that average sales can also manage senior executives across different
turnover is 35 percent, nearly three times that of any areas of a buyer’s organization, from technical
other function.9 manager to chief financial officer.
9
“Sales turnover statistics you need to know,” Xactly, August 24, 2021.
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit 8
Exhibit 2 of 10
There is increasing demand for new sales skills.
80%
ranked analytical and
quantitative skills among 85% be a core sales capability,
requiring strong product
the top capabilities to knowledge and solution
develop. design as well as
account-planning skills.
The sales function—at least in the US—has been our objectives and key results, into the way that our
slow when it comes to increasing gender and racial executives talk about the business, into our core
diversity. In 2019, 76 percent of salespeople in operating principles, and into our reviews. How are
the United States were white, and the number has you serving the customer and the user? Part of that
barely changed in the last decade. Women account has to be that I’m serving everyone, not just the
for less than one-third of all B2B sales roles, falling people that look like me.”
to just a quarter in the technology sector. The
higher up the organization, the fewer women there Some companies have been successful here.
are: only 12 percent of the top sales jobs are held A leading business-information services firm,
by women. Yet research suggests that women in where more than 40 percent of the salesforce
B2B sales outperform men—86 percent of women are women (a proportion that carries through to
regularly achieved quota compared to 78 percent of higher management roles), has taken steps to make
men, according to a 2020 Harvard Business Review the organization more diverse by encouraging
report. 10 employee referrals for hires. And the head of sales
at a professional-services company told us that its
The sales leaders we spoke to believe that diversity leadership walks the talk: all six of the senior-level
is needed and is desirable, though admit that it is appointments made over the last 12 months are
very much a work in progress. The head of strategy from diverse backgrounds. The company has also
at a leading technology firm expressed the view of created diverse interviewer panels to overcome
many: “Having a diverse salesforce is necessary if biases in interviews—and has included diversity as a
we are serving diverse customers … [The value of metric in its quarterly reviews.
diversity] has been embedded into the culture, into
consultative sales model, the company needed to training on these skills, improved its coaching
develop a training program for reps. Using data program, and set up a long-term training structure
analytics, it discovered three crucial issues. that made capability building a key enabler of sales
growth.
First, reps spent too much time on non-selling
activities. Second, there was a large disconnect Our research shows that companies can boost the
between how effectively sales managers thought lifetime value of sellers by 10 percent by making
they were coaching reps, and how the reps the right hires, optimizing onboarding, building
perceived the coaching. Third, sales reps and capabilities, and retaining the right people. The
managers believed that relationship and network analytics underpin this: using psychometrics,
building were key skills for customer growth, behavioral data, performance, and team or
when in fact sales analytics showed that pipeline relational analytics, organizations can build targeted
management, prospecting, and product knowledge interventions at every stage of a salesperson’s
were more important. The company focused its tenure.
10
Andris A. Zoltners et al., “Why women are the future of B2B sales,” Harvard Business Review, May 28, 2020.
Exhibit 9
B2B sales organizations need to reskill frontline reps and add leadership roles.
Sales leaders see reskilling as their … as less than half of sales leaders
immediate priority… believe most of their reps have the right
capabilities to succeed.
Which best describes how your company What percentage of your company’s sales force
thinks about upskilling your sales force? currently has the right capabilities to be successful?
% of respondents % of respondents¹
4 1
15
<10%
20–39%
40–59%
Top priority 97 42 60–79%
>80%
39
Low /not a priority 3
1
Figures may not sum to 100%, because of rounding.
Source: McKinsey insights
11
Boudewijn Driedonks, Sinem Hosletter, and Ryan Paulowsky, “By the numbers: What drives sales-growth outperformance,” McKinsey,
April 13, 2022.
12
Hillary Hoffower, “Money isn’t everything for the 20% of people who regret quitting their jobs during the Great resignation,” Business Insider,
April 19, 2022.
5
Future of B2B sales: The big reframe 33
Best-in-class companies are innovating their GTM large salesforce transformation. It adopted a simple
practices to drive meaningful, sustainable growth. narrative of “mobile first, cloud first,” departing
But it's not easy. In the words of a senior sales leader, from the traditional “Windows first” strategy. Later,
“If I’m struggling to get my reps to update their CRM, targeting new areas of opportunity, the company
how will I get them to use analytics insights in their shifted toward an “AI/cloud first” strategy.
sales process?”
This type of messaging is ideal. Simple and concise,
Other pertinent questions arise: How do you change it can be understood by everyone in the organization,
the way of working of a sales team that has seen and captures the essence and the magnitude of the
major attrition over the last 12 months? How do you change. It became a key pillar of Microsoft’s hugely
embed technology in every action of a sales rep who successful transition to the cloud, which contributed
has relied, and thrived, on intuition for decades? to its stock multiplying more than fivefold.13
How do you balance independence and relationship
building with a rollout of best practices? How do
you make the changes scale past a few proofs of Role-model change from the top
concept? No implementation will work without steadfast
support from the top. And role modeling is even
There are no easy answers. Change is hard. more effective than executive support. When
However, a few practices could accelerate reps see their leaders embracing new concepts
change— and make it stick. First, define a simple, that they’ve been preaching to the frontline, they
compelling vision that the whole sales organization model that behavior in their own sales pods and it
can understand. Second, role-model change from cascades through the organization. As a sales leader
the top. Third, embrace the “two-pizza” rule: adopt told us, “Nothing is more important than seeing
nimble cross-functional teams (small enough to be senior sales leaders doing exactly what they’re
fed with just two large pizzas!). And finally, create a asking the broad organization to do—especially
culture of autonomy—but measure everything that when it’s hard!” This level of collaboration requires
matters. overriding internal politics, seeing the big picture,
and focusing on the best solution.
13
Doug J. Chung, “Commercial Sales Transformation at Microsoft,” Harvard Business Review, October 15, 2019.
Executives at best-in-class
organizations are moving away
from “command and control”
and relinquishing authority to
smaller, independent teams,
which can move faster without
bureaucratic challenges.
Guilherme Cruz is a partner in McKinsey’s New York office, where Molly Lewis is an associate partner. Boudewijn Driedonks
is a partner in the London office, Ben Ellencweig is a senior partner in the Stamford office, and Maximilian Fischer is an
associate partner in the Denver office. Fidel Hernandez is an associate partner in the Miami office, where Maria Valdivieso de
Uster is a partner; Josh Klemme is an associate partner in the Boston office.
The authors wish to thank Katherine Chan, Jan-Christoph Köstring, Ayushi Ladha, Bret Lineberry, Steve Reis, Jennifer Stanley,
and Michael Viertler for their contributions to this article.