Internal collaboration in B2B Selling

A career in sales has long been viewed as an individualistic endeavor. Switch to any classic sales movie, and you will find the salesperson overcoming all odds through self-reliance. Traditionally, we have defined success in sales as an individual's hustle to perform, personal Rolodex, and ability to close deals while keeping his cards close to his chest.

As a product manager at BuyerAssist, I have always been intrigued by how B2B selling works and how modern buying preferences are shaping the future of sales. Building a product that can help the modern seller deliver an engaging digital buyer experience is a by-product of this journey. Here are some modern sales trends that I have observed:

Trend 1: Selling is a team sport. But the reality of actual execution is that B2B sales is still about 'go it alone'. This proves counterproductive as today's buying committees have grown more expansive, and sales strategies have evolved to be more collaborative, with several pre-sales and post-sales functions proving to be the centerpiece of a successful sales cycle. Data collected by Salesforce research helps illustrate the importance of internal collaboration.

• 60% of sales professionals say that collaborative selling has increased productivity by more than 25%
• Across all performance levels, 62% of sales teams say collaborative selling is critical to their overall sales process.

Trend 2: Sales collaboration plays a key role in the "land and expand" strategy. Accelerating value realization is critical to expanding with an existing customer. Functions such as implementation, delivery, customer success need to deliver a connected experience ensuring nothing gets lost throughout the buyer's journey. In fact, research by Accenture says that 62% of customers' decision to renew is based on the installation experience. This calls for an even stronger internal collaboration between pre-sales and post-sales.

The power of internal collaboration

What are some ways to maximize sales revenue with a strong culture of internal collaboration?

1. Shared Success Definition: Internal collaboration is fundamental to your ability to deliver a superior customer experience. Despite well-defined sales and customer success playbooks, today's customers face a broken experience due to suboptimal handoff processes. Modern sales teams have closed this gap by working through a connected GTM playbook built around the customer journey (Think sales, customer success playbooks, etc., baked into one integrated framework). This needs companies to shift their thinking of customer success from a team to a mindset by placing the customer experience at the center of the playbook for sales and post-sales teams.

2. One place for all: Traditionally, we only look at the data layer as one place for all, so naturally, we used siloed tools for collaboration as long as data flowed into the CRM. But the modern customer demands a connected experience, which means we also need to prioritize one collaboration system for the entire customer journey. 

3. Cross-functional Collaboration: Sales teams demand success management whereas Customer Success teams demand deep project management capabilities; on the other side, leadership teams need approval workflows and data flows baked into it; a shared collaboration system will also adapt to the unique user preferences in each of these functions.

We have a good idea of how effective collaboration can be the revenue driver. Let's look at the nature of collaboration owing to various stages in a deal.

If you believe a strong culture of internal collaboration plays a pivotal role in revenue acceleration, check out how BuyerAssist helps revenue teams achieve this by driving effective and efficient internal collaboration. With BuyerAssist.io, sales teams get the upper hand to collaborate more effectively on a single and easy-to-use platform. 

1. Single source of truth: As per research by Gartner, selling teams tend to lose 30% of their selling time collaborating with cross-functional teams. How your sales teams talk to CRM, Customer Success teams, etc., will play a critical role in product adoption. BuyerAssist provides a single collaborative platform bringing together stakeholders from all the internal teams to Organize, automate & manage customer onboarding from handoff to Go-live and beyond. 

2. MEDDIC: Internal collaboration systems are also critical for sales playbook adoption. For example, many of our customers have automated MEDDIC adoption in every deal using the Mutual success plans in the sales cycle. They also use the same system to systematize and automate customer onboarding processes and collaboration. BuyerAssist transforms Meddic from an internal checklist to a collaborative tool by ensuring seamless stakeholder onboarding, systematic and efficient project management, and timely warnings to prevent deal slips. 

3. Faster movement of information: Handoff documents are the most overrated documents in B2B sales; asking someone to summarize what they have seen in weeks/months into a 1-2 page Q&A document is too old school. A strong culture of internal collaboration means systems take care of information flow, and users focus on context and experience.

If streamlining collaboration to deliver a better buyer experience is top of mind, you can contact us here.

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