Why is Programmatic B2B part of the essential kit if you sell to Large Companies?
- 8th July 2020
Average buying center size in companies with 1.000+ employees consists of 34 employees in contrast with B2C where the customers are the people who purchase. On such a scenario, how should Sales and Marketing work together to close the big deals?
Not only the size of the buying group is significantly more complex. If your size deal is very high, the risk/ complexity will be a critical factor in your selling cycle. It is probably easier to sell a set of workstations to a small SBM that to have a 3 year agreement for workstations, warranty and updates with a 10,000 employee company.
The two selling processes will have very little in common.
1. Decision Making
As identified by Gallup “a recent study in Germany, for example, looked at the purchase decisions made by buying center members in mechanical engineering, electronics and automation industries. Almost eight in 10 decision-makers (77%) indicated that they disregarded emotions when making purchasing decisions, while seven in 10 (70%) claimed to rely only on objective facts. However, a majority of the respondents (54%) also said that they would let a deal fall through if they had a “bad feeling” about it, despite favourable facts.
These findings suggest that the final decision isn’t a purely rational choice, even among German technical and engineering purchasers.”
Not only the size of the buying group is significantly more complex. If your size deal is very high, the risk/ complexity will be a critical factor in your selling cycle.
It is probably easier to sell a set of workstations to a small SBM that to have a 3-year agreement for workstations, warranty and updates with a 10,000 employee company.
The two selling processes will have very little in common.
Decision-Making
The days of a single economic decision maker are over in most companies and industries. The fact that many executives are not able to make buying decisions on their own comes as a shock for many people used to deal with SMEs. It’s likely that the executive you target and meet, will take the decision to a larger team and then move it ‘upstairs’ to the C-level executives. This is especially true for the larger deals. You may well get a great response, share in some happy back-slapping and hand-shakes, only to find that the decision to buy from you has been reserved at a higher level. So, the key question is how to reach and influence all relevant stakeholders
Last Word
Selling into the blue-chips can be a long, tiring and let’s face it, expensive and complex process. This is why Account-Based Marketing on top accounts is having so much success.
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If you want to know more details on what are the best practices in B2B Sales and Marketing to Large Accounts, do get in contact with us. Now it’s time to move beyond the hype.
