Is B2B selling art or science - or is it engineering?
Is sales an art or a science?
Traditionalists used to think of sales as a combination of art and heroics. A recent
article in the Financial Times
suggested that it was moving from an art to a science. Many other commentators
have observed that successful selling - particularly in complex buying
environments - involves some combination of art
and science.
I think it’s clear that in today’s
business environment, sales people have to draw upon elements of both art and
science, and that any sales person that relies exclusively on one or the other
is unlikely to be successful - or if they were, they would probably be a
nightmare to manage, and impossible to replicate.
But there’s a third perspective -
one that seems to be entirely more appropriate to the world we all live and
sometimes compete within, and it’s that successful selling actually owes a
tremendous amount to the disciplines of engineering.
The
lure of the unknown vs. the comfort of certainty
So what’s the difference between
science and engineering? A number of observers have characterised scientists as
preferring the unknown as opposed to engineers who prefer certainty. They see
one discipline pursuing learning into order to achieve dramatic breakthroughs,
the other to achieve progressive improvement.
At the individual level, I’ll accept
the notion that sales success requires a subtle combination of art, science and
engineering. But at an organisational level, where the goal must surely be to a
establish a scalable process that is capable of identifying, attracting,
engaging, qualifying and converting more of the right sort of prospects, the
primary discipline must surely be one of engineering.
Effective
process vs. acts of random brilliance
Of course, you have to first believe
that the key to sustained sales success lies in effective process rather than
random acts of brilliance, and there’s a (fortunately dwindling) proportion of
the population that still believes in the latter (and in miracles as a sales
strategy). If you fall into this camp, I suspect that you won’t have made it
this far through the article.
Engineers tend to have a process
mind-set. They dislike looking at the world as a series of random acts. They
believe in cause-and-effect. They look for patterns. They seek to understand
how processes work and how they can be improved. They measure the success of
processes in terms of the outcomes they achieve.
Measuring
what does and doesn’t work - and doing something about it
We live in a world where outcomes
can be measured with greater precision than ever before. We no longer have to
succumb to John Wanamaker’s oft-quoted frustration that “I know half of my
advertising is wasted - I just don’t know which half”. We can work out what
works, and what doesn’t - and we can do something about it.
Now, I happen to believe -
particularly in today’s increasingly complex world of buying behaviour - that
an engineering mind-set provides the perfect foundation for driving sustained
B2B sales and marketing performance improvement. We have tools that allow us to
recognise patterns, to measure and model, and to identify winning behaviours and
propagate them.
The
legacy of Hewlett and Packard
I started my career at
Hewlett-Packard, in the days when that company was a true innovator, pioneer
and thought leader. HP had a respect for engineering that went far beyond
product development or manufacturing - it permeated every aspect of the
company’s thinking. And it created a culture where sales and marketing was seen
as a process that lent itself to engineering discipline.
It may not have resulted in the
world’s most creative marketing, but it was remarkably effective, and subject
to continuous improvement. Fast-forward to today, and there is no excuse for
any organisation to not have access to the data that could allow them to
systematically understand and improve their sales and marketing processes.
All
a matter of mind-set - and of respect for process
It’s all a matter of mind-set. The
information (and associated insight) is potentially accessible to every
organisation - no matter how large or small. We all have the potential to
systematically engineer a more effective sales and marketing process. We all
have the capability to identify and eliminate the bottlenecks that are holding
us back and slowing us down.
We all have the ability to see
what’s working and what isn’t, and to do something about it. We can all
engineer more successful outcomes. All we have to do is to abandon out-dated
notions of selling as either art or science and to think of it instead as a
series of processes that if understood, can be refined.
All we need is to have a respect for
process. And to pay tribute to the engineers that have built so much of the
world around us.
One
last thing…
If you think of your sales and
marketing as processes that can be systematically improved, I’d like to suggest
that you invest 10-15 minutes in our recently updated B2B sales and marketing
self-assessment. It incorporates the lessons learned from some of today’s most
effective sales and marketing organisations - and the insights should appeal to
your inner engineer.
Bob Apollo
http://www.customerthink.com/blog/is_b2b_selling_art_or_science_or_is_it_engine
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