There we go! The R&D department has had a stroke of genius… Marketing has confirmed the appeal of this new product with in-depth market research, production has reworked its processes to manufacture it at lower cost, the certification body has given its approval, the communication department has unleashed its people's boundless creativity to build an action plan and… Total flop… No sales, no orders from distributors, no feedback, stock sitting in the warehouse, capital tied up. The designated culprits: our sales reps! In reality, the company forgot that they are the ones on the front line…
Launching a new product means no longer claiming to control every interaction the user will have with the manufacturer. It means learning to work in synergy with all the players in the commercial relationship.
The Hundred Years' War
Ever since 1901, the date of the « invention of modern marketing » with the creation of the Michelin Guide - designed to encourage motoring tourism (and therefore tyre wear) - Marketing and Sales departments have been waging an eternal war.
For Marketing, sales reps are mercenary, work-shy smooth talkers who wander around bad-faith distributors without ever mentioning the benefits of our products - which, according to them, are supposedly always too expensive anyway. All they know how to do is sell existing products to already loyal customers… For Sales, the « marketers », who gang up behind their backs with the Professor Calculus types in R&D, are out-of-touch intellectuals with no field experience, lost in their ivory tower…
The cause of this war is simple: while the two departments pursue the same end goal, their added value does not sit at the same point in the sales process. So each side is convinced it contributes the most value and struggles to appreciate the other's, seeing them more as an intruder than as genuine support.
Changing buying behaviour
Yet today's B2B customer is omnichannel. Their opportunities to experience the brand are many, particularly upstream of any meeting with a sales rep, when the buyer researches potential suppliers online. The customer journey is becoming increasingly blended, mixing remote channels (mobile, web, etc.) with face-to-face meetings with sales reps.
The sales rep no longer « owns » « their » customer. Even if they are ultimately the one whose action triggers the purchase, every department in the company contributes to it and, as such, shares « ownership » of the customer.
The solution: involve sales teams in the launch
The support of a communication consultancy like Convergence is often decisive in winning over sales teams and involving them in a new product launch. The agency is seen as « neutral » in the marketing-versus-sales standoff. Its immersion in the industry's professional channels also enables it to bring fresh ideas to the initiatives to be activated... At Convergence, our methodology is as follows:
- An « immersion journey », a participatory working session our teams devote to understanding the launch objectives, cross-departmental relationships and how customers use the various information and decision-making channels.
- A recommendation of initiatives combining internal communication (to unite and engage the teams) and external communication (aimed at the various audiences according to the objectives defined upstream).
- The roll-out and operational implementation of the recommended communication actions and tools: media campaigns, operational marketing and sales promotions, events, print and digital tools, videos, sales support tools, press relations...
26 April 2022
Paul R.
8minOur objective, in this delicate phase for the company, is to activate the levers that motivate sales teams to promote the new product: the financial lever (I earn more), the intellectual achievement lever (I have a story to tell that reflects well on me and that I helped shape), and the altruistic lever (I help my customer grow). Ultimately, it is about providing all the keys and tools for a successful product launch: a success shared at every level of the company!