The Selling System In The Age Of The Customer

The age of the customer is upon us. Buyers are more demanding, informed, value sensitive, and have more choices available to them than at any other point in history. As executive leaders drive transformational customer-centric business strategies, they are growing increasingly frustrated with the revenue and profitability results their organizations are generating. In response, functional leaders are also driving changes in their operating practices, all with the goal of helping sales sell. The result? These efforts tend to create either organizational drag or confusion at the point of sale, or both. Businesses that wish to boost their margins will create selling systems to: 1) communicate value to targeted executives, and 2) develop a new set of principles to help drive the details of an operational plan. A go-to-customer approach provides executive leadership with a clear vision to communicate to the rest of the organization and a way to carve out organizational white space for new operational models to emerge.