Watch on-demand Dave Irwin, of Polaris I/O, and TSIA’s John Ragsdale, as they discuss modernizing expand selling capabilities to reduce manual and inefficient approaches to account research and reallocate time against customers’ expressed needs that can be quickly converted into expansion opportunities.
In a recession, key account cross-selling and retention is essential. Increase productivity across existing resources by modernizing your systems.
The Current Environment
Account teams face multiple challenges in growing key accounts including disseminating many sources of account information, creating contextually relevant sales conversations by stakeholders, and coordinating with internal resources to pursue initiatives over long periods of time.
Challenge #1
Information Overload
The amount of external information account teams must research on their own is immense and growing. To make matters worse, continuously prioritizing compelling customer events, connecting the right plays to the right stakeholders, coordinating pursuit strategies as a team, and tracking each new opportunity over long periods of time is next to impossible to manage manually.
“To bridge the disconnect between what commercial organizations do and what the buyers need requires situational understanding.”
Gartner, Reinvent Your Go-to-Market Strategy, 2/22
Challenge #2
Irrelevant Sales Conversations
Only 11% of sales conversations are considered relevant by executives based on over a decade of research. This is due to the disconnect between supplier products vs. customer problems. Relevant sales conversations, with situational context across a group of stakeholders who must agree to do something is complex given their perceptions change as conditions on the ground change over time.
“Today’s buyer teams can include as many as 20 stakeholders, each of whom relies on different sources of conflicting information along an increasingly self-service buying journey. This creates massive variation in how any given buyer organization arrives at a deal, and renders standard engagement practices ineffective.”
Gartner, Reinvent Your Go-to-Market Strategy, 2/22
Challenge #3
Decentralized Pursuit History
External and internal information ranging from research, articles, meeting notes, backgrounds, communications, people, organizational changes, presentations, and assignments are fragmented across email and file systems across many people like shattered glass. Yet every pursuit is typically a six-figure investment that should be carefully protected.
“...commercial leaders across the marketing, sales and service functions must work together to align their strategies, streamline execution and drive collaboration through commercial convergence.”
Gartner, Reinvent Your Go-to-Market Strategy, 2/22
Gartner expects that by 2026...
"B2B organizations that unify commercial strategies and leverage multithreaded commercial engagements will realize revenue growth that outperforms their competition by 50%." – Gartner
Double your account team’s productivity and generate new pipelines faster.
Conditions
Quickly identify relevant account needs from 1000s of news feeds, documents, financial reports, and press announcements.
Map Sales Plays
Your company’s products, services, and solutions are linked to every new sales opportunity created. Hosted content libraries make it easy to map the right set of capabilities into the sales play being pursued.
Stakeholder Canvas
Identify, engage, and coordinate as a team with all the stakeholders involved in making a buying decision.
Ready to double your team's productivity?
Let’s talk about how Polaris I/O can support your goals.
Maureen Porter, Commercial Leader at Polaris I/O
