The Next Era of Commercial Differentiation

Sellers learn early that the keys to success are to understand buyers’ needs, teach them how to improve their business, and quantify the benefits they’ll see from a purchase. Unfortunately, the buyers they are selling to find this less helpful than ever as they struggle to navigate constantly changing needs and organizational priorities, that make the future feel uncertain. As a result, more buyers are downsizing, delaying and abandoning purchases. This disconnect between what sellers do and what buyers need is hurting commercial performance. Commercial productivity and deal sizes are stalling, and CEOs have taken notice, pointing to ‘buyer factors’ as the biggest threat to commercial productivity.

Our research identifies the key to overcoming buying friction and helping buyers to make bold purchase decisions -- deals that are 15% larger than they expected them to be, and still result in greater advocacy for the supplier. It lies in delivering a differentiated go-to-market experience, one that demonstrates that you can evolve with them as their needs change, anticipates their needs and evolution and helps them through roadblocks, and aligns the entire go-to-market team to the customer's needs. We call this experience "Headway Selling", and it results in higher win rates, higher average sales price, and more loyal customers.