I’ve just come across a very well-done infographic from CEB Global, on the evolution of the B2B buying. You can find it here.

What’s your opinion on their conclusion? Personally, I can relate to every single passage.

Let’s sum up the highlights:

• The average modern buying process is generally at an advanced stage before buyers engage with a salesperson — some say more than 50% of the sales process just disappeared;
• Why so? Because an increasing majority of buyers are starting their purchase decisions using a Web search. The Internet is a huge source of information and buyers potentially now have at hand all the elements needed to find a seller;
• However, with too much information, buyers also have too many options and do need an extra push to make a purchase decision;
• The average B2B buying cycle is longer than in the past;
• Why so? The reason is that the number of stakeholders involved in the typical B2B buying decision process has risen: location, function and seniority all come into play, while in the past the salesperson generally dealt with only one decision-maker.
• That said, how should the salesperson take advantage of this new context? My answer is: by adding value to his/her sales approach.

What does this mean in practice? 3 things in particular:

• help buyers/stakeholders define their problem;
• provide buyers/stakeholders with a solution;
• drive and secure a true and healthy consensus.

In short, salespeople have to build a meaningful and collaborative dialogue around service, solutions, results.

What do you call this type of sales professional? A Challenger, as we saw in my previous post, evolves from being a “product pusher” into an “insight provider”, thus adding value to the buying experience.

In closing, the traditional sales process is now obsolete; it’s time to follow the buyers’ journey and his new behaviour.

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I have been living in Shanghai since 2008. It’s been a long time and I must say I like being here for the most part, both from a private and a professional standpoint. However, it wasn’t easy at the beginning. Immersing myself in a culture so different from mine has been one of the most engaging and exciting experiences of my life so far.

You might get to know a new culture well if you simply live in a country for an extended period, as a student for instance. But if you have a job there, your understanding grows substantially; if you do business with local people, then you gain in-depth insight and that’s really an enlightening opportunity.

If you’re interested in expanding your business to China, there are many aspects that need careful and thorough consideration before taking the first step, starting with culture, society, and customs. Have a look at this interesting article by Forbes. I have had first-hand experience of each of the ten principles mentioned and I would like to give my personal testimony on several of them:

• Trust is interpersonal and takes time to build: yes, absolutely true. Chinese behavior can be frustrating initially. People tend to nod and say yes to everything you tell them but what usually happens is that the very next day they are likely to reject or deny all they seemed to have accepted at first. It’s hard to understand at first, and it’s frustrating personally and time-consuming from a business point of view. You will learn after a reasonable period of time that they are sort of testing your reliability and trustworthiness. I found myself repeating the same things over and over again to the same people before gaining their trust.
• Mistrust and opportunism are endemic: also true and strictly related to the previous point. Since corruption is rather widespread and a well-functioning legal system is still lacking, Chinese people are reluctant to grant their trust, but once you have achieved it, they give more credit to your word than to a contract.
• Chinese society is hierarchical: this is why the Chinese are so quick in making decisions. When I was entrusted with the establishment of the Marcegaglia plant in China, I first had to locate the appropriate area. After talking with representatives of each eligible municipality, my choice fell on Yangzhou. At that point all procedures and mechanisms started to work incredibly fast. I didn’t have to open everlasting discussions with a line of stakeholders. The deal was made and all systems got up and running smoothly.
• Notions of “out-of-bounds” behavior do not necessarily match: this might be embarrassing, as a matter of fact. It’s true that negotiations take place over dinner and you are expected to drink a lot. During the encounter with the municipality representatives mentioned earlier, we were all together having dinner around a table. Each of them, in turn, approached me, provided me with some quick information and then we toasted with a shot. It’s a business custom and you are not supposed to weasel out of it. We were a table of six or seven, and this routine was performed by each person — not just once, but three or four times. Just guess how I ended up the night.

Do you happen to have any funny stories to tell of what doing business in China means?

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One of the first topics I want to develop in this blog is the modern form of Senior Management, which is nowadays at the forefront.

Call it what you like, the wordings are many (at least in the Italian market, where we use a lot of English expressions): temporary management, interim management, turnaround management, sharing management. And the managers?

Besides the above mentioned words, you can also find titles like contract manager, leasing manager, freelance manager, or even – in Latin – pro tempore manager.

The terms may be new, but this kind of professional is not. This role has been in the market for a long time now, but our times of widespread crisis and consequential transformation have given these managers the opportunity to evolve and to carve out an even more specific profile and position.

Just a few days ago, for instance, the Italian Economic Development Ministry increased from €10 to €15 million the funding for companies to employ a temporary export manager, since the submitted applications have been consistently more than expected. Italy is running late in terms of internationalization, I know (and I will discuss this in detail in another post), but this is true for many other countries as well.

As far as I’m concerned, I follow the “rules” of sharing management, which is substantially different from typical contract management. This basically means that I take care of a company for a couple of days a week, for instance, over a given period of time. Having my own company to run, this way works better for me. But I must say it’s also beneficial to the existing management of the company I am in charge of, because the very nature of the task is not only to make practical changes but also to transfer competencies.

The profile of the contract manager is somewhat at odds with the profile of the consultant. And this is ironic because I cover both roles! But this gives me a twofold perspective on the attributes and the services that each provides.

Typically, a consultant doesn’t carry out the business management, but commits himself to providing suggestions, presenting hypotheses, and drawing up scenarios and related actions. At I.E.S. Shanghai & Hong Kong, for instance, I generally give three types of advisory opinions:

• technical > dealing with the engineering of cylinders;
• processes > often costs can be reduced by optimizing procedures and processes;
• commercial/marketing > if clients are searching for a supplier, in a new foreign market for example, I often provide them with some free recommendations, in accordance with the philosophy of the sharing economy.

In contrast, contract managers are experts in action: they operate in person inside the company by covering tasks aimed at effectively managing the transition the business has to face and, on top of that, are held responsible for the outcome of their interventions. I’m using the term “transition” because this is the situation I usually deal with. I work side-by-side with companies in need of a turnaround due to a crisis period, or a reorganization due to a poor performance against a high growth potential.

Some of the tasks of a good contract manager are:

• Assisting and coaching commercial directors and sales team
• Helping the company to find the right market positioning (USP)
• Creating an appropriate selling price-list (industrial cost + margin)
• Resolving contractual and commercial problems
• Researching and reporting on external market opportunity (purchase & sale)
• Developing the sales & marketing strategic plan (sales budget)
• Developing the procurement strategy plan (purchasing budget – raw material)
• Developing a marketing & communication strategy
• R&D of new products

The definition I have come across lately is not only motivating, but also absolutely appropriate: “contract managers are wizards of change“. And moreover, this is what strikes me as a revolutionary mind-set: their raison d’être is to become useless.

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Selling has become a lot more complex recently and any sales leader will acknowledge that dynamics, techniques and even the role itself have changed significantly over the past decade. However, that doesn’t mean sales professionals cannot achieve great performance anymore. Quite the contrary!

A really interesting article by the Harvard Business Review gives an overview of the different profiles sales professionals have developed over the years to keep up with the sales evolution.

Let’s have a look at them to find out who is a stellar performer in the present context:

• Relationship Builders: their focus is to develop strong personal and professional relationships, by committing hard to meeting customers’ every need, preventing tensions in commercial relationships and resolving them when needed.
• Hard Workers: they are completely dedicated to their job in terms of time — showing up early, staying late, skipping breaks — and of commitment – working hard to hit the best numbers: more calls in an hour, more visits in a week than anyone else on the team.
• Lone Wolves: their main characteristic is a deep self-confidence in their skills and in their way of doing things.
• Reactive Problem Solvers: they are similar to the Relationship Builders, from the customers’ standpoint, as they are highly reliable and committed. But unlike them, Reactive Problem Solvers are not as good at building strong relationships as in focusing on post-sales follow-up and in making sure that response to implementation and execution issues is quick and careful.
• Challengers: they have a deep understanding of their customers’ businesses and needs and use their knowledge to take control of the sales conversation. They are assertive and self-confident and their approach is especially beneficial to customers, since, by discussing and sharing even potentially controversial views, they push their thinking or make them see things from a different perspective.

Who is outperforming in your opinion nowadays? Predictably, the answer given by the Harvard Business Review is the Challenger type and it’s easy to see why.

Sales professional profiles have evolved because we, as customers, have evolved as well. We are better informed and more empowered than just 10 years ago: before purchasing anything, we’ve probably done our research, checked several sources online, and asked for ratings and assessments from people like us. We’re not at the mercy of the sales people anymore, and the same happens in B2B.

The sales process was a one-to-one approach earlier but now 70% of it unfolds online, and deals can be made by email. In the Information Age, sales professionals have to deliver added value to the selling process and this is where the Challenger profile fits in.

What are their main best practices?

• First of all, they teach their customers to think differently, give new insight, present new opportunities, make progress toward their goals.
• They also tailor their sales message to customers, thanks to the understanding of their objectives and value drivers.
• Finally, they take control of the sales process, knowing exactly where to meet customers on their journey and how to drive them towards a final sale.

You see, this role is quite a bit different than that of the other profiles. Challengers are more consultative, collaborative and advisory. I presume many of you think that the Relationship Builders still have their say though, and it might be so, provided that they change the nature of their relationship with customers.

Relationship still matters a lot, of course. But if you acquiesce to your customers’ every demand, if your sales conversation is based on convenience and your objective is to keep customers in their comfort zone, then you’re not giving them any added value.

In short, let’s each of us become a Challenger or, at least, let’s borrow from them some characteristics which we can leverage in our business practices overall.

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I began my professional life way back in 1976. We’re now towards the end of 2015.

That means nearly 39 years of experience in the hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder industry.

Mapping the market thoroughly is the backbone of an overall business and marketing/sales strategy, therefore, being the first post of this specialized category, I believe it is useful to make a sort of recap of how the market is made up, of its players and its dynamics.
Nowadays the hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder industry is controlled by two main types of customers:

1. Hydraulic/Pneumatic Equipment manufacturers
2. Hydraulic/Pneumatic Cylinder manufacturers

Before taking a look more in detail at each of them, I just want to make a preliminary observation.

The use of Hydraulic/Pneumatic Equipment can be found in a wide range of sectors, for instance:

• Agriculture
• Construction
• Material Handling
• Automotive
• Marine & Offshore

Equipment manufacturers encompass large multinational corporations, medium-sized companies, down to small producers with local interests only. The key question for any marketing strategy to answer is: do equipment manufacturers produce their own cylinders or are they supplied by cylinder manufacturers, the second group?
This is the very starting point. A smart customer database is structured according to this criteria and, like this, it provides an exact picture of the market.

Now let’s see how the two customer types differ from one another:

1. EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURERS PRODUCING THEIR OWN CYLINDERS
   The requirements imposed by these customers are typically: detailed technical specifications, audit of the production facilities, sample inspection for homologation. If these criteria are met, a regular business relationship can be established. Doing business with this type of customers means supplying a specific and limited range of products and sizes, depending on the area where the equipment is used in. Long-term supply contracts are common and variations in executions and quantities are known very much in advance before implementation. In case of relationship with the very big players, production forecasts can span over several years.
2. HYDRAULIC/PNEUMATIC CYLINDER MANUFACTURERS
   This group of customers supplies the equipment manufacturers who do not produce their own cylinders.
   They might specialize in certain application areas or cover all types. In terms of requirements, they generally meet the standard material specifications, they usually cover the full range of sizes and executions and their delivery timeframe must be tight and prompt. Larger producers usually determine supply contracts on a yearly basis and align them in the light of production forecasts of their main customers. They rarely are involved in spot business.

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If you have any comments, input or observations, feel free to share them here. I’d be happy to know your thoughts.