Automating complex B2B sales: how to overcome chaos and choose the right CRM system

It is no secret that there is a market shift underway. Technology leaders with ready-made CRM solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle and Salesforce, are leaving Russia. Customers are faced with the task of choosing a new solution. The problem is not so much what tool is needed, but how to approach it. That’s why we decided to take a closer look at this topic.

In this expert material based on the results of the open webinar, we have collected not only key recommendations on choosing a tool, but also methods of preparation for automation and typical mistakes that should not be made.

The Place of Complex Selling in Corporate Sales

As with any topic, we need to start with definitions. Let’s break down what complex selling is in B2B.

Complex selling in B2B

If you look at what is written on the internet, there is no single definition of complex selling. We, having been involved in complex selling since 2013 (development, training, consulting), have formulated a simple definition for ourselves and even developed a short test to set an inbound filter for the customer.

In our understanding, sales complexity is threefold:

1. Product: Technologically or intellectually complex. For example, in IT, this could be industrial internet of things or low-code platforms. In other industries, it could be the implementation of complex technologies in manufacturing, corporate insurance systems for large clients, intellectual property legal services, or consulting services.
2. Customer: large and medium-sized enterprises with a large number of stakeholders whose relationships are not always clear and may be contradictory. The structure of the customer is not always obvious at first sight.
3. Interaction: the quick “come, see, win” approach does not work. It takes long and careful work with the client to close a major deal.

Our test to determine sales complexity includes the following items:

1. The presence of a complex product
2. Long transaction cycle (six months to several years)
3. A large number of negotiators on both sides
4. High value of the deal (millions of rubles)
5. High value of each client (small number of potential clients)

If you have most of these points in common, then your sales can be considered sophisticated.

In the following, we will talk primarily about the sales process, i.e. repetitive activities. But it’s also worth mentioning project sales and vendor sales of enterprise products.

Project Sales

Project sales is usually understood in two aspects:

1. Applying a project-based sales approach
2. Selling a project rather than a specific product (e.g., building a data center or participating in a development project)

Project sales uses other tools and we can discuss them separately in the future.

Vendor Sales

Regarding vendor sales, in the western model, the vendor usually does not sell directly to end customers, but uses a partner sales channel. This requires special mechanisms for recording and controlling transactions. There is a whole class of ** Vendor Customer Service Management (VCSM) products that cover not only sales but also after-sales support.

In Russia, the situation is somewhat different: many vendors are still engaged in direct sales. Therefore, CRM-system in one form or another is needed by almost all companies engaged in complex sales.

The issue of combining complex and transactional sales in one CRM system

If we talk about best practices, the obvious answer is that you can’t combine complex and transactional sales not only in one CRM system, but also at the level of business processes, people, and ideally even at the level of individual brands.

Let’s give some examples:

• Tool manufacturers often separate residential (low-cost, transactional) and professional (more complex sales) product lines.
• Automakers create separate brands for the mass-market and premium segments.
• In IT, cloud providers sometimes create separate brands for transactional sales.

The reason is that transactional sales have completely different success criteria: price, ease of purchase, delivery time. The emphasis here is on automation and eliminating salespeople from the sales cycle. If you try to combine these approaches, you run the risk of slipping into a transactional model, which will negatively impact the margins and profitability of the complex sales business.

You can pay attention to the other side of the coin. There are situations when a company that is used to transactional sales tries to implement complex sales using an existing system and approaches. This is especially noticeable in the IT sector, when new developers or telecom companies enter the market of complex solutions. Trying to promote complex products through an existing system of salespeople often doesn’t work.

Two pipelines – for transactional and complex sales – within one system

Technically, it’s probably possible. But if you really have different people, processes, marketing, management, and budgeting for the two areas, it doesn’t make much sense to keep them in the same system. They’re effectively different businesses.

Moreover, transactional sales should ideally be fully automated. Let me give the example of Oracle. When their databases turned from a complex product into a transactional one, they fully automated their sales, removed salespeople from there, leaving only specialists in document execution. And the salespeople who were supposed to handle complex sales were retrained and assigned to sell more complex products. This allowed for more efficient use of resources and avoided overpaying expensive specialists for simple tasks.

Retraining salespeople from transactional to consultative

However, retraining salespeople is quite a challenge. In our practice, one third of projects are development-related, when transactional salespeople need to be retrained. According to our statistics, 20%-30% of sales professionals are unable to retrain. Because in a complex sales should go quite trainable and smart people.

Where to start automating complex sales

The first thing to understand is whether your sales are complex. If you have both complex and transactional sales in your business, they need to be developed in separate areas. Separate people if you have more than one and a half diggers on your team. Separate department, separate directorate, separate brand, separate business. This is what you should strive for.

When we realized that we have complex sales, we want to improve their efficiency, it is tempting to just implement some new CRM system. It’s like the marketers case study. You hire a new marketer, he comes in and says, well, you need to change to a new website. You update the site and nothing changes. It’s the same thing with a CRM system. That is, if you just change the CRM-system, even if it contains the best practices, but people will not understand why you dumped all this toolkit on them, they will not use it, it will not help to eliminate the chaos that exists. Automating chaos, as we know, usually does not work.

The main problem is that people separate two things. The first thing is consulting without automation, and the second thing is automation without consulting. They don’t have the right effect separately.

That is, in the first case, when, for example, we have built processes, but we have not automated them, because the current system does not allow us to do this. What we get is that salespeople have nowhere to structure the information that they have started, for example, to collect from deals. They don’t get some kind of support from automation. It requires them to have other fields, other actions, other order of operations. And it all gets blurred, marketed, lost, and goes back to the way it was. And vice versa, when just a client comes and asks to implement a new gray system. And at the same time the issues are not methodically worked out at all. Not in any way. We get just automation, as we say, chaos from what was, and again, most of the functionality that CRM was built in, it is not disclosed and not used. That is, people do not understand how it should work.

In our practice there was an example, when a large project in the field of complex sales began with the fact that a system integrator came, the top 10 at that time, a system integrator and said, listen, this is the third time we implement CRM and the third time it does not work as we planned. It was a foreign CRM with a solution selling methodology. At some point we realized that people simply do not understand the logic of working in such a model. Before, they just saw budgets and shipped them. But now you have to work, now you have to sell solutions and deliver value to the client. On the one hand, this is methodological chaos, and on the other hand, competition is very tough – there are more than 20 thousand products in the register of domestic software.

Methodological chaos can be both from illiteracy and from the baggage of outdated methodologies that don’t work. For example, when complex sales people are taught to work out what only works in transactional markets with great stretch. To work out objections, to press the client.

In such a situation, you need to streamline the process, to break the established stereotypes. The first thing is to get to the understanding that we have a mess. The second is to understand what I want to get as a result. And the third is to understand how I can make it happen. The next thing is to look for an expert to help figure it out. When choosing a consultant, talk to at least three different experts.

It would seem that everyone has heard of Solution Selling. A lot of articles in Russian have been written on this topic. However, in practice, people begin to understand this topic in a basic way only after the first training.

That’s why we always start any automation with building business processes. This should be remembered, understood and taken as a given. Unless we build processes, implement some practices, and train people, no automation will give us a clear effect. This applies to complex sales, not transactional sales.

First we analyze the current situation, study the best practices, which preferably fit the industry, so that the consultant has experience of working in our area. And after that, we design new business processes and launch people who have already been trained there.

Methodological foundations of building processes in complex sales

At the heart of the modern understanding of the complex sales model is SPIN, which is known to most exclusively as the 4 types of questions to ask in client meetings. But in fact, these are the results of a very large and well-positioned research, which were conducted in the 70’s by Neil Rackham. On their basis a number of models related to the cycle of a big sale, to the client cycle, to the tools of work with the buyer at different stages of this cycle were built.

Here we can draw a close analogy for IT people with ITIL. ITIL is the results of research commissioned by the British government, where a lot of work was done to collect best practices related to the activities of operating IT infrastructures in large companies. In the first versions it was also rather theoretical, i.e. there were general recommendations, but there was no practical guidance on how to build individual processes.

If we go back to ITIL, Microsoft also has such a framework as MOF (Microsoft Operational Framework). It’s a grounding of ITIL to practical needs. If you read ITIL, read MOF, you can see that MOF is closer to business process implementation. That is, you can take some section from MOF as it is, formalize it with minor modifications in the form of regulations and live by it. This will not work with ITIL. There is a much more abstract description of common practices.

Similarly, Solution selling is a good adaptation to real life of those models that were discovered and studied within SPIN.

We draw parallels between Solution Selling and IT practices for a reason. Despite the fact that Solution Selling appeared and started its development as a general methodology of consultative selling, its further development was strongly influenced by such large IT companies as IBM and Microsoft. Therefore, Solution Selling has developed some specialization in the area of selling IT solutions. Specific effective results of each stage of selling in this area were described. A system of tools and their interrelation was developed.

CusDev, value selling, Lean startup approaches grew out of this direction. These approaches have worked well for startups at the stage of bringing new products to market. But when we need to build a working complex sales machine for an established business, we have to go back to SPIN and Solution Selling. SPIN is more theoretical, Solution Selling is more practical and IT-oriented.

Automating Complex Sales

Once you have chosen a framework to build your sales processes and engaged an expert, the question of automating those processes comes up. What requirements for a CRM platform will arise at this point? The main requirement is to have out-of-the-box practices and tools specialized for complex sales.

Speaking specifically about our CRM system (SimpleOne B2B CRM), we have a possible deal. There’s a double loop implemented there: the first is the customer cycle, so we understand what phase the customer is in. And there is a second funnel, linked to the first one, as they do not contradict each other, but more detailed – it echoes the Solution Selling phases and reflects the sales process from the seller’s side. The second funnel is editable. If you don’t adhere to the strict stages from Solution Selling, you can add or remove your own stages.

We realize that at each stage, starting with qualifying interest the seller has different strategic objectives. At each stage we need to perform certain tasks, and the results of these tasks need to be reflected somewhere, somehow structured. Our CRM system offers tools for each stage. For example, if it is a cold customer entry strategy, we must have a tool for mapping contacts within the customer. We need to understand which people are responsible for making decisions, which people are responsible for their own projects and their results, and which people just share contacts and information with us and are not responsible for anything. And so on at every stage. This is a big topic, we will cover it in a separate article.

Where automation begins

Automation starts with business processes. First comes the realization that they are a mess.

Second is setting goals, what do I want in terms of complex sales.

Third is to find the right methodology and consultants in the market. Train people. We strongly recommend that you always start by sending your executives and your salespeople to training on the methodology of your choice that’s going to be the best fit for you. And people will be able to look at these processes from a different angle when they come back. They will be motivated, they will have new ideas.

Fourth, start a business process re-engineering project with the help of a consultant.

And fifth – see which CRM system best meets the requirements for automating complex.

Migrating from an existing CRM system

One of the reasons for migrating to a new CRM is the task of import substitution of Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce products that have left the Russian market. We are sure that the companies that implemented these systems had a mature approach to sales. It is very difficult to work in them without the processes described.

Another case is a shift from mass-market CRM systems for SMB to corporate CRM systems for big business. We face two extreme situations in our practice. The first situation concerns small teams. These are teams of one and a half to several dozen employees. When we start to implement a methodology, and we have a project that we bring to fruition, there is a need to change the CRM system. Mostly such teams sit on various cloud systems, and I.T. people usually make upgrades quickly. There are no modernization problems.

But when it comes to large companies – 150, 500, 2000 people – you start discussing the implementation of methodology and realize that one of the main tasks is to adjust the processes in the CRM system. And what do you hear in response? “We won’t touch the CRM because we have it set up. We can’t do anything with it.” This is a typical response from large companies. The following point is very important when we discuss mass CRM: on one side we have simple solutions and on the other side we have complex sales. Different CRM systems have their own niches and a universal CRM will not fit for complex sales of IT products as well as for an online store, for example.

If we implement such a system for 100-200 salespeople, there may be performance problems.

And even if we don’t have that many salespeople, but we are implementing a new methodology, we need to change and make a lot of tweaks to the system. Standard mass systems destabilize under the weight of rework. Each successive rework creates more and more defects, the system becomes less stable, and more errors appear. The responsiveness of the system also decreases. Customers we talk to say, “We’re tired of waiting every time we click the mouse, we’ve tweaked it a lot, and it’s affecting performance.”

The second bottleneck that shows up on a large number of users is the CRM system’s operational data analytics capabilities. When we have three people in sales, we can keep most of the important deals in front of us. But on a large number of salespeople, we start to feel acutely aware when data access is limited by the capabilities of the CRM system. We realize that they are difficult to search and analyze. We realize that a normal report can be made only by IT department on request and it takes a long time. Reporting in the system dies, and Excel-files appear next to it.

To our great regret, in a very large number of large companies, each salesperson has his own Excel, these reports are weekly summarized into one table for the manager and so on. Sadly, this is common even in IT companies. This leads to the fact that CRM turns into a system of “post-mortem accounting” of transactions, and ceases to be a working tool.

We can say that this is a litmus test of the success of the CRM implementation project – whether the management uses the system data or collects them manually.

Criteria for selecting CRM for complex sales in large businesses

The most common case is when we see that the company is large, a corporation, there is an IT department, and an inappropriate tool is used. Roughly speaking, instead of a professional drill we use a household one. It fails, even though they look the same. It is clear that we need to understand that there are Enterprise-level systems, i.e. corporate systems. And there are systems designed for the SMB segment. They are completely different, although they seem to have the same functionality. This applies to architecture, server clustering, scalability, encapsulation of enhancements, their packaging, parallel development, automatic transfer of developments between installations, logging of user actions.

For example, if everything that we clicked with a mouse in the properties of a form, button or field in the process of development in the no-code mode will need to be repeated on the second instance of the system – this is not a corporate story. In enterprise level systems, this can all be bundled and automatically migrated.

From such system features comes such a characteristic as time-to-market, i.e. the time between when the business has a need to change something in the system, i.e. the process has changed, and how quickly we can automate it in the working environment.

What does it mean to have an enterprise-level solution?”

It’s an IT story. Everyone is used to the term by now, but it remains complex for the average person. To evaluate it, you need to involve those people who will be involved in the operation, that is, those who will make improvements to the system. They should see the underside of the system, see how well and correctly the development process is organized, how flexible the system’s capabilities are, what it allows you to do and what it does not, how quickly you can transfer improvements from one server to another.

For example, if you and I, two developers, have developed different things for different sales departments, can we merge these improvements together into one, automatically detect conflicts where we changed the same things, resolve these conflicts and deploy the merged improvement on a working server.

These are quite specific things that IT specialists should analyze when choosing a system. That said, there are also system architecture issues. It should be seen that the system is horizontally scalable, that is, you can simply add servers to the cluster to increase its performance. In this case, there should be no bottlenecks in terms of growth of this performance, ie, the system should not balk at technical limitations when increasing the load, which may be associated not only with the number of users, but also with the number of improvements implemented in CRM.

Now, when such giants as Dynamics and Salesforce have left the market of B2B CRM systems, in Russia remained mass-market CRM systems that are not suitable for complex corporate sales, as well as several solutions that are implemented on more or less corporate low-code platforms. The automation platform is universal, low-code, roughly speaking. Some of them have a good experience of implementing their systems in the B2C segment. Why are we concentrating on the B2B niche?

Because we have a lot of experience in this area. A box solution is valuable not because it contains some directories, and when buying it we tell the client: “You can do what you want from here. It is important that the box contains some ready-made best practices, solutions, and tools that are interconnected and used in our field.

For example, we have strong expertise and experience in corporate sales and complex sales. We have put these processes into the box to the maximum. It is clear that our solutions can also be used for B2C, but the B2C story, as we say, is primarily transactional. And in general, this means that we have to automate sales as much as possible in order to reduce their cost.

When we automate a specific area, we start to take into account its specifics. That is, an effective B2C CRM system is usually an industry-specific solution, customized specifically for your industry, product, or niche. And yet, if you are an industry leader, and your accumulated experience is very different from the average industry standards, then you decide: either look for a well-suited industry solution, or take a universal platform and customize it for yourself. These are two different approaches. And if you choose the second one, B2B platforms with a high level of flexibility will be suitable for B2C sales automation as well.

Requirements for CRM platform vendor

When evaluating a CRM system developer, you should look at its history and team. What did the company do before it developed the CRM system? How much expertise is represented there, both in terms of sales and in terms of building corporate information systems? Did they have experience of interaction with foreign vendors, experience in implementing and operating these solutions?

This is very important. If people are writing a CRM system from scratch, even on a corporate low-code platform, it is very important to realize that they are not reinventing the wheel, that they have a good track record and are familiar with the best practices that have been developed by the world’s leading companies. That they understand how to build the right architecture so that you don’t have problems later on with extracting data from the system because the database is designed without taking into account all the processes, for example. It is important that the terminology is used correctly and that there are sufficient opportunities for convenient operational data analytics.

In the box solution itself, you should pay attention to ready-made processes and best practices. It is clear that you can take any designer and make any solution, but the box is valuable in that it should already contain a well-established process inside, on which you then customize your automation, taking into account your specific requirements, but based on a well-designed reference process embedded in the product.

Closure

Automating complex B2B sales is a major challenge for companies in the process of selecting a new CRM system. Given the lack of mature solutions on the Russian market, it is important not only to select a tool, but also to conduct its competent integration into existing business processes. First of all, it is necessary to realize the specifics of your sales: whether they are complex and how this affects the selected methodologies and approaches.

We dwelled on the critical idea that successful automation is not just replacing one tool with another, but the need to review and rethink all processes related to sales. As practice has shown, a one-time CRM implementation without prior preparation and structuring of sales can only lead to the aggravation of chaos and inefficiency. It is impossible to achieve significant results if employees do not understand how to properly use the new tool or how business processes have changed.

Developing effective sales processes based on SPIN and Solution Selling practices allows you to choose the right strategies and directions. However, the key role in this is played by competent experts and consultants who will help to adjust the current processes and create a new, more effective version of them. Such work requires time, effort and willingness to change, but it will be the basis for implementing the right technologies.

A key stage of automation is choosing the right CRM system that not only provides the necessary functions, but also meets the criteria of complex sales. An effective CRM involves integration with existing processes, flexibility in customization and specialized tools for each stage of the transaction. This must be realized at both management and rank-and-file levels.

Thus, the success of automating complex B2B sales depends not only on the technology, but also on integrating knowledge, experience and methodology into a single system. If done correctly, companies can not only improve their sales efficiency, but also adapt to new market conditions, minimizing risks and ensuring sustainable business development in an environment of constant change.

Authors of the material

– Tatiana Kornilova, Russia’s leading expert in B2B complex sales development, Pragmatic Sales
– Alexander Starodubtsev, PhD in Economics, methodologist/productologist SimpleOne B2B CRM
– Ivan Karpukhin, GC Marketing Director, ITGLOBAL.COM