Solution Selling Requires a Selling Solution – Welcome to the Demand Generation

“business development is an indispensable part of the demand generation process”

You’re likely familiar with the idiom ‘it takes a village’. An ‘all hands on deck’ approach to a momentous challenge. Solution-selling takes a village. The target isn’t a singular prospect and the ‘road to close’ is often an evolving, circular process.

For a business to adopt a ‘solution’ that impacts the entire enterprise, multiple decision-makers, influencers and end-users will have contributed along the way.

The ultimate task for the ‘solution-seller’ is to line up the right targets. And critically important, approaching the ‘key’ target first. A strategy that will get you access to the decision-making metrics [the process] and eventually, to the other players.

This requires a unique focus on ‘demand-generation’ as a critical component of your business-development strategy. Business development and demand generation should be symbiotic.

Forbes Magazine (July 29, 2020), in their article "Make Business Development More Valuable”, insists “business development is an indispensable part of the demand generation process”.

Forbes refers to “high-performing companies” as those who have a business-development (BD) strategy perfectly aligning with all sales initiatives.

The goal of all sales initiatives is to maintain a pipeline filled with revenue opportunities. If Business Development is aligned with that goal, it will require a Demand Generation strategy that incorporates Account-Based Marketing (ABM).

The ABM component ensures that the process incorporates essential market ‘identifiers’ in order to determine if a prospect is indeed a ‘qualified’ target.

Qualified targets are essential to a successful business-development campaign. It’s the ‘secret sauce’ of Demand Generation. It’s the process of separating ‘suspects’ from ‘decision influencers’.

Ultimately “qualified” opportunities begin to stream, mid-funnel, where your sales leaders take over the sales and nurturing process.

I’d like to share Forbes conclusion:

“There is no silver bullet for effective business development. It takes a synchronized effort and team alignment to gain trust. The truth is that you don’t need a silver bullet. There are methods that can help you align your organization. Eliminate that gap between BD and sales by creating a singular mission so that the pipeline overflows with opportunities that the team can close.”

Second Sight, as your Demand Generation partner, ensures seamless alignment with your sales strategy. Account-Based Marketing principals are the foundation at Second Sight for identifying and targeting ‘qualified’ prospects. Campaigns are then structured to produce meetings that will result in ‘qualified’ opportunities. It’s a selling solution for those selling solutions.

Demand Generation Playbook: Five Recommendations To Make Business Development More Valuable (forbes.com)