Growing the Existing Accounts, Buyer Myths and Winning more B2B sales - A Gartner framework

This is the excerpts from Gartner´s 4 publications for Sales and Accounts Growth mentioned below. 

1. Three Buyer Behavior Myths Debunked 
2. Why Accounts Aren't Growing, and What To Do About It 
3. Win More B2B Sales Deals - How sales delivers more value to today’s B2B buyers
4. The Sense Making Seller - How High-Performing Sellers Help Today’s Overwhelmed Buyers 

In essence - Growing Accounts

When it comes to growing accounts, customer improvement has a great impact on retention as ensuring customers get maximum value from the solutions they have already bought

1. Provided customers with unique, critical perspective on improving their business
2. Laid out a vision for improving customer’s business
3. Outlined the ROI of their commercial relationship

Driving growth

Growth is ultimately about asking the customer to do something differently in the future than they have done in the past. And doing something differently moving forward naturally requires a new decision altogether, not simply a repeat of one made in the past.

Key stats - Winning B2B sales and Buyer myths 

1. We have to sell to the business and avoid IT - 75% of senior people involved in technology buying decisions are NOT in IT
2. Organizations buy in teams - for a deal value of $5M+ = 13 people are involved. The average complex technology purchase involves between 14 and 23 people. Team size grow. 
3. Buying is hard, and most organizations are bad at it - 74% Buyers rated buying efforts as “complex” 
4. Your customers need help and guidance on how to make a good technology decision, not just how to choose you. The hardest part of B2B solutions isn’t selling them‚ but buying them. Today’s buying journey has effectively reached a tipping point where it’s become nearly unnavigable without a significant amount of help. 
5. No.1 depressant of big deals is - customer confidence . this is not lack of confidence in sales, vendor or brand, product/service.  this is the lack of confidence among themselves to make a decisive decision in the face of so much uncertainty 
6. Help customer to identify signal and clear noise.  Too much information out there in market. Help customer Reconcile conflicting information. 
7. How can you help customers make big disruptive decisions without having to research or study on it for years.  Confidence is - not I do not want to feel good because i chose you. Customers to say i feel good because i chose well. I.e. (Chose you Vs Chose Well) . That will make choose you again because, they chose you well . they feel good about themselves that they are good chooser 
8. Sense making- take knowledge to reality. I know lot of info. Outside. It is bet it is confusing. I know even i was. Stuff from trade association/ competitors. It drives down skepticism of the sellers. This is a moment of empathy. I'll help you to make sense. Sense making is value.  We can help ask right questions. These are things you should consider. 

In Conclusion - Actions

• Remember, your customers need help and guidance on how to make a good technology decision, not just how to choose you. 

1. Act like a member of the buying team (and coach on best practices)
2. Encourage premortems (exploring success and failure)
3. Share lessons learned on buying (from other customers)
4. Provide “how we got here” guidance (for occasional decision makers)

Note / Disclaimer: All the information published here belongs to Gartner and Brent Adamson and his team. Complied here for reference purposes as these articles are very informative.