How many times have you heard or read over the last few years “The b2b buyer behaviour has changed”, “Buyers want to self-serve and have a seller-free experience.”
Even if you only consider the articles, white papers or market updates written by Gartner and Forrester, you could blow through at least a couple of printer cartridges.
But, for all the predictions of the future of sales, there is a remarkable shortage of granular insight into the specifics of the behavioural change and the things companies are doing to address the changing marketplace.
This is why I was really excited when Kerry Cunningham from 6Sense agreed to be a guest.
Kerry has spent most of his time during the last 10 years working as a researcher and analyst for Forrester and Sirius. Focusing his energies on working with marketing operations or demand management functions in some of the world’s leading organisations.
In our interview, we focus on one area of the sales process that has been transformed more than any other over the last 10 years, information asymmetry.
It is well documented that even before buyers reach out to a sales rep, they are likely to have researched the organisation, and its competitors and asked for views on the product or solution from their network.
Whilst many organisations still see this as a bad thing, there are some that are embracing the opportunity of selling to prospects that are informed and have preconceived opinions.
Key Areas of Discussions with Kerry Cunningham, Senior Principle at 6Sense:
- How organisations are able to leverage a prospect’s “product and market research activities” to fine-tune their lead conversion process.
- Why the best organisations are using a single lead from an organisation to initiate an account-focused sales process.
- Why organisations need to actively engage with buyers’ pre-existing assumptions of your product.
- How sellers can positively address feature limitations of their product/service.
- Why buyer behaviour has not changed, but what is possible has changed.
About Kerry:
Kerry Cunningham has more than 25 years of experience in B2B demand generation and management, spanning a broad array of industries and markets.
Kerry has been a thought leader in the design and implementation of demand marketing processes, technologies, and teams for a wide array of B2B products, solutions, and services. For more than two decades, spanning the gap between marketing and sales, Kerry has also developed a wealth of expertise in the alignment of marketing and sales organizations.
At SiriusDecisions and then Forrester, Kerry authored and co-authored a wide range of key models and frameworks, spoke at dozens of industry events, including 4 appearances as a SiriusDecisions Summit keynote speaker. Throughout, Kerry has continued to drive the RevTec revolution in B2B, helping organizations transform from outmoded, ineffective lead-based practices to modern, buying team and opportunity-centric processes to unlock next-level performance.
Kerry brings to his work with B2B organizations a unique combination of academic and real-world expertise in marketing, organizational design and management, including expertise in cross-cultural organizational design and change management, employee selection and retention, and performance management. In addition to dozens of business briefs and articles, Kerry is a published author in both literary and scientific publications.
Kerry has a BA in psychology and journalism from Indiana University Bloomington and an MS in psychology from San Francisco State University.
