Growth, Marketing & Sales Practice
Future of B2B sales:
The big reframe
November 2022
This article is a collaborative eort by Guilherme Cruz, Boudewijn Driedonks, Ben Ellencweig,
Maximilian Fischer, Fidel Hernandez, Josh Klemme, Molly Lewis, and Maria Valdivieso de Uster,
representing views from McKinsey’s Growth, Marketing & Sales Practice.
Customers nowadays expect
more and companies need
to shift to put them at the
center of sales—by improving
channels, technology, talent,
incentives, and culture.
2 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Introduction
Introduction
3Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
The world went online when the COVID19 pandemic hit. Business, board and staff meetings, chats with
friends, exercise sessions—anything that was previously done in person was forced into a virtual space.
Sales was no exception. The new remote-sales environment presented challenges, yet it achieved a
surprising degree of success.
A couple of years later and the state of sales is evolving at a rapid rate—and will only continue to do so.
Customers have become savvier and are demanding more, sales are increasingly becoming digital and
operating models more hybrid, and the “great attrition” is having a detrimental effect on talent. The current
recessionary environment only adds to the urgent need for change. The situation is challenging, yet exciting;
some companies are using the macroeconomic environment to their advantage to leapfrog competitors.
Leading companies are seizing the opportunity and taking action, with great success.
To understand the new era of sales, we spoke to more than 50 heads of sales across a range of industries in
numerous geographic markets. Their insights are enlightening and a wake-up call for those wary of change.
Five themes emerge from the research:
Put the customer at the heart of growth
Capture your customers and build their loyalty and trust by offering them value propositions and
personalized experiences that suit their needs. This can be done with effective analytics and tailored
content that emphasizes solutions and expertise.
Break the channel mindset
Single channel no longer works. Hybrid is the new standard—it offers powerful opportunities to connect
with customers in ways they want.
Create a scalable sales engine
A successful sales organization is able to repeat its best practices again and again—leveraging data,
technology and agile operating models.
Rethink the people strategy in the age of attrition
A new world of selling requires new sales capabilities. Talent needs to be reassessed as businesses face
both the attrition brought on by the pandemic and hyper-informed customers expecting more.
Make the change stick
For transformation to truly happen, cultures, mindsets, and behaviors need to change. Leaders need to
inspire the change and guide the process.
We hope you find the examples of how outperforming companies have put these themes into practice
helpful; that it kick-starts discussions in your leadership team around how to deliver growth in these
uncertain times; and that it inspires you to achieve what is possible in this new world.
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
4 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Put the customer at
the heart of growth
5Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
1
Customers’ expectations of how their vendors
serve them have changed dramatically—they want
simpler, on-demand, omnichannel engagement
that puts their needs first. They expect to have
informed conversations with vendors who can
demonstrate expertise on their industry, product,
and market challenges. Otherwise, they have little
compunction about moving elsewhere. More than
70 percent of businesses say they will happily
consider other vendors if their core “must haves”
are not met during their buying journey or if the
experience is poor (Exhibit 1).
Despite this, many B2B companies are struggling
to embrace a truly customer centric mindset,
starting with the language they use to define
success. In this new era, top performers are
obsessing less about an internal view of their
sales funnel (such as "introductions,", "proposals,"
or"negotiations") and obsessing more about
guiding customers on a personalized buying
journey (for example, "awareness," "evaluation," or
"purchase"). They might consider three customer-
centric practices here. First, find customers by
harnessing comprehensive data on customer
intent preferences, and deploying analytics that
translate those insights into impact. Second, attract
customers by offering B2C-grade, personalized
content with tailored value propositions. Finally,
delight customers by keeping a pulse on readiness
and delivering consistent experiences across their
entire buying journeys.
Exhibit 1
Changing customer expectations puts pressure on companies to adapt.
Source: McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Aug 2020, n= 602, Feb 2021 n = 562, Nov 2021, n = 602
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit 2 of 10
Experiences required for customer attention
% of respondents who will actively look for another supplier if these are lacking
Top-tier
customers tend to want
all ve of these must-
dos in combination.
Performance guaran-
tees oered during sale
78%
Real-time/always-on
customer service:
72%
Product availability
shown online:
74%
Consistent experience
across channels:
72%
Ability to purchase from
any channel:
72%
McKinsey & Company
6 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Find customers by turning 360-degree
insights into sales
While forward-thinking companies are using
analytical insights to find new customers, others
are struggling to adapt to the current digital-
first engagement model, which has shifted the
power from seller to customer. Customers—are
doing their own research online and finding out
about a company or product before the seller has
an opportunity to pitch it, whether it concerns
transactional items or complex systems.
Companies are therefore turning to analytics to help
them predict more accurately who their potential
customers are, their pain points and their next
moves, and then proactively engage with them as
early as possible. Outperformers—here defined
as companies that beat the average growth rate of
their sector—already use analytics extensively and
successfully. Players with strong customer analytics
are 1.5 times more likely to grow fast, and can drive
increases in earnings upwards of 1525 percent
(Exhibit 2).
1
“Today’s buyers are more
technically savvy. They're
more digitally savvy. They're
spending more time on
their devices. And they
want to engage on their
time, not your time.”
1
Jochen Böringer, Alexander Dierks, Isabel Huber, and Dennis Spillecke, “Insights to impact: Creating and sustaining data-driven commercial
growth,” McKinsey, January 18, 2022.
—Go-to-market executive, biotechnology company
7Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
An automotive original-equipment manufacturer
(OEM), for example, was about to launch a new
model as its older models were declining in
popularity. When the head of sales found out
that their current lead generation plan hinged
on converting existing customers, he realized
an expanded approach was needed to identify
potential customers as well. What type of buyer
would want to buy this vehicle, and how could the
company approach them and finish the sale?
The company used machine learning to combine five
different data sources that had not been connected
before, including previous ownership data,
demographics, and service history. This highlighted
30 specific characteristics that defined their ideal
buyers and allowed the company to create 10,000
lead profiles with which to calculate an individual
customer’s readiness to buy.
Their experience of leveraging granular internal data
to determine propensity to buy is a common theme
we heard across leading companies. The company
successfully launched the new model, delivering
10 percent higher conversion rates and a 5 percent
sales uplift overall.
Top performers emphasize two customer analytics
key factors that can unlock growth—data and
decision making. These outperformers use them in
the following ways:
Use unexpected sources of customer data at a
granular level. Leading B2B companies build rich
signals that go beyond traditional customer data to
offer a fully rounded view. For example, companies
are identifying customer buying opportunities by
tracking their hiring patterns—if a manufacturing
company starts heavily recruiting data scientists,
then a tech infrastructure company might infer
that the manufacturer is in the market for data
infrastructure and target it accordingly.
Exhibit 2
Outperformers are already using analytics extensively.
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit 2 of 10
Outperformers Outperformers
Slow growers Slow growers
3 out of 4
outperformers apply tables-stakes
analytics such as sales planning
(vs half of slow growers)
2 out of 3
outperformers apply analytics use cases
to be more granular on deal and
account-level opportunities
(vs half of slow growers)
McKinsey & Company
8 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Data-collaboration technology takes this a step
further by enabling businesses to share approved
data safely and securely with each other, driving
smarter go-to-market (GTM) and strategic
partnerships. For instance, a retailer might share
transaction data with a manufacturing company,
that could help the manufacturer predict its
required inventory at stock-keeping unit (SKU)
level, adjust its sales initiatives, and adapt its
marketing material.
These innovative sources of data can be turned
into actionable recommendations for companies’
frontline sellers. For example, one mortgage lender
developed a tool to help its sales teams make
decisions based on previously unavailable data. By
combining public, partner, and proprietary sources
spanning geospatial, urban, financial, consumer,
and business data—including datapoints such as
distance to highly rated restaurants—the lender
could accurately predict the rent of buildings.
Move from predictive to prescriptive decision
making. Predictive insights are only helpful if they
are actually used to drive targeted actions. Hence,
one needs to not only predict customer behaviors
but also have the data-driven tools to prescribe what
to offer, how to message, and where to engage—in
real time. This applies to preventing churn as much
as to customer acquisition. It’s not enough to know
that your customer is at risk of leaving; knowing
when they’re in the leaving window, why, and what to
do about it equips companies to address customers’
concerns right away.
As an example, one agricultural distributor was
facing mounting competitive pressure and
disintermediation from large producers that were
selling direct to growers. Faced with rising churn
and declining win rates, sales leaders knew they
needed to drive mitigating actions that went beyond
traditional analytics to build a complete, prescriptive
decisioning engine, aligning their engagements and
touchpoints with observed customer opportunities
and preferences.
2
Predictive insights are of
little help unless combined
with data-driven prescriptive
recommendations for where
to engage, what to offer,
and how to message.
2
Ibid.
9Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Using internal data, external interviews, and focus
groups, they systematically defined customer
segments, journeys, and buying preferences. They
hosted design-thinking workshops where they
translated these insights into a comprehensive list
of sales initiatives and campaigns meant to drive
specific business outcomes and articulate their
unique value proposition. Among these were a
new e-commerce sales channel and a customer-
experience hub that accounted for over 60 percent
of revenues within six months of launching. Field
sellers, in turn, had greater focus and success
driving strategic growth opportunities, enabled by
new data and analytics flows.
The company fed the results back into their analytics
engine to measure the impact of these initiatives;
The result was $1 billion of revenue flowing through
new digital channels, with churn three times lower
than the traditional sales model.
Capture customers’ attention with
personalized content
Of the companies that invest in analytics, many
still bring their customers a “boring” laundry list of
products. Leading B2B companies are abandoning
this one-size-fits-all approach and taking a page
out of the B2C playbook. Only 8 percent of B2B
organizations are currently set up to deliver highly
personalized marketing—but of that 8 percent,
three-quarters report growing market share
(Exhibit 3). And fewer than half of companies
surveyed grew their market share with little to no
personalization.
3
With a more personalized approach, companies
can reach out to the right executive with the right
message at the right time. In one case, a fast-
growth software company built a business around
a new enterprise platform but recognized it had to
up its game when pitching to the C-suite. It tested
a content-personalization strategy that departed
from its standardized pitches. After aligning on a
target list of industries, sub-industries, and specific
accounts, it developed highly personalized value
propositions based on a customer’s regulatory
environment, technological sophistication, recent
acquisitions, and publicly announced strategic
initiatives.
Developing these tailored pitches took the sales
team weeks of training to understand their target
accounts’ personas and market dynamics. Some
3
Auron Arora, Liz Harrison, Candace Lun Plotkin, Max Magni, and Jennifer Stanley, “The new B2B growth equation,” McKinsey, February 23,
2022.
Exhibit 3
Increased market share, by degree to which marketing is personalized
% of respondents by market-share move
The more personalized the marketing, the better.
Somewhat Personalized Very Direct one-on-one
47
66
75
52
McKinsey & Company
10 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
In B2B, content outweighs both sales presentation
and timeliness as customer-buying factors.
However, 57 percent of sellers say they don’t
pay much attention to content produced by
their marketing teams, feeling it is generic and
unresponsive. Yet by combining analytics—using
novel data drawn from innovative sources—with
direct customer conversations and surveys,
B2B marketing teams can personalize content
that speaks to individual decision makers and
influencers in specific accounts or industries. For
example, the sales approach for a chief information
officer (CIO) and a data scientist at the same
company may be very different while still reinforcing
common messages (Exhibit 4).
Leading technology companies have recognized
the need for greater customer personalization and
deploy specific strategies to target their end users,
including data scientists, developers, and designers.
customers required hand-holding, while others
were immediately ready to discuss detailed
integration of the platform into their existing stack.
And the approach paid off: customers specifically
celebrated how well the company had “done its
homework,” earned trust, and demonstrated that
they had the expertise to deliver. With this content
strategy, the company built a $50 million annual
recurring-revenue business in 18 months from an
accelerated deal pipeline.
The bar for B2B content is high. Ideally, it is visual
and exciting, conveys complex ideas in a simple
format, and meets rapidly evolving customer
expectations. Products are usually more expensive,
and sellers often may have only one vital pitch with
their target customer account. Trust, too, is an
important issue: great content shows credibility and
deep expertise, convinces the customer that they’re
getting an end-to-end partner, and anchors on the
end outcomes rather than individual features or
capabilities.
Exhibit 4
Modern B2B GTM drives growth with digital and personalization end-to-end.
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit 2 of 10
BB revenue lift from increased
content relevance & engagement
5–10%
higher sales productivity
& eciency
20–25%
increase in testing
speed & throughput
5–10x
Awareness Understanding Purchase Success
CIO,
RetailCo
Head of IT,
RetailCo
Data
Scientist,
RetailCo
Marketer
Seller
Jointly prioritize accounts /
verticals with intent &
behavior data
Form cross-functional pod
to pursue RetailCo & jointly
track engagement end-to-end
Receives video
testimonial from a
friend about a
CloudCo retail client
Sees CloudCo display
ad for retailers
Reads industry report
mentioning CloudCo
Signs up for CloudCo’s
exec event
Is directed to
CloudCo white
paper for retailers
Finds CloudCo in
search results
Gets personalized message
from sales rep post event
Gets quarterly trends &
insights email
for current
customers
Sees CloudCo sales
pitch and demo;
negotiates contract
and signs thereafter
Use personalized
digital tool on
CloudCo site to
build business
case that they
pitch to CIO
Builds personalized content
strategy for RetailCo
Renes content based on
initial customer conversation
Finds relevant messaging & content on
central CMS and sends note to CIO
Deploys self-serve tool to quantify
value-at-stake & builds demo
experience with product team
Sends ongoing
nurture content to
current customers
Delivers pitch along with
customer success manager,
aligning on
success metrics
McKinsey & Company
11Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Understanding that end users are increasingly
influential “option creators”, tech companies are
putting together tailored, purpose-driven events
where the chief technology officer—not sellers—
take center stage to talk about new initiatives and
topics, such as AI and sustainability.
Companies are hosting everything from hackathons
to interviews with engineering luminaries to appeal
to this developer demographic. And it works: they
are turning these users into influential champions for
their products and, by not inviting sellers, building
trust with them as well.
Impress the customer with a seamless
buying journey
Five years ago, B2B customers had around five
distinct marketing and sales touchpoints during
their buying experience—now they can have as
many as ten. This journey can be cumbersome, and
ensuring consistency between touchpoints can be
difficult for B2B sellers.
They could consider dismantling the barriers
that have long separated marketing and sales,
smoothing the experience as customers move from
one touchpoint to the next. This requires some bold
moves, like fixing broken incentives by replacing
marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) with measures of
a customer’s readiness to have a conversation, and
combining marketing and sales forces to give the
customer a frictionless experience.
MQLs have long forced marketers into a demand-
generation trap, where they are incentivized to
push customers through a funnel to sellers without
knowing whether those customers are ready
to advance. Customers can get annoyed, while
marketers become frustrated by artificial targets
that call on them to engage in low-value activities.
Sellers can become dissatisfied because these
MQLs are only marginally more likely to take a
meeting; often sellers ignore them and develop
separate measures of the pipeline.
Smart companies are shifting from a “sales funnel”
mentality to a “customer buying journey” mindset,
with sales and marketing working togethe and
oriented on where customers might actually be.
This enables marketing to play a deeper role in the
customer lifecycle, instead of pushing leads that
might have little interest in buying.
One enterprise software company parted ways
with the MQL concept entirely. Instead of artificially
qualifying customers, it adopted a “conversation
readiness” mindset by simply talking to customers at
events, in surveys, and via the website, asking them
if they wanted to engage a seller. Customers were
not pushed to a seller unless they were ready—and
they loved it. From fewer leads overall, the company
experienced four times more opportunities and a
doubling of account engagement.
Make every seller a marketer … and vice versa.
Nine out of ten B2B decision makers say that
marketing and sales need to work more closely
together to put an end to overlapping work. They
recognize it would be more effective for both
functions to work on the same go-to-market
strategy, from the same data, and with the same
message so that customers don’t get frustrated by
contradictory messaging or confusing handoffs.
To address this, a leading enterprise cybersecurity
company has marketing and sales collaborate
in “pods” that report to a combined business-unit
leader. They work together to approach prioritized
customers. Marketers lead personalized content
and self-serve digital tools, and train sellers to
deliver these. They also educate sellers on their
customers’ key buying factors and strategies to
tailor content.
Sellers then deliver the pitch and report back on
how the content resonated or not with customers.
Front line reps (field sellers, remote sellers,
customer success managers, sales development
reps, and channel partners) all provide critical
inputs to marketing. Content-management systems
and digital-asset managers help access and
tag content, while other internal communication
channels—company intranet sites, townhalls, client-
case videos, and employee pulse checks—ensure
consistent delivery. This has all contributed to 30
percent year-on-year growth.
12 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
The advantage of the self-
serve journey is that it drives
a sale without the seller
being needed, even at the
moment of purchase—making
every marketer a seller.
Marketers historically have focused on demand
generation, making customers aware of their
products. Now, however, by creating and deploying
self-serve tools, marketing can play a role in not just
generating demand, but converting and nurturing it.
For example, IBM’s hybrid cloud-value calculator,
Amazon Web Service’s migration evaluator, Google
Cloud’s pricing calculator, and Microsoft Azure’s
total-cost-of-ownership calculator are all self-
service tools that offer personalization and empower
potential customers. By answering a few questions
about factors such as their company’s industry,
annual revenue, IT spend, and current cloud
maturity, prospects can get a customized, visual
business case for adopting the cloud solution.
The advantage of the self-serve journey is that it
drives a sale without the seller being needed, even
at the moment of purchase—making every marketer
a seller. And by using the customer’s data from that
journey, sellers have a ready-made business case to
pitch to leadership.
A customer-centric journey involves finding
the right customers through analytics-based
insights and ensuring a personalized, consistent
customer experience. But to unlock value, it is
essential to address the siloed channels that hinder
transformation.
13Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Break the
channel mindset
14 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
2
Traditional channel strategy has been upended. B2B
customers now often use more than nine channels
on their buying journeys—from older channels
like email and phone calls to mobile apps and web
chats.
4
They have become so comfortable with this
mode that many are happy to close deals in excess
of $500,000 without ever meeting the seller in
person. Customers no longer think of channels;
they want intuitive, seamless, and personalized
experiences that satisfy their buying needs
(Exhibit 5).
The idea of allocating reps to accounts once a year
and then reevaluating for the next planning cycle
is no longer effective. Companies that addressed
this change and sold through more channels grew
market share at a faster rate in 2021.
5
Leading B2B sales organizations react to changing
buyer behavior in three specific ways. First, they
adopt hybrid as the default approach. Second,
to make hybrid work for customers, companies
optimize the channel experience for each step
of the customer-buying process. Finally, leaders
find creative ways to complement traditional sales
channels, thereby unearthing new sources of
revenue.
Adopt hybrid as the default approach
It’s a reality: more than 65 percent of companies
now prefer remote and digital interactions, a
trend accelerated by the COVID19 pandemic.
Increasingly, they are investing more in hybrid
roles—reps are no longer seen as “field” or “inside”
Exhibit 5
B2B buyers have settled into using an evenly divided mix of sales channels.
1
Q: Currently, how do you split your time with sales reps from your company's suppliers during the following stages of interactions?
2
Traditional includes in-person meetings, direct mail, fax, etc. Remote includes phone calls, video conference calls, emails etc. Digital includes company web-
sites, e-commerce, chatbots, internet searches, mobile apps, etc.
Source: McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Aug 2020, n = 3,626; Feb 2021, n= 3,496; Dec 2021, n = 3,360, countries: Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germa-
ny, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, UK, US
Current way of interacting with suppliers’ sales reps, by stage of process
% of respondents per sales-channel type
¹
Remote human interactions²
Traditional interactions²
Digital self-service
²
2 out of 3 buyers in 2021 opted for remote human interactions or digital self-service
22
34
34
29
32
33
Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21
Identifying and
researching new suppliers
49
35
33
30
33
33
22
32
33
Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21
Considering and
evaluating new suppliers
48
35
34
36
34
35
20
32
32
Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21
Ordering
44
34
33
35 36
36
19
30
30
Aug 20 Feb 21 Dec 21
Reordering
46
34 33
McKinsey & Company
4
Arun Arora, Liz Harrison, Candace Lun Plotkin, Max Magni, and Jennifer Stanley, “Rebalancing works: Omnichannel is more effective than
traditional sales models alone,” McKinsey, February 23. 2022.
5
Ibid.
15Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
but a mix of the two, adjusting to customer need
at each stage of the sales process. And it seems
this phenomenon is here to stay: research shows
that hybrid has seen the fastest growth of all types
of roles over the last few years—making hybrid a
channel of its own (Exhibit 6).
To succeed, salespeople need to become experts
at both remote and in-person selling. There are
a number of ways to achieve this. First, learning
how to judge the right form of interaction for
different contexts and situations at every stage
of the customer journey. Second, learning to read
both physical and virtual settings and understand
what makes buyers tick in each. Third, mastering
hybrid orchestration, where some customers might
be physically in the room while others are spread
across the world.
Although challenging, the benefits of the hybrid
approach are clear: it enables a more consistent
and customized level of engagement; sellers can
engage with customers more frequently; and they
can easily access information when using digital
remote channels, while not losing the effectiveness
of in-person meetings and demonstrations.
The hybrid model also allows traditional in-person
sellers to use technology to optimize their sales
activities, such as applying speech analytics to
customers’ verbal cues or analyzing video footage to
clarify customer questions. Adopting hybrid as the
default model enables a broad set of channels to be
used, depending on where the customers are in their
buying journeys.
Many companies have significantly improved
their sales performance using hybrid models. For
example, a leading financial-services company
faced many challenges with its traditional channel
structure—it lacked focus on cross-selling, had
an inconsistent sales performance-management
structure, and placed limited emphasis on
advanced-analytics capabilities. So sales leaders
chose to increase the number of hybrid sales
professionals, who needed to be able to operate
seamlessly between the field and inside, by
50 percent.
Exhibit 6
Hybrid and digital are the fastest-growing sales roles.
1
Q: over the past year, how has the size of your company's sales force in the following areas changed?
Source: McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Nov 2021, n = 602
Hybrid Digital Inside
Field
70%
64%
43%
33%
McKinsey & Company
Net change in sales roles, percent of respondents, US only¹
16 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
The company also made significant investments in
technology, which allowed employees to develop
presentations and pitches that could work both
in-person and remotely—sometimes at the same
time, if the customer had people both in the room
and on videoconference. Its best field-sales
expertise can now address lower cost-to-serve
digital channels, making smaller customers
profitable. The shift has allowed sales leaders to
introduce consistent messaging across the sales
function (which customers reported as a major
issue) and helped the company achieve around ten
percent top-line growth.
Meet your customers where they wish
to meet
With customers wanting personalized buying
journeys, approaches that are experience-led
(looking at customers’ previous buying journeys
and needs) and expertise-led (demonstrating
expertise in aspects such as customers’ industry
or geography) could be the way to go. Too often,
customers launch into new channels in relative
isolation and with no consistency. Leaders in this
space are meeting customers where they are to
ensure consistent messaging across channels,
rather than making the customers come to them.
A global B2B software-as-a-service player now lets
the type of transaction—what is being sold to whom
and when—determine the GTM approach instead of
assigning larger accounts to field reps and smaller
ones to inside sales. Simple transactions for all
customers are handled by inside sales or digital
channels, while field reps cover more complex
purchases.
Before this, if a customer posted a query on the
website, the digital-sales team referred it to the call
center; staff there had basic technical and selling
capabilities but lacked the expertise to land sales.
The company’s data showed, however, that inside
sales can effectively follow up remotely by bringing
in experts for guidance from a centralized pool in
the commercial hub. The final negotiation and close
Direct-to-consumer experiences in B2B
With the increased use of omnichannels, some
B2B organizations have found opportunities in
unexpected places. Some have chosen to (re)
define their customer as the end consumer. This
has led them to embrace direct-to-consumer
(DTC) business, without relying on intermediaries.
Research shows that DTC margins are typically
812 percent higher than other channels.
Companies can operate at various stages of the
DTC journey, too: it doesn’t necessarily mean
just adding an e-commerce function to the
website. Some companies focus on building brand
loyalty, others on education around their unique
value proposition, and others on direct top-line
growth. Whatever the entry point, it’s important for
companies to be clear on the value they want to add
for the customer and prioritize building the right
capabilities to deliver that. This includes investing in
analytics to predict customer needs and personalize
their journeys.
Possible problems with a DTC model include the
risk of channel conflict, and antagonization of the
customer base. It is critical to gain stakeholder buy-
in. Deft organizations achieve this by communicating
upfront with retail partners, adjusting incentives,
maintaining price parity, and being omnichannel.
Most of the mature DTC companies McKinsey
surveyed do not view channel conflict as a concern.
Although the DTC model may not work for all sellers,
and creates the potential for cannibalization, it’s a
trend that many B2B companies are exploring and
adopting.
17Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
are then managed by field sales. This new GTM
approach speeds time to market, raises customer
satisfaction, and lowers cost.
Getting this model to work is not straightforward.
In addition to developing systems and processes
where information flows as effectively as possible,
some of the sales leaders we spoke to hold regular
cross-channel meetings where managers are
allowed to rebalance budgets, adjust channel
strategies, allocate customers, and improve how
channels reinforce each other. They define when
and how to engage, and ensure internal resources
are aligned so that customers can move seamlessly
from one channel to another. This goes beyond just
sales and includes all roles that have any meaningful
customer interaction, such as customer success,
customer service, and implementation.
Customers also like self-service channels—
downloadable demos, virtual webinars, digital
marketplaces, video libraries, and online
communities all help to equip B2B customers with
the content they need when and where they want it.
According to a recent McKinsey survey, B2B buyers
now spend a third of their time engaging with self-
serve content across all stages of the buying journey,
Customer success: Focus on business outcomes, and sales will follow
team created dashboards based on usage data that
flowed back from installed products. These showed
customers how they were using the products, made
suggestions for improvements to support intended
outcomes, and recommended additional products.
This data also helped the company identify
customers at risk of churn and enabled it to act
to mitigate this risk, by tweaking the service or
investing more time with customers to help them
understand how the product could be used better.
This approach is not limited to tech companies:
financial-services companies, manufacturers, and
professional-services players can all benefit from
the customer-success model. One large financial-
services company built a customer-success
team as part of a much larger customer-focused
transformation by empowering people to drive
success outcomes such as usage, adoption, and
retention—critical business objectives for the
organization. It created small, agile, cross-functional
teams to understand customers’ underlying needs,
answer their questions without many internal
conversations, and ultimately ensure that the
financial products customers were buying enabled
them to hit their strategic goals.
More companies are realizing the power of a
customer-success team and that selling a product
and offering support create a deeper customer
relationship. For example, a leading technology-
services company had a new set of products ready
to launch, though revenue was in structural decline.
It invested heavily in building a customer-success
unit alongside its traditional sales channels—to
understand how consumers were using existing
products, assess whether they could use them more
effectively, and ensure that the new product range
was being deployed to deliver maximum value.
The company took hundreds of its transactional-
service people and moved them into customer
success. These people undertook quarterly success
reviews to understand how the products helped
customers, which then had a meaningful impact on
both new sales and retention. In this way, customer-
success qualified leads became as important
as the more traditional qualified leads, as the
company realized the power that non-commercial
conversations could have in driving commercial
potential.
For smaller customers, where such intense
coverage was not practical, the customer-success
6
McKinsey & Company Global B2B Pulse, Aug 2020, n=3,626; Feb 2021, n=3,496; Dec 2021, n=3,360. Countries: Brazil, Chile, China, France,
Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, UK, US.
18 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
including the moment of purchase and for high-
complexity products.
6
Driving sales through unexpected
channels
Selling is not always driven by sales: for example,
customer service has long been part of most
companies’ selling playbook. However, some
leading companies. Leading companies are building
innovative channels to capture revenue from
unexpected places. One frequently used model
is influencer marketing—which asks end-users
to help sell a product by recommending it to their
leadership and colleagues. Companies can harness
this power by offering clear incentives to referrers,
and by designing marketing events, microsites, and
other experiences to intrigue industry influencers.
For instance, a leading cloud-software company has
adopted an influencer marketing-style strategy that
uses powerful customer testimonials to turn buyers
into “ambassadors”. Top ambassadors are rewarded
with direct monetary incentives or other benefits
such as free products. The company includes
case studies on product-specific webpages with
information about how these products have helped
customers—including return-on-investment details,
“It's very easy in people's
personal lives to have access
to information and to get
what you want when you
need it. People are bringing
that same expectation into
the business world.”
—Chief commercial officer, consumer goods company
19Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
video testimonials, and quotes. The testimonials
span industries and functions, and help prospective
buyers comprehend how products will suit their
businesses.
Some companies go further and create buyer
communities: platforms where buyers engage
without intermediation by the seller. They are
successful only if they are seen as independent
channels, with communities expressing their
genuine opinions of a company’s products or
services. However, they can act as a core part of the
channel journey and are a powerful tool to collect
direct feedback from customers.
One large technology company launched
communities where customers can find answers or
ask for help, accessing relevant data and content.
The communities include self-service portals that
provide support and feedback (for example, FAQs
and discussions with other customers). They provide
multiple benefits to the technology company,
allowing it to share relevant information easily while
reducing sales and customer-service costs. They
create better customer experiences, increase
customer engagement, grow customer retention,
and drive product innovation.
Understanding how to integrate these non-sales
functions into their channel strategy is a hallmark of
successful sales organizations.
20 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Create a scalable
sales engine
3
21Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
In sales, what separates average performers from
distinctive ones is not just landing the perfect deal
but being able to do it again and again. Leading
sales organizations deploy three tactics. First, they
use cross-functional “win rooms” (agile hubs where
deals get solutioned and continuously refined to
fit customer needs) and constantly refine their
solutions to fit customer needs. Second, they invest
in a narrow set of tools and technologies they
actually need, but double down to ensure thorough
front- and back-end adoption, focusing on driving
customer outcomes instead of solving technology
problems. Finally, they elevate the commercial
operations function into a clear strategic role
and make it a true sales leader role in the overall
business.
Create cross-functional win rooms as
the new standard
A win room brings together a cross-functional
team comprising people from sales and from a
combination of marketing, product, delivery, finance,
and technology (and other functions as needed), all
working together at a structured cadence to focus
on closing deals. Our research suggests that the
top-performing sales functions have embraced and
implemented this concept, bringing focus and rigor
to the sales process.
Although win rooms can be used for both large
and small deals, the approach is slightly different
for each. For large deals, the focus is on creating
a perfectly tailored solution for a particular key
customer—the right design at the right price, with
the right support level. For smaller deals, the focus is
on designing and testing different experiments and
scaling the ones that work well. Whichever approach
is appropriate, it is essential that win rooms have
clearly defined timelines, meeting cadence, roles,
and agility.
As an example, a financial institution launched a
new business unit and saw soaring sales for the
first couple of months. But as the launch excitement
faded, the sales team’s focus lapsed, momentum
ebbed, and daily sales fell. To revitalize the business,
the company set up a win room to shift the team’s
mindset from reactive to proactive. Sales leaders
established a small cross-functional team with clear
task owners, meeting structures, and dedicated
resources that were guided by working principles
(for example, that all decisions were to be made
in win-room sessions). They also introduced an
accelerated approval process. The team focused
on increasing the rate of experimentation around
new campaigns and optimizing the conversion rate.
It set up dashboards to track both campaign and
sales-rep performance and incorporated frontline
feedback into campaign design. In just four weeks,
the company had launched seven high-impact
campaigns that led to a 30 percent increase in daily
sales.
Ensure the correct tech-stack intensity
Many leading sales organizations find themselves
in a difficult situation—they subscribe to multi-
million-dollar technology solutions designed to
make reps’ lives easier and to help management
track performance. But they then realize that few
salespeople are using them. Many are streamlining
their tech stack and adopting a more outcome-
based approach to the problem
“Sales tech” is booming—what was once a niche
category dominated by a few customer relationship
management (CRM) players has proliferated into
dozens of subcategories, with private investment
in the sector soaring ~70% between 2020 and
2021. It’s also top of mind for sales leaders: around
80 percent of chief sales officers say that having
an effective sales tech stack is critical to hitting
revenue targets.
7
However, it can be complicated. Companies race to
purchase technology solutions, only to see marginal
productivity gains. Most sales organizations
spend $500 to $1,000 per rep on sales tech, but
barely more than half boast good technology
adoption.
8
For example, a Saas company invested
significantly in cutting-edge tools to enable the
7
“Taming the sales tech mayhem,” Gartner, 2021.
8
How to boost adoption rate of new technology,” Bigtincan, November 29, 2019.
22
Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
sales organization. Yet, even after significant seller
training, ultimately only two out of the nine tools
implemented were used consistently by the entire
sales force.
Those who get the sales-tech strategy right can
achieve transformational outcomes—yet a good
tech strategy is not just “more tech”. User adoption,
change management, and data should underpin
every decision to add another tool. There are four
imperatives common to companies that have
genuinely transformed their sales productivity:
1. Emphasize quality over quantity: The
fragmentation of solutions is a challenge—single-
source providers that can expand through the
stack can help avoid proliferation. Reps are familiar
with jumping from one tool to another, but this is
inefficient and halts adoption. A sales executive
at a large technology company commented, “I was
sitting behind the inside sellers to learn how they
worked, and was amazed to see they had dozens
of tabs open. I said, ‘Can you walk me through each
of these tabs?’ Of course they couldn’t remember
the tabs or how to use them. To me it’s about having
fewer tools but having them easily integrated, and
then focus on the best use cases.”
2. Start with the outcome, not the technology:
There seems to be an automated tool for every
step of the sales value chain. But rather than be
distracted by the latest technology, successful
sales organizations start with the specific
outcome they want before exploring what tools
are available. A sales leader told us, “The trick was
going back to basics. First, reminding ourselves
that the end purpose of tools is to support sales
reps, and second, to ensure that we see strong
results before investing in the next set of tools.
We don’t focus on the technology, we focus on
what we want our sales reps to do, and then see if
the technology fits.”
3. Invest in the data: While many companies
spend a lot of time launching new tools and
looking for business insights, few make the
necessary investments in the data foundations
that let these tools perform best—leading to
poorer outputs and a frustrated frontline. As one
sales leader put it, “There’s no point having all
the best-in-class tools if we can’t drive the right
insights because the data is poor.”
4. Prioritize change management: Companies
need to consider why a new tool is valuable to the
“It's more about having fewer
tools, but thoughtfully
integrating them—and
focusing on the outcomes
instead of the technology.”
—Chief commercial officer, consumer goods company
23Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
seller. A company executive noted that, “You need
to communicate clearly why you are using certain
tools and new governance methods. The best way
is a top-down culture, where the CEO or head of
sales clearly communicates the added value—and
champions it by role-modelling its use.”
Expand commercial operations:
Traditionally, commercial operations was a sales-
execution function to set sales quotas, manage
sales technology, and make reps more productive. In
today’s world, that’s not enough. If companies want
to operate at scale, they need to broaden the role
of commercial operations so it’s seen as a source of
analytical and strategic value. Our research shows
that companies that do this perform significantly
better than those that maintain a simplified sales-
operations function (Exhibit 7). Yet, despite the
clear benefits, fewer than one in ten companies
has seized the opportunity to expand the role of
commercial operations.
A software provider’s senior vice-president (SVP)
of sales operations described how his role has
morphed in recent years. He used to be responsible
only for day-to-day management and overseeing
functions that reported to him. However, as his
organization recognized the increasing importance
of a sales-operations voice, his role has been
elevated. “Now, I play a key role in bringing together
stakeholders in the organization’s go-to-market
strategy. I have a seat at the table in discussing
corporate strategy and working with the CFO, and
essentially act as a right hand to the chief revenue
officer to the CRO by working with marketing, HR,
and product to integrate channel strategies.”
Exhibit 7
How an evolved commercial operations lifts performance.
1
Companies whose commercial-operations organization includes sales ops, professional services operations, customer-care operations, and marketing
operations. Figures may not sum to 100%, because of rounding.
Source: 2020 Commercial Ops survey
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit 2 of 10
View of company’s performance vs peers by maturity of commercial operations
Rate of company’s revenue growth compared to peers in market/industry, %
>5% above
market
0–5% above
market
In-line with
market
0–5% below
market
>5% below
market
Companies with
only sales ops
Companies with full-suite
consolidated commercial ops¹
36
100%= 14 18
43
14
7
50
38
13
McKinsey & Company
24 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Commercial operations is an ideal partner for sales, because it has the power to observe and analyze
markets, generate insights through data, and use these insights to steer the salesforce. But companies
need to invest in it continually to ensure its success. Some organizations have transformed it into a
trifecta of sales operations, marketing operations, and customer-success operations—to great effect.
This critical change requires reconfiguring the team and organizational structure, but with it comes
effective collaboration, the better dissemination of information, and all functions traveling in the same
direction.
Many interviewees told us that expanding their commercial operations helped significantly to streamline
their processes.
A SVP of global sales said,
“When we consolidated
our operations functions,
we unearthed a lot of
inconsistencies and
redundancies that we
were able to standardize
through adopting
best practices.”
And another SVP of
commercial operations
told us, “After creating a
commercial ops team, we
saw a 30 percent increase
in productivity and a 5
percent increase in market
share over four years.”
25Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
26 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Rethink the people strategy
in an age of uncertainty
4
As much as technology underpins the ability to
execute at scale, sales remains a people-driven
function. With the global resignation trend, how can
sales leaders ensure that they hire, train, and retain
the best talent?
More than 57 million people in the US quit their jobs
from 2021 through early 2022. As companies look
for new skills and capabilities in their commercial
function, and focus sharpens on meeting customer
needs, the need to attract and retain people has
become more important than ever.
Effective talent-development strategies tradition-
ally include competitive compensation, an excellent
incentive structure, learning and development
opportunities, and a strong culture. A growing
number of organizations are now also incorporating
“purpose” into their talent messaging, as employees
value working for purpose-driven organizations.
Despite these efforts, hiring, retaining, and
replenishing talent remains difficult, particularly
within sales: HubSpot reports that average sales
turnover is 35 percent, nearly three times that of any
other function.
9
Our research shows, however, that if equipped
with the right talent strategy, B2B organizations
can revamp their salesforce skills to address
today's needs. Three key levers stand out: leading
companies are rethinking which sales skills are most
relevant, using analytics to craft unique training
programs, and breaking away from traditional sales
incentive structures.
New sales reps for a new era:
Rethinking talent
Today’s reps are no longer just agents who sell
a product. They need analytical, strategic, and
technical skills; they must be able to work with data
and derive insights, stay ahead of the customer,
strategize on next steps, provide the best solution,
and keep an eye on the customer’s business
objectives and profit and loss. As one sales leader
said, “If you can’t tell a customer what you’re going
to do to enhance his profit and loss, then you have
no reason to exist as a salesman.” Good sales reps
can also manage senior executives across different
areas of a buyer’s organization, from technical
manager to chief financial officer.
9
“Sales turnover statistics you need to know,” Xactly, August 24, 2021.
“If a seller cannot talk to a
customer's P&L and tell
them what is going to be
done to enhance it, then
they won’t be successful
as modern sales reps.”
—President, technology company
27Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
At some B2B companies, especially in the
technology sector, these skills are becoming
standard (Exhibit 8). An executive at a large
technology firm explained, “Our salespeople need
to be able to understand data. They need to be able
to look at situations or customers intuitively and
see patterns. If I had more traditional salespeople
who thought the job was only about building
relationships and closing a deal on the golf course…
well, those people won't make it in this market.”
Since reps need to have an in-depth understanding
of their customers, it’s understandable that many
B2B organizations target their own customers for
recruitment. One technology-sector sales leader
is bringing former healthcare professionals into
sales roles, for example. Organizations are finding
it’s more effective to train industry experts in sales
than to bring in fresh faces who need both sales and
industry training.
While some companies look to their customers
for talent, others are taking a different approach.
Offshoring is well established for functions such
as technology and customer service, but less
tested in sales. The potential benefits go beyond
traditional cost-reduction measures—by expanding
the geographic scope of hiring, companies can
Exhibit 8
There is increasing demand for new sales skills.
Web 2022
Emerging cautiously: Australian Consumers in 2022
Exhibit 2 of 10
85%
80%
Analytical and quantitative skills Solution selling
of sales leaders surveyed
ranked analytical and
quantitative skills among
the top capabilities to
develop.
believe solution selling will
be a core sales capability,
requiring strong product
knowledge and solution
design as well as
account-planning skills.
McKinsey & Company
access fresh pools of talent, enable global growth
strategies, and even tactically improve their reach
through such basic measures as being in the
same time zone as potential customers. One B2B
company is experimenting with offshoring its sales-
development reps, starting with a small team of
fewer than ten. If successful, it plans to expand the
concept to relieve the competitive hiring pressure in
the US market.
Companies don’t have to go offshore to expand
their talent pools. Many are taking advantage of
the growing popularity of remote work and its
role in accessing new domestic markets. A legacy
industrial supplier, which had traditionally centered
its commercial team in one region of the US,
expanded to diversify its team; with new commercial
and sales leads in non-traditional regions, they
were able to bring in deep sales experience, cross-
industry perspectives, and a stronger talent pool
that could deliver the next-generation skills needed.
Use analytics to train the team
A US health payor’s revenue growth lagged as it
struggled to sell ancillary products. The regional
sales teams rarely shared best practices, and sales
was broadly reactive. As part of a shift to a more
28 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Diversity and inclusion: An imperative for sales
our objectives and key results, into the way that our
executives talk about the business, into our core
operating principles, and into our reviews. How are
you serving the customer and the user? Part of that
has to be that I’m serving everyone, not just the
people that look like me.”
Some companies have been successful here.
A leading business-information services firm,
where more than 40 percent of the salesforce
are women (a proportion that carries through to
higher management roles), has taken steps to make
the organization more diverse by encouraging
employee referrals for hires. And the head of sales
at a professional-services company told us that its
leadership walks the talk: all six of the senior-level
appointments made over the last 12 months are
from diverse backgrounds. The company has also
created diverse interviewer panels to overcome
biases in interviews—and has included diversity as a
metric in its quarterly reviews.
The sales function—at least in the US—has been
slow when it comes to increasing gender and racial
diversity. In 2019, 76 percent of salespeople in
the United States were white, and the number has
barely changed in the last decade. Women account
for less than one-third of all B2B sales roles, falling
to just a quarter in the technology sector. The
higher up the organization, the fewer women there
are: only 12 percent of the top sales jobs are held
by women. Yet research suggests that women in
B2B sales outperform men—86 percent of women
regularly achieved quota compared to 78 percent of
men, according to a 2020 Harvard Business Review
report.
10
The sales leaders we spoke to believe that diversity
is needed and is desirable, though admit that it is
very much a work in progress. The head of strategy
at a leading technology firm expressed the view of
many: “Having a diverse salesforce is necessary if
we are serving diverse customers … [The value of
diversity] has been embedded into the culture, into
10
Andris A. Zoltners et al., “Why women are the future of B2B sales,” Harvard Business Review, May 28, 2020.
consultative sales model, the company needed to
develop a training program for reps. Using data
analytics, it discovered three crucial issues.
First, reps spent too much time on non-selling
activities. Second, there was a large disconnect
between how effectively sales managers thought
they were coaching reps, and how the reps
perceived the coaching. Third, sales reps and
managers believed that relationship and network
building were key skills for customer growth,
when in fact sales analytics showed that pipeline
management, prospecting, and product knowledge
were more important. The company focused its
training on these skills, improved its coaching
program, and set up a long-term training structure
that made capability building a key enabler of sales
growth.
Our research shows that companies can boost the
lifetime value of sellers by 10 percent by making
the right hires, optimizing onboarding, building
capabilities, and retaining the right people. The
analytics underpin this: using psychometrics,
behavioral data, performance, and team or
relational analytics, organizations can build targeted
interventions at every stage of a salesperson’s
tenure.
29Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Companies with the best sales talent demonstrate
four to five times higher market growth. For most
established organizations, the fastest way to build
the best sales talent is through strong learning
and development programs. This means reskilling
roughly half their salesforce and plugging gaps in
core commercial roles to drive success (Exhibit 9).
Leading sales organizations make learning
personalized, serve it in small bites, and reinforce
it regularly. And it works—our analysis finds that
companies that tailor learning programs to the
observed needs of sales reps are 1.3 times more
likely to be outperformers.
11
Integrating micro-learning—what one sales leader
referred to as “snackable content”—in the sales
curriculum overcomes the challenges of lengthy
(virtual or in-person) training sessions. Reps are
more engaged and retain knowledge, and it takes
less time. Training can be delivered through virtual
platforms and integrated into reps’ customer
relationship management so that it’s delivered when
needed.
An agribusiness company is introducing a tool that
integrates sales training into Salesforce. This allows
sales reps to access training simply by switching to
the landing page in their Salesforce window. When
they need support in managing opportunities,
Salesforce provides refreshers and micro-training
sessions that take just a few minutes and are
tailored to what reps need, when they need it.
Data and analytics are at the heart of personalized
training. A digital-solutions provider grew its
business by double-digit percentages every quarter
predominantly by hiring more sales staff. But when
growth slowed, the company turned to analytics
to understand its reps’ skills. It discovered large
variations between reps—the consequence of
investing less time in training after onboarding while
it scaled at pace, and not assessing performance
management often enough. By comparing reps’
skills proficiency with outcomes, the company found
it could achieve better results by refreshing reps’
product knowledge, equipping them with proven
tactics for negotiating prices, and improving their
handling of customers’ concerns. By personalizing
Exhibit 9
Sales leaders see reskilling as their
immediate priority…
… as less than half of sales leaders
believe most of their reps have the right
capabilities to succeed.
Which best describes how your company
thinks about upskilling your sales force?
% of respondents
What percentage of your company’s sales force
currently has the right capabilities to be successful?
% of respondents¹
B2B sales organizations need to reskill frontline reps and add leadership roles.
Low /not a priority
<10%
20–39%
40–59%
60–79%
>80%
Top priority 97
3
1
Figures may not sum to 100%, because of rounding.
Source: McKinsey insights
McKinsey & Company
1
15
39
42
4
11
Boudewijn Driedonks, Sinem Hosletter, and Ryan Paulowsky, “By the numbers: What drives sales-growth outperformance,” McKinsey,
April 13, 2022.
30
Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
its training to sellers’ individual needs, it saw a
4 percent rise in revenue.
Sales leaders can use data in this way to identify
gaps in sellers’ knowledge and skills, understand
how reps can apply their learning to active sales
opportunities, and replicate the best practices
of top performers. By using commercial-activity
analytics to assess how reps spend their time,
measuring digital interactions (such as emails
and appointments) and linking them with existing
organizational data, business contexts can be
assessed. This too can inform which training should
be aimed at which individuals.
Rethink incentives to drive motivation
and retention
Organizations typically motivate sales reps by using
monthly or quarterly financial incentives to ensure
revenue targets are met and to retain staff. Over
time, however, companies have seen downsides to
this approach, exacerbated by changing customer
behavior and redefined sales-rep skills.
Short-term incentives can even lead to decisions
that hurt long-term opportunities. To meet monthly
targets, for example, a sales rep might sell a product
that is not the perfect fit for a customer, damaging
longer-term prospects for that relationship. Meeting
targets is challenging—especially in times of
economic uncertainty—and, as reps strive to meet
them from one quarter to the next, they might have
little interest in long-term account management.
Or they might move off if they get a better deal
elsewhere. However, as the skills and mindsets of
reps evolve, more personal motivations to drive
retention and focus on longer-term objectives could
be a solution.
Go beyond financial incentives. The most recent
recruits to the workforce, Generation Z, care about
the principles and culture of their place of work:
42 percent care more about their company’s
values and purpose than salary levels.
12
Young
professionals today seek mentorship, career
opportunities, and flexibility. The desire to decide
when, where, and how they work has been
reinforced by the pandemic, and available options
have increased. Younger recruits also care deeply
about a culture of diversity and free thinking.
Analysis shows that a lack of career path is a major
driver of voluntary attrition. Most companies have
a two-year plan for a sales career path, often
causing reps to leave after that amount of time. A
Young professionals today
seek mentorship, career
opportunities, and flexibility.
Younger recruits also care
deeply about a culture of
diversity and free thinking.
12
Hillary Hoffower, “Money isn’t everything for the 20 percent of people who regret quitting their jobs during the Great Resignation,” Business
Insider, April 19, 2022.
31Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
fast-growing B2B2C company that needed to
grow its sales team quickly in a competitive market
focused on career opportunities as a pitch to both
candidates and its existing salesforce—reps were
not just joining a sales team, but had a definitive
path with significant career options, both within and
beyond sales. This helped the company not only
hire strong people, but also keep many of its top
performers.
Promote long-term strategic incentives. Financial
incentives are unlikely to disappear completely, but
some companies, especially in industries with long
lead times, are starting to restructure incentives
to get away from quarterly or annual targets. More
customer-centric attitudes can be achieved by
offering sales reps multi-year quotas and incentives
to develop an ownership mindset.
Some fast-growing companies have even removed
quotas. A leading technology company now pays
no variable compensation to its B2B salesforce.
Instead, it has introduced a long-term compensation
model where top-performing talent gets ranked
higher, promoted earlier, and receives more stock.
Since the stock takes several years to vest, sales
reps tend to stay with the company. Not having to
drive for incentives every quarter has changed sales
reps’ mindsets, fostering an attitude of collective
partnership to drive the business forward, while
removing much internal politics.
Simplicity is another hallmark of successful
incentive structures. Leading companies tie
financial incentives to only one or two core metrics
that they want to drive and that are aligned across
the entire commercial organization.
For example, one company’s inside sales center
needed to address attrition; the problem wasn’t
the rate of attrition, it was who was leaving. On
average, attrition was less than 20 percent, but
that masked dramatic variations across business
units: some were losing more than 40 percent
of sales staff. Attrition correlated with quota
attainment, but while quotas were uniform across
territories, the territories themselves differed
greatly in their potential. The company switched the
major performance metric from quotas to growth,
allowing strong sellers to benefit from upselling
while not being under threat from canceled deals.
This retention effort alone was responsible for
preserving $20 million in revenues.
32 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
33Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Make the
change stick
5
Best-in-class companies are innovating their GTM
practices to drive meaningful, sustainable growth.
But it's not easy. In the words of a senior sales leader,
“If I’m struggling to get my reps to update their CRM,
how will I get them to use analytics insights in their
sales process?”
Other pertinent questions arise: How do you change
the way of working of a sales team that has seen
major attrition over the last 12 months? How do you
embed technology in every action of a sales rep who
has relied, and thrived, on intuition for decades?
How do you balance independence and relationship
building with a rollout of best practices? How do
you make the changes scale past a few proofs of
concept?
There are no easy answers. Change is hard.
However, a few practices could accelerate
change— and make it stick. First, define a simple,
compelling vision that the whole sales organization
can understand. Second, role-model change from
the top. Third, embrace the “two-pizza” rule: adopt
nimble cross-functional teams (small enough to be
fed with just two large pizzas!). And finally, create a
culture of autonomy—but measure everything that
matters.
Create a compelling but simple change
story
A clear vision allows everyone, from sellers to
customers to channel partners, to understand what
the change is and why it’s necessary. The sales
VP at a leading company put it this way: “The ‘aha’
moment for our team was when we asked reps for
their thoughts on the transformation and it became
clear they didn’t really understand why we were
making it. So, we spent time making the change
story clear and transparent and this allowed us to
gain whole-hearted buy-in from employees.”
When Microsoft, for example, pivoted its core sales
efforts from selling Windows-based software to
focusing on the Azure cloud platform, it undertook a
large salesforce transformation. It adopted a simple
narrative of “mobile first, cloud first,” departing
from the traditional “Windows first” strategy. Later,
targeting new areas of opportunity, the company
shifted toward an “AI/cloud first” strategy.
This type of messaging is ideal. Simple and concise,
it can be understood by everyone in the organization,
and captures the essence and the magnitude of the
change. It became a key pillar of Microsoft’s hugely
successful transition to the cloud, which contributed
to its stock multiplying more than fivefold.
13
Role-model change from the top
No implementation will work without steadfast
support from the top. And role modeling is even
more effective than executive support. When
reps see their leaders embracing new concepts
that they’ve been preaching to the frontline, they
model that behavior in their own sales pods and it
cascades through the organization. As a sales leader
told us, “Nothing is more important than seeing
senior sales leaders doing exactly what they’re
asking the broad organization to do—especially
when it’s hard!” This level of collaboration requires
overriding internal politics, seeing the big picture,
and focusing on the best solution.
Embrace the two-pizza rule
“Change might be designed in the board room, but it
happens on the ground,” said a former executive of
a global technology company. And it happens faster
with small, agile teams.
A leading biotech company had an issue where
patients with serious, life-threatening illnesses
could not afford the drugs they needed. It typically
took the company up to three months to process
patients’ information so they could receive free
medication. To fix this, the company developed a
cross-functional team of eight frontline members
who were given free rein to redesign the system in
two weeks. They devised a new system that could
13
Doug J. Chung, “Commercial Sales Transformation at Microsoft,” Harvard Business Review, October 15, 2019.
34
Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
process patients’ data in just three days, thanks to a
deep understanding of customer and seller
pain points.
Grouping the right cross-functional people and
empowering them to take decisions and drive
change is a fundamentally different way to run a
business. Executives at best-in-class organizations
are moving away from “command and control” and
relinquishing authority to smaller, independent
teams, which can move faster without bureaucratic
challenges.
Balance autonomy with measurement
Teams require autonomy if they are to act fast.
And this goes hand in hand with trust. A culture of
trust drives ownership, boosts confidence in the
transformation, and makes employees feel involved.
As one sales manager explains, “Salespeople
typically don’t like to be micromanaged, so we really
need to make sure they have autonomy to shape
the change.” Autonomy does not, however, equate
to lack of oversight. Change needs to be clearly
measured and tracked. This drives results better
transparency and enables leaders to correct course
where necessary.
Executives at best-in-class
organizations are moving away
from “command and control”
and relinquishing authority to
smaller, independent teams,
which can move faster without
bureaucratic challenges.
35Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
Sales has changed more in the past two years than
in the previous decade—and is unlikely to slow
down. Customers expect a tailored rather than a
generic answer, channel silos are moving to hybrid,
analytics is at the heart of all GTM discussions, and
companies have to rethink how to obtain and retain
skilled salespeople.
The full menu of actions that best-in-class players
are taking may seem daunting, but in reality all these
concepts reinforce one other. As we spoke to sales
leaders, it became obvious that the trends outlined
in this report are no longer “ifs” but “whens”. There
are three questions sales leaders are now urged to
address:
• Which topics do you want to prioritize? Where
are you already ahead, and which issues will
affect your business the most?
• How quickly do you want to embrace change?
Are you confident with going all-in with a
full-scale transformation, or would a series
of change waves make more sense in your
context?
• What capabilities are most critical for your
organization? And how do you know?
To continue successful growth in this new era of
sales, change is no longer optional. There is no
better time to start than today.
Guilherme Cruz is a partner in McKinsey’s New York office, where Molly Lewis is an associate partner. Boudewijn Driedonks
is a partner in the London office, Ben Ellencweig is a senior partner in the Stamford office, and Maximilian Fischer is an
associate partner in the Denver office. Fidel Hernandez is an associate partner in the Miami office, where Maria Valdivieso de
Uster is a partner; Josh Klemme is an associate partner in the Boston office.
The authors wish to thank Katherine Chan, Jan-Christoph Köstring, Ayushi Ladha, Bret Lineberry, Steve Reis, Jennifer Stanley,
and Michael Viertler for their contributions to this article.
36 Future of B2B sales: The big reframe
