Making the Consensus Sale

Reaching consensus and closing deals has become an increasingly painful and protracted process for customers and suppliers alike. The biggest change in sales and marketing today is how customers buy. The new need to create consensus is turning decades of conventional sales wisdom on its head - replacing the requirement that sales focus first on connecting the customer to the supplier with a requirement to connect decision makers within a customer's organization with one another. The other requirement, more implicit than explicit, is that the relationship between sales and marketing finally change. Companies have long paid lip service to the need for sales and marketing to play together nicely. But given today's pressure to drive consensus, suppliers that do not align sales and marketing as a single team with a common goal will be trounced by suppliers that do.