[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2018\/10\/18\/b2b-selling\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2018\/10\/18\/b2b-selling\/","headline":"Kissing the Apex: Selling at 200 mph","name":"Kissing the Apex: Selling at 200 mph","description":"Customers expect more and faster. If they don\u2019t get it, they switch vendors. The \u201cswitching economy\u201d is $6.2 trillion dollars a year - are you ready?","datePublished":"2018-10-18","dateModified":"2021-08-29","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/giles-house\/#Person","name":"Giles House","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/giles-house\/","identifier":311,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/46fdd91c3256d22bfe92712f7e11f4472f37bb7c84ed0c5f71fe16431508385c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/46fdd91c3256d22bfe92712f7e11f4472f37bb7c84ed0c5f71fe16431508385c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Future of Commerce","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","width":172,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/thumbnail-8f7c335907e67e4d21e8ca80361827f2.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/thumbnail-8f7c335907e67e4d21e8ca80361827f2.jpeg","height":375,"width":1200},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2018\/10\/18\/b2b-selling\/","about":[{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/sales\/","name":"Sales","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sales","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q194189"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/sales\/sales-general\/","name":"Sales","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sales","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q194189"]}],"wordCount":706,"keywords":["B2B","B2B Sales","SAP Sales Cloud"],"articleBody":"Two-hundred miles per hour is a scary and dangerous speed to most people. If you look at the history of Formula 1, it was even a dangerous speed for most professional race car drivers.Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Formula 1 drivers didn\u2019t take many safety precautions. They raced in trousers and dress shirts, and in cars without seat belts. They raced on gut feelings and reflexes. The result was some incredible driving, but also drivers being thrown from cars with a 50\/50 chance of survival. It really was living on the edge.Things changed in the 1970s \u00a0and 1980s with the advent of \u201ctelemetry\u201d and onboard computers that analyzed your car\u2019s movement around the track. After the race, you\u2019d get a printout that suggested how you could have \u201cKissed the Apex,\u201d i.e., taken the fastest trajectory around the curves without crashing. \u00a0Oh, and that\u2019s when the use of seat belts and fire suits cut down on actual deaths.Fast forward to today, and Formula 1 cars have sensors everywhere. Every move the car and its driver makes is streamed in real time, analyzed, and adjustments are suggested at pit stops.It\u2019s no longer a car, but a high speed data hub with several terabytes of data generated in a single race. Suddenly, driving at 200 MPH isn\u2019t so dangerous – it\u2019s routine.The same thing is happening in B2B sales.      Fostering B2B sales collaboration for CX success                Fostering teamwork and B2B sales collaboration has become increasingly important as businesses focus on customer experience.      Breakneck speed: B2B salesThere has been a revolution in customer expectations, driven by the Amazons, Apples, and Ubers of the world. These companies, which have so changed our world, have crept up out of seemingly nowhere to change our lives. Uber was founded in 2009. The first iPhone was shipped in 2007. That\u2019s only a few years ago: a blink of the eye.Customers now expect more and faster. And if they don\u2019t get it, they switch vendors.The \u201cswitching economy\u201d is $6.2 trillion dollars a year, according to Accenture. That\u2019s larger than the economy of almost every country in the world.It\u2019s driven by customers who have a bad experience or two – sometimes just a single bad experience. And it\u2019s driven by customers who don\u2019t feel much of a connection to the company they are buying from.So sales needs to keep up with this dizzying pace.And like modern-day Formula 1 racing, you need the tools to do that — tools to make those pit stop adjustments automatically so that you can keep driving with the optimal speed and trajectory.It’s not you, it’s… oh, wait, it IS you: How sales software can improve customer retention and profitsMany of the failures in customer experience have to do with clumsy and disconnected sales tools, bridged by manual processes and \u201cgut feel.\u201dIn most cases, it actually isn\u2019t the sales rep\u2019s fault that a customer goes away unhappy.Too many companies have tools that provide quotes too slowly, and don\u2019t provide a full view of a customer engagement and the actual order, from lead to tracking supply chain and procurement.When you ask a sales person about a product and get a blank stare, it\u2019s probably because they don\u2019t have the tools that could have provided them with the answer in a timely manner.SAP Sales Cloud was borne out of this need for a hyperconnected and hyper-speed sales experience.It was built to be:Fast with quotesFast with information on productsFast with answers on back-end supply chains.Sales Cloud was built with automation and machine learning, not on gut feel. It was built with personalization at a deep level, including custom pricing and custom product lists sometimes only seen by a single customer.And it is built on signals from sales activity and customer interactions – not on inaccurate and out-of-date information on pipeline stages and deal probabilities manually entered into an opportunity.It was built on the need to accelerate sales to 200 mph.  More options. More conditions. More stakeholders. More circling-back.Modern selling is anything but simple.Intelligent sales enablement starts HERE."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"2018","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2018\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"10","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2018\/\/10\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"18","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2018\/\/10\/\/18\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"Kissing the Apex: Selling at 200 mph","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2018\/10\/18\/b2b-selling\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]