Friday, March 13th, 2026
A question of (purchase) complexity
In a world where technology has outpaced the theory, how do we define a new operating framework for sales and marketing? Here is a question that, in my view at least, should not still need asking in 2026: what is the actual difference between marketing and sales? Ask ten senior commercial leaders and you will get ten different answers. Ask…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Sales Leadership 101 – Are sales and marketing aligned around the customer?
Use this checklist to assess your current interface with marketing – and the customer. If you can’t answer “yes” to the following questions or don’t know the answers, it may be time to revisit the alignment between sales and marketing in your organisation – and your customer focus. 1. Go-to-market strategy 2. Buyer confidence and customer focus 3. KPIs, accountability…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
A game of two halves
Are sales and marketing functions strategically aligned to optimise business? We asked a range of experts – practitioners, academics and consultants – six questions about the interaction of sales and marketing in a B2B environment. We sought their views on how well sales and marketing organisations typically collaborate to support the aims of a business. We asked them how the…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Building bridges between sales and marketing
For businesses to thrive, sales and marketing need to reforge their relationship. I’ve been writing about sales and sales management since the mid-1980s – that’s around 40 years. For almost 20 years, I was heading up a marketing communications agency. So, I’ve observed the sales and marketing relationship from both perspectives. During much of that time it is fair to…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
A strategic approach to ABM
ABM Is no longer a marketing tactic; it’s a commercial operating model. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has an identity crisis, but not because it is losing relevance. Quite the opposite. ABM has become so commercially potent that describing it as a marketing approach is no longer accurate. In nine years of running the Global ABM Conference, we have witnessed ABM evolve…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
A critical new mandate for marketing
What if marketing, sales, sales enablement, and customer success align around a mandate to eliminate barriers to buyer confidence and ensure customers achieve their desired business. There’s a growing recognition that the challenge in complex B2B sales isn’t just about creating demand or building pipeline. The challenge lies in ensuring that we eliminate the barriers to buyer confidence – before,…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Buying groups growing larger and procurement becoming more influential says analyst
The typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers, with that number rising for more complex or strategic purchases, according to research and advisory firm Forrester. And, while generative AI is fundamentally reshaping how business buyers discover, evaluate, and purchase products and services, it has also become something of a “double-edged sword” in the buying process….
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Beyond the “war”: 20 years of research on the sales and marketing interface
20 years on from HBR’s seminal “Ending the War” paper, how can business leaders align sales and marketing to maximise market performance? When Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, and Sujay Krishnaswamy published “Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing” in Harvard Business Review (2006), they gave managers a language for an enduring organisational tension. Sales and marketing, they argued, were structurally…
Monday, November 24th, 2025
Selling strategic investments
How to use capital budgeting as a sales methodology. Abstract Capital budgeting is a fundamental process in corporate finance involving the evaluation and selection of long-term investments that are in line with a company’s strategic objectives. When employed as a sales methodology, capital budgeting helps sales representatives present their products and services as strategic investments to potential clients. This approach…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Buyers need human salespeople as guides in complex B2B environments to escape preconceptions
In today’s B2B landscape, buyers conduct significant research and vendor comparisons prior to ever contacting a salesperson. At the same time, vendors assume that buyers are likely to be confident in understanding the problems they are trying to solve, which can lead to sellers failing to conduct a robust discovery process once they do get involved. More paradoxically, however, buyers…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Buyers prefer self-service, but choose sellers for key tasks
Buyers favour online self-service tools over sellers when searching for general information and learning new things. However, for buying tasks requiring contextual intelligence, such as determining whether a product or service fits their company’s needs, buyers prefer to seek seller input. That’s according to Alice Walmesley, Director Analyst in the Gartner Sales Practice. “Instead of offering generic information that buyers…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Most B2B buyers will prefer human interaction to AI by 2030 – Gartner
While AI-driven solutions offer speed, efficiency, and convenience, especially in the early stages of the sales process, recent analysis suggests that the demand for genuine human engagement is far from diminishing. In fact, by 2030, Gartner predicts that 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritise human interaction over AI, prompting organisations to rethink how they structure their…
Thursday, January 9th, 2025
Omnichannel, AI and the future of B2B sales
How are B2B buyer expectations changing and where is B2B sales headed? In the previous edition of the Journal, we ran a story on McKinsey’s ninth global B2B Pulse report (released 12 September), which questioned 4,000 B2B decision-makers across eight major industries. This identified how B2B suppliers are responding to “consumer-like” purchasing demands from buyers. Here we talk to the…
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
B2B e-commerce unseats in-person sales for second year running
Business-to-business suppliers are under pressure to respond to “consumer-like” purchasing demands as buyers continue to shift the way they make purchases, a new global survey released on 12 September reveals. At the same time, buyers feel more comfortable with remote and selfserve spending on big-ticket items this year than they did in 2022, according to consultants McKinsey & Co. “E-commerce,…
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
5 essential steps for targeting customers
Researching prospects can be a time-consuming activity but is essential to success. Used judiciously, AI can help streamline the process. Then it’s time to make contact… See Sales Tips 101 “Opening a conversation” +
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
How to establish trust with customers
Trust plays a major role in our prospective customer’s decision-making. Here are a few of the most important ways in which salespeople can establish trust: +
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
Sustainable sales
What does it mean, and does it add value to businesses? In a world where sustainability is the new buzzword, is “sustainable sales” just greenwashing or can it genuinely support the creation of a company’s unique selling proposition? Academic concepts sometimes languish through lack of action as they cannot be translated into professional practice; however, this article defines sustainable sales…
Friday, September 30th, 2022
Cranfield KAM Forum (Reports from Q2 2022)
Cranfield KAM Forum has now restarted face-to-face sessions in parallel with its online seminars. The success and popularity of the online seminars has demonstrated that there is benefit from them continuing in parallel with the face-to-face sessions. As always, the speakers and subject were chosen to be particularly relevant to key account managers building and maintaining business in the current…
Tuesday, January 11th, 2022
Cranfield KAM Forum online
Reports from the Q2 and Q3 sessions While things are slowly returning to normal, the Cranfield KAM Forum seminars are continuing to complement the regular face-to face meetings that will resume when it is safe to do so. The webinars continue to address both strategic and operational themes and personal development topics of interest for key account managers. In this…
Wednesday, December 19th, 2018
Understanding procurement and negotiation
How should KAM teams create impact and…