In any business-to-business relationship, especially for those who hold customer-facing revenue-generating roles (like sales or account management), it’s important to be able to discuss more than just the service or products you provide.
This type of broad commercial awareness is not just “small talk”; it helps sellers to identify priorities, ask better questions, and more effectively connect solutions to business outcomes.
B2B customers are often business owners, senior executives, supervisors or managers. Their area of concern usually – and I’d say most often – goes well beyond just the impact your service or product has for them.
They’re probably thinking about how to manage:
- supply chain disruptions
- interest rates
- fuel costs
- changes to wages and WHS obligations
- competitor activities
- and filling the office admin role before they get swamped with paperwork because they’ve been left in the lurch by the previous person suddenly leaving!
That’s why when, for example, your sales person, account manager, or engineer calls on them to discuss a sales opportunity it’s easy to understand why the customer may have other priorities on their mind.
So my question for you is…
Does your team have the breadth of general business knowledge to be able to conduct a conversation around those business-related topics?
Clearly, they don’t need to be an expert in every aspect of business. But are they comfortable enough to hold conversations about relevant business topics that aren’t focused on your product or service?
From my experience working with business development teams across various industrial sectors, it’s not unusual to find the customer-facing/sales team feeling as though they struggle to develop an initial conversation. They’re not getting conversational traction.
Sure, they might greet the client and ask “How’s business going?” or something similar. But are they really prepared to discuss how business is going? Or can they only discuss what they are selling?
Consider assessing your teams comfort level across these three areas of knowledge:
- Product-focused: Explaining features, benefits, alternatives, and pricing
- Customer-aware: Understanding the customers immediate problem and the implications for them
- Business-aware: Understanding the wider commercial, operational, and industry context which the customer operates in
Being able to effectively relate to business customers takes more than just knowing your own products or services. Are you building your teams capability to do this?
A structured learning program may be helpful. This can be conducted during in-person or online team meetings.
For example, each month a different commercially-focused topic could be discussed, such as:
| Topic | Learning Focus |
| Cash flow and margins | Explain what it is and how it affects different sectors |
| Industry trends | Focus on the major markets you serve |
| Operations | Select a few “common” customer types and discuss potential bottlenecks and implementation issues |
| People and workforce | Discuss employee engagement and what that means for a business |
| Procurement | Map the customer’s buying process and discuss their key decision points |
| Risk and compliance | Review typical risks facing customers and how that may affect their willingness to buy from you |
It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about knowing just enough.
The best B2B salespeople are not expected to know everything about business. They are expected to know enough to recognise what matters to the customer, ask better questions, and connect their solution to a worthwhile business outcome. That capability has to be deliberately developed. Simply increasing product knowledge isn’t the answer.
As a business leader are you providing the structure to build your teams commercial conversation capability?
About the author
Stuart Ayling MIMC, BBus, GCM holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) and a Graduate Certificate in Management (International Business). He is an experienced strategic planning facilitator/consultant, and trainer in business-to-business sales, critical thinking skills, and management skills. For over 20 years he has been engaged by a wide range of national companies, regional firms, and founder-led businesses across Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. He is also a full member of the Institute of Management Consultants (Australia).
