Steve Silver

In many professions, education for a new employee’s role incorporates learning with doing. Educators must undergo a full semester of student teaching; surgeons develop by “watching, teaching, doing”; and aspiring electricians must deliver hundreds of hours as apprentices prior to licensure. Even most MLB stars spend years toiling in the minor leagues perfecting their skills. But this sort of learning by doing rarely applies in B2B sales, where few formal vocational learning opportunities exist.

Last week I presented at my 10th, and final, Forrester B2B Summit North America. I say final not because the event is ending, but because I’m retiring from Forrester in June of this year. One of my sessions introduced the Forrester Customer-Led Sales Growth Model, which was a perfect way to summarize my views on the evolution of B2B sales, and how sales leaders must change to adapt to the new reality of selling.

I’ve been involved with account planning programs for over 30 years – first as a sales rep, then as a sales manager, then as a sales operations leader, and finally as an analyst and advisor. And in all that time, resistance by sellers to the process of creating and leveraging account plans remains high. Why? Why do sellers and sales managers resist something with so many potential benefits?