Introduction

In my experience, working with B2B organisations, I've discovered certain truths that consistently separate high-performing companies from their competitors. These aren't complex strategies requiring expensive consultants or revolutionary technologies—they're fundamental principles that are often misunderstood or poorly implemented.

I call these the "dirty little secrets" of B2B consultative selling. The best companies grab these secrets by the throat and prosper—the rest struggle with inconsistent results and commoditised offerings.

Let's dive into these ten secrets that can transform your approach to strategic customers and drive sustainable growth.

Secret #1   Value Creation is everything. 

The best companies understand they must create, sell, and deliver genuine value. This sounds obvious, but most organizations confuse features with benefits, and benefits with value.

True value begins with a deep understanding of who your customer is and what they truly need. Not what they say they want—what they actually need to succeed. This requires genuine curiosity and investigation beyond surface-level interactions.

Strong business relationships start by understanding customer needs first, then providing targeted value. Everything else—pricing strategies, marketing messages, sales conversations—follows this fundamental principle.

The diagram above shows the principles of any business. Know your customers and understand what they value. Develop an offer that meets those value needs, then build a company to deliver that value. This drives your brand and your business results. Selling to strategic customers is no different. It starts with understanding what the customer values.

Key Question: Do your customer interactions start with your agenda (what you want to sell) or their needs (the problems that they need to be solved)?

Secret #2.  Go beyond customer-centricity...be value-centric 

Most companies understand customer-centricity, at least in theory. But the best organisations are value-centric, which is fundamentally different.

Value-centricity means creating an ecosystem where value flows in multiple directions. It's not just about understanding your customers—it's about collaborating with your suppliers to maximise the value you can deliver.

Think about it: Your organisation sits between suppliers and customers. When you work backwards from customer needs to align your suppliers' capabilities with those needs, you create unprecedented value that competitors can't easily replicate.

This three-dimensional approach—connecting supplier innovation with customer problems—creates powerful competitive advantages. Instead of just pushing what you have to sell, you're orchestrating resources across your entire value chain to solve specific customer challenges.

Key Question: Are you leveraging your supplier's capabilities to create unique solutions for your customers or squeezing them for their lowest prices?

Secret #3  Build KAM capability tailored to your business

The most successful organisations don't simply copy key account management (KAM) programs from other companies—they develop capabilities specifically tailored to their business model and customer needs.

Generic KAM approaches produce generic results. Your business is unique, and your strategic customers have specific expectations when collaborating with you. Your KAM approach should reflect this reality.

Effective KAM programs are built on universal principles but customised to address your specific market position, customer relationships, and organisational strengths. They reflect your culture and values while creating structured approaches to your most important customer relationships.

As the KAM research indicates, "The best organisations build an organisation that follows basic principles, but in the end they have their way of doing business." This ownership creates alignment throughout the organisation and ensures the approach isn't just another corporate initiative that will fade away.

key Question: Does your KAM program feel like it was built for your organisation, or does it feel like a generic template that could apply to any company?

Secret #4  Success requires inter-organisational "zippering"

The lone hero salesperson is a relic of the past. Today's complex B2B sales involve multiple decision-makers with different priorities and concerns. The best companies understand this and create multiple connection points between their organisation and customers.

This is known as "zippering"—strategically connecting experts from your organisation with their counterparts in your customer's business. This approach recognises that different stakeholders have different values and concerns.

Your product manager speaks with their operations team, your technical specialist connects with their engineers, and your executives build relationships with their leadership. Each connection point strengthens the overall relationship and provides valuable intelligence that a single salesperson could never gather alone.

This multi-threaded approach creates relationships that are significantly harder for competitors to displace. When multiple people in your customer's organisation have positive connections with your team, you've made a relationship asset that transcends any individual product or service offering.

Key Question:  How many meaningful connection points exist between your organization and each strategic customer?

Secret #5 Problem framing precedes solution selling

You cannot create an effective solution if you don't know what problem you're solving. This seems self-evident, yet many sales approaches jump straight to pitching solutions without adequately understanding and framing the problem.

There are two fundamental approaches in B2B sales:

1. Talk "at" the customer about your products and services (your agenda)
2. Listen, research, and frame the problem before proposing solutions (the customer's agenda)

The critical step is not just understanding the problem but framing it in a way that resonates with the customer. When the customer agrees with your problem framing, they become significantly more receptive to hearing your solution.

The most successful organizations invest heavily in problem discovery and articulation. They know that a well-framed problem does half the selling work for you. When customers say, "Yes, that's exactly what we're struggling with," they're already mentally preparing to hear your solution.

Key Question: Do you spend more time explaining your solutions or exploring and framing customer problems?

Secret #6 They manage the big and small pictures

Successful B2B organizations possess the ability to seamlessly navigate between strategic vision and tactical execution—what I call managing both the big and small pictures.

At the strategic level, they understand industry trends, customer business models, and how their offerings create competitive advantages. Simultaneously, they excel at the details—implementation plans, account-specific metrics, and concrete action steps.

This dual focus creates confidence. Customers trust organisations that can articulate a compelling vision while demonstrating mastery of execution details. Too many companies excel at one but neglect the other.

Key account managers in high-performing organisations must be comfortable discussing long-term strategic objectives in the morning and diving into technical specifications in the afternoon. They connect tactical actions to strategic outcomes, helping customers see how specific initiatives support their broader business goals.

This balanced perspective prevents the two common pitfalls in B2B selling: getting lost in technical details without strategic context, or promoting high-level visions without practical implementation plans.

Key Question: When speaking with customers, can your team fluently connect day-to-day actions with long-term strategic objectives?

Secret #7  They plan...to a certain point

Strategic planning in B2B sales relationships is essential, but the best companies understand the limits of planning. They create structured approaches while maintaining flexibility to adapt as conditions change.

Effective organisations develop account plans identifying key objectives, stakeholders, and opportunity areas. However, they view these plans as living documents rather than rigid prescriptions. They incorporate feedback loops and regular reassessments to ensure they remain aligned with evolving customer needs.

This balanced approach avoids the twin dangers of having no plan (reactive selling) or being enslaved by an outdated plan (inflexible selling). The best account teams know when to follow the plan and when to deviate based on new information or unexpected opportunities.

This adaptability has become increasingly valuable in today's rapidly changing business environment. Customers don't expect you to predict the future ideally—they expect you to respond intelligently when conditions change.

Key Question: Do you know if your account plans provide clear direction while allowing for adaptation when new information emerges?

Secret #8 Strategic and critical thinking are core skills

The most successful B2B organisations prioritise strategic and critical thinking as essential skills throughout their sales and account management teams. These capabilities aren't viewed as nice-to-have senior leadership traits—they're fundamental requirements at all levels.

As illustrated in the research on Key Account Managers, these professionals must reconcile tensions across boundaries and time while developing competencies to plan customer activities and mobilise resources for seamless execution strategically.

Strategic thinking involves:

• Identifying patterns and trends in the market
• Anticipating future customer needs
• Recognizing how your offerings create competitive advantages
• Aligning solutions with customer business objectives

Critical thinking encompasses:

• Questioning assumptions
• Evaluating evidence objectively
• Identifying root causes rather than symptoms
• Developing logical frameworks for decision-making

Together, these skills enable sales professionals to move beyond transactional relationships and become trusted advisors. They allow for meaningful conversations about how your offerings solve real business problems rather than just technical challenges.

Organizations that cultivate these skills invest in ongoing development through structured training, coaching, and real-world application. They create environments where strategic thinking is expected and rewarded

Key Question: How deliberately does your organization develop strategic and critical thinking skills among customer-facing teams?

Secret #9 Selling is a valued (and respected) skill

While it might seem obvious, the best B2B organisations value selling as a professional skill, not just as a necessary evil or a supporting function to their "real" business.

These companies recognise that effective selling requires expertise, emotional intelligence, problem-solving capabilities, and persistence. They invest in developing these skills and celebrate sales achievements as central to organisational success.

Too many organisations subtly devalue sales by treating it as a less sophisticated function than product development, operations, or finance. This cultural bias undermines selling effectiveness and creates artificial barriers between departments that should be collaborating to deliver customer value.

The most successful companies position selling as a strategic capability. They understand innovative solutions require effective selling to create customer adoption and value delivery. They break down silos between sales and other functions, creating shared objectives that unite the organisation around customer success.

Despite the evolution of the Key Account Manager role, which includes many leadership and strategic aspects, the ability to "make rain" and win business remains a highly valuable skill that should never be underestimated.

Key Question: Is selling genuinely valued in your organisation's culture, or is it subtly positioned as less important than other functions?

Secret #10: They develop eight strategic selling skills

The top-performing B2B organisations systematically develop eight strategic skills that create superior customer value and sustainable competitive advantages. These skills represent a comprehensive framework for developing complete business professionals who can drive meaningful value creation:

1. Value Ambassador: Experts who understand value and how to build innovative offers are the leaders in your supplier organisations—they are regarded as ambassadors of this way of thinking and working.
2. Innovating and Developing New Ideas: The capacity to create and test new concepts, generate creative solutions, and develop business cases demonstrating value. This skill encompasses both visionary thinking and practical innovation.
3. Strategising: The ability to see the big picture and the details, formulating approaches that align customer needs with organisational capabilities. This includes building effective cross-functional teams and facilitating collaboration.
4. Rainmaking: The talent for internal and commercial selling, persuading stakeholders within your organisation while also pitching effectively to customers through formal presentations and informal influence.
5. Team builder: The skill to identify opportunities, articulate value clearly, and demonstrate how your solutions deliver measurable business impact for customers.
6. Silo-busting: The ability to build internal relationships, navigate organisational politics, and present effectively to senior leadership, including boards of directors when necessary.
7. Planning: The discipline to execute plans effectively, manage complex initiatives, build business cases, and lead cross-functional teams to deliver promised value.
8. Change agent: The capability to lead, coach, advise, and mentor others, creating environments where team members can thrive despite complexity, pressure, and paradoxes.

These eight skills don't develop by accident. The most successful organisations create deliberate development paths, provide coaching and training, and measure progress in each area. They recognise that excellence in these capabilities creates a competitive moat that others cannot easily cross.

Key Question: How systematically does your organization develop these eight strategic skills among customer-facing teams?

Final thoughts

These ten dirty little secrets aren't complicated, but they're frequently overlooked or under-implemented. The organisations that embrace them create significant advantages over competitors that are still focused on product-centric selling approaches.

The central theme connecting all ten secrets is simple: understanding customer needs deeply and building your entire approach around delivering meaningful value. This customer-first, value-centred philosophy transforms transactional relationships into strategic partnerships.

Which secrets are you already leveraging effectively?

Where do you see the greatest opportunities for improvement?

The answers will guide your next steps toward building a genuinely value-centred approach to B2B selling.

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When you are ready, there are a few ways I can help. 

1. DOWNLOAD MY LATEST ARTICLE:

If you want to find out more about Value-Based KAM and how it can become a significant competitive advantage to your business, click below and receive a copy of my latest article-

Rethinking Key Account Management - The 4 blocks to ignite KAM as your strategic competitive advantage.

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Footnote

The insights, strategies, and opinions shared in this newsletter reflect the author's personal perspectives and experiences. While we strive to provide valuable and actionable information, please use your own judgment when implementing any recommendations. Results may vary based on your specific circumstances, market conditions, and implementation approach. The author and publisher accept no liability for decisions made based on this content. You're the expert in your business—we're just here to spark ideas!

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