The Next Steps to Driving Bold B2B Buying Decisions

For B2B organizations to make the right annual planning decisions for 2025, they need to ensure they remain on top of rising sales and marketing costs and slowing commercial productivity. It’s clear that a critical part of the value creation process will require growth leaders to capture rapidly shrinking opportunities if they want to achieve their revenue targets.

In our earlier research, we explored how industry leaders remain competitive despite challenging market conditions. They are able to secure high-value opportunities while others are struggling to achieve any progress on deals. The secret to their success lies in their ability to go beyond product offerings and deliver a differentiated go-to-market (GTM) experience that gives buyers the confidence to advance into the decision stage. This technique—we term it “headway selling”—also provides the buyer with a renewed sense of confidence in the supplier, keeping them committed and encouraging bold decisions.

However, the key to value creation success begins with setting the right foundations for commercial teams to leverage headway selling effectively. We know how headway selling can benefit organizations, but the next step starts from three commercial pillars:

1. GTM Talent and Development

Often, when decision-making teams are considering their options, it is up to the commercial team to guide them through the buying journey. Thus, organizations need the right people who are armed with the skills to develop and execute a tailored GTM experience. Commercial leaders should begin assessing the GTM team’s current approach—whether they were effective and what gaps were uncovered in prior deals. Crucially, it is imperative that leaders understand how time was spent in pursuing deals.

Equipped with historical information, organizations are now prepared to train sellers and managers on how to anticipate change and translate the impact into support for headway selling. For GTM teams to succeed, their managers need to be aligned with the buying journey and the initiatives in place to drive decision-making.

2. Enable and Support Headway Selling

One of the key elements of building the credibility and trust needed to guide customers towards bold decisions is supporting commercial empathy. By mapping how change impacts the buyer’s state today and tomorrow, sales teams are able to effectively identify pain points and adjust their approach according to their evolving needs.

Establishing a support and enablement structure that helps the commercial team execute their initiatives also contributes to overall organizational alignment: every function is fully aware of their role in the decision-making process. This also creates avenues for sellers to leverage partner ecosystems when making progress, preempting changes, and allowing them to execute on upsell and cross-sell opportunities, ultimately getting more wins while building towards bold decisions.

3. Adapt the Operating Model

With the talent and enablement needed to help the organization win more deals, now growth leaders need to take a close look at their operating model. Based on historical data uncovered in prior audits, revise the GTM role design and ensure that the model is driving customer alignment. The sales and marketing engine is full of interrelated functions that all need to be working in harmony. Otherwise, organizations risk lower commercial productivity and smaller deals.

A close look at the operating model is also an opportunity for growth leaders to segment market opportunities, especially when it seems like you can repeatedly deliver valuable directions for similar customers. This helps commercial teams to streamline their approaches to possibly similar buyers, allowing to be more agile in providing a tailored GTM experience that would drive bold decisions.

The key to unlocking profitable growth lies in effective headway selling, where sellers are helping buyers build a solution towards their success. To learn more about how it can help your organization drive bold decisions and secure bigger wins, read our latest Commercial Efficiency report here for free.