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The frictionless way to make B2B sales fly

The funnel is dead – most people know that by now. But has the flywheel been universally adopted yet? I very much doubt it. Be honest: how central are your future customers within your commercial process? Are you able to fully integrate your marketing, sales and customer service processes? Building bridges won’t cut it any longer...

The funnel is dead – most people know that by now. But has the flywheel been universally adopted yet? I very much doubt it. Be honest: how central are your future customers within your commercial process? Are you able to fully integrate your marketing, sales and customer service processes? Building bridges won’t cut it any longer!

The characteristics of a flywheel:

  • You set a flywheel in motion by giving it a powerful turn.
  • The more power you exert, the faster the flywheel turns.
  • And if nothing causes friction, a flywheel will turn forever.

A flywheel spinning at maximum speed represents the growth of your business:

  • You set the flywheel in motion with every action that leads to a high-value sales contact.
  • Happy, satisfied customers then make the flywheel turn faster.
  • Any negative experiences in this process slow the flywheel down and prevent your business from growing.

Growth = ensuring your flywheel turns faster by increasing power and minimising friction.

There you are: a sales professional battling for every lead. You dedicate your energy and ideas, systematically ploughing through your sales tasks. You keep the flywheel turning. But it can go faster. It must always go faster. Your targets get higher and more sales colleagues join the team: the sky’s the limit. 

Zoom out for a moment and take a critical look at your successful sales process. Focus on the steps your future customers need to take and try looking at your selling process as a buying process. Now assess the points at which friction occurs. Where could you prevent friction so your business can truly grow? Look at marketing, sales and customer service. Integrate these processes and unite your colleagues around your future customers’ journey!

This HubSpot model can help you move forward: Frictionless Selling Framework.

‘Frictionless selling’ is a way of rethinking your selling process and simplifying it for both buyers and sellers. Your future customers are always searching for easier, faster and smoother ways to find the essential information they need to make the best buying decisions.

So what are the differences between traditional sales and frictionless selling? Think about the questions below and the different answers – how do they apply to your current sales process?

1. Is your team adequately facilitated?

Traditional sales professionals: 

  • Do cold standard outreach
  • Work in their own ‘sales silo’
  • Use many different tools, with dispersed data
  • Do not set priorities -> volume means revenue (?)
  • Mainly deliver quantitative output

Frictionless sales professionals: 

  • Do informative personalised outreach
  • Break through silos with marketing and customer success colleagues
  • Use an all-in-one platform that brings all data together in a central place 
  • Work systematically to determine priorities
  • Mainly deliver qualitative output

2. To what extent does your approach align with customer needs?

Traditional sales approach: 

  • Offers information that’s available during office hours
  • Characterised by multiple back-and-forth emails to plan a meeting
  • Negotiates firmly based on their own interest
  • Aims for a sale

Frictionless sales approach: 

  • Offers information that’s available 24/7, so at any given time
  • Characterised by smart tools that make it easy to plan meetings
  • Follows a transparent process to achieve the best partnership and price
  • Aims for a purchase

The companies that make a difference today are those that focus on customer success

A good CRM is key to this success. Supported by a good CRM, you can transform your teams of traditional sales representatives into sales professionals capable of eliminating friction entirely. Doubts may be creeping in here. After all, one in three CRM implementations fails and half of all sales professionals hate using their current CRM. So here’s the big question: which CRM is easy to use and powerful enough to scale up my sales process and allow my business to grow?

Luckily you no longer have to choose between ‘easy’ and ‘powerful’ these days. You can have both. HubSpot functions as an all-in-one platform to give you a centralised overview of all customer data. This enables you to offer a consistent and personal experience through all stages of your commercial process, just as your future customers expect nowadays. The HubSpot software offers your team members a frictionless way of organising their processes, with efficient tools to develop lead touchpoints into high-value customer relationships. You gain insights that support effective coaching for your team members, as well as playbooks to get new colleagues up to speed quickly.

The CRM systems of old are unwieldy, user-unfriendly and completely uninspiring for tomorrow’s sales professionals. The companies that make a difference are the ones that take the customer experience as their starting point for growth. So remove the friction from your current processes, demolish the silos and centralise your future customers’ data.

Want to know how TÜV Nederland closed the sales gap?

Read the case
Picture of Thijs van Rosmalen
Thijs van Rosmalen

Inbound Marketing & Sales Consultant