Vous êtes disruptif ? Innovant? Bravo. Mais vos commerciaux le sont-ils?

In 2025, being disruptive or innovative in a B2B offering will not be a "nice to have". It will be a "must have". However, while developing a B2B offering (whether technology or service-based) is already complicated, selling it is even more so. This is one of the frustrations that often comes up when I talk to executives:

We sell innovation. We are disruptive. But we struggle to sell that innovation.

Selling innovation or disruptive services means, among other things, that when talking to your sales representatives, your prospects must see the world differently. The problem is that prospects constantly encounter sales representatives from other innovative companies. Sales representatives who try with many arguments to convince these same prospects to buy their products and services.

The solution? If your GTM (Go To Market) strategy relies partly on a sales team (typically when the value of your product or service starts to become a little high and a "self-serve" approach is no longer possible, then you need to ensure one thing), then your sales team must also be disruptive...

Unfortunately, this is more often the exception than the rule. So if your salespeople's approach is:

❌ Cold Call: I am calling to schedule an appointment or to inquire about your budget.

❌ Discovery: Focused on your "innovation" or "disruptive solution" rather than the challenges you are solving, the impact of not changing, the value for people rather than just the target business, etc. 🤦‍♂️

❌ Qualification questions: Focused on existing technologies or services 😱

❌ Don't rush to engage other users of your solution by going deeper and higher into the prospect account (known as multithreading).

In that case, your sales team is doing what everyone else does.  Which is far from disruptive. There is no alignment between what you think you are doing with your offering and what your sales team does every day.

It is essential that your salespeople are also disruptive, that they are able to challenge your prospects from the very beginning of conversations, right from the prospecting stage, and that they are not afraid of losing them during the process. I have written an article on this subject. It is available here (English version on LinkedIn and French version here in this post).

Otherwise, I'm afraid you'll have a problem.