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Where influence becomes commercial interaction: Part 6 of 6 - Insight
Description
The concluding article in Eric Doyle’s (F.ISP, Consult Crux) Modern Commercial Leadership series, covering the
fifth pillar: Commercial Conversion. It opens with an analogy about satellite navigation, the significant change
was not the technology itself but the behaviours it replaced, and argues the same shift has occurred in B2B
buying: where understanding an organisation once required meetings, site visits and referrals, buyers can now
assess a company’s leadership, specialists and thinking long before contacting its sales team.

The central argument is that the preceding four pillars matter only insofar as they produce commercial interaction:
“leadership visibility doesn’t pay invoices … commercial conversion pays invoices.” It contends organisations
mistakenly believe they compete during the sales process, when they are often competing months or years earlier
while buyers decide who appears credible. This is supported by research cited from LinkedIn’s B2B Institute and
the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (approximately 95% of potential buyers are not in market at any given moment) and
the 2024 Edelman/LinkedIn Thought Leadership Impact Report (75% of decision-makers researched a product or
service they had not previously considered after engaging with thought leadership). The article sets out how the
pillars connect into a sequence: familiarity creates trust, trust creates conversations, conversations create
opportunities, opportunities create commercial outcomes.

Three anonymised client examples illustrate the pattern across different objectives, an offshore infrastructure
engineering consultancy invited into an early-stage major project discussion after twelve months of visible
expertise; an industrial automation software company shifting from outbound activity to inbound enquiries by
making technical specialists visible; and a renewable energy business improving the quality and volume of
applications by having leadership and project teams share the reality of working there. The article closes by
redefining measurement: rather than impressions, engagement rates and follower counts, it proposes asking who
contacted you, who remembered you, who introduced you, and who shortlisted you before a procurement process
existed. Aimed at senior sales and commercial leaders
Summary
Availability:
On-Demand
Cost:
FREE
Credit Offered:
1 ISP CPD Credit
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