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B2B sales people: You get delegated to the person you sound like

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Art of ConversationThe quality of any conversation, whether business or social, is largely determined by who we choose to talk to, what we choose to talk about and the form of language we choose to use.

But in the business domain, and particularly as a sales person, your choices have another important impact - because if you get these choices wrong, and whether you like it or not, you’ll end up getting delegated to the person you sound like.

“Solution selling” is only part of the solution...

If you’re in high-tech, it’s hard to maintain high growth through technical product superiority alone, because the early adopters who buy that way represent such a shrinking percentage of today’s market. Today’s buyers are mostly risk-averse pragmatists who are looking for proven solutions.

That’s why many sales organisations have bought into the concept of “solution selling”.  They acknowledge the advantages of solving problems rather than promoting features. They make determined efforts to sell “top down” within a potential prospect. Their top performing sales people are often successful. But many more fall short of their targets.

Zen and the art of quality conversation...

Like many of us, the protagonist in Robert M Pirsig’s best-selling “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” struggled to formally define quality - but knew it when he saw it. Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to master either motorcycle maintenance or Zen, but I believe that we can all identify the characteristics of a “good” conversation.

One of the key attributes is relevance. When I conduct voice of the customer analyses on behalf of clients, senior decision makers frequently offer the same feedback about sales conversations: “As long as I am learning something of value, you’ve got my attention. Share a relevant insight, and I’ll want to hear more. But the moment you start pitching your product, you’ve lost me”.

Cut out the techno-babble...

These decision makers weren’t interested in product features - particularly if they were described using the techno-babble that still resonates around so many high tech industries. They wanted to be sure that the vendor empathised with their problems, had valuable insights to share and had a track record of delivering relevant solutions.

They distrusted claims that the vendor’s products were better, and wanted to understand how and why they were different. They needed to be sure that if they went ahead that the vendor would help them manage change and mitigate risk. They recognised the need for someone in their organisation to understand the underlying technical detail, but they “had people who did that for them”.

What top performing sales people do well...

When you look at the habits of successful, top-performing sales people, it becomes clear that they do one thing particularly well. They are able to empathise with senior decision makers, and they understand, use and reflect their language. Their conversations are full of anecdotes, examples and illustrations.

They resist the temptation to prescribe a solution until they fully understand the prospect’s problem, the underlying causes, and why it might be important to deal with it now. They avoid dealing with product detail until the time is right, and the need is clear. And when they do, they negotiate and manage access to the prospect’s relevant internal experts.

This behaviour can be learned...

There’s no doubt that some top-performers just have a natural gift for this sort of behaviour. They have the emotional intelligence that Tony Blair recently claimed was so lacking in Gordon Brown. But this customer-aware behaviour can be learned, and average sales people with potential can significantly boost their success rates by embracing the principle.

Above all, they must learn to take their time diagnosing the prospect’s situation and avoid prematurely prescribing the solution. When a prospect acknowledges a problem, issue or a goal, they must take the time to understand the root causes, the potential consequences and who else is affected. They need to build the economic case for change before they propose their solution.

Key next steps...

How can this be accomplished? It requires a team effort. Marketing (with sales’ help) needs to identify the issues that are catalysing change within their prospects and market to these themes. Top sales performers need to share the questions and anecdotes that they find most effective in advancing quality conversations in prospects.

The organisation needs to identify the common characteristics of winning deals, and to find ways of both connecting with similar prospects and conducting similarly successful sales campaigns. And sales people need to both be coached and encouraged to share best practices in the art of sustaining winning conversations with senior decision makers.

If they sound like the right people, they are less likely to get delegated to the wrong ones...

There are only 2 reasons why you lose a sale

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I'm happy to share the second in our series of guest blogs from Donal Daly, CEO of the TAS Group.  In this article, first published in his Sales20Network blog in April 2010,  Donal explores the factors that affect sales win rates - and concludes that there are only two reasons why you lose a sale.  

I am sure you'll enjoy his perspective - over to you, Donal...

Book keeper"One of the issues that I’m often asked about is how to improve Sales Win Rate.  Sometimes the question is presented as “What’s a good Win Rate?”, or “What percentage of deals that I bid for should I win?”  Of course there is really no universal answer to this question – and the reason for that is that it’s the wrong question.  In my opinion, energy is more productively spent in determining why you lose deals, and in my experience, the explanation follows a fairly predictable pattern. If that is true, then if you can identify the common attributes of lost deals, you can work to avoid deals with those attributes, or focus on how to overcome the weaknesses that gave rise to the failure. Then by definition, your Sales Win Rate will improve.

In reality there are really only two reasons why you lose a deal:

  • You Should Not Have Been There (pursuing the deal) In The First Place, or
  • You Were Outsold.

I will substantiate this claim a little later, but first I want to share some alternative perspectives.

When I ask sales managers why their teams lost a specific deal the most frequent responses include things like:

  1. “Well, he wasn’t speaking to the Decision Maker.”
  2. “She didn’t understand what the customer really wanted to achieve.”
  3. “We should never have bid in the first place, the customer is locked into our competitor.”
  4. “Our solution just wasn’t a good fit, and he (the sales person) tried to squeeze a round peg into a square hole.”
  5. “The competitor had a stronger relationship with the customer.”
  6. “There was never a project there in the first place.”
  7. “We didn’t understand the personal motivation of the Decision Maker.”
  8. “He couldn’t get the customer to understand our value proposition.”
  9. “She never realized that the budget was way too small for our product.”

Responses from sales people to the same question include many of the above, but there are sometimes some additional reasons given:

  1. “We’re just too expensive.”
  2. “We couldn’t provide a reference because we’ve never sold to that type of customer before.”
  3. “I never knew [the deal] had to be approved the technology committee.  He never told me that.”
  4. “The customer just doesn’t get it. I don’t understand it – she really needs our stuff.”
  5. “I never knew that the competitor wrote the RFP.”
  6. “He never told me that Capability X was important.”
  7. “My [internal] sponsor just didn’t have the juice to make it happen – even though he told me he did.”

For mid-to-large deals in an enterprise B2B market, the costs incurred in pursuing a sale will typically range between $10,000 and $100,000. Our research at The TAS Group has shown that it takes 50% longer on average to lose a deal than to win one.  Think about that for a moment.  If your sales team is spending more time losing deals than winning deals, what’s that going to do to your quota achievement?  Or, if you could fix the problem, what impact would that have?

No matter how you look at the reasons given above, in truth there are really only two reasons why you lose a sale:

  1. You Should Not Have Been There (pursuing the deal) In The First Place , or
  2. You Were Outsold.

It’s as simple as that – just two reasons. In my experience, failure is weighted fairly evenly across both. So, let’s look at these in a little more detail.

Reason 1. You Should Not Have Been There In The First Place

At The TAS Group, we discuss ways to help sales teams win 4 of 7 deals, instead of 3 of 10.  This means that you pursue fewer opportunities.  It’s not about ‘getting up to bat’ more often. In fact it’s the opposite.  In practice it means determining at the outset if your solution can uniquely and competitively add value to the specific customer that you are targeting. Of course it means research, and work, and understanding of what the customer wants to achieve, and how your solution might be applied to solve their specific problem.  This information is only useful if you understand what the competitor might be offering.  Often, it’s as simple as defining your ’sweet-spot’ customer – listing the attributes that describe the profile of the customer to whom you can competitively add value. When you hear yourself saying “We’ve not sold to this type of customer before – but I think I can make it work.” – then move on. You’re wasting your time.

If you look at the ‘lost deal’ reasons listed above, items 3,4,6, and 9 in the Sales Manager’s list, and items 2 and 5 in the Sales Person’s list fall into that category – you should not have been there in the first place.

Reason 2. You Were Outsold

Sometimes this is hard to accept. I know that in my case, if it’s not Reason 1, then I’ve been outsold. I didn’t understand what the customer wanted to achieve, I was not politically aligned in the customer’s organization, I didn’t understand the customer’s buying process, I chose the wrong competitive strategy, I failed to articulate my value proposition in terms that the customer understood, I failed to demonstrate ROI for my solution, or, more likely, a combination of a few of these.  Looking at the lists above, items 1,2,5,7,8, and 9 in the Sales Manager’s list, and items 1,3,4,6 and 7 in the Sales Person’s list fall in to this category. I’ve been outsold – someone else did a better job.

Now, even if you’ve done a great job in qualification – and that’s what you’re doing to pass the ‘Should I Be There In The First Place?‘ test, you won’t win all of the deals.  Sometimes, you will be outsold, 3 out of 4 is a realistic Sales Win Rate target.

* * *

When I express the perspective outlined here, I get a range of reactions, ranging from animosity (“Who does he think he is? He doesn’t understand what I go through to win a deal”) to guarded acceptance and excitement (“Wow, if we could actually achieve that, it would be incredible. We should give it a shot.”).

As we’ve watched our customers move to these kind of ratios it’s been really gratifying to know that we’re making that kind of difference for some.  I’ve spoken at length to those who excel on this journey, and there are a number of common attributes – some organizational, and some with respect to the tools they use to help them.  Organizationally, the companies just seem to be run better, and sales is viewed as the engine that fuels growth, and investment is commensurate with that view.  From a sales tools perspective, the common elements are a sales process that maps to how the customer buys, deep analysis of the customer’s political structure, and collaborative interaction with the customer to truly understand their business problem and what they want to achieve.

The following movie links give an overview of components of how the Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation platform is used to support these three goals.  Though, as it uses our Dealmaker product, it’s a little self-promotional, and I don’t like to do that in the blog, it’s the best way I can think of to elaborate on the areas that I think add considerable value and I’ve seen executed well."

I hope that you've enjoyed Donal's perspective, and that you'll understand why we see such value in our relationship with the TAS Group. You can learn more about Dealmaker here.


McKinsey and the end of the Road Warrior...

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As we emerge from the downturn, it’s clear that we’re going to have to find new and better ways of reaching and satisfying our customers.  The May 2010 edition of the McKinsey Quarterly reports that “the way businesses buy from and sell to each other is changing”.

No great surprise there.  The article explores three trends that McKinsey’s analysts heard from senior sales executives.  Now the nature of McKinsey’s sample is such that the results reflect the experience of some of the world’s largest and best established companies – but my own observations suggest that a growing number of successful up-and-coming organisations are already embracing their recommendations.

The “end of the road warrior”?

HelmetOne prediction in particular caught my attention.  Under the heading “the end of the road warrior”, McKinsey pointed out that many sales organisations have built new, lower cost channels to serve smaller customers.  But siloed approaches in which low-value deals are served through a low-touch channel and high-value deals are served through a high-touch direct sales operation are proving - with good reason – to be unnecessarily rigid and increasingly ineffective.

Part of the reason – as McKinsey point out – is that many of the stakeholders and decision makers involved in the buying process have become more relaxed about where and how they get the information they need to support their decision-making.

Time for a blended approach...

For high-value products with complex and lengthy buying cycles, it’s clear that “one-size-fits-all” go-to-market models are hopelessly inadequate to serve today’s buying behaviours.  But it’s equally apparent that rigid demarcation lines that force buyers down specific sales paths according to the value and perceived complexity of their transaction aren’t satisfactory either.

Surely it’s time for a blended approach – one that enables prospects to get the information they need in order to advance their buying process through the medium that they feel most comfortable with.  Rigidly distinctions between inside and outside sales, or direct, indirect and web-based channels aren’t going to help.  Today’s most progressive sales and marketing organisations are thinking “outside in” around how best to facilitate each prospect’s buying decision making process rather than “inside out” around how it might be most internally convenient for them to organise.

Establishing multiple touch points...

We need to establish multiple touch points that can satisfy our prospects and facilitate their buying processes.  Sometimes our prospect’s needs might be best served through face-to-face interaction, at other times through a remote conversation, and at still other times through their ability to “self serve” the information they need.

Our decisions need to be guided by a deep understanding of how – given the dynamics of today’s buying environment – our prospects prefer to receive the information they need during each phase of their buying process in order to facilitate a decision to move forward with us to the next stage.  And, of course, we need to be guided by an appreciation of the costs to us and the value to our prospects of each mode of each interaction.  The goal must be to provide the greatest utility to our prospects in the way that makes the best use of our resources.

Aligning compensation with desired behaviour...

It’s likely that many people could contribute to a successful sale in this new blended model.  And knowing - for sales people in particular – that compensation strongly influences behaviour, it’s important to think through the implications of a fair compensation model that motivates winning behaviour.  

Just as the first past the post voting model seems to have failed the British electorate, simple compensation models that encourage traditional “it’s my deal” behaviours are likely to be counter-productive.  Successful organisations seem to be incorporating incentives that reward collaboration and a shared contribution to sale success.

So – is the era of the road warrior really at an end?

Yes and no.  We are certainly observing a decline in traditional go-it-alone, sales heroics based, road warrior behaviours – but we’re also observing great success in organisations that have successfully created a blended model in which face-to-face interaction is retained where it delivers value to both the prospect and the vendor, and is complemented by alternative methods of interaction where they better support the buying process.

Effective use of technology is clearly a critical factor – to support both remote and self-service interactions.  And there’s no doubt about the attraction of reducing travel costs and avoiding the suffocating and unpredictable grip of Icelandic volcanoes.  Complex, high-value sales will still depend on the power of personal interaction.  But that power will be amplified and focused through the intelligent use of multiple touch points.

Reversing the Decline: How to boost sales performance in 2010...

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CSO Insights recently released their annual Sales Performance Optimisation study – and the results make for sobering reading. Their global survey of more than 2,800 companies revealed dramatic declines in average sale performance.

According to CSO Insights, the percentage of reps making quota fell from 58.8% to 51.8%, and overall revenue attainment vs. plan dropped from 85.9% to 77.9%.  At the same time, lead generation budgets were being frozen or reduced in more than two-thirds of the companies surveyed, training budgets fell, and investments in sales enablement technologies were curtailed. 

You can't cut your way to success...

CutAs CSO Insights point out, most firms increased sales quotas from 2008-2009 – and then tried to “cut their way to success” by reducing budgets – a strategy that has manifestly failed.  85% of the firms surveyed have now raised sales quotas again for 2010, without significantly changing their behaviour.  You’ve got to wonder whether they are about to have a Groundhog Day experience.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.  Now, I’m not arguing that organisations thoughtlessly throw money at the problem – but I believe the only way that companies are going to dig themselves out of this hole is to get smart and have a ground-up rethink of the sales and marketing process from the buyer’s perspective and eliminate anything that isn’t creating customer value.

Eliminating wasted effort...

It’s not as if there isn’t a lot of well-meaning but wasted effort that could be redirected.  The American Marketing Association, in a series of studies, concluded that between 80-90% of all sales collateral played no useful role in the buying process.  Frequent failures to get marketing and sales organisations to agree what constitutes a “sales ready lead” cause similarly dramatic wastes of money and effort.  Investing huge amounts of effort on deals that at the end of the day decide to do nothing is a third example. You can probably think of many others.

I’m going to suggest that it’s time to take an evidence-based approach that clearly defines the characteristics of your most valuable prospects, identifies their most pressing challenges and aligns them with your most powerful capabilities.  But perhaps most important, it’s time to align the sales and marketing process around a deep and profound understanding of how and why your potential customers choose to buy.

Step into your prospects' shoes...

How would they describe their problems or challenges?  What triggers their search for a solution?  Who do they trust when they are looking for advice?  What are the key steps they follow in their buying journey, how can you determine what stage they have reached, and what can you do to persuade them to move forward with you?  Equally important, what might be holding them back, and what can you do to remove any barriers that might lie in their way?

Armed with these insights, you can focus your efforts on connecting with the right sort of prospects, and on doing the things that are most valuable to them in their buying process.  You can concentrate on the issues that really matter to them, and be in a better position to qualify out prospects that are not right for you (or you for them) far earlier in the cycle, and redirect your efforts towards more profitable activity.

Have intelligent conversations...

You can also equip your sales people to have intelligent conversations with informed prospects, to ask diagnostic questions that reveal the true cause of the prospect’s pain rather than simply treating the symptoms, and to help the prospect solve problems, simplify complexity and manage change.

Technology can help - there are a growing number of promising collaboration, social media, networking and new generation CRM solutions that can help facilitate your prospects buying processes. Training can help to equip your sales people to have intelligent, provocative conversations that stimulate prospects to take a fresh perspective. An integrated approach to campaigns, media and sales can also contribute.

Change your perspective...

But first, you have to get the mindset right. It’s not about selling harder, or trying to do more with less without changing what you do. It’s about making it easier for your best prospects to buy from you. If you can get that right, you can break free from the depressing decline in sales productivity.  Because you can be sure that your less-smart, less-agile competitors won’t have grasped the seismic change that is happening around them.

Gartner: Enterprise CRM "no longer a priority" for CIOs

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GartnerGartner have just revealed the results of their annual survey of CIO priorities.  It makes fascinating reading when compared to last year’s report.  IT spending for the coming year will increase by an average of 1.3% - but that is compared to a dramatic decline of 8.1% in 2009.  2010 IT budgets are back to the levels of 2005 – half a decade’s growth in budget has been wiped out.

From managing resources to managing results...

According to Mark McDonald, Gartner Group VP and head of research for Gartner Executive programs, the role of IT is changing from merely managing resources to taking responsibility for managing results, while the technology focus is shifting from heavy owner-operated solutions to “lighter weight” hosted services.

Business process improvement remains the #1 business priority, followed by reducing costs and improving workforce effectiveness (promoted from last year’s #4 to #3).  But the real change in priorities comes on the technology side.  Last year, enterprise CRM was the #2 technology priority.  In 2010, it does not even make the top 10.

Reshaping the role of IT...

Gartner anticipates that CIOs will change their focus from driving cost-based efficiencies to achieving productivity gains, using collaborative and innovative solutions that leverage services-based and social media technologies, including virtualisation, cloud computing and web 2.0.  They see them providing the platform for information and process-intensive solutions that will ultimately reshape the role of IT.

Salesforce.com is one of the more obvious beneficiaries of this change - but there are many others.  I suspect that few of us are going to bemoan the passing of traditional “big iron” IT projects that inevitably cost too much, take too long and deliver too little.  But what benefits might a more agile, adaptable IT infrastructure bring – and what do we need to do to position ourselves to exploit the potential for improving sales and marketing performance?

From automation to enablement...

I suggest that a great deal of the answer lies in what processes we choose to IT-enable.  We need to stop thinking about automating often badly-aligned “sales” and “marketing” processes and seize the opportunity to facilitate our prospect’s buying processes and embrace the dramatic changes that the net and web 2.0 have already made to buyer behaviour.

If we are to take advantage, we’re going to have to do better at connecting with our most valuable prospects and customers, identifying their most pressing problems and understanding how and why they choose to buy.  If we can leverage the dramatic change in technology to change how we think about the role of sales and marketing, we’ll create the scope for achieving dramatic gains.

But if all we do is to apply this wave of innovative technology to traditional approaches to the sales and marketing process, we’ll probably still end up spending less money, but on doing the wrong things...

Are you REALLY Customer-Aligned?

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What was your 2010 New Year Business resolution?  The one I've been hearing most often from Chief Executives and Sales and Marketing leaders is to "get closer to their customers" - which seems like a laudable objective.

Who wouldn't want to?  However, it seems that becoming REALLY "customer-centric" or "customer-focused" or "customer aligned" (choose whichever term you prefer) is proving harder than it first appears.  The indications are becoming rather too familiar:

  • "Customer-Aligned" organisations that still describe themselves in terms of who they are, or what products or services they offer, rather than what they enable their customers to achieve...
  • "Customer-Focused" sales people who can't wait to jump in and prescribe their solution the moment the prospect admits to a problem, rather than taking their time to diagnose what may really be going on...
  • "Customer-Centric" marketing organisations that still don't have a very clear idea of who their best prospects are, what really matters to them, who they turn to for advice, or how or why they choose to buy...

Dangerous attraction...

The list could go on.  It's not because these people, or these companies, refuse to acknowledge the benefits of customer alignment.  It's because the systems they work within seem to have a dangerous magnetic attraction that keeps tugging them back to thinking in terms of their company, their products or their services.

I've come to the conclusion that this is a cultural thing, and that changing it is going to require more than sloganising.  Where customer-centricity works, there seems to be an institutionalised curiosity about who their most valuable prospects are, what their most pressing issues might be, and how they go about making buying decisions.

The insights within...

The sad thing is, many of these insights already exist with organisations that are struggling to become customer-focused.  The front line sales people and other customer-facing employees often have invaluable insights - and would be prepared to share them if only they were asked.

I don't think this is usually an issue of willingness - it's an issue of process.  With this in mind, I've recently revamped our methodology to help make it easier for our clients to capture and apply the information.

Download the check list...

But what I'd like to share with you right now is a simple 15-point check-list that captures much of what we've observed.  Please download it here.  I hope that it might stimulate some fresh perspectives - please drop me a line if you would like to share them with me.

Stanford research shows that sales grow when bonuses are eliminated

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Recent research from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business suggests that companies that eliminate bonuses for achieving sales quotas generate more revenues.  According to Professors Nair and Misra, the benefits can be significant – in one case stimulating a 9% uplift in revenues.

Revenue Growth PathAs 2010 approaches, that sort of sales uplift could make the difference between achieving your revenue goals for the year - or falling short.  It’s a powerful argument for reviewing your sales compensation plans now, so that you’re ready for the new business year with a set of principles that can optimise your sales performance.

If you’ve run a sales force for any length of time, you’ll probably be familiar with the principle that compensation drives behaviour.  As Nair and Misra point out, quota bonuses can result in sales people gaming the process.  If they have already made their quota for the period they may defer or “sandbag” deals, whilst sales people who see no chance of achieving their quota may instead defer their efforts to the next period.

Removing these quota-related bonuses can help to remove the inefficiencies caused by the sales people’s attempts to game the system.  In the example quoted in the research, they worked with an organisation to redefine their compensation plans for FY2009.  The results were impressive - the new structure resulted in a 9% improvement in revenues, translating to an additional $1m a month.  What’s more, the new plan proved extremely popular with the sales people.

Of course, removing quota-based bonuses may not be the answer in every situation - but the research draws our attention to the need to carefully define the desired sales behaviour, modelling the desired outcomes, and tuning the compensation plan accordingly.  

Most organisations want their sales force to be encouraged to maximise profitable revenue, and to do so as early in the business cycle as possible so that end-of-quarter and end-of-year surprises can be eliminated.  This can be achieved through careful design of targets and accelerators.  Similar principles can apply to incentivising certain elements of the product mix.

As the end of the sales year approaches and you prepare to hit the ground running from the very start of 2010, I suggest you reflect on how well your current sales compensation plans stimulated the desired sales behaviour.  Even if you did well, is there room for improvement?  And if it looks as if you may end the year short of your original goals, how can you change the situation for next year?

An external perspective may help.  We’ve worked with a number of clients to help them structure and tune sales compensation plans that drive the desired outcomes, and eliminate the opportunity for sales people to game the system.  Drop me a line at bob.apollo@inflexion-point.com if you would like to learn more.

Getting it right is worth it.  On average, organisations spend more than three times as much on sales compensation as they do on advertising.  Careful planning can make sure that the money is well spent.


What if product marketing saw itself as "problem solving marketing"?

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I was reflecting on a thought-provoking blog by Dave Brock, who asked "what would happen if we saw things the way our customers saw them?".

As Dave points out, your capabilities as a vendor are irrelevant unless and until they can be connected to your prospect’s challenges in a language they can relate to. Your value propositions can’t be generic – they have to relate to what really matters to the prospect.

Problem SolverThe really smart sales people have already figured this out.  That’s why they so often tailor the “corporate” presentations churned out by marketing to reflect what they have learned their prospects are really interested in... which is almost never the "feeds and speeds" or technobabble so beloved of the average product pitch.

Marketers, this is no time to get upset with them or curse them as rebels.   They are only responding to what they sense their prospects are looking for - and remember they are probably having many more prospect conversations than anyone else in the organisation.  Let's celebrate their adaptability!

Imagine what could happen if product marketing listened to and learned from their wisdom?  Imagine what they could produce if they saw their primary role as "problem solving marketing" instead?

Of course, the best product marketers do this already - to the great benefit of the organisations they work for.  But from my observations, many others - and it's a significant proportion - are still far too fixated about what their product does, rather than what problem it solves.

The resulting sales tools often end up wandering around like the Marie Celeste, with no clear sense of their destination or what role they play in facilitating the prospect's buying process.  As a result, as many as nine out of ten corporate sales tools end up being little used by sales people.   It's a huge sales enablement challenge for many organisations.

I'd like to suggest a checklist that could help to ensure that sales materials are focused on the problem, not the product:

  • What problem are we trying to solve?
  • Who are we trying to solve it for? 
  • How will they recognise they have a problem?
  • How do our capabilities help them solve the problem?
  • What phase in the buying process is the sales tool intended to support?
  • What do we want the prospect to do as a result of the tool?

I think it's a fair bet that if your organisation's sales tools were designed with these questions in mind that your sales people would be more inclined to use them and less inclined to develop their own.  Even more so if they contributed to the design and development of the tools in the first place.

Am I on the right track?  I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Are you ready for a fresh perspective?

Would you like to learn more?  Then please continue to browse the site and when you are ready, contact me here or call me on +44 7802 313300.

I look forward to hearing from you!

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