I sell to some really big companies. One rule I established when I founded my business is that sales is about listening and collaborating, not presenting. The reason was that I had watched cost of sales at many companies skyrocket due to huge investments preparing elaborate sales presentations that often fell flat and pursuing deals that should have been disqualified or re-framed early on.
Even with the best qualification questions and inside sales efforts, a sales rep walking into an initial customer meeting is going to have, at best, a superficial understanding of the customers’ need. If they start by bulldozing through pre-prepared slides, they are likely to a) waste time on topics irrelevant to the customer b) miss the opportunity to gain a better understanding and c) fail to establish a collaborative relationship with the customer.
If you’re a marketer creating content and tools for a direct sales force, ask yourself if the information and asset you’re giving them help sales people to:
- Ask questions that both demonstrate their expertise and help them gain greater insight into customer needs
- Facilitate in-depth discussions that are positive and valuable experiences for customers
- Articulate how what they’re selling is directly relevant specific customer situations they discover during the meeting
If individual employees have more power to select products and technologies, then should we market to them the same way we market to consumers?
Consumerization of corporate buying decisions is leaving B2B marketers asking if and how to use B2C techniques in B2B sales. I like to break the question up into pieces, starting with messaging, then sales strategy, and finally marketing tactics.
What’s really different between messaging in B2B vs. B2C environments?
First, consider the similarities:
Everyone develops initial preference based on emotional response, whether they are making personal or business purchases. So you must appeal to the individual and their personal priorities in both settings.
In B2B, recognize that business people often have unstated personal interests and decide how your sales strategy is going to address these. To make this a repeatable sales practice, include an assessment of personal objectives for key stakeholders in your account planning process. (Assumes you have one, but that’s a whole other topic.)
Now the big difference:
While the consumer might or might not bother to rationalize their decision, the business buyer almost always MUST demonstrate tangible (not just perceived) value to the company. While you can rely exclusively on brand image and emotional response with consumers, you have to message to BOTH the emotional and rational considerations for business buyers.
If you’ve used B2C-style messaging for a B2B product, tell us how that worked.
More on this topic in our next post.
I was thrilled to be a guest speaker on Linda Popky‘s Marketing Thought Leadership podcast series.
The podcast topics include:
– The definition of customer context
– How to use every aspect of context in messaging
– The customer use case as a tool for articulating credible and provable value
Listen to the entire podcast, “Customer Relevance: Why Use Case-Driven Value™ Matters to Marketing”
Better than "Please Don't Touch"
Pam Fox Rollin, Executive and Leadership Coach extroadinnaire, shared this photo recently. Its a perfect example of using insight about your audience’s complete context to make your message more relevant and notable.
The owners of this store didn’t just state what was important to them (i.e. “Don’t touch” or “Watch your children”) They thought about what would make the request really stand out to busy parents. They thought about the reality of the lives of those busy parents, and came up with great, catchy, and funny sign instead.
Are you thinking about your customers’ real life when you design your messages?
