Feb 17, 2010 | Management, Operations, Sales
The gate keeper role is progressively becoming redundant as web tools evolve to offer many other avenues to get “inside” a prospective customer.
The most aggressive commercial gatekeepers have traditionally been in the acquisition roles, and finding ways to butter them up, or get around them consumes huge resources in many organsations selling B2B, and using the model successful last century, getting to know the purchasing manager, taking him to lunch, sending his kids a birthday card to show you care, and so on.
Nowadays, these people are almost redundant, the most they usually do is fill in the purchase order, and ensure delivery, they rarely now make the decision to buy yours, or the others.
The task now is to identify the decision maker, and market your product benefits to him/her, building the value of the benefits, by identifying what your product delivers in terms of three parameters:
- The sales benefit delivered.
- The cost benefit delivered
- The productivity benefit delivered.
If you are not delivering at least one of these three, preferably two, why would they waste their money buying from you.
Feb 15, 2010 | Marketing, Sales
The retail end of music industry as we currently know it continues to be in trouble.
This New York Times article is now a bit old, but I am pretty sure the marketing challenge has not gone away.
Imagine, 13 million songs for sale on the web in 2008, 10 million did not sell one, just one, not even to family and friends, and 80% of revenue came from just 52,000 songs, less than 1%.
The web has given us an amazing ability to “publish” but the marketing challenge of being relevant, noticed, engaging, and commercially successful has not changed at all.
Just because you can put it out there, does not mean it is any good, and because it is a big “market”, and you only have to sell to a tiny, tiny % of the punters to make a dollar, does not mean you will.
Feb 9, 2010 | Change, Management, OE, Operations, Sales
For a long time as a consultant, who has done a fair but of sales training in a B2B environment, I have fallen back on a foundation proposition made up of three parts.
When planning a sales strategy to sell a product that is not a cheap disposable commodity (like paper clips)to a customer, you can only really do three things:
- Assist the customer increase his sales
- Assist the customer reduce his costs
- Assist the customer increase the productivity of his assets.
If the product you are selling does not address at least one of these three parameters, why would someone buy from you?
Recently, undertaking an improvement exercise for a manufacturing client, it became clear the same three questions can be applied to any improvement process, not just sales.
If any activity, policy, assumption, or behavioral norm does not contribute to at least one of these three outcomes for your organization why are you still doing it? “How does that contribute to…..?” becomes a very powerful question.
Feb 1, 2010 | Branding, Marketing, Sales
Most products have a range of alternatives that the buyer can purchase and use in relative certainty that it will deliver pretty much as promised.
Consumers when in a supermarket have a basket of products in a category they buy, usually with a first and second choice, and sometimes a third choice. On any trip to the supermarket, the purchase decision is made at POS based on a whole range of factors, of which price is only one.
Our task as FMCG brand marketers is to find the means to reduce the importance of price in the purchase decision, in an environment where the supermarket is hell bent on convincing us that price is the only factor that matters, and they have all the power of the channel at their disposal.
The power of data mining techniques that have evolved in the last decade is stunning, but they do not remove the basic dilemma for FMCG marketers, who must find the balance between price, stock velocity, retail margin, and brand building that has to be funded from their margins and long term returns, and which carries substantial risk.
Only building a brand that consumers have as their first choice in the basket of acceptable choices, where price sensitivity is less than the category norm will offer longevity, the rest just contributes to retailer profitability at the expense of the supplier margin.
Dec 14, 2009 | Sales
Part of a small current assignment is looking for a simple ERP system for a SME client, now too big to rely on spreadsheets and simple accounting packages.
Automatically, I went to the web, looking for user groups of similar software, and it got me thinking.
The web is the first place we look for something, from a complicated bit of technology, to a phone number, and this has come about so fast we do not think about it.
The standard early stages of the B2B marketing processes have been replaced by peer contact facilitated by the web, research is done on line, no longer relying on the vendor to do anything more than fill in the gaps, and provide a price.
For some time, I have been on the e-mailing list of an ERP vendor, I just never bothered to click the “off” button, to de-register, but I cannot remember their name now I need their product, or similar, just like old fashioned advertising, until you need it the ad is totally forgettable most of the time.
It seems theB2B game now is to create leads that have been motivated in some way before you get to them, and the sales role is being truncated into the closure, implementation and follow up stages.
Dec 10, 2009 | Management, Sales
You would not build a house without a plan, so why would you set out to manage your major customers without some sort of plan.
For most businesses, their key customer base is the core of their commercial sustainability, so it is worth investing a few resources to ensure you are able to deliver an optimum experience to them when dealing with you.
Engaging the customer in your planning sessions for their business is sometimes a counter-intuitive, but very worthwhile activity, after all, who knows them better, what they need, how they see the future, the internal hurdles they face, than one of their key employees?
