Go on Marketing - help us identify customer problems we can sell against

Last week, courtesy of my discussion with Neil Rackham, I described the issues Sales & Marketing can create for themselves as a result of the assumptions over roles throughout the sales cycle.

The first area to address is what Neil Rackham described as "problem analysis tools". Selling, as we all know, starts with identifying a problem we can address with our "products/solutions". So who is responsible for identifying the "problem"? It's clearly both Sales and Marketing.

Marketing can be generic
Marketing clearly cannot know the specifics of an individual's (or their company's) needs, but they can identify the types of issues sales should be looking for that play to the strengths of their product. Here are some examples that help illustrate what I mean

• Technical problems - Every product has been designed to do a job or address a specific problem (the issues the product features have been designed to address). Instead of listing the technical feature (what it is), marketing ought to provide sales with the "problem" the feature was designed to address. An example of this is:
• Instead of describing the security features of a notebook - identify why security is required and the potential impact of having a notebook lost/stolen. It's the "so what?" rather than just the "what?" and is often the first stage of qualification.

• Business problems - All businesses have to address issues around costs, sales, legislation, etc. These are ultimately the things that drive the final decision ( remember that the best technical solution will always struggle against an average solution that better addresses the business issues). Marketing can help the market and their salespeople to understand what business issues their product is best designed to address. Here is another example.
• Find a business that has a high profile "environmental policy" then identify the green credentials of your product and how it helps your customer towards achieving carbon neutrality

• Don't forget emotion -All consumer retailing is based on emotional selling - making you look/feel better, pricking your conscience to give to charity, etc. Marketing could be helping sales identify the emotional phrases that they can focus on.
• These emotions can be identified via "objection handling" - listing the emotional words that are positive and negative. For example, Marketing can say in their collateral that "many of our customers find that the environmentally features of our products help to reduce the consumption of electricity". In this case reducing the use of carbon based fuels is an emotional as well as problem solving feature.

Sales must be specific

Sales have a simple role here "ask questions, listen to the answers and use this intelligence to identify the opportunity".

At the risk of upsetting some of our readers, too many sales people go into "pitch mode" using the generic slideware of Marketing. The role of Salespeople in problem identification is to uncover the unique problems of the prospect, Marketing can only give you the hints as to what you might hear.

So what does good look like?

Accredit has been working with a number of IT organistions to put into practice what we have been preaching here, and it works as follows:

• Marketing builds a "customer viewpoint" for the sales team. This explains the issues customers could be facing and how this links to the features of the product/solution (moving from Feature to Advantage)
• Marketing produces a "call/meeting guide" which lays out how best to have the initial engagement with the prospect (what questions to ask, what to listen out for and link to the offering. (click here to see an example)
• Sales practices the call/meeting before doing it "live"

This is not just a theory - we know it works - If you want to know more why not register on our website as we are regularly adding new examples of call/meeting guides.

Next week we will look at how we build differentiation against our competitors.

Sales just speak to the client, it's Marketing who decides what they say

I recently had a meeting with Neil Rackham (creator of SPIN Selling) and during our conversation we got onto the subject of why for all the focus on "solution selling, too many sales people focussed on features and did a pitch. We both agree that one of the major reasons for this was the internal failures between sales and marketing.

Neil then proceeded to give me one of the best descriptions of the challenge sales and marketing face. It was not a new approach, but the clarity which he gave the issues was impressive.

The key issue is one of expectations. The client clearly knows the steps they need to go through to make a decision, and the sales/marketing organisation knows what they need to supply to support the client make a decision. So where does it all go wrong?

The failure stems from a lack of clarity as to who owns delivery of the components. The most common outcome is that sales and marketing revert to type and we end up with:

• Marketing producing literature that is inward focussed ("here are our features") and then tells the customer what the benefits are.
• Sales scrambles around trying to work out why anyone would buy their solution and resorts to "pitching".

Next week we will look at some of the steps we can take to address this issue.

If you have any examples of the imbalance between sales and marketing (from either a sales, marketing or customer perspective) please share them by placing a comment.

"Look they are Listening!" - Update on Active Speaking

Short entry this week (I am supposed to be on holiday, but my wife has gone shopping!)

So I am into my first week of "active speaking" and I wanted to give yo a quick update.

1. Active speaking in a meeting - I had a very important sales call for a client (my role was to ensure that the meeting achieved its objective, without taking it over!) The impact of active speaking, in my humble opinion was quite dramatic.
• We learnt far more than we expected
• The customer committed to a strategy that could open up 15% of their client base to our offer!
• They confirmed their agreement that our sales strategy was correct.
• They agreed to a half-day meeting in three weeks!
2. Active speaking with colleagues - I have started speaking quieter, but as most of my conversations this week have been over the phone, they keep saying speak up!
3. Active speaking with my family - Major success here, my 17 year old agreed to something! (more work, get some work experience, tidy his room). I only hope this continues.

So how have you been getting on? Please drop me a line mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com or comment on the blog.

Can we have your feedback - Please let us know what you think of this blog, is it useful, what would you like more of? All comments will be gratefully accepted (either add a comment or send me an e-mail  mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com )

Next week we will start to look at the challenge of getting sales to support the needs of the marketing strategy, and vice versa.

Don't speak so loud if you want others to listen

I was very fortunate to meet one of the most impressive characters I have ever met, Neil Rackham. Neil, as you may know, was the creator of SPIN selling and is recognised as one of the leading thinkers in what makes a sales person effective.

Rather than go in to detail of our discussion, I'll save this up for another time, I want to highlight one of Neil's most impressive traits, the volume of his voice. Neil is a very softly spoken individual and he forces you to listen to him, rather than hear him! I am sure that this is deliberate, as I found myself concentrating on what he was saying as opposed to thinking ahead and missing key parts of the conversation. Neil is implementing what I would call "active speaking".

Everyone talks about active listening as a key aspect of a successful sales call, but how many of us combine active listening with broadcast speaking (i.e. we go into pitching speak) where we talk at the client. I know that I am often accused of "telling people" or "using the force of my personality to get a point over". My meeting with Neil revealed an alternative approach - speak quietly and bring the listener gently into the discussion.

The active speaking behaviour is:

• Speak at the volume you would normally use to calm somebody down.
• You will find that you naturally slow down the speed of speaking (providing you with thinking time, and making it easy to listen to).
• Encourage the listener to join you in the conversation.
• If you want to draw something don't use a flip chart, use a piece of paper and get the person to join in. 

The 21 day active speaking challenge
I have been set a challenge by my colleagues, and we are setting the same challenge to all the sales people we coach, the challenge is as follows:

For the next 21 days I should use active speaking in every meaningful conversation I have. This will cover 1-2-1's with colleagues, sales calls and coaching sessions.

Why 21 days? - This is the time it takes to turn a new behaviour into a habit. Research shows that if you repeat the behaviour throughout the 21 days (with the intention of accepting the behaviour), at the end of the period you will do it without thinking.

So I am setting the same challenge for you (and your teams). Introduce active speaking in your 1-2-1 sessions and customer discussions and post comments here to tell us how it is going.