On the face of it this is a straightforward activity; take the offer marketing want to promote, identify why someone would buy it, create the message the sales team need to deliver, show them how to deliver the message and finally work with them to deliver the message.
But the offer is wrong!
Unfortunately we hit a problem as soon as we started, the message would not work. It was not that the message in itself was wrong, but it was not consistent with what marketing had been telling the wider world and what they had been asking the sales people to tell existing customers.
Read your website and supporting material to check your current message
At its simplest the campaign was to target specific products at Large Enterprises, but the website proudly announced that "we have designed these products to meet the needs of the mid-market".
Sales made it clear that they would not even consider this campaign as they had been told the product was solely targeted at SMEs! There was no argument, the message was clear, "we will not do this!"
Beyond this we did a quick audit of the website and although the new products were mentioned, when you clicked for more information you were sent to a page all about the previous model. Fortunately sales did not spot this or we would have had even more issues.
Sales will not do anything that is too complex!
As a sales person I am happy to do anything that will help me over-achieve against my OTE, but I will always look for the path of least resistance. If I am not sure about the message, or think that the customer will only get confused, I will not use that message with the customer, whatever marketing may ask!
Are you sure you have not done the same?
I am happy to put my hand up and say that our messages are not always consistent, and I use the excuse of "our messages are evolving........". I know that this is due to the need to be agile, but we have delegated the responsibility of managing our website and we don't always update our web partner on the latest message.
How confident are you that your messages are consistent!
Customers do not like inconsistent messages, they will just ignore you!
The reality is that customers do not care why your messages are inconsistent, they will identify the reasons not to buy and reject you.
The sales team were 100% correct, we could not ask them to position the product to Large Enterprises, not only would it have been an ineffective campaign, it would have been damaging to the brand of the organisation.
The three steps to consistent messages
- Before you build your campaign , check what messages you are currently delivering to your target market segments
- Before you tell sales the new message, tell them how the message is changing and why
- Before you launch the campaign ensure that all customer touchpoints are delivering the same message:
- On-line media (website, PR, etc)
- All above and below the line collateral
- All customer facing people
- All your channels
Keep following this blog, it will help you
It is our aim to continue to provide pragmatic and practical advice and solutions to the issues facing sales teams. We will always ensure that whatever we say you can use with your teams confident in the knowledge that we have already used the solutions in real life. We will continue to provide free tools and if you want access to more tools then you can always visit our website www.sales-accredit.com.
We need your input
We base all of our examples on the issues we are identifying in our clients, but we would like you to help us. Send us the issues you are facing and we will endeavour to address them in our future blogs.
And Finally
In the last blog of 2009 we discussed the personal business plan. We now have a worked examples, so if anyone would like a copy please drop me a line mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com
The next blog will explain what we did next after we got sales back on side.
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