Feb 16, 2007
Channel Tips:
Supporting the Complex Sale
How Traditional Marketing Programs & Tools Fail and What to Do About It
By Greg Nutter
Part 2
In our last article, we discussed the disconnect between the marketing programs and tools most companies create and what the field selling organization needs to advance a complex sale. The impact is lost sales, unproductive sales teams, and a whole lot of wasted money.
Let’s continue by exploring how this disconnect impacts strategically complex sales.
As mentioned earlier, selling becomes strategically complex when there are multiple people involved in the purchasing process and each has a different view of the decision criteria (IT, purchasing, legal, users, executives, etc.). Today, B2B sales are almost always strategically complex because that’s how companies minimize the risk of making poor decisions.
Reps who are good in strategically-complex situations know that, to maximize their chances of winning, they must sell to everyone who can influence the decision, particularly users and those responsible for allocating funds. Often, individuals in purchasing or IT will say that they are the only ones involved in the decision and that you just need to work with them. If your product is a commodity and the company has lots of experience buying it, this might be the case – if not, nothing could be further from the truth. Selling only to the gatekeepers is a very risky proposition.
The marketing disconnect: Once again, look at how your marketing programs, collaterals and tools are focused: most tend to be either very general or are technology, “spec”, or corporate oriented (company history, etc.). They’re great for purchasing or IT evaluators but aren’t any value to users (unless IT is the only user) or senior management making the final funding decision. Another example of wasted marketing effort is the “happy customer” testimonial or case study where everyone says nice things about the other but there’s nothing of real business value to either the user or the financial executive. As a result, savvy reps that get an audience with users or financial executives must create their own tools to support their selling efforts. Creating such tools takes away from valuable selling time and results in customer leave-behinds which often don’t align to corporate standards.
Why the disconnect?
Marketing professionals don’t set out to create tools that are of limited value to sales. However, most have never had the opportunity to learn why complex selling is so different. Few have sold in a complex sales environment and almost all formal marketing training that they may have taken is consumer-oriented. Finally, when developing marketing programs and tools, people often tend to rely on their own life experiences, which are highly consumer-oriented. Consumer and corporate marketing are vastly different which explains why most tools end up on the shelf or in the circular filing cabinet.
So, what can you do?
- Develop more tools and programs that users and financially-oriented executives will find of value. Focus on improving business processes, ROI, and other business oriented benefits. Use more facts and less fluff.
- Avoid one-message-fits-all marketing. Target programs and tools to specific audiences and selling situations so that readers don’t have to hunt for the part that’s relevant to them.
- Engage your selling organization. Ask them where they need help in the sales cycle and develop tools to make them more effective.
- Access complex selling expertise. If you don’t have anyone in marketing that has lots of complex selling experience, hire or contract with someone who can fill the gap.
Aligning marketing and sales can have significant payoff. According to a 2006 survey by CSO Insights, companies who were considered world-class in aligning their marketing message to their selling processes reported 20% higher win-rates, 300% increase in proposal success, and were five times better at avoiding excessive discounting. Looking for a new way to meet this year’s numbers? – look no further.
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Greg Nutter is a Principal with Soloquent Inc. (www.soloquent.com) where he helps technology companies develop go-to-market strategies, programs, and tools that increase indirect and direct selling performance. He has over 20 years experience in sales, sales management, and channel development in the HVTO industry.
Got a comment, got a question, got a problem? Send Greg a note at greg@soloquent.com
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