How to alleviate your recession woes? Stop selling products!
If you’re anything like most businesses, your main focus right now is riding out the economic storm. To stay afloat you’ve got to shift product. But there are ways of doing this and, believe it or not, the best is not to start a sales pitch with this notion.
Remember, you’re selling a resource, a fix to a problem or a solution to a challenge. It’s not just a product! We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Marketing is not a department. In this sense, it cannot be distinct from sales. And now more than ever, the psychology of selling is critical to business success.
Calling all sales teams; listen to your customers...
We recently spoke to five engineering and purchasing VPs about the changing roles of their vendors in the context of maturing technologies and a highly stressed global economy. These conversations repeatedly led to similar pleas: “Be someone that I can call on as a resource” or “Understand my business and my customers.” We were told in no uncertain terms that too many sales people still call or visit with only the most superficial knowledge of their prospect’s company. Or, even worse, they called with out-of-date information.
During these conversations, it became clear that in spite of the increased difficulty the economic cycle has arguably brought to the task of developing customer-vendor relationships, solid pre-sale relations are nonetheless significant to their purchasing decisions. One VP we contacted suggested that to him, "It’s a leading indicator of what a vendor’s post-sale value will be to me.” Food for thought indeed.
Box-to-box selling virtually always accelerates the downward spiral of prices. That’s a reality in almost every situation but increasingly the case in maturing technology markets. And today’s technology buyers know there are multiple sources for most products and where to find them. Long selling cycles and multiple contact points complicate B2B marketing. Your business needs its message to be available at the correct time and in the correct format. But most of all, the message and delivery needs to be relevant. Relevant to them, not you.
If you need any help, you know where we are, simply get in touch.
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