HOW TO PUT EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS IN PLACE TO QUALIFY PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS (PART 2)
Most marketing managers are convinced that they can understand their market without doing research, and that they know what prospective customers are thinking about their products without asking them. Some of them have maintained this delusion through their professional career. But most eventually realize they are locked in a separate reality, and that they must develop a client-centered approach to selling to help them qualify prospective customers’ needs and concerns, move business forward, and move their sales objectives.
Customer Requirement Analysis
The most effective way to prepare a customer requirement analysis is to ask lots of questions, to make a few assumptions as possible about your customers’ needs and concerns, and to verify that you have not overlooked any factors that may affect your customers’ business. If your customer requirement analysis is detailed, your salespeople should review it with their customer before making any recommendations or proposing any solutions.
Step 3: evaluate your product demonstrations
The key to effective product demonstration is to plan and practice the demonstration before meeting with your customers. Before demonstrating your product to your customers, your sales representatives should be prepared to:
- Use every product feature
- Explain how every product feature works
- Map every product feature to one or more customer benefits
- Recover from common error conditions
If your salespeople take the time to record and analyze what happened during and after their product demonstrations, they will be able to improve their presentation techniques and rectify any mistakes that they have made.
Step 4: Evaluate your sales proposals
Sales proposals usually include a summary of your customers’ needs or requirements; information about products and services that are being recommended; information about installation; implementation, and after-sale support; an analysis of why a specific solution is being recommended, and information on pricing, cost justification, customer training, and product delivery.
Companies that achieve total domination usually create comprehensive sales proposals because they know that failing to include information that their customers need to make in informed purchase decision will delay their customers’ purchase process. And when a customer’s purchase decision is delayed, there is more opportunity for competitors to win the customer’s business.
Most sales proposals are drafted in one of three styles:
- “We want to solve your problem”
- “We have the best product service for your business”
- “We can solve your problem as well as our competitors for less money”
Many companies use “boilerplate” proposal templates to help their sales team generate comprehensive proposals as quickly and easily as possible. But in any case, your company’s proposals should include all of the information that your customers need to make informed purchase decisions.
Step 5: Evaluate whether your company is prepared to sell to major accounts
Major or “strategic” customers often account for a disproportionate amount of a company’s profits, because the cost of marketing to a small number of major accounts is normally much less than the cost of marketing to a larger number of accounts that purchase the same amount of product. This is why most companies that achieve total domination put so much emphasis on developing compelling major-account marketing strategies that enable them to win this profitable business.
Supply Strategies
The widespread adoption of supplier performance evaluation and review (SPEAR) and just in time (JIT) inventory management has had a profound impact on industrial marketing. Sales representatives in these industries should be prepared to discuss supply strategies, statistical process control, and quality assurance with almost every buyer.
Vendor Analysis
Vendor analysis helps companies facilitate vendor selection by providing a quantitative assessment of supplier variables in relation to a specific product. For example, your customer might evaluate its suppliers on the basis of price, reliability of delivery (availability and on-time shipment), and product reliability (defect rate). Your customer might weigh each of these factors to enable them to do quantitative assessment of the service level (value) that each supplier delivers. Depending on an individual customer’s concerns and priorities, the suppliers with the lowest-cost product might or might not win a specific customer’s business.
Step 6: Evaluate whether team selling is an effective strategy for your company
Team selling is often the best way for technology-driven companies to deliver the combination of marketing and technical skills that are needed to solve customers’ problems and move business forward in the most cost-effective way.
| Potential Advantages of Team Selling | Training Approach to Team Selling |
| Leverage corporate resources | Enlist training manager to help sales team close strategic accounts |
| Higher customer service level | Team program development manager with account manager on each new account to provide greater degree of program customization |
| Win more competitive sales | Sales manager and VP of marketing helps sales representatives close strategic accounts. |
| Generate more revenue per customer | Training manager contacts each account after training seminar to solicit customer feedback and to suggest additional programs that may help the client’s sales force work more effectively |
| Generate higher revenue per sales call | Account representatives are trained to explore how training products and consulting services can help customers improve many different areas of their business. |
| Shorter sales cycle, fewer sales calls | Account representatives make between 3 and 4 sales calls before asking for their customers’ business. |
Depending on the type of products and services that you are representing, and on your customers’ technical background, it may be necessary to have one or more support personnel involved in the selling process. For example, at most technology-driven companies, sales support personnel are responsible for various selling activities, including technical presentations, customer support, contract support, and customer training.
Part 3 continues in the next article
If you find this article useful, please share and subscribe to our newsletter.
…………………………………………………………………….…..
