Posted by Tom Ball
Jumping through hoops by Owen Ashby
Owen Ashby, CEO of one of our strategic partners, Think Smart Marketing gets fired up about the hoops you have to jump through to get sign off on anything these days.
Of course it’s getting harder to get new projects and initiatives approved. While some organisations have imposed a complete embargo on any kind of expenditure, others have reduced authority levels and increased the number of steps needed for approval for even the smallest of investments. All of which conspires to make an already challenging environment for the sales team, just that bit harder still.
While an extended sales cycle is doubtless bad news for pipeline planning and cash flow forecasting, it also means more bases to cover for the sales team, more influencers to work with and more potential blockers to contend with. It means where yesterday you thought you understood the customers’ buying and decision making process, today, all bets are off.
All this of course adds to the cost of sale, let alone the blood pressure levels of all concerned.
There are some common issues with current sales processes which become even more evident in today’s massively competitive environment;
People talk too often about their own sales cycle, without attempting to understand the customer’s buying cycle. Your sales cycle is irrelevant if your customer can’t buy when you need them to.
Organisations still send generic and bland literature or make standard “credentials” and “corporate” presentations and expect the end customer to work out how it might be relevant to them and their organisation. Customers are rarely keen to find out first how many people you employ, how long you’ve been in business and how much money you make and they won’t thank you for taking 80% of the meeting time telling them about it. Make everything you do and say mean something directly to your customer or prospect.
Sales teams work tirelessly to get the deal to the board room table only then to be scuppered by having missed out key decision makers from the sales process along the way.
And probably worst of all, in the most unpredictable and volatile climate in living memory (for most of us), people continue to do the same thing they’ve done for years….because it worked in the past.
Blimey if you needed a wake-up call to think about how to do things differently, they don’t get much louder and blindingly obvious than today’s global economic chaos.
So what can you do about it?
….Well seeing it from the customers’ perspective would be a great place to start.
Make it easy for them to understand not only what your proposition is BUT how it benefits them and their organisation.
Make it simple for them to be able to articulate internally and upwards within their organisation how what you’re offering is of value to each of the stakeholder/budget holder groups. – Help them to sell up inside the organisation for you.
Give them something that engages them and enables them to engage others in the organisation in debate and discussion. – Help them become a champion for you and your proposition.
Send them or hand them something that can’t get “filed” or “piled” with everything else that lands on their desk.
Provide them with something bespoke and of immediate relevance and value. – Don’t ask them to work out how your generic proposal may be of benefit to them.
Do something intelligent, different, bold and unique.
I can speak from personal experience and indeed that of my customers, a big picture speaks volumes and works wonders and a big picture as part of an integrated sales process is quite simply breakthrough.
Personally, I’m happy to keep that knowledge for myself and my clients….but I suspect the savvy among you will already be drafting an email to the Cognac team to find out more!
Think Smart!
Owen
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