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Part 1 of these posts talked about how power in the market has shifted to the buyer. (Reference Voice of the Customer Marketing by Eaman).  Thus the focus in of marketing and sales  is to learn as much as possible about the buyer’s journey.

The marketing and sales departments must work together to extract value stories to help marketing build out:

• Agreement with sales on what is a sales ready lead (Reference: Brian Carroll)
• Knowledge of all the stages that a buyer goes through internally prior to and during a decision to purchase  ( Reference: Sharon Drew Morgen)
• The unique value(s) that they can demonstrate they bring to the buyer ( Reference: see how LeveragePoint can help)
• Knowledge of what buyers find valuable from dealing with your sales force. (Have salespeople earned the right to talk to buyers?)
• Campaigns that place the needed proof in front of the targeted buyers well before they engage with sales. (Lead your prospects to value, not a sale. Reference: Ardath Albee)
• The changing proof needed for each stage of the buyers journey.
• Segmented value proofs for the many different individuals participating on the buyer’s side (You deal with a committee).
• Compelling value stories that bolster the salesman’s efforts/confidence in using a value based, not pricing based approach.

This is an investment in time and effort that builds a long term sustainable sales funnel. Research has shown that at any one time only 5% of your “suspects” are in buying mode. This leaves 95% which need to be nurtured by marketing until they raise their hand.  As I said in the first post, the buyer decides when they will interact with you.

A recent LinkedIn Answer by Ian Dainty is relevant at this time on  Who is Responsible for Generating Leads, Sales or Marketing?

Ian Dainty • Here is my two cents worth.
Because I have been in the B2B tech space for over 35 years, as a sales rep, marketer, executive and owner, I have seen all kinds of scenarios. I came from the “dialing for dollars” days, when no SMB tech company had a marketing department. The sales rep did it all.
However, after all of this time, and through years of research, executive interviews, and being in the trenches, I have been able to make some good observations that work.
If you have a company, with under $100M in revenue, then marketing’s main function should be to generate leads. (or as we used to call them – suspects). This should be done through Direct Response Marketing (DRM). DRM includes emails, letters, Social Media, PPC, advertising, etc., anything that asks a suspect to put their hands up and ask for your free content, whether that be a white paper, a free download, etc

.
I have seen too many marketing VP’s spend their time designing logos (seriously) as if this is going to help build a company brand. Marketing needs to bring in and nurture leads, until they are qualified by sales.
Sales should qualify leads. Unfortunately, very few sales people know how to qualify properly, and end up chasing leads for months. Hence the long sales cycle in most B2B tech companies. Please go to my blog for more information, especially “How to Stop Chasing Dead Leads” http://bit.ly/mgCTGo But I digress from the topic here.

Once a lead has been qualified as far as timeframe and need, and this where most qualification processes fail, then sales should take over. If it is simply a tire kicker, then marketing needs to keep nurturing.

Too many sales people spend their time either cold calling, not needed if you have at least $1M in revenue, and/or not knowing how to qualify, and chasing dead leads.

Sales should also generate leads, through three main avenues. They should be asking for referrals from clients. They should be getting testimonials for use by marketing. And more importantly, they should be generating more business in each of their current clients.

Many sales people fail on all fronts. But marketing needs to take on the lead (suspect) generation for a company.

Thanks Ian, I could not say this any better. Next what does Sales have to do to implement a value based selling approach.

Related articles

• Implementing a value based sales approach. Part 1. Introduction. (regnordman.com)
• Marketing Automation is Not the Magic Bullet for Your Sales Issues (regnordman.com)
• Your web based content could be driving more leads away than its bringing in. (regnordman.com)
• B2B Marketing: Time to Bring the Digital + Physical Worlds Together? (customerthink.com)
• 5 Ways Salespeople Can Use Social Media to Grow Leads (toprankblog.com)
• Sales Intelligence: How Reps Find Insight in Customer Data (Part 4) (customerthink.com)
• Treat Your Content with More Respect (marketinginteractions.typepad.com)
• Build Lead Personas For Better Lead Nurturing (customerthink.com)
• Ten marketing lessons from DemandCon (customerthink.com)
• Time to Bring Outside Sales Inside – A Guide to Virtual Selling (customerthink.com)
• 5 Essential LinkedIn Apps for Sales Teams (mashable.com)
• Most CEOs Think Marketers Lack Credibility – Focus on Revenue to Change That (b2bmarketingpost.com)

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Selling is harder every day. This topics series is presented to help you better meet the challenges of resisting discounting and over time increasing your prices)

Selling processes/methods/tactics that were successful become less so over time. Marketplace noise increases daily.  The standard practise of push marketing plus outbound sales adds to the noise with targets increasing their use of a Delete key. In order to get to talk to a prospect about how a  product
or service brings value, sales needs high quality help from marketing and different sales skills.

This change is necessitated by a market power shift. Power in the process has shifted to the buyer, because the seller is no longer the sole source of information for the purchase.  Buyers have ready access to a sea of information about products through the Web. Buyers determine when and how the
seller will interact with them.

In my own case, I  receive numerous mail and phone requests every day for “just a few minutes of your time to discuss a new product or service that will bring benefit to your business“. Delete.  I need to be engaged by the sellers content and knowledge of my situation before I will respond.

Many sales and marketing teams still misunderstand this point, wasting millions of dollars yearly of  internal funds. If a selling company was effective in fixing this they would experience:

1. Marketing having ongoing conversations with their target market
2. The bulk of the sales conversations would be initiated by the buyer.
3. The momentum of the sales cycles would be increasing (shorter cycles)
4. Reduction  of the cost of sales and
5. Rising profits.

In our consulting practise we see the opposite happening for many companies.

Any modern selling process (what the seller does) now takes a distant back seat to fully the knowing the buyer, the  buyer’s (hidden) process (what the buyers do) and the value the seller brings during the  buying process. This is a sea change in how many previously successful sales people have been trained.

(In part 2 I describe one of the changes needed – in marketing )

Your comments and examples are welcomed.

Related articles

• Marketing Automation is Not the Magic Bullet for Your Sales Issues (regnordman.com)
• E-Selling and buying (cash-bandit.com)
• The Future of Buyer Personas is Social – Part 2 (customerthink.com)
• Adopting a Buyer-Focused Marketing Model (reportcontentwriter.wordpress.com)

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Pricing with Confidence. 10 ways to stop leaving money on the table by Reed Holden,Mark Burton . 2008. ISBN 0470197579.  This is a book for the practitioner, whether it is CEO, CFO, VP Sales/marketing.   They do a very good job with strategy:

• set pricing and offerings
• establish list prices and base agenda

and tactics:

• actual transaction prices
• rules for negotiations
• holding to earned legitimate discounts, alignment with street price

They give you a model of change how to go in small steps from:

• cost plus
• value enhanced cost plus
• better market driven to
• value driven.

There is also lots  of meat there for the in-the-trenches salesperson with a surprising (to most sales managers ) metric showing that you can expect maybe 38% of your prospects to be price driven, with the rest being relationship or value driven. They also show you how to best deal effectively with all purchasers including the poker playing purchaser .  The case studies are good and easy to emulate.  This is an easy to read, easy to use book.  My only concern is that its been around for 3 years and I could have used it all the time.  Put it on your Kindle and keep reading it over and over.

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Pricing for Profit. How to command higher prices for your products and  services.  Dale Furtwengler.  2009. ISBN 0814415172.   This is a very useful book and it may have been the basis for quotes I have found in other later books. It is an easy to read combination of strategy and tactics with good examples .  Core to his thesis is that most owners do not know how to monetize the intrinsic value  in their offerings.  At Rocket Builders we could not agree more.

I was taken with his analysis of value and price buyers.  Over the past few weeks I used this idea while looking at various people in their sales role and their own approaches to pricing. Results have been very interesting to say the least.   In this book I have found lots of truths that others believe as well. E.g.

• Using low prices to market your offerings sends the wrong signal to the market.
• Price buyers are not loyal
• Buyers will find the money if the offer is truly important to them
• New product launches are when you can command premium prices, prices denied to the competition
• Combine the bottom line impact with personal goal achievement and you can get the premium price
• Bundling helps you achieve the price you want.
• The use of options in premium pricing
• Companies fail in marketing through telling what they do vs what the customer wants.

Most of the marketing material is of not use to the buyer and they are telling you so.  This book will be on my reading shelf for quite some time.  You should get it too.

Related articles

• Smart Pricing. How Google, Priceline, and leading businesses use pricing. Kagmohan Raju & Z. John Zhang. (regnordman.com)
• No B.S. Price Strategy. The ultimate no holds barred kick butt take no prisoners guide to profits, power and prosperity. Dan S. Kennedy & Jason Marrs. (regnordman.com)
• Pricing Strategy for a Service Business (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Should You Put Prices In Marketing Emails? (aweber.com)
• You’re Working Too Hard To Make the Sale. More than 100 insider tools to sell faster and easier . William T. Brooks & Tom Tavisano. 2nd Ed (regnordman.com)
• Conversations for Change. 12 ways to say it right when it matters most. Shawn Kent Hayashi. (regnordman.com)

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Roadmap to Revenue. How to sell the way your customers want to buy. Kristin Zhivago. 2011. ISBN 9780974017924.  This is likely to be a trailblazing book for 2011. In our work on Content Marketing we are always looking for good reference texts to get across that you need to have content that’s relevant from the customers point of view .  In our pricing work, we stress having companies find out what customers tell them what is the value of the products.  This book helps on both these fronts plus it is written from a sales point of view.  That is important because sales packs more clout in most companies still.  Zhivago has made very pertinent analyses of four types of purchasing scrutiny (from light through to intense scrutiny). She has laid out the most complete  and succinct description we have seen of customer interview techniques yet.  This is a must buy, must read book for sales and marketing types.  There is not a wasted page in the whole book.

Related articles

• You’re Working Too Hard To Make the Sale. More than 100 insider tools to sell faster and easier . William T. Brooks & Tom Tavisano. 2nd Ed (regnordman.com)
• Slow Down, Sell Faster! understand your customer’s buying process and maximize your sales. Kevin Davis. (regnordman.com)
• We Have To Invest In Revenue Generation (customerthink.com)
• Are you built to sell? (drewsmarketingminute.com)
• Conversations for Change. 12 ways to say it right when it matters most. Shawn Kent Hayashi. (regnordman.com)
• Consultative Selling. The Hanan formula for high-margin sales at high levels. 8th Ed. Mack Hanan (regnordman.com)

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You’re Working Too Hard To Make the Sale. More than 100 insider tools to sell faster and easier . William T. Brooks & Tom Travisano. 2nd Ed. 2005. ISBN 0971785678.  This book directly addresses the sales truth , customers first decide emotionally and then justify that decision with logic. In a simple direct style, the authors lay out what the bulk of sales people are doing wrong and tried and true ways to remedy this.  Now this is not easy  to do but once you read the book it just makes sense. This book also ties into our research on the growing use of compelling content to ease the sales job.  This book will help you and your team combat the sales stereotypes, increase your ability to differentiate and drive value as a buyer criteria. Their customer profiling is masterful. I wish I had this book years ago.

Related articles

• Consultative Selling. The Hanan formula for high-margin sales at high levels. 8th Ed. Mack Hanan (regnordman.com)
• Slow Down, Sell Faster: A Review (businessinsider.com)
• Conversations for Change. 12 ways to say it right when it matters most. Shawn Kent Hayashi. (regnordman.com)

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Slow Down, Sell Faster! Understand your customer’s buying process and maximize your sales. Kevin Davis.2011. ISBN978081441685.  I like Amacom , they put out great business books.  This is a completely revised/updated edition of Getting Into Your Customers head (1996) which was a good book already.  Today’s focus of learning about your clients buying process is combined with spending the time up front to dig for the value your solution brings to the prospect.  Your value(price) needs to reflect the value to the customer to solve his particular problem.  Davis lays out exactly what a new or mature salesperson needs to do at every stage, as well as giving pragmatic answers to the questions that come up  (E.G. “So give me a ballpark cost” – we know this is not a buying signal, rather is a customer asking -  is the problem worth solving and for what budget? By using the proper sequence of diagnostic questions, the answer to this one comes from the prospect)

Really good stats.

• 2% of your sales audience is likely seeking the benefit you speak of. You can not assume the other 98% are looking for it. Thus take your time talking about potential client issues and restrain yourself from talking about your solution. Premature product or benefit presentation will just raise pricing objections if you have not done the work to find out what the customer’s product value is (profits/margin improvement)
• IBM software solutions group loses 93% of the sales where they were not involved in defining the solution requirements.
• 90% of the sale takes place when you are not there.
• price and negotiations always comes up during the closing dance. You need a game plan so your company does not lose.

The icing on the cake is the final chapter, which helps the sales manager address the common issues about implementing this method. The ideas are first class and immediately useful. This is a very good book for your sales quiver.  Like most sales books it completely misses how marketing could help.

Related articles

• Book Review: Slow Down, Sell Faster (salesandmanagementblog.com)
• Consultative Selling. The Hanan formula for high-margin sales at high levels. 8th Ed. Mack Hanan (regnordman.com)
• Selling More May Have Nothing to Do with Sales! (businessinsider.com)
• There’s More To The Discovery Process Than Identifying Needs! (customerthink.com)
• It Doesn’t Matter What We Know, It’s What The Buyer Needs (customerthink.com)
• What Are the Real Inhibitors to Effective Selling in Your Organization? (davesteinsblog.esresearch.com)
• SAAS Benchmarks? Throw them away and improve these 4 SAAS Numbers! (businessinsider.com)

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Consultative Selling. The Hanan formula for high-margin sales at high levels. 8th Ed. Mack Hanan. 2011. ISBN 9780814416174.  I first read Mack Hanan many years ago  and have used his approach ever since.  I was delighted to receive his latest book from Amacom.  As part of my ongoing research into value pricing I was interested to see what Mack had to say  on this topic.  Well it is a lot.  This is likely the most complete sales book  that is based on value pricing and explains what we call value based selling.  He has remained true since 1970 to stating that sales main goal  is improving customer profits and margins .  So this book is full of great examples and studies of  how and where to use value selling.  I strongly suggest that if you are serious about being a successful sales person or having an effective sales organization in today’s buyer driven world you get and carefully read this latest book by Mack.

Related articles

• Is The Profession Of Sales At An Inflection Point? (customerthink.com)
• Last Chance to Register for Free Selling to Government Webinar (govsellingsolutions.com)
• 11 Sales Definitions For Recent College Graduates Looking For A Career In Sales (businessinsider.com)
• The unsell vs. consultative selling (blogs.sitepoint.com)
• Consultative Selling – You are not a guru if you read a book or two. (thecustomercollective.com)

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Rethinking the Sales Cycle. How Superior Sellers Embrace the Buying Cycle to Achieve a Sustainable and Competitive Advantage.  John R. Holland &  Tim Young. 2010. ISBN 9780071639798.  This book has been out awhile, but it is light years ahead of any sales book on the market today.  The treatise is, buyers have  aken full control of the buying cycle through becoming much more aware of what they want and how they want to be engaged.  Sellers who have not adjusted their methods to these buyers who are fully engaged in researching and contacting other users of products are now stuck in a very old paradigm.  Sellers have no control and if they attempt to manipulate buyers they will suffer dearly.  Most sales loses are due to now being outsold.  If you are being forced to sell on price, it likely reflects on poor salesmenship, lack of good sales training, and a lack of sales ready messaging from marketing.  And it seems  like 90% of sales  and marketing organizations  (and training programs) are way behind the ball.  Marketing is charged to now come up with much more relevant content for the interested buyer as well as sales ready messages/materials (for many different players and verticals) for the sales team.  Every page rings so true that I literally could not put this book down , since it directly applies to content marketing.  I shared so many items from it that Facebook said I was sharing too frequently!!!  If you are a CEO, in Sales and/or  Marketing this book is a must buy and multiple read.  The authors have a training program at http://www.customercentric.com/

Related articles

• Rainmaking Conversations. Influence, persuade and sell in any situation. Mike Schultz & John E. Doer (regnordman.com)
• A Rational, Relevant, CustomerCentric Selling Approach (customerthink.com)
• A Rational, Relevant, CustomerCentric Selling Approach (davesteinsblog.esresearch.com)

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Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Dan Pink. 2011. 978-1594488849.  A fitting successor to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi`s Flow and Good Business , this is a useful book for those of us trying to optimize our efforts and productivity.   Lots of challenges to popular myths on motivation in this book.  I appreciated his differentiation between motivating for the very simple repetitive tasks and the more complex.  (I agree with him that no one can motivate anyone – people only motivate themselves.  He brings up the de-motivating effect off paying for tasks, vs separating the cash from the intrinsic performance high.  We certainly see how some people get trapped by the cash and the toys – losing sight of the satisfaction of basic achievement.  This is an easy compelling read, yet it does not treat the subject lightly.  There are some deep implications here for sales force compensation schemes.  (This is the first non fiction book I have only read on a Kindle – it takes me a whole lot longer to do and is not as pleasant an experience for me).

Related articles

• What motivates us? (timragan.wordpress.com)
• There are two kinds of people in the world … (Dan Pink) (simplicityisbliss.com)
• Money Motivated Salespeople a Dying Breed (customerthink.com)
• “Meaning” is the New Money (abhishekmittal.com)
• Incentives Matter (timragan.wordpress.com)
• Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms (RSAnimate) (climbtothestars.org)