Partner Article

One crucial ingredient many SMEs are missing…

Having worked with many SMEs over the years and having trained hundreds of salespeople that work for SME’s, I find there’s often one vital ingredient lacking that’s common to both the organisation and the sales people that they employ.

Just as in the baking process, if you miss out yeast when baking bread, it will not rise, and if you miss seasoning out in your soup it won’t quite taste the same – miss this vital ingredient out and your sales recipe is often doomed to failure. The results, as in cooking will simply be disappointing, but unlike cooking where you can simply throw it in the bin and make another pie, in the world of sales you will more than likely have blown your chances with that prospect.

So what is this one missing ingredient Peter? I hear you ask….

Quite simply – it’s a lack of a value proposition. A Value proposition is the primary reason why a prospect should buy from you. In a nutshell, it’s ideally a clear statement that:

• Resonates – Explains how your offering solves customer problems and improves their situation (relevancy). Weak resonance = buyer reaction of “I don’t need” or “it’ not important enough”
• Substantiates – Delivers specific benefits and / or backs up claims made in other marketing activities. Weak substantiation = buyer reaction of “I can risk it” or “I’m sceptical about your claims”
• Differentiates – Tells the prospect why your offering is better for them than buying from the competition. Weak differentiation = “What’s your best price?”

It is differentiation that many SMEs struggle with in my experience. In turn their salespeople hit the streets armed with insufficient weaponry in order to win the battle – would you really go into battle against a tank armed only with a pea shooter after all? The most effective salespeople are those that can articulate your company’s value proposition succinctly and quickly early on in any conversation with a prospect.

If your company has not got a formal Value Proposition then it’s never too late to get this sorted. The best way to tell if you have a formal VP is to look at your company’s homepage. The best VP’s should be in a prominent place on the homepage for the world to see in a nutshell why they should be doing business with you. The VP is usually a small block of text, and often accompanied with 2 or 3 key bullet points. It is also often displayed on a ‘reasons to use us’ page of a website (albeit not as powerful this way).

A salesperson’s message should always reinforce this message, as indeed should all marketing activity. One example springs to mind when I was working with an office supplies company. In such a price driven market it’s essential to communicate what sets you apart from the rest. They offered a very useful same day service and a ‘to the desk’ service enabling large organisations to get stationery delivered direct to the end user’s department saving them a lot of hassle, time and associated costs. The company communicated this in small text on one of their webpages, and the salespeople failed to mention it on every call I witnessed. Instead the salespeople would play the ‘price game’ and compare prices with their current supplier. The salespeople were also targeting many SME’s who simply would not benefit from a ‘to the desk’ service as there may have only been two desks!

Unsurprisingly, this approach was producing disappointing results. It’s never too late to evaluate your marketplace and conduct an open and honest SWOT analysis of your direct competitors. Ask yourself:

• How do they beat you at present?
• Do you need to adapt to reflect this disadvantage?
• How do you beat them? (Got to be more than price!)
• What can you do to further improve this competitive advantage?
• Does your current marketing activities and website reflect your VP boldly and clearly?
• Are your salespeople going after the right target market that would want to take advantage of your strengths?
• Are your salespeople asking early on the questions that would identify the right needs that would lead to your unique solutions being offered?

Using my example above, the office supplies company had a great offering with some fab USP’s but it was not being pitched to the right people in the right way.

Ultimately if you pitch the right product / service in the right way to the right people, you will succeed. That is what successful selling is about.

As a company, by ensuring that your VP is consistently communicated through all sales and marketing channels, and that you have a target market chosen specifically then you should begin to reap the rewards. Remember that your product or service is not for everybody! Who is most likely to want or need your product service? What are you doing to target this audience? If all of your market sector are all chasing the same small crowd then there can only ever be one winner and many losers.

Happy Selling,

Peter

www.moresalesperformance.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Peter Rabbage .