4 Pointers to organizing B2B marketing of solutions, projects and professional services

Point 1 : Who is responsible for marketing?

Marketing of professional services cannot be the responsibility of the marketing department (includes sales department too) alone. This article will give you an idea about how to organize your marketing function. Please note that in most cases the marketing department does NOT handle ALL marketing functions. All the marketing functions are shown below in the marketing process diagram.

While the responsibility for the marketing of "inspectable" and "boxed " products can be given to a marketing department; the same cannot be done in high contact professional services like firms selling

• consulting 
• advertising
• legal advice
• turnkey solutions of infrastructure, manufacturing, IT

Point 2 : Product vis-a-vis service marketing
The difference between Product marketing and the marketing of professional services and solutions is best understood by a concept called SNTBRE. It stands for

• Size and access to market
• Need
• Timeframe
• Budget
• Responsibility
• Experience.

Application of SNTBRE to the marketing of soap

• Size of the market :  almost everyone buys soap every month
• Almost everyone needs a soap
• Most buyers will buy a soap over the "next 1 month" time
• They will have kept a budget aside for buying a certain number of cakes 
• They would have allocated the responsibility for buying soap to the housewife
• They all have an experience of buying a soap - so they already know a lot about who sells it, what is on offer and what are the prevailing prices.

Diagonally opposite is the marketing of ERP on the SNTBRE concept.

• A handful / few  companies need ERP at any one point of time
• They themselves do not know that they need an ERP because
  they do not truly understand the costs attached to their current manual system
• They do not have (obviously) have a time frame in which to buy an ERP
• They do not (obviously) have a budget for an ERP
• Clearly there is no one assigned as responsible to look into the buying of ERP
• They have no experience and do not know  who sells, what is on offer, or prices.

It must be clear to you by now that ALL marketing practices are very different between these two markets

• Soap is used by everybody and hence you can use "mass advertising".
  Looking for firms needing ERP means searching for "a needle in a haystack"
• Since SNTBRE already exists, soap marketing involves explaining "superiority".
  For ERP you need to meet the top brass who can create "SNTBRE" first.
• In short, for soap, you do "Product Marketing"
  For an ERP you do "Concept Selling"

Point 3 : How to organize

Organizing for selling soap is almost entirely in the hands of the marketing and sales departments because both the input and output is visible to them and is largely within their sphere of influence. The results of the money and time spent in a marketing campaign / effort  a standard boxed product can be measured by the number of units sold or by the awareness created by an ad campaign over a relatively short period of time – like a given a quarter.

But marketing of professional services is very different.  Nothing happens over a short time because the “sales cycles” are pretty long. Second, the marketing and sales effort does not directly link to the sales numbers.  The role of marketing in professional services is to pre-sell, educate and create an  appetite for a solution to a problem that you’ve identified and which client can be made to understand. The output of a marketing program for professional services is generally when the customer rolls out a “red carpet” for the marketer to come for a meeting with the members of their top brass. This opportunity needs to be seized by the technical and commercial “top brass” of the marketing company to impress the “top brass” of the prospective client company. And, even if this meeting is successful, more meetings need to be conducted to study existing practices, discuss findings, weigh costs and benefits, negotiate.  In the marketing of prosessional services you need two hands to clap - the marketing hand and the rest of the organization.

Because the  marketing of professional services is an organization-wide and cross-functional effort; the CEO's active involvement is necessary for good marketing to happen. The CEO needs to resolve an interesting  dilemma because the senior people’s time is very costly and the  CEO needs to decide how much of their time should be devoted to 

• speculative and non-billable business development activity.
• business activities which are billable to a client.

Many of you are impressed by the website copy, brochures and other content written by professional service firms like McKinsey, Bain & Company, Harvard etc. Do you realize that it would not have come out so well if it was left to the marketing department or the ad agency? A good marketing campaign for high end professional services can only be written with inputs from the top professionals working for the company because they alone can put themselves into a specific customer’s shoe and write out the copy, proposal or answers to queries. The ad agency can do it only for a standard and simple product like a soap or a shoe.  

Point 4 : Defining Business Development Objectives

In view of all this it is absolutely necessary to define the BD objectives in a professional services firm so that it is clear who needs to do it.  The following is a possible list

1. The recognition and recall of your name
2. Knowledge of your firm's capabilities
3. Knowledge of what problems your firm helps to solve
4. Circumstances under which you may called to help
5. Belief that you can understand and solve the problem
6. Belief that you are responsive, concerned and trustworthy
7. Willingness to respond to take a call and give an appointment
8. That your firm is responsive, concerned, and trustworthy
9. That your client retention rates are high

In almost all cases, even where professional salespeople are involved, the sale must ultimately be made by the professional who will perform or supervise the service.

Attaining more account / sales management maturity

Account Management Maturity Model

3 Ways to move up the Maturity Model

 

Design, Develop and Implement a Sales Process mapped to a Buying Process.
The foundation of any sales strategy is a well-defined sales process that is adopted in the field.  Sales Managers can then coach and develop to the process, improve productivity and begin to move up the model.

Implement a Sales Performance Management System : Baseline the Key Performance Metrics by identifying how to measure these metrics accurately. Use these baselines to gauge performance as you mature. Make sure you understand what the reasons for improvement are.

Stick to the Sales Management Fundamentals : Regular cadence around one on ones, sales meetings, field evaluations and coaching to situational development is key to increasing maturity on the model. Adhering to seeing customers, making sure sales reps spend the majority of their time selling and measuring leading indicators (funnel depth) vs. lagging indicators are essential to success.

Blue Printing a Sales Process

Why establish a sales process at all ?

What happens if there is no sales process

1. You need to rely on the heroic efforts of the few "natual" who hit the number
2. You will not have a good smell of which deals are real and which are wishful thinking
3. You will not see how the buyers are moving through the process
4. Your forecasts will be awry because the reps will go by instincts and history
5. The end of the month will always be a fire drill
6. Your reps will rely on you to sell complex deals (and not develop own capability)
7. New Reps will get inducted through trial by fire
8. This will increase attrition and also "time to get trained"

Companies with a formal sales process win 48% more business, have 37% shorter sales cycle and generate 2 times revenue per head. A major reason is the common language and common method they have to review their performance.

Benefits of Sales Process Blueprinting

A Sales Process produces  an improvement in forecasting accuracy, repeatability of successes and the sales managers being able to drive performance by acting as coaches. Otherwise sales managers become only administrators. Sales process means that you

• have an understanding of the customers' buying process 
• know status of each suspect, prospect, engagement, close, delivery, payment
• can describe your process (pre, during, after) in this language
• know the information, skills, tools, equipment, FAQs needed at each step
• know the script of performing each stage successfully.
• know workflow, go-no-go statements, responsibility, procedure and tools 
• have a checklist of what not to forget for each customer at each stage
• know how to measure /accelerate journey from one milestone to other
• know the pipeline needed to achieve a given sales target
• know how batons get passed between sales, marketing, call centers, service, office
• know not only sales processes but also back office processes
• know how to increase the time in front of the customer 
• Create a shorter sales cycle
• Enabling greater interaction with qualifying prospects
• know how to improve sales forecasting
• know how to avoid stagnant prospects

How to do Sales Process Blueprinting

At the very least, it must be based on collecting data and information to identify best practices  and then documenting and codifying these best practices so they can be repeated by all sales team members.The first step in creating a model sales process means looking no further than 20% of your top sales performers who get 80% of your revenue.  Isolate and document how they drive the revenue and then codify them  into "best practice" (not recommended model) for a trainable, scalable, monitorable, repeatable, and sustainable process.  There are 3 main categories :

1. Selling Operations : the starting point - the “gut” - around which everything revolves
2. Business from current customer base : Customer Satisfaction maintainance
3. Sales Support : how all departments play their roles to make it happen

Sales operations

• Identify opportunities
  To whom might I sell my products/services?
  How do I determine which are my best prospects?
• Gain access and attention How do I get the decision-maker's attention
  How do I get the decision maker to recognize I have useful products/services?
• Establish interest
  How do I engage the prospect in my products/services?
• Conduct discovery
  How do I find out what does the prospect want
  How do I customize my presentation to him
  How do I justify the use of my products/services and get his/her buy-in?
• Present/propose
   How do I package my complete value proposition for delivery to the prospect?
• CloseHow do I reach final commitment?

Customer satisfaction

• Deliver/implement
  How do I assure that my products/services are properly delivered
  How do I assure that my products/services are properly used by the customer ?
• Support customer operations
  How do I monitor and ensure continued customer satisfaction?
• Develop relationshipsHow do I establish and continuously enhance the trust and confidence ?

Sales support

• Account and territory management Things to do to assure that time and resources are productively used? 
• Field operations supportWhat must the sales support staff do to help the sales reps
  What tools do they need?
• Human resourcesHow do I recruit, hire, train, motivate and retain sales personnel?
• Quality assurance What are the standards for performance of each sales activity?
  How do I assure that these standards are met?
• Process management and metrics How do I ensure continuous improvement?
  How do I measure all the activities in the sales process so I know how well I’m doing?

Sample Sales Process

1. Marketing distributes qualified lead to sales person.
2. Gathering and notification of new leads. Sales team members are automatically sent e-mail notifications of new leads they are responsible for. A sales person can follow a link in the notification to the prospect file for easy review, at which point they can accept or decline the lead, or hand it off to another salesperson.
3. Sales initiates contact with lead.
4. Follow up with future actions and forecasts. Automated notifications improve your organization's lead cultivation efforts and provide managers with an overview of their sales force's efforts.
5. The sales cycle occurs.
6. Share info and ideas with other people. Sales force and managers can discuss goals and tactics, as well as address common issues and questions about sales efforts.
7. Create, track and assign tasks to sales support. Quickly create and assign tasks to their sales force in the management of leads. Sales personnel are automatically notified of new tasks via email, and created tasks include a "respond by" date, ensuring the timely ownership of staff to their assignments.
8. Sales plans and tracks activities related to prospect. Sales staff and managers can quickly track prospect activity and make strategic decisions in relationship development.
9. Sales creates and tracks correspondence and conversations. Allows sales people to quickly generate pre-configured emails, letters, faxes and more.
10. Management reports for activities and future projections and pending actions. Offers work pending reports that track the activities of the sales force.
11. Sales utilizes marketing materials to enhance the sales cycle. Provides a central location to store your organization's marketing materials, allowing your sales force to quickly access marketing documents to support their efforts. This centralized storage ensures your staff is using approved, up-to-date materials.
12. Proposal is written and submitted to prospect. Create and centrally store sales documents and templates, enabling your sales force to easily access the tools they need when they need them: proposals, correspondence, questionnaires, risk assessments and more.
13. Contact/Purchase order is generated.

Reduce Sales Force Attrition : Use "Reverse Gear"

Cost of Attrition

Even if we disregard one reality - that the days are truly over when an ample number of good prospective salesmen fell over themselves to fill your vacant sales positions - the second reality cannot be avoided : the real cost of attrition is much larger than what the accountants will tell you. When a salesperson leaves

• the territory sale suffers for months till a new person joins & learns ropes
• In the interim, competition gains. Some of these are permanent gains
• Customer Relationships - acquired by the person - also leave the company
• These relationships may be used by your competitor by hiring the person
• If the man had high potential, you lost a future "manager in pipeline"
• Your reputation suffers
• You incur costs of recruiting a new person and training   

New Reality 

Many of us who employ sales people still live in the past when we could afford to work under the assumption that (a) the prospective employees needed us more than we needed them (b) there is an abundant supply of suitable prospective employees out there which can be tapped at will by us. This is simply not true anymore.

Create an equal opportunity  

I recommend a "Reverse Gear" approach to you wherein you establish 2 processes 

1. that enable you to evaluate and choose the right candidate 
2. that enable the candidate to evaluate and choose you   

Surprised by the 2nd process? Don't ! Do not focus only on learning about the candidate so that you can make a solid decision. Focus also on creating an environment where the candidate has the same opportunity. This way both sides can make a solid decision and start a good relationship.

Reverse Gear Approach   

How to give the sales candidate an opportunity to make an informed decision ?

• FAMILIARIZATION WITH YOUR CULTURE : Many, these days, save money by conducting  interviews by phone and only bring the finalists to the Corporate. The company gathers key information, but the candidate does not get a chance to evaluate if they can apply their skills successfully in the company's world. One of the best ways to share the sales culture with candidates is through reverse interviewing wherein the candidate gets an opportunity to ask questions to a potential peer who is a seasoned company person who knows how your company really operates.
• FOR SENIOR POSITIONS INVOLVE FAMILY TOO : For senior positions involve the spouse too so s/he can ask questions and understand the plans of the company. If you do this well, you are creating an ally who lives in the prospective employees' home!
• YOUR PLANS : equally important is the direction of the company because people like to work in an environment that is forward looking and knows where it is going.  Many companies lose this opportunity to excite the candidates even before they join.
• CLEAR COMPENSATION PACKAGE EXPLANATION : very few companies walk their candidates through the compensation plan as a part of the screening process. Time taken in the beginning will save a lot of heartburn later on. The same thing goes for the benefits. Share the benefits program. In both cases, realize that the interviewees may be too polite to ask this during the interview. I suggest provide them with an HR contact with whom they can freely inquire about benefits and allowances without feeling embarrassed.

Which sales model is appropriate for you ?

Of course, it is important to learn which sales model is important to you. If you make nails for multiple uses and if your customers want to buy transactionally (see the transactional selling model elsewhere in this article); it will be wasteful for you to get into "Consultative" selling .

If you have millions of customers and if the order size of each customer is going to be small; you cannot adopt a direct selling and servicing mode. Hence this article is important for you to learn what selling process you should adopt.

But before you read, I want to caution you that the fundamentals do not change much with which model you are using because  what makes difference is the execution of the basics. 

In football, blocking and tackling are the "fundamentals" : similarly what are the fundamentals in selling? They are listening skills, a good work ethic, empathy, imagination, problem definition and problem-solving skills, and a secure ego. All those traits end up as prominent in all the sales models. I recently played golf with my brother in law. I used rented clubs. After miss-hitting a drive, I made a disparaging comment about the driver. He took the driver from me and nailed a shot well down the middle of the fairway. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. It's not the club; it's the golfer. 

This piece appealed to me. It is adapted from Charles Green of Rain Today

Sales Models & Their Prescriptions

• Traditional Selling – Hard
• Traditional Selling - Professional
• Customer Focused Selling
• SPIN Selling
• Solution selling
• Consultative selling ( vis-à-vis transaction selling )
• Collaborative Selling
• Strategic Selling

One Liners

• Traditional selling – driven by the seller’s need to sell based on product features
• Traditional selling – the sellers tries to present in the light of customer needs
• Customer focused selling - first know the need and then suggest
• SPIN selling : ask questions before jumping to solutions
• Solution selling : Deliver improvement based on mutually agreed solution
• Consultative selling : clients buy solutions they have been a party to creating
• Collaborative selling : both act as each other's customers 
• Strategic selling : enterprise to enterprise selling

Traditional Selling - Hard  

is where the sales person is taught to take charge of the selling encounter and maintain control of the conversation from start to finish and persuade the buyer to buy even where the buyer is not in need.

Traditional Selling – Professional   

is where the sales person is taught to build rapport and get the customer into a mood to listen to the sales pitch – during which the salesperson presents his offer in the light of  the needs of the customer so that he is influenced to make a favorable buying decision.

Customer Focused Selling

In today’s crowded market place, marketing efforts have shifted from product marketing to customer-focused marketing model of 3 steps :

Step One--Customer Discovery :  The sales person’s first priority must be to discover the customer’s wants and expectations,  motivations, criteria, and readiness to buy.  Hence the sales presentations can start only when you discover customer needs. 

Step Two--Customer Acquisition : when an agreement has been reached, the acquisition phase of the selling process starts and includes verifying the order, keeping the customer informed,  managing pending orders, ensure smooth implementation, addressing any billing issues or concerns and may involve training, handholding, installation and follow-up.   Electronic industries have recognized that while they make a quality product such as a VCR, customers who are unable to install and use the features of the product complain about the product quality. These same businesses employ people to create user-friendly instructions.

Step Three--Customer After Sale Selling :  Unlike traditional selling models that stop with a customer closing, Customer Focused Selling has a third phase of After Sale Selling. The customer looks for maximum performance from the product.  Most sales people fear this phase of the selling so they skip it.  They are afraid the customer may be disappointed about the performance of the product or upset that promises were not fulfilled.  Rather than face an unhappy customer (there is no money in this), they start selling with new prospects. A selling model which does not include selling after the sale loses sight of the most valuable asset in a business -- the existing customer data base.  Look at these simple facts (a) More than 30% of customers will purchase again (b) Customers know and trust you (c) It’s 10 times cheaper to sell to existing customers than new prospects (d) Repeat buyers are less concerned about price than new prospects. Repeat business--sales after the sale--will only take place if you take care of your customer.  You become an advocate for their business and monitor the use of your products and services.  Customers will buy again and will refer their friends and relatives to the business if you have kept in contact and become a trusted advisor to them. 

SPIN Selling

In successful sales calls it's the buyer who does most of the talking, which means that the salespeople are asking questions. Asking questions means that the salesperson is building Rapport with the buyer, building rapport allows the buyer to feel more comfortable talking. SPIN selling is based on quote that “People do not buy from salespeople who understand their products but from those who seem to understand their problems”.

SPIN is an acronym for a “questioning sequence” and has 4 types of questions :

• Situation ( what is the context of the customer …)  
• Problem ( what are the pains in the current situation ….) It is better to uncover several problems before asking implication questions. It can be dangerous to focus on one problem as it invites the buyer to raise another area where you solution does not fare so well. (Don't put all your eggs in the one basket)
• Implication ( understand what the pain implies ..what effects ?)  are the most powerful sales questions and the skill in using them doesn't automatically improve with experience.
• Need-payoff ( ask about explicit needs …)

SPIN method says there are 4 stages to a sale :

1. Opening
2. Investigating
3. Demonstrating Capability
4. Obtaining Commitment
   
   

Solution Selling

What is a solution? "It is an answer to a problem". Solution selling is not only giving an answer to the customer’s problem. It is important that the problem needs to be acknowledged by both the buyer and the seller. So a “solution” is a mutually agreed-upon answer to a recognized problem. But then, the solution must also provide measurable improvement on “Before and  After” basis. So the “solution selling” may be defined as a mutually shared answer to a recognized problem that provides measurable improvement. "Solution-Selling" generally apply a consultative sales approach to all aspects of their sales process (during a sales cycle) including:

• Prospecting
• Diagnosing customer needs
• Crafting a potential solution
• Establishing value
• Bargaining for access to decision-makers
• Positioning proof, ROI and the total solution
• Negotiating a win-win solution
• Following up to ensure customer success

Consultative Selling (vs transactional selling)

It describes a selling technique in which the salesperson acts as an expert consultant for his prospect, asking questions to determine the prospect's needs and then using that information to select the best product or service for those needs... ideally, the salesperson's own.

Consultative selling frequently works hand-in-hand with value-added selling, in which a salesperson presents customer-specific benefits related to their product or service. The consultative approach, when properly executed, yields a quantity of information about the prospect's wants and needs – which makes it easy for the salesperson to take the next step and present the perfect benefits for those wants and needs.

Thoroughly qualifying prospects before setting up an appointment is critically important to a consultative approach. If you the salesperson don't know ahead of time that your product will be a good fit for the prospect, you'll end up wasting a long appointment drawing out the prospect only to discover at the end that you can't provide what they need.

A Transaction is a simple short-term sale. The customer already knows what he needs so he is not looking for any product knowledge. Buying criteria usually hinge on price or ease of acquisition and finding a “deal” or “bargain”. The Transactional Shoppers are

• focused only on today’s transaction – no  thought of future purchases
• Their fear is of paying more
• They exhibit comparative shopping behavior
• They do their own research so they won’t need the help of an expert
• Consumer Reports are published primarily for the transactional buyer
• They enjoy the process and hence don’t count the time spent
•  Anxious for “good deals” : they are excellent sources of word-of-mouth advertising.

 A Consultative sale is complex and is a long-term process involving collaboration of both buyer and seller, in which the latter must first develop an understanding of the customer’s business, industry, and needs, and then craft a solution to help the customer achieve their objectives. This is usually service or solution-based.  The Relational Shoppers exhibit different behavior

• they consider today’s transaction to be one in a long series of many future purchases.
• They are looking less for a product than the source from where to buy
• Their fear is of making a poor choice
• Their decision depends on your people, process and proof
• They don’t enjoy the process of shopping and negotiating
• They are  looking principally for an expert they can trust
• They consider their time to be part of the purchase price
• Confident of having found “the right place to buy”, they become repeat customers.

 In consultative selling, the initial focus is on first understanding the deeper needs and buying motives of the customer and then ensuring your product fits with these needs and motives. Given that customers value different things, this approach requires some product diversity but also presents greater upside on the sales front.  However, even consultative selling has a drawback : , when the entire focus is on meeting the needs of the customer, the needs of the supplying organization may suffer. This brings us to  Collaborative Selling.

Collaborative Selling

In a collaborative selling approach, there is a partnering mentality between customer and supplier as both realize that their longer term success is predicated on both of them staying in business - and this means that supplier needs matter too. There may be opportunities where the buyer can be flexible in order to help the seller survive. This could include some flexibility on payment terms, inventory levels, and other items that help the overall bottom line of the seller, without significantly impacting the business of the buyer. In effect, in collaborative selling, both buyer and seller become customers to each other. This approach has three primary goals for both organizations

• minimize short-term risk
• maximize long term gain
• create value by partnering with each other. Creating value is recognizing the natural synergies that already exist and jointly seeking new ways to be innovative and proactive in adding to each partner’s business success.

Not all customers, of course, want to be partners. In fact, for many customers, the current focus on consultative selling (with a focus solely on their needs) works just fine. For these customers, the sales person should continue to do what’s been working well to increase sales - no need to change a winning game!  There are in fact three ingredients that cause both buyer and seller to want to move from a consultative to a collaborative mode, including:

• The two organizations already have a successful and trusting business relationship.
• Each organization needs the other organization to succeed in order for it to succeed.
• There is some element of risk threatening the welfare of one organization that potentially could cause harm to both.

When these three conditions are present, it is in the best interests of both organizations to partner with each other. Given their already trusting relationship, it should be relatively easy for the sales person to articulate the needs for flexibility and joint problem solving on matters that were traditionally the sole concern of one organization, but not both. It is also worth pointing out that the "tables can turn", so partnering can have reciprocal benefits to both organizations. That is, whereas one organization may be struggling today; the other may be struggling tomorrow. Working in a collaborative way builds a spirit of reciprocity that can help both partners as business cycles ebb and flow.

Strategic Selling

Is about organizations selling large and complex offerings to other organizations where approval of multiple stakeholders is needed. This system is about identifying sales opportunities,  identifying all key players in the customer’s organization, understanding each player’s degree of influence and their reasons for buying, and uncovering essential information, to evaluate competitive positions, and address the business and personal motives of each decision maker in the client organization. It gives organizations a common process and language for pursuing sales opportunities and criteria for allocating resources to determine when to walk away from resource-intensive deals with a low probability of success. Participants will learn how to focus time and energy on those opportunities most likely to become profitable, long-term customers.

• Secure approval from multiple decision makers
• Navigate the internal bureaucracy of customers and prospects.
• Gain more visibility into the status of important sales opportunities
• Allocate resources appropriately for large sales
• Improve team collaboration to pursue strategic opportunities
• Forecast revenue with greater accuracy
• Increase close rates for opportunities with long sales cycles