Should we be rethinking our Unique Selling Proposition?

Should we be rethinking our Unique Selling Proposition?

Nov 15, 2016 | Marketing, Sales

From the dawn of marketing time, the Unique Selling Proposition has been a foundation idea. I wonder if it holds the same attraction now, post the digital reconstruction of marketing, or should we be rethinking our approach.

The USP was intended to communicate what you did that nobody else could, or would. That was fine in the days before the marketing world was global, as in your local area you could pretty easily be unique, but that is no longer the case.

Any idea that emerges that generates traction with customers will be copied very quickly by competitors, making it no longer unique. Anyway, just because an idea or claim may be true, there is no compulsion that customers should believe it.

Perhaps this boils down to making an appeal to people’s hearts rather than their minds. This has always been the case, but in a homogenised world, takes on even more importance.

When I think about my own behaviour critically, there are a few things I notice that presumably are pretty common. If so, why are we not using them more in place of claims of bigger, faster, better?

Choice. In most cases, there is more than one product that solves whatever challenge I am facing. In making a choice, being sure of the ability of the product to deliver the solution is worth money to me.

Top of mind. TOM is even more relevant than at any time in the past. We are blasted with thousands of messages every day, so being Tom when the appropriate occasion arises is gold!. A good enough solution that is there, easy to access, and offers reasonable value will get a vote.

Experience is never forgotten. Good or bad, the past influences the way we behave today. There are now a number of café’s in easy walking distance of my office. Some time ago I got a lousy coffee in one of them, probably a ‘trainee barista’ but when I pointed out politely the coffee was crap, all I got was a shrug, and explanation that the boss was  not there. No second chance will be given, perhaps irrational, as it was a while ago, and almost certainly a one-off, but  that is their problem, not mine, I have plenty of choice.

Heart. What it says about us. Sometimes we make purchase choices simply on the basis of what the choice we make says about us, and this is usually almost unconscious. I drive an old Mercedes, it is a great car, but much to my surprise, it is what that car says about me that makes it so comfortable for me. Similarly, in the days we all smoked, Marlborough was a big brand, not because there was any USP, it was just a fag, but because of what it said about the smoker. (Lucky that has changed a bit over time).

Value is always a combination of all sorts of little things, some not obvious. Convenience, availability, branding, packaging, exclusivity, design, and yes, price, as well as many other often highly personal factors.  In an increasingly busy life, changing just a little of any one of the factors can considerably enhance value.  When we compute value, again often unconsciously, it is rarely the USP that pops into our minds, there is a mental wrangle of all the foregoing, that sometimes ends up being expressed as a number relative to some other number for an alternative, called price, and sometimes as just a feeling.

Back to the question, should we rethink our USP?

To my mind the changes that have occurred in the last 20 years demand that we do so.

We used to be able to sell products, so the USP was a useful tool, but that time has passed. The power in the buying relationship has moved from the seller to the buyer, completely altering the nature of a sales process. We can no longer deliver a product and charge a price, now what we deliver is an increasingly personalised value package, for which we are paid. We need therefore to be considering a Unique Value Proposition, UVP.

It might seem just a semantic difference, but it is a huge behavioural one

 

Are you Ready to Buy?

Are you Ready to Buy?

Nov 4, 2016 | Marketing, Sales

Reality TV is about as far from Reality as you can get, but sometimes something useful emerges.

Just for the record, I do not watch this stuff, there are thousands of better ways I can think of to waste an hour. However, judging by the ratings and water cooler conversations, many do.

Sales happen when a potential customer encounters some sort of situation that requires a solution. They go seeking that solution firstly from those with whom they have a pre-existing relationship of some type. For a consumer product it is often represented by a brand they know and trust, in a B2B situation, it is those with whom they have successfully done business before, followed  by those they know have the solution they need, and in whom they have some level of confidence.

Back to the reality shows.

Expecting to make a significant sale without some sort of relationship being in existence just never happens, irrespective of how ready to buy the potential customer may be.

That  ‘Married at first sight’ show, throws two people together and expects them to make a successful marriage, while the world (or some small part of it) watches. You may as well turn up at a random hens night and ask the bride to be to marry you. She might be ready to get married, just not to you.  The ‘Batchelor’ series, of both persuasions, at least gives the protagonist a choice, but it is a limited and superficial choice, and as we have seen, also doomed to failure.

Making a sale is like building a relationship that ends in a marriage. It is a process that takes time, consumes resources, requires a great degree of mutuality, and even then does not always work.

Being ‘ready to buy” is not enough, they need to be ready to buy from you before consummation.

 

How to tell if you are selling to the right person.

How to tell if you are selling to the right person.

Oct 13, 2016 | Sales

The early stages of a B2B sales process can be tricky. Few people are happy to admit that they do  not hold the power implied in their role, and those in a corporate purchasing role are particularly reluctant. Rarely will they admit that they are not able to sign a purchase order, or that they are just tyre kicking, price checking, or otherwise filling their time and wasting yours.

How do you know?

That question arose a short while ago while working  with a medium sized business struggling with a wealth of so called leads but a very poor conversion rate.

One of the frameworks that  used to be deployed quite a bit, but seems to have been forgotten is “B.A.N.T.”

Budget: The ability to buy.

Authority: The authority to sign a contract.

Need: The capabilities of the offer matched the clients requirements, and/or solved a problem.

Timeframe: Articulated a sales timeline that accommodated the selection, transaction and implementation of the solution.

It was a simple and pragmatic way of sorting the real leads from the chaff, and enabled simple metrics to be applied.

It was most famously used by IBM in the 80’s who required a documentation of BANT variables , and a positive on three dimension before any significant development resources could be allocated.

The world has moved on a bit since I first saw BANT applied. Sales funnel automation, online selling, relocation of the power of information from the seller to the buyer, consensus decision making, and all the rest, but the foundations of success have not changed at all.

The simple application of the BANT parameters to the prospect list of this business, and the subsequent prioritisation of effort and resources delivered a very quick return.

The world is a more complicated place, but sometimes the simplest ideas are still the best.

Why do customers buy from you?

Why do customers buy from you?

Sep 9, 2016 | Sales

Last week I found myself in another conversation trying to make the case to the owner of a medium sized manufacturer that his best shot at survival was to focus obsessively on a niche where he could add value in some way to customers that his competitors could not match, where he had a competitive advantage.

As often happens, the need to deliberately choose to ignore a possible ‘walk in’ was winning the day, the  desire to be all things to all people ‘just in case’.

It is a common challenge for all businesses, not just small ones.

In the course of the conversation, I recalled a sense of confusion that occurred last Christmas.

My wife bought me a couple of shirts. I needed them, but hardly inspiring.

As ‘Santa’ handed the wrapped pack to me, she said “I did not know what to buy you”.

In that moment, I realised that while the woman I had been married to for 35 years did not know what to buy me, I got emails every day from Amazon offering me stuff that I would really like!

A bloody algorithm knows me better than my wife!

Go figure that one out if you can.

Jeff Besoz has made a huge dent in the world, and one of the quotes attributed to him is: ‘Amazon  does not sell to customers, we help them to buy”

Pretty good advice, and to do that, you must know them intimately, at least as intimately as possible.

Bezos insists that there is an empty chair in every meeting at Amazon representing the customer, to continually remind all and sundry of why they are there.

Simple really. Customers will buy from those who know  them well enough to anticipate and deliver on their needs.  Customers are not interested in us, they are interested in them. The extent to which we can help them, they will be prepared to buy from us rather than someone else who exhibits less interest in them.

9 considerations when planning  sales follow up

9 considerations when planning  sales follow up

Aug 8, 2016 | Sales

You never fail to get a sale because you followed up too much, but understanding the inflexion points in the process when you reach them is critical, and it will vary almost every time.

You might follow up poorly, or with inappropriate ineffective material, but the number is important.

Most sales functions operate on some  sort of commission basis, and this encourages cherry picking, and limits follow up, which takes time away from the less obvious cherries. However, there is often great value in the follow up when done well, it builds a depth of understanding that can significantly enhance the lifetime value of a customer, rather than the short term transactional relationships so encouraged by default.

Besides, it is unusual in B2B to make a sale on first contact. There is plenty of research around that points conclusively to the majority of sales happening after the 5th follow up.

So here are some thoughts on follow up.

  • People buy when they are ready to buy. They do not buy when you are ready to sell, at least not without significant inducement. They might be prime prospects, just not at the moment, and failing to follow up risks them not coming back to you at the time they are ready to buy.
  • Pepper your follow ups with smart questions, things that encourage meaningful conversations, and demonstrate you are across the issues that the prospect faces.
  • Continuously demonstrate the value of your solution by demonstrating how it can solve the problem they face.
  • Use old fashioned snail mail with handwritten envelopes and notes. Because they are so rare now, and the investment of time you have made is obvious, snail mail always gets opened, usually read and understood.
  • Have a follow up plan, a sequence that is logical and suites the industry and circumstances of the lead you are nurturing.
  • Ensure the material you follow up with is appropriate to the prospects position in the buying cycle.
  • Make it easy for the prospect to take the next step.
  • Give yourself permission to follow up again. E.g. Don’t just leave a message saying you called, leave one that primes them for the next time you call.  ‘I missed you today, but will try again tomorrow morning at 8.30, as I think this may be important to you’.
  • Try the dead horse approach. At some point, you have to move on when all else fails. However,  before you do, ‘Dead Horse’ is a technique that has some sort of psychological motivation, so it often works, e.g.. ‘I have called and left a number of messages, none of them have been returned. While we are both busy, I thought this might have been important for you, but apparently not, so I will not bother you again. If you would like to reconnect, I would be happy to do so, but until, then, I assume we are done. Have a great day.’

Even doing a couple of these will lift your sales hit rate significantly, so don’t let the ‘hunter’ instinct of many sales people  move them onto greener pastures too quickly.

How to build a sales process for your human salesforce.

How to build a sales process for your human salesforce.

Jul 14, 2016 | Customers, Sales

These days great sales people, real ones, those that go and talk to customers and potential  customers are expensive, and hard to find.

Most often in a B2B environment their role is not just closing a sale but developing a relationship that is deeper and longer term than the individual  transaction. Success is measured not just by the transactions, but by the quality of the relationships they build, and the trust, that will take the pressure off price, delivery times, and the other quantitative measures used to judge performance from a distance.

It also true that the first time many sellers know a potential customer is in the market is after that customer has done a considerable amount of research, arrived at a short list, features required and price  point, which gives them the power in the conversation, unless you are able to re-frame it somehow.

The word ‘Process‘  in the headline implies repeatable, subject to continuous improvement, and measureable. In order to achieve these outcomes there are a number of building blocks:

Plan

The old cliché “failing to plan, is planning to fail’ is unfortunately true, that is why it is a cliché.  The caveat of course is that just planning will not generate an outcome, you actually have to implement. The gap between planning and implementation is deceptively wide and full of very hungry crocodiles  that will consume your will, time, and financial resources given the chance.

 

Don’t spend time, Invest it.

We demand a return  on our financial investments, why don’t we do the same for that most valuable of resources, our time? Most of us complete some sort of post capital expenditure review to check that the returns we expected and planned for prior to a capital investment actually materialised.

Why do we not do the same thing without most valuable resource, time?

This may be a challenging idea, but if you allocate your time to the ‘important but not urgent’ category rather than the seemingly urgent, but not important things that consume our lives, the returns will flow.

 

Learn continuously

Being able to learn is a gift, leverage it. Nobody becomes outstandingly good at something without learning from those who have gone before and mastered  the skills. Beyond a base level of skill, you need coaching to learn,  and it is the primary role of a sales manager to coach those in their team, so they learn, do better, effectively leveraging their time and expertise, learnt from those who went before, and their hard won experience.  A core part of learning is being able to be reflective about what worked and what did not, then making those small adjustments, day after day, to test and improve.

 

Be proactive

An old football coach of mine used to bang it into our heads that while defence was a critically important component of any contest, you did not win by preventing the other bloke from scoring, at best, it was a draw.

Being proactive is about experimenting, taking considered risks, searching for opportunities, prospecting for ideas and applications that others have missed, being unafraid of the power of the status quo, and being prepared to ask for forgiveness rather than waiting for permission.

My standard mantra is ‘get out of the building’ meaning nothing different or innovative happens within the context of your normal, routine activities.

 

Follow up obsessively

Few sales are made at the first contact, or second. It takes time and polite persistence mixed with an understanding of why the ‘target’ will benefit from buying from you. Failing to articulate the value of your proposition results in the follow up being Spam, but if the value is genuinely there, follow up builds credibility, and in a small way, a sense of reciprocity or obligation to at least give you the opportunity to make your pitch.

 

Remove ‘busywork’

We all know that work fills the time available, but we also know  that often the stuff being done is just ‘busywork’, stuff that rally makes little difference apart from reassuring yourself that you are needed, and others that you are indispensable. Remove it, ruthlessly, in favour of activity that customers would be prepared to pay for, because that is exactly what they are doing, indirectly.

 

Most of the real work is not digital

It has becomes to easy to rely in digital to do our jobs for us. It won’t, it can only do exactly as it is told. Besides, people buy from those they know like and trust, and I never met a computer I completely trusted, somehow they are not completely human.

 

As noted previously, the term ‘Sales’ is to my mind approaching redundant, as it conjured up in most people minds something less than what it is, or should be. The term I favour is Revenue Generation. This simple semantic change tends to shake perceptions and put the sales function into the spotlight as being vital, not just those people down the hall with company cars who go out to lunch a lot.