The First Fundamentals of Sales Know-How: Knowing What You Do
In my previous blog I introduced The 6 Fundamentals of Sales Know-How, the evolution of my sales method, built through 30 years’ experience in sales – that works. The First Fundamentals of Sales Know-How – Knowing What You Do.
Knowing What You Do is understanding what sales is, how sales and marketing work together, the sales process and your role as your customers’ problem-solver.
For many reasons, “sales” can conjure up images of fast-talking salespeople who have loose relationships with facts and scant regard for long-term customer welfare. Fortunately, this is more of a throwback to a bygone age. Good technical sales professionals are assets, and their ability to maintain and grow existing customers, and target and secure new ones, is vital in an increasingly competitive and changing world. The best sales professionals become problem-solving members of their customer’s wider team.
Think about why you buy a sandwich:
Do you buy it because it is the most attractive looking sandwich you have ever seen, and you want to take it back to the office and display it on your desk?
No, you buy it because you are hungry – hunger is your problem, and the sandwich is the solution. Thinking of it in a wider context, a good lunchtime sandwich nourishes and energises you to work productively through the afternoon. This is the positive business impact.
Your customers work with you because your products or services solve problems for them. While the physical deliverables you provide them are tangible, those deliverables (products or services) enable your customers to progress what is really important to them and their business.
Thus salespeople must focus on solving problems. Before sales though, there needs to be a product or service that delivers value, for which there is a desire or need. Before sales comes marketing, with the marketing messaging reflecting how the product or service solves the customers problem. Sales and marketing must work together.
How Sales and Marketing Work Together
Understanding how sales and marketing work together is critical for sales success. Essentially the key elements of sales are:
Exchanging your product or service for money
Interaction between a customer, a seller and a product or service
An agreed perception of ‘value’ by the customer
A repeatable process to get repeatable results
Sustainability with a sensible balance between new versus repeat business
Similarly, in its most basic form, marketing can be described as:
Ensuring you have the right product and messaging for the right market (the strategy)
Communicating with your target audience in a way that informs and engages them – to support your sales efforts (the tactics)
Engaging and communicating with your customers so they continue to buy, buy more and recommend you to others
Understanding sales process is a key component of knowing what you do and worthy of its own blog – which it shall have, but not today!
Principles of Marketing
For sales and marketing to work together, those in sales roles need a basic understanding of what marketing is and how it works.
Dr Philip Kotler is thought of as the father of modern marketing. He is probably best known for popularising the Marketing Mix, the 4Ps of Marketing which is one of two well know models, the other being the SAVE model.
The 4Ps model is focused on the target market. It remains a valid, proven and appropriate model for primarily B2C, and B2B, marketing. It has been enhanced over time to 7Ps to include People, Process and Physical Environment. However, a recent reimagining of the model provides a more customer-focused approach that works well in B2B marketing: the SAVE model.
The SAVE model refocuses the 4Ps model. It shifts from product-focused to customer-focused and is more educational than promotional in its approach. I really like this and think it’s a brilliant way of truly understanding what it is you really do for your customers and of centring your sales approach.
In this way:
Product becomes Solution
Place becomes Access
Price moves to focusing on Value
Promotion becomes Education
Solution: Focus on the problem your product solves; the solution it provides.
Access: Focus on how to make your product, service and company more accessible to customers. Make yourself easy to find.
Value: Focus on the value and benefits your product provides, not price relativity, and the positive impact it has on your customer’s business.
Education: Focus on educating your customer about the value of your solution, specific to their needs, and inform them about issues relative to their needs.
The SAVE model modernises the approach to marketing. B2B customers in the modern world are more empowered in the business-customer relationship than ever before. Understanding the customer’s world and concerns earlier in the sales process can help create and deliver more value for them, building stronger mutually beneficial relationships and setting sales teams up for success.
If we think back to the sandwich example, the pain point was hunger and the sandwich is a nourishing and energising solution to that hunger. The business impact is that it enables more work to be done in the afternoon, which improves productivity. This is not dissimilar from the traditional F.A.B. (or Features, Advantages, Benefits) model, e.g., our product does this (Feature), which allows our customer to do that (Advantage), which enables their Business to (Business Impact).
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Farm Machinery Sales: Most farmers want quality, reliable products supplied by someone they trust, backed by good after-sales service and support, that enables them to cultivate/drill/harvest efficiently and productively, so they can complete their task as quickly as possible for maximum return. That way they can spend more time enjoying their lifestyle.
Professional Service Providers: Most clients want concise, technically correct advice or deliverables from trusted advisors, to enable them to compliantly complete their projects as effectively and efficiently as possible, on time, to avoid penalties. This will help them build their business and reputation.
See the theme? It’s not what you do – it’s what they can do with what you do.
Understanding what you do will allow you to shape your marketing messaging, identify target customers and go get them.
Next up it’s the Second Fundamentals of Sales Know-How – Knowing What You Do It. But if you can’t wait until then you can purchase my book here:
If you want to evolve your sales approach to be more consultative and effective, I’m here to help. Check out my services page, or contact me directly for a bespoke programme of business mentoring at hello@iancartwright.co.nz .