Common Sales-Marketing Problems

Selling complex products or services to the global 2500 involves engaging a range of individuals in several departments at several levels within an enterprise over time. Not surprisingly, marketers advertising and selling everything from software to financial services to real estate to professional services or outsourcing face similar hurdles and challenges.

Addressing these critical issues will spell the difference between those who meet their quotas in 2006 and those who don’t.

THERE ARE FEWER BIG DEALS.
The recession and its recovery have forced buyers to buy in smaller lots. In most industries and sectors the really big deals are few and far between. This forces the big game hunters among the sales force to downshift and makes more sophisticated targeting and marketing communications imperative.

The need to sell more smaller deals smarter and faster places a burden on lean and mean sales and marketing teams that have been pared to the bone over the last few years, often losing veteran and niche expertise long the way. Basic marketing sizing and number crunching married to detailed sector and firmographic analysis requires new, different data sets and players capable of dicing and slicing data to reveal opportunities and discern effective messaging and sales tactics.

MORE NURTURING IS NEEDED.
Success also depends on the ability to identify, engage, qualify and nurture opportunities for 6 to 12 months among prospective customers not-yet-ready to buy. Because sales cycles are longer and buyers’ risk appetite is smaller sales people, the most costly resource, cannot be squandered chasing unqualified leads. They must focus on nailing deals with the greatest likelihood of closing. Marketing must fill the void, nurture early stage opportunities and keep the pipeline full.

EVERYTHING IS PERCEIVED AS A COMMODITY.
Nobody has a lock on anything. Barriers to competition are at an all time low. And buyers with cash to spend have the leverage to drive prices down. Marketers must work overtime to differentiate their offerings and establish value propositions that resonate with customer needs and that only they are capable of delivering on.

YOU HAVE TO GET TO THE C SUITE.
To get a better hearing, to sell solutions not products and to get buyers to see the forest for the trees you need to engage CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CIOs, CMOs and the full range of head honchos who generally define the needs, initiate buying cycles and approve and authorize the chosen vendor.

The problem is everyone is targeting them and they tend to get fired every 3 years or so whether they need it or not. Very few sales and marketing organizations have access, credibility or strong relationships to trade on. And everyone needs a new way of getting to these guys, messaging these guys and involving these guys at the appropriate stages in the sales cycle.

YOU HAVE TO HIT ‘EM HIGH AND HIT ‘EM LOW.
Buyers are generally a team and often include internal or external consultants, partners and others with specific expertise that might bear on the purchase decision. Marketing has to seed the clouds using free media and advertising, find, address and persuade influencers like analysts and consultants all the while trying to pin down who is on the project team, what roles they play and when or how their input affects the decision to buy.

This requires a proactive and data-driven effort to marshal resources, arguments and sales tools and orchestrate them to achieve maximum impact over a 6-18 buying cycle. Successful selling organizations can deliver the right messages and the right demos or collateral to the right buyers at the right time with the right terms to satisfy the right needs, the right business processes and the right people to move the needle. It requires better internal coordination between marketing, sales, tech support, customer service and PR a system for keeping track of who is doing what to whom and when plus a consensus on governance, priorities, sequences and the division of labor and budgets; basically a whole new way of internal operations that crosses traditional silos and turf.

IT HAS TO PAY OFF.
Demand generation works but its hard to measure because a stimulus today yields a response tomorrow and a payoff nine months downrange. Simple counting and sorting is insufficient to measure productivity or assess the efficiency of sales and marketing tactics. Many organizations can’t even tell you the fully loaded cost per sale, forecast an allowable cost per acquisition or tell you which thing they did worked best. It’s a game of throughput which demands management discipline and perspective tied to mechanisms to measure and report what is going on and compare it to how much is being spent.

Danny Flamberg is Presdent of Prescients, LLC, a marketing consultancy.

[tags]danny flamberg,sales marketing,global selling,demand generation,management discipline[/tags]