Understanding the 3 Phases of the Buyer’s Journey

Each of the engagements we have with our customers begins with a thorough understanding of their business objectives. We then back up and attempt to help our customers to identify how their customers get to them or if they initiate the contact. We delve into questions such as, what steps did the prospects that looked at their organization go through to get from interest to on–boarding?  

The concept of the buyer’s journey
There is a lot of noise in the sales enablement space today about mapping “the customer’s journey” and then aligning it to the sales process. This is hardly a new approach. It is a dust–off of a three–decade–old concept, decked out with fresh wrapping paper, buzzwords and a shiny bow to get companies to think more about customers than themselves and the products they sell. A dust-off yes, but still a useful approach if it helps sales teams to understand the phases of the buyer’s journey. 

In order to help our customers understand what is important to their customers, we rely on the research done by Neil Rackham. Rackham is the author of SPIN Selling. Rackham’s research yielded a chart that documents the three phases a buyer goes through, as well as what is important to the buyer in each of the phases. Much has been written about this research, and the use of the model has gone through adaptations when major innovative and market forces, such as the Internet, have entered the environment. But in general, the phases hold true.  

  • Phase 1 is called Solution Development. At this time, the main concern of the buyer is their needs, although we often replace the word “needs” with “business objectives.”  
  • Phase 2 is called the Evaluation. During this phase, the most important component to the buyer is proof: proof that your organization’s services and capabilities can match the buyer’s business objectives.  
  • Phase 3 is called Commitment. The most important component to the buyer when they are ready to commit, or make a decision, is risk. The risk comes from the uncertainty of knowing if their selection will do what was promised. This is especially true when moving from one competitor and another in the same industry.   

Note that price and cost are of course concerns for the buyer, but never are they the most important concern at any point in the sales cycle. Despite what you have heard about phrases like “sharpen your pencil,” or “give me your best and final,” price is rarely the final factor, and you’ll see it’s conspicuously absent from the three phases described above.    

Do you know which phase your buyer is in? 
It’s important to understand what phase your customer is in when you engage with them and make sure you identify what’s important to them. You also must recognize when different buyers are in different phases. For example, you could have three different buyers in an organization at different places along the buying phases spectrum.  

It is the sales person job to make sure that they cover all three of the buyers’ phases, regardless of where the buyer is on the initial contact. This is one of the reasons that proactive new business development is critical for sales people. If they can initiate the identification of a business objective, they will be in the driver’s seat to shape how that gets addressed, preferably in a specified solution that your competition can’t offer.    

An engaged sales process means knowing your buyer’s business objectives, offering them proof, and getting them to commit.  

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FSS in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area This Week

If you are in or near San Jose, Palo Alto or the Walnut Creek/Concord towns in the Bay Area, let John know if you’d like to meet this week. He will be there meeting with customers and prospects alike, sharing ideas on revenue generation, sales skill development and the importance of Coaching in each of those capacities.

For 2019, there has been a renewed focus on the roles for all individuals in Customer Facing Roles (CFRs) for how they communicate with customers and prospects. It’s not only up to Sales to speak “the language of the customer”, but for all team members (Marketing, Customer Service, Inside Sales, Technical Support) to be able to carry the dialogue on customers’ goals, challenges and the solutions your company provides.

So, reach out to John to meet in the Bay Area this week-in person for a coffee, or for a conversation at 858 518-7039.

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Strategic Selling: How effective is your Value Message?

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Value proposition is a phrase that became ubiquitous during the 90’s dot.com (dot bomb?) era. You may still encounter this, or the “value messaging” term on a regular basis in the business world. Buzz word or not, value messaging will help quickly convey the value of your product or service without overwhelming or boring potential customers away in a landslide of features and benefits dumping.

Based on the research performed by Sirius Decisions, communication plays the biggest role in sales failures. The number one inhibitor to achieving your sales quota is the inability to communicate value messages, followed closely by an information gap, and then by having too many products to know.

Top Inhibitors to Achieving Sales Quotas
Insufficient leads: 13.3%
Poor sales skills: 16%
Too many products to know: 21.4%
Information gap: 24.3%
Inability to communicate value message: 26%

If you can’t articulate what your product is in a simple manner that is easy to digest, how do you expect customers to understand why they should choose you over the competition? To get you on the right track, here are three strategy development tips to work against these statistics and help you develop and convey a powerful value message:

    1. Learn about your customers – Develop an ideal customer persona.  First, from a demographic or “firmographic” perspective, do your research.  Learn about their market, what they sell, how much they sell, the organization size and the roles involved in the decision making process.  Next, conduct informational interviews within your network.  Talk to anyone in the industry who has been exposed to your ideal customer.  Even third hand knowledge can be valuable in preparing for the next step – which is to talk to your customers and/or prospects.  Find out about their goals, how they measure and track their success, and ask about their pain points.  Once you have a solid definition of your ideal customer persona, you’re equipped with the knowledge to successfully position yourself to appeal to your target audience.
    2. Demonstrate value – Take what you’ve learned about your customer; their pain points, needs and goals to start crafting a message that demonstrates the value of your product from their perspective. How will your product eliminate pain points and help them achieve daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly goals? Messaging that shows that you, the seller, understands the customer’s view point will make your message much more powerful than an organization that suffers from “Me Syndrome” and constantly talks about themselves and product capabilities.  Here are two examples of how you can paint a picture for the customer:
        • “Imagine a day without the stress of x, y, and z. With the time you save you’ll be able to accomplish twice as much of what you need to do.”
        • “Whether it’s daily, weekly or yearly we understand that goals are always top of mind. Let (product X) help reduce the time it takes to meet those goals by taking advantage of x and y capabilities.”
    3. Position and differentiate –What makes you different from your competitors? Is it your exceptional customer service, large number of capabilities, or the price of your product? Whatever it is, be sure to reiterate the difference across all sales and marketing channels, and especially when you’re physically speaking with a prospect or customer. Proper positioning involves being able to identify who you, as an organization are, and consistently demonstrate that to prospects and customers. A mistake some companies make is forgetting to consistently use the same positioning statements and language in sales and marketing when speaking about how they help your customers create value. Make sure what you’re saying on your website is demonstrated similarly on your social channels, in your marketing materials and through the words that sales reps use with customers. It sounds obvious, but unfortunately many organizations fail to do this.

Successful sales strategies are all about the creativity and adaptability that your sales management can create in conjunction with Marketing. Understanding your customer, demonstrating value and positioning yourself are all simple strategies to help streamline the sales process. Don’t fall into the 26% that are unable to communicate value messages about their product consistently and effectively.

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On Sales, Travel and Dreams

On Monday, I returned to San Diego State University to speak with a Business to Business Marketing class in the College of Business. Most of the students in the class are graduating seniors, and several are in the Sales Certificate program, a defined path in the curriculum that helps the students prepare for a career in Sales.

The topics covered included careers in sales, sales process, how Marketing enables sales with tools for consistent positioning, sales skills mastery and execution and travel. Yes, the latter came up as we interacted and discussed their plans upon graduation in May.

While it is important to help them understand how to move towards their career of choice, it is equally relevant to show how your passion and dreams on a personal level can weave into the work that you do. I feel blessed to have this reality in my life, and enjoyed sharing my experience, and listening to how these capable young people see how it can happen for them, too.

 

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Establishing Value Around Your Product or Service

John recently addressed the Association of Language Companies (ALC) at their annual conference held in San Diego. The ALC is a professional organization of commercial translation and interpretation companies who operate in a global capacity.

The following video is a five minute outtake of the dialogue conducted. Listen in for the framework on how to help your customers and prospects understand the value that you provide. If you would like the tools that are mentioned, simply e mail to john@drive-revenue and they will be forwarded to you.

 

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Reinforcing Sales Skills: Try Our Online Learning Portal (OLP) for FREE

The Flannery Sales Systems’ OLP is another tool we created to:

  1. Enable our customers to understand buyer behavior
  2. Reinforce the core concepts and selling skills of Sales Process for all individuals in customer facing roles.
  3. Provide practice and repetition of skills in a self-paced, ongoing basis.
  4. Help Managers to understand where their sellers are competent, where they need coaching, and how to improve results.

The web based portal (view screen shot here) includes:`

  • Six reinforcement videos by sales stage and skill; each are 5 to 7 minutes long (click here to view a sample)
  • e-Toolkits that support each stage
  • A reinforcement quiz for each stage
  • The Manager’s Coaching Room
  • Support with live phone coaching sessions

In a previous article (How To Make Learning Stick), one of the key tenets of Adult Learning Theory emphasized a need for a learner (salesperson) to use repetition as a way to embed additional skills into their everyday routine.

Coaching is a major component to reinforce the use of enhanced skills, but until the new skills are entrenched, coaching will be difficult. The portal is designed to provide the repetition, and then offers the visibility for a specific skill that needs improvement (i.e. qualification, establishing value, negotiation, etc.).

Once the salespeople go through all six modules, Managers will be able to see the results of the scores on the quizzes completed. This provides the Managers with the objectivity needed to pinpoint coaching efforts.

Sales skills is often one of the last things to be addressed in the overscheduled world of most Sales Managers. The OLP provides Managers with an objective way to assess skills, as well as a platform to create skill related topics for sales team meetings.

Marketing, Customer Service and Inside Sales personnel can also benefit from the use of this valuable tool, as the OLP provides a window into the buyer’s world, the sales process that is being used in the field, and how other customer facing roles can use it in their respective roles.

For your FREE 30 DAY TRIAL, please contact John Flannery at john@drive-revenue.com or call 858-518-7039.

 

 

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The Tactical Execution of Strategy: Sales Process Illustrates the “How”

A Go To Market Strategy is the high level view of the vision or mission of an organization’s long and short term objectives. The strategy is carefully formulated by upper management to move an organization toward their specific destination. If, for example, an organization has the desire to increase revenue, a sales strategy for increased revenue may be formulated with the careful consideration of many different factors: assets, competition, the marketplace, margins, operational costs, the number of product lines, distribution, channels, value propositions, and plans for growth, to state a few.

We recently worked with an organization who wanted us to help them build a sales process to “get more sales now”! Their short-sightedness of only looking at the “close up” of the map gave them the misguided idea that their destination was nothing more than to get the reps out there selling better!  We were able to guide them through a sales strategy exercise, and THEN helped them build a sales process on how to execute their strategy.

One Conversation At a Time

The principal component of a sales strategy is execution. Sales process outlines the step-by-step, most efficient, customized directions of execution to get to the final destination.  It provides information on how to get to the destinations in specific detail, based on selling skills. The steps are broken down one conversation at a time for practice and mastery.  This specificity enables the implementation of strategy by providing the following advantages to the entire team:

  • A common path and language
  • Functional messaging tools based on the strategy
  • Skill sets that are tied to process steps
  • Flexibility to use the process in practical terms as competencies are mastered
  • Process steps that are tied pipeline milestones

Visibility with Leading Indicators for Success

If you ensure that all sales reps and managers follow the sales process, you can outline expectations and more easily benchmark your sales team against common criteria, providing an excellent evaluation of the strategy at the rep level.  A sales process provides:

  • Confirmation that opportunities are moving, or stalled, as the case may be
  • A measure of the skill of individual sales reps
  • An opportunity for focused skill coaching of sales people by managers
  • The backbone of reporting tools for leading KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of performance measurement against key outcomes of the sales strategy.

When determining your organization’s sales strategy, take the time to ensure your understanding of the entire landscape.  Then, implement a sales process that allows you to execute toward your objectives, with the ability to gauge your success along the route, and soon, you’ll arrive at your destination:  Success!

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Will a Trade Show Help You Meet Your Sales Goals?

Sales and Trade Shows

Trade shows. As salespeople, it seems we either love ‘em or hate ‘em. If you’re a member of the sales team looking forward to a few days of schmoozing and staying in a nice hotel, you probably enjoy the experience. If you’re the sales manager in charge of meeting sales goals and managing a budget to ensure money is wisely spent, you probably don’t.

Being part of a trade show requires both a financial investment and a people one. Are trade shows worth it? It depends. For some companies, skipping a trade show attended by competitors would be akin to skipping your sister’s wedding: You just have to be there. For others, it’s an opportunity to schedule a lot of face-to-face meetings all within a short period of time and in one place. And there are other justifications such as brand awareness, publicity, etc.

Yet too often we see companies spending tens of thousands of dollars to participate in a trade show, then bemoan the lack of leads and closed deals that came out of it. In other words, they didn’t see the ROI they had hoped for.

Being Clear on Your Goals Can Help
And maybe hope is part of the problem. Making a trade show work for you requires advance planning and intensive measuring—starting with your goals. Because, as they say, if you don’t know where you’re going…

If you’re going to do a trade show and you want to make sure you can prove the value of doing so, make sure you’re clear on your goals for the show. What will you measure and how will you determine success both short-term and long-term? How many leads will you need to make it worthwhile, and how many sales later? How long of a timeline will you allow for tracking these metrics? What tool or process will you use to track them?

Is There a Better Way to Meet Your Goals?
If your objective is lead generation and eventually sales, is a trade show the way to do it? Maybe not. It could be spending your dollars in another area would generate better and longer-lasting results.

Here’s something to think about: Maybe you should consider investing in something like improving your team’s sales skills or an effective sales process. What kind of incremental improvements might you see if you had a process in place that increased your salespeople’s productivity? If they were better at qualifying leads? If they knew how to maximize the CRM system?

If you’re not generating an impressive ROI from your trade show attendance, maybe it’s time to skip one this year and invest that money in your people and processes instead. And then you’ll reap the benefits all year long, not just a couple of times per year.

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Flannery Sales Systems at ProMat Show in Chicago this week

John will join his long-time customer ID Systems  at ProMat in Chicago this week. Mark Stanton, GM of IDSY has invited John to the show to speak with the ISDY Dealers, and see how they can benefit from the use of the IDSY Sales Process.

We know how strong the Dealer network is for IDSY, and look forward to exploring additional ways we can help them to grow their revenue in 2019 through the usage and deeper connections in the sales process.

If you are attending ProMat, or are in Chicago this week and would like to meet up with John, text or call him at 858 518-7039.

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Sales Pros Must Attend Continuing Education: Sales 3.0 Conference in SFO

 

John is attending the Selling Power 3.0 Conference in San Francisco on Monday and Tuesday of this week. The purpose for spending 2 full days out of the field is to gather information that will help Flannery Sales Systems’ customers to drive revenue.

As a great Sales Manager once said “If you are coasting (in your career), you are usually going downhill.” Don’t let that happen to you!  We are committed to learning and sharing important new information from Sales 3.0 with individuals in all customer facing roles, not just sales.

 

 

 

Here are two thought provoking concepts from the conference:

  • Relationship sellers are 63% less likely to ask tough questions of customers and prospects because they have an overriding need to be liked
  • Growth and comfort never co-exist

If you’re attending this conference, or in the Bay Area and would like to speak to John about how to improve your revenue generation, give him a text or call at 858-518-7039    #salestraining #salesconference #salesleadership #S30C

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