Understanding the priorities of the B2B customer

To achieve your sales targets

Most of my posts are generally related to marketing and not direct sales. This one is , however directly related to a major issue that sales managers face when leading a sales team selling to B2B customers.

When you lead a sales team, you build your forecast based on the probability given to a deal by the sales person. If the sales person doesn’t understand the priority of the customer, then she may ascribe a probability which she believes, but the customer doesn’t believe.

For any solution that is provided, there’s an impact that the product/service has on the business. The higher the impact, the better is the chance that the sale will happen fast. However their is another variable, that needs to be understood. That is about the urgency, from the customer perspective. Only if the Impact is high and the urgency is high, then the sale will happen, fast.

Here I am talking mainly about products/services that are being bought for the first time. If its a repeat purchase, where, everything is known and its only a matter of routine, then the logic, in the preceding paragraph doesn’t matter.

Now returning back, to my earlier argument, if the impact is low, but there is an urgency to get something done, then the order will get placed fast. For example, a company may be wanting to revamp their website. They already have an existing website. So getting the new website may not directly have a major impact to the business. But if it’s something that has been getting delayed for a long time, then the order will get formalised fast.

On the other hand, if something can improve production by 30%, but if the investment needed or the amount of disruption it can cause are high, then management may not treat it as so urgent. It may be good to have, but since nothing is “broken” yet, it gets pushed into the back burner.

Then there are the obvious cases, where, the customer thinks that they don’t want to experiment with a new technology and they pass the project forever.

So now it’s important that the sales person understand and question the customer on their priorities, the impact the product/service will have on their business and the urgency for doing it.

There will also be cases, when the management wants to showcase some new initiatives to their share holders or there is a new government ruling. So even though the impact may or may not be large, it suddenly acquires urgency. By questioning the customer on their reason, for wanting to go for the new product/service, you will be able to understand the dynamics which is playing out internally within the company.

That will make the sales forecasts more reliable. It is always better to have a few cases, where the probability is certain , versus lots of cases, where the probability is suspect.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B – Single Target Market – Deep Analysis – 3

B2B, Marketing, prioritizing, single target market

We have in the last two posts, looked at the challenges of the B2B market, whether its the hierarchies involved or the dynamics between various roles.

There’s another two dynamics which are specific to the companies and the people in those specific companies.

Some companies are marketing driven, which means that generally they want to lead the market whether its in the use of new technologies, tools, new initiatives. They are willing to experiment to continue to be the leader in the market. Since these companies are willing to experiment, they are generally more receptive to new ideas. The culture in these companies is to experiment hence down the line every one is generally open to seek new ideas. People are generally not afraid to take decisions.

Then there are others which are finance driven and keep a very tight control on “accounting ” costs, audits etc. They are always wanting to ensure that they take steps once something is proven. They want to have proof before moving forward because they don’t want to be caught up in audits. People are always trying to ensure that their “backside” is protected. These companies are therefore slow in adopting new initiatives.

These are the two extremes. If you look at it as a continuum then most of the others fall in between. There’s nothing good or bad about either of these. It’s more important to map with you’re selling

If your product or service is ‘new’ with technology or process etc. then it makes sense to start with marketing oriented companies. On the other hand if your product or service is more a replacement or substitute for something where you can give cost benefits, then you should look at starting from the other end.

Once you have identified the Single Target Market, your next step will be to identify the companies and do more research on them to prioritize your efforts.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritising 80/20 and ferocity together

Affirmative action, prioritizing, problem solving

This is the latest brain wave which I have had. I had written a post on ferocity which was a word I learned from Steven Kotler in his book “The Art of Impossible…”. His thesis is that if you go out at problems with a ferocity, take affirmative action and the more problems you solve, the better you become at solving problems which helps you become even better to achieve your impossible dreams.

I have been working on the 80/20 principle as suggested by Richard Koch on prioritising my day and then also use the Prioritisation Matrix to work further and plan my day based on impact of what I do and where I want to go.

Now comes the brain wave portion. 80/20 and the prioritisation matrix are all about doing less work but more focussed work. While the ferocity logic is about gaining proficiency by solving more. So there’s a slight dichotomy in my opinion.

Except if you can create enough focussed problems and then try to solve them at a go. so instead of planning a prioritisation matrix for a day everyday, we were to build it for a week in advance. Then we try to achieve the most critical parts of these in a day rather than a week.

I don’t know how practical this would be, how much time will I have and whether I will be able to delegate enough, but I will figure out and let you know how effective it was.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritising your day

Affirmative action, Focus, prioritizing

I have written earlier about doing an 80/20 of your activities in your day. While I use the concept along with the Prioritisation Matrix suggested by B.J.Fogg in his book Tiny Habits, I used it primarily to save time so that I don’t end up finishing tasks that don’t have too much return on invested time. A lot of times I used to feel exhausted at the end of the day, but when I would look at the achievement , there was nothing to show for it.

It was like I was always walking on a treadmill, burning calories but getting nowhere. That’s where Richard Koch’s 80/20 rule and in a different way the Prioritisation Matrix have helped me considerably. Now everyday in the morning I look at my To-Do list which I keep updating on my phone. Then I put down on this matrix each of the tasks that need to be done in terms of their scale of impact and my ability to influence the outcome.

The benefit of this is that even if I do only the tasks which have a high impact and my ability to influence is high then at the end of the day I would have still achieved considerably more.

Why am I explaining all this to you. Well today was one such day. It was supposed to have started early and I would have done all my meditation and focused sitting before starting office work. But as I got up my wife complained of fever. So I had t replan my day completely while keeping my customer and internal meetings intact. There was quite a bit of overwhelm through the day. I did not achieve a lot of the items on my To-Do list for today. But I still achieved 90% of my highest priority tasks which ensured that I was considerably effective inspite of the challenges I had all day.

If you also have a lot of tasks on your daily To-Do list and you get overwhelmed, seeing your life pass by while you seem to be not getting anywhere, try the 80/20 rule. Once you focus and take affirmative action with a clear indication on what will have the most impact for you, it will definitely change a lot of things for you. Let me know in the comments below if this practice helps you.ichard

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!