The B2B sales person’s tight rope walk

B2B, Sales

The sales person is the face of the company but she is also the interface of the customer. So while the company pays the salary, its the customer who gives the business, because of which the company earns revenue and can pay salaries.

So whose orders should the sales person take…..this is a very big dilemma. When I was young and new in sales , I actually ended up offending a few customers, because I literally took my boss’s orders on some issues.

Luckily I was able to salvage the situation and some of those customers gave me business for a long time after that. This situation could have happened with any sales person not only in B2B.

In B2B the challenges are that we are a looking at more than one person with whom you deal. In addition there’s long term business at stake because B2B buyers don’t change suppliers quickly. So if you offend one person, the news may spread and you may also lose business with the other buyers over time.

There’s another peculiar situation in B2B. You may be doing business with one buyer, let’s call him Sam. You may try to explore business with another buyer in the same company, let’s call him Tom. Now Tom is even willing to talk to you, but Sam wants you to route all your interactions through him and if you try bypassing him, he gets upset and holds your payment or other such issues.

You later find out that Tom and Sam are actually not on speaking terms and therefore Sam is penalizing you for talking with Tom.

This is a very delicate situation. You want to expand the business because that’s what your company and you want, but if you offend Sam you may actually even lose the business that you presently have.

If you think, I have an answer that can solve this problem for you….no I don’t. Each situation is different and has to be handled carefully, it really is a tight rope walk.

However one tool which I tell my team members to use is to “make me the bad guy” . Meaning for this situation, my team could tell Sam,’ you know my boss is such a jerk , he wants me to get the business from Tom at any cost, what do you think I should do’ . This works in a lot of situations for my team members because the sales person now earns sympathy of Sam.

See if this works for you and let me know. Also let me know in the comments below if you have come across some other things which have worked.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The concept of Value – in Services – 2

B2B, Product Management, services, Value, value proposition

In the post yesterday we had seen how services can have different values for different people and its our responsibility as sellers and product managers to create the value differentiation.

If we look at the B2B segment, there’s a very clear difference between how the value is seen if it is helpful in getting revenue or is it about cost.

Anything which can help increase revenue is always more valuable, versus anything that is about cost is always going to be seen as less valuable.

Therefore any proposal on the cost side will take longer to close, until and unless there’s an emergency of some kind, versus a proposal which talks about increasing revenue.

Even when you’re going from the “gate” which brings in the revenue, you have to be able to showcase how your service forms a solution to their overall problem of increasing revenue. As an example,you can’t go in saying I am a content writer and therefore I can increase revenue….you won’t be able to move ahead.

On the other hand if you understand the problem that they have and how content writing can be the solution to their problems then you have a bright road ahead.

Its happened with me many times, where , we created an amazing offering for the cost side and were not able to get it to move with customers because they were already solving the problem in a different way. But we started getting traction the moment we moved towards re-orienting the solution from the revenue side.

This is a key thing to learn for all of us who are in the services business of any kind.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The more people you know….the more you sell in B2B

B2B, Customers, Networking, Sales

It doesn’t matter what you know, what matters is who you know.

A lot of internet marketers will talk about this when selling their mastermind programs. Some of it is actually very true. If you’re in the right masterminds , where people are of the sharing type, then you do get to learn a lot.

But since my focus is on the corporate type of environments, the so called B2B space, just the simple concept of meeting and knowing everyone from the peon (junior most level) to the CEO is very valuable.

I continuously emphasize this to my sales team. A lot of times the small talk with people at the junior levels can give you insights about the organization and its situation. Most senior people are generally formal and carry a facade. They meet a lot of people all day and they are conditioned to give out only as much information as necessary.

On the other hand people at the junior level are not used to getting attention. So if you genuinely, they key term is genuinely, give them the attention and respect, they will open up to you and talk freely.

The other thing which happens because of this is that they also help you navigate into other departments within the company. Due to this you’re able to figure out either more opportunities or more applicability of your services or products.

However with these pieces of information, its your responsibility to put all of them together to figure out the insights and accordingly add value to your customers.

Today’s customers can get almost 80-90% information from the net. But in a lot of cases they are starved for insights of how they can do better. If you can become that advisor, you can pick a lot of sales.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Market forecasts – how I would get them wrong – 3

Assumptions, B2B, Marketing, Product Management

So in my last 2 posts I wrote about couple of areas, on how as a product manager, I would get my forecasts wrong.

In this one, we will talk about competition. Whenever there’s a good market, you will have competition come in, sooner rather than later. The more the competition, the more the challenges because you have to estimate in advance how competition would react to your offering.

The advantage of the B2B market is that generally, the competition is defined. Until a rank outsider comes in with a revolutionary product, generally the B2B space is defined and the products/services are also known.

In the market – perception is the reality. So if your competition creates a perception of a superior product/service or a cheaper service or a more flexible service, then all your forecasts can go haywire, if the market believes that your product is inferior in any way / more expensive / less flexible.

When you are working with a specific software tool or you are a partner for only a specific kind of equipment, then your options for differentiation decrease. It limits you to primarily two things – experience that you have and the kind of technical expertise that you have created.

If its your own product/service you can leverage on other things like the kind of packaging that you do, or the software code that you have built.

From a competition perspective the other thing that you need to note is the number of sales people in the market from your competitors versus yourself. If you have 3 sales people while you have competition with 7 sales people each, then its not practical for your team to outrun the competition. Your competition will always have more people covering more accounts. Which means your chance of losing a deal is always higher. Planning without this aspect clearly articulated in your assumptions is a grave mistake.

But marketing – especially in B2 is very interesting because of these factors.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!