Common Sales Myth #4 – It’s a Price-Driven Market

Posted on January 1, 2013March 13, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

I truly sympathize with sales people who are dealing with commodity managers in large corporate purchasing organizations. Those procurement specialists can be brutal in negotiation. More and more they are driven by corporate edicts to “source overseas” or “reduce commodity purchase costs by 3% per year” or to “reduce the number of suppliers by 20%”.

The truth is, classifying what they do as “Negotiation” is not fair to Merriam-Webster’s definition of the word – or to anyone for that matter.

Can it get any tougher for manufacturers? The Rock

These days, sales people and their parent manufacturing companies commonly find themselves confronting a series of “non-negotiable” buyer requirements that would be laughable, if they weren’t so real and becoming more common:

– 90 day payment terms

– Guaranteed cost-downs

– The lowest cost – period!

– The highest possible on-time delivery

– Impeccable quality

– Unlimited time frame on returns

– “No-questions asked” returns

– No-charge, collaborative up-front engineering and/or marketing cost sharing

– Transparent margin calculations

– And the requirement to keep a buffer inventory of finished parts in the factory – owned, of course, by the supplier

The not-too-thinly veiled threat hidden among those requirements is, “If you can’t meet these terms, we can always find someone else to supply that part/service in Mexico, Asia, Brazil, India” or even, “We’ll build those parts here – ourselves, inside”.

We talked about the Rock above. Here’s the Hard Place.

In the banker’s office the CEO and CFO of the small manufacturing firm are hearing:

– Your cash flow is slowing

– Your margins are slipping

– Your credit line needs to be reduced and renegotiated

– We need to see your financials, monthly

– We need to tighten up our loan portfolio because of the lending debacle of 2008

– and… “No, you can’t have any more leeway”.

So, between the banks pushing for higher prices and margins on your products to improve cash flow (or you lose your financing), and your big customers pushing for lower and lower prices, what’s a small manufacturing firm to do? And, how does a sales person make a living if he isn’t price competitive. Isn’t some margin, albeit low margin, better than losing a customer?

What Price Competition Really Means

Price-driven competition means that one or more of the following statements are true:

The buyers in your target market perceive no meaningful performance or value differences between products from different suppliers – including yours
Your product offering actually has no real and meaningful differentiation compared to your competition for those customers in that target market segment
You, as a sales person, or your marketing team, are doing a very poor job of communicating your meaningful, market-specific differentiation to customers in that market
You are unable to economically quantify the value your product can deliver to customers in that market
You are aimed at the wrong market and customers – a market for which your differentiation does not actually deliver meaningful, economic, emotional or physical value

We have seen all of these situations in our client engagements – typically disguised and drowned out by the sales person’s pleading and cries to “drop the price”.

So What Can Be Done About This Kind of Situation?

The simple, yet most effective answer is: Decide which of the five statements above are true – then set about fixing them.

It is actually easier than you might imagine.

A Case in Point 1: Wrong Market Targeting

A client of ours had a new product that wasn’t selling well. It was price disadvantaged by a factor of 3 over competitive offerings in the general market!! In spite of this, the new business development team was hustling to set up general distributors across the country. They were counting on a major price reduction they were politicking for with corporate to spur sales – when in fact corporate was quietly considering shutting the product line down.

We were asked to determine whether the product line was worth saving.

What little sales there were, were focused in two very narrow markets. Simply by asking customers that bought the few units that were sold in each of these markets why they bought this “over-priced” alternative, a set of inherent, here-to-fore un-promoted competitive advantages were revealed.

Then simply by pivoting the sales team to focus on the market in which the most compelling benefits were revealed the following results were realized:

– Not only did the price not have to be reduced, the market’s desire for added features quickly brought the average selling price of the top model to 4X the original price!

– The single largest order for this product had been $20,000 – now with focus and a re-promoted and re-emphasized set of market-specific benefits the largest order from a customer exceeded $1,000,000

– The number of new customers buying this product quickly rose from 2 to over 150

– Price reductions were no longer discussed

– The effort to saturate the market with distribution outlets was no longer considered necessary and saved a ton of money

Case in Point 2: Poor Economic Benefits Communication

In another instance a client was puzzled by the slowness with which their new product, designed specifically to help customers save substantial amounts of money, was not selling better. The root cause was discovered to be the distributor sales manager who simply “.. did not believe the economic argument” and refused to promote it – in spite of the customer testimonials to the effect of the savings realized.

A rapid individual re-education was required, followed by a re-training of the distribution sales force, and the product’s sales turned up shortly afterwards.

Case in Point 3: The CEO Gap

I once asked a group of 12 B2B CEOs to take out a blank sheet of paper and write down what they perceived as their best product offering, the product that they thought customers should appreciate the most. I also asked them to identify an ideal customer for that product.

I then asked them to identify the factors and calculate what economic benefit that ideal customer was likely to receive from that product. They stumbled. None of them could do it in the 15 minutes allotted.

If they can’t do it – can their sales people?

The Point:

Price-driven markets and situations are often a symptom of; a) misdirected market targeting or b) a lack of understanding of, and poor ability to communicate, market-specific economic, emotional or physical benefits of your product offerings to potential customers.

Customers buy for their own reasons, not yours. No matter what you have convinced yourselves about the value customers should see, they saw what they were looking for when they decided to buy. Sometimes it’s not what you want them to see, but if it worked it is delivering real value.

So, if your sales people are screaming for price reductions and you have customers buying when you are not the cheapest price – those customers are seeing something you are not. You need to find out what that is and why. And if they are not buying when the economic case is real, independent of the price, your communication is broken somewhere along the line.

Oh yeah, one final point. If price was truly the ultimate deciding point for decisions, we’d all be driving Versas. If it helps, here’s a link to Car and Drivers article on the 10 Cheapest Cars

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If you’d like to learn more about dealing with price-based competition call Jerry Vieira, CMC at 503.318.2696 or email to jgv@qmpassocites.com. The QMP Website is at www.TheQMPGroup.com and more insights can be found at The QMP Insights Blog

Common Sales Myth #5 – Closing Techniques are Effective

Posted on January 1, 2013March 13, 2014 by wadmin

Let’s start this discussion with a stipulation that all successful sales have to go through some sort of closing stage. Nothing happens until a customer or client agrees to pay your company for the delivery of a service or a product. So, in the strictest sense, I guess we can call that a “close”. We can also imagine that all commerce in the world would come to a screeching halt unless some kind of transaction closing happened.

So, good closing techniques are essential – right? And if that’s so why am I targeting closing techniques as a myth?

A Closing Process is Different than a Closing Technique

A “Closing Process” is likely to be mechanistic. Get the quantity and delivery dates correct, get the PO issued and confirm with the customer your ability to meet the delivery schedule. These days that process may be enabled by all sorts of mobile systems, and field inventory accessibility tools. That’s mechanistic closing.

“Closing Techniques” are something different all-together. Closing Techniques are many times designed to manipulate the emotions of the buyer, or to create a sense of urgency, guilt or fear, toward the end of triggering a commitment to buy. At one level, an example might be a car salesman saying something like, “Well, these models are going fast. In fact, there was a guy in here earlier that test drove and liked the exact car you just expressed an interest in. He said he was bringing his wife back this evening for a final decision.” Or, in a business-to-business environment, “We are just about at capacity and if you really need delivery in July, we need to get your order committed and on the schedule no later than end of this week.”

Well before you assume that closing techniques are cool, perhaps even having been indoctrinated by the training your own sales management required, consider the following information – then decide for yourself.

The Impact of being “Closed” by a “Closing Technique”

Neil Rackham in his book “SPIN Selling” reveals the results of 10 years of research done by the Huthwaite Center into high $-value sales success, analyzing 10,000 sales people and 35,000 sales calls in 27 countries. They studied 116 factors that might contribute to sales success.

The results of that study concluded that customers with which “Closing Techniques” were used (emotional, urgency or fear) were:

Less likely to buy
Less likely to re-buy
Less likely to be satisfied after the buy

Admittedly that is an extremely brief description of his work and its conclusions. But it is compelling – and I strongly recommend all sales managers read “SPIN Selling“. It may alter, for the better and forever, your thoughts about training your sales people to use “Assumptive” closes, the “Standing Room Only” close, the “Alternative” close, or any other trick closing technique.

The Huthwaite SPIN model offers an excellent, and more effective, sales process alternative. SPIN is an achronym, and stands for Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-Payoff. The SPIN selling process trains people how to use questions of each type to win a sale.

So, Why is So Much Emphasis Still Placed on the Training and Use of “Closing Techniques”?

Today, the pressure on Sales Managers to produce sales results is higher than it has been in years. Foreign and price-based competition, combined with a still iffy and sluggish economy is resulting in significant pressure on small-to-mid-sized firms. The result is that CEOs, Owners and Sales Managers believe that closing techniques will somehow move a sale forward more quickly. But, in my experience I find that they are, for the most part, ignorant of what the data from the Huthwaite study reveal – and ignorant of other more effective sales techniques. And, they may be pressed to find the time or money to embark upon such a change of direction and approach in mid-stride.

Customer and Client Collaboration Works Much Better

So rather than disenfranchising your sales prospects with slick closing techniques, consider a sales approach more like the Winter Olympics sport of curling. A good sales person is like the “sweeper” who, through patient and detailed questioning, problem solving and collaboration leads the customer to the best answer to help them achieve their goal.

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Common Sales Myth #6 – The Biggest Accounts are the Best

Posted on December 31, 2012March 20, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

Here is the last in the series of Six Common Sales Myths.

For small to mid-size businesses, the decision to commit resources to target a large account should considered carefully. The primary considerations are: “What are the implications of winning?” and “How, should we go about it?”

So let me provide you both sides of the story.

Why the Largest Accounts are NOT the Best Sales Targets

The Competition is the Highest: Sales managers and sales people almost universally drool over the thought of landing the big account. Some folks call them “Whales”. With these whales come visions of top line revenue waves carrying on their crests big commission checks and bonus trips to Bermuda for exceeding sales production quotas. The bad news is that every competitor’s salesperson is striving for that same, beach-front room in Bermuda.

It Reduces Your Negotiating Power: Have you ever been presented with 90-day or 120-day payment terms by your large customers? Have you been confronted by corporate edicts from your large customers to buy overseas, or forced to share your product cost models or had to make a pledge of cost-downs (targeted and contracted cost reductions delivered directly to the customer). All of these can be relentless.

You May Become Too Dependent on Them: Bankers, these days, have tightened their requirements for business loans. One of the things they look closely at is the vulnerability associated with one customer presenting too large a proportion of a firm’s business. Having a hefty chunk of business from one large customer may also make one complacent.

Under What Circumstances Can Large Clients be Good?

When You Are Selling a Unique Value Proposition That Is IP Protected: This greatly relieves the pricing pressure and competitive threats – but it is likely short-lived.

When you are adding desperately needed capacity to overheated market demand for your product/service commodity: When there are overall industry shortages of the product or service commodity you deliver, because of very high market demand for your customer’s products, those large “whales” swim a lot farther to find the krill they need to survive. They also become a lot less demanding. Again, this somewhat relieves the discomfort associated with working with large customer accounts – but heated up industry demand does not last forever.

When Your Large Customer is Enlightened: Enlightened means they have embraced the concept of true partnership – recognizing the need for mutual investment, mutual trust, mutual innovation and mutual ROI.

When Decision Making is De-centralized: De-centralized decision making increases the probability that you will find either: a) an enlightened decision maker in one or more of the myriad divisions of the “whale” or, b) divisions and circumstances to which you can deliver significant value from your company’s specific combination of value proposition and differentiation.

When They Spur You on to Innovation or Breakthroughs: The promise of a big payoff, with lots of business from a large customer, can spur creativity and product innovation. What it should not encourage is gambling. By gambling, I mean taking a long-shot that requires stretching beyond reason the laws of physics or the organization’s overall capabilities. Such gambling can quickly destabilize the financial safety net of the firm.

How to Eat a Whale

Yes, yes. No surprise. The answer is one bite at a time. But where you bite first is the real question. Here are some guidelines on selecting where your bite will be most productive, profitable and nourishing.

There are 6 basic strategies in war and business – 3 F’s and 3 D’s, and no, these F’s and D’s in no way reflect my 6^th grade report card. Here are the strategies, by name:

– Frontal

– Fragment

– Flank

– Defend

– Depart

– Develop

The subject of strategy is simply too large to cover in this blog post, so suffice it to say that 5,000 years of military history and 75 years of marketing science have demonstrated, unequivocally, that the most productive strategic combination from the list above is the combination of Fragmentation (segmenting) & Flanking (differentiation). History and research have also demonstrated that frontal assaults can lead to disaster even in the case of great initial success. Remember Napoleon in Russia, Lee at Gettysburg, the English at Gallipoli, the German army in Russia and the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. Or, in business terms, think Texas Instruments’ frontal assault on the watch market, Raychem in fiber optics and IBM in PCs. All were frontal assaults by large, highly confident organizations with huge assets behind them. All failed miserably.

By Fragmentation we mean, finding a business segment or Division of the “whale” to which your value proposition provides disproportionate economic value compared to its cost. By Flank we mean identifying, matching, communicating and demonstrating your differentiated value to the fragmented business segment that gets the most value from it, in effect, multiplying your overall value proposition.

A Case in Point:

Long before I was a market strategy and sales consultant, I was involved in a business that sold factory automation software. The division was attempting to sell this software solution to some of the largest, multi-site, multi-divisional manufacturers in the United States. We were spurred on by the knowledge that every large manufacturer we spoke with had active, funded corporate programs to find solutions to the common manufacturing challenge extant in all their manufacturing business units.

Talking with these corporate types, our software team energetically began to design and add capabilities to our system to assure we could handle all of the needs they had identified.

Unbeknownst to us, a competitor had been making inroads with what we perceived as a vastly inferior, inconsequential, less complete offering. They were selling low level, simple solutions into the divisions where decisions did not require corporate “influence”. They were, in effect, fragmenting the account -taking lots of little bites of the whale. By the time we had developed our comprehensive solution, the low level competitive solution had penetrated so expansively, in so many fragments of the business, that retrofitting was out of the question.

This is just one example of how subversive fragmentation can be used to penetrate a large account – one small bite at a time.

The Take-Away:

Large accounts are not inherently good or bad sales targets. They are good or bad sales targets depending on:

the strategy used to penetrate them,
the “enlightened partnership nature” of their corporate procurement,
the centralized or decentralized nature of their decision making,
the strength of your IP and the economic value proposition it delivers, and
whether or not you are adding industry capacity to overheated market demand

That’s the long and short of it.

For more information regarding QMP’s Sales Process and Skills Improvement Workshop or Sales Improvement Consulting Services, call to 503.318.2696 or connect through our Contact Us page.

*****

Revitalizing Stalled Sales

Posted on January 26, 2012June 13, 2013 by Jerry Vieira

As the economy continues to bounce along, (some say showing signs of a small movement off its bottom while others disagree), business owners and managers are getting impatient to find ways to boost revenue. Not only are we seeing evidence of this within our own client base, but also our “Insights” blog post on “Diagnosing Stalled Sales”, published in June of 2011, has re-surfaced recently as the top-read posting on the all time QMP blog popularity-list. The second most popular blog on that list is “The Marketing and Sales Audit”. Business leaders are looking for revenue answers. Standing idly by and waiting for the economic recovery is no longer a reasonable option.

As I re-read that “Diagnosing Stalled Sales” post, I realized that it was too diagnostic and not prescriptive enough. After all, what good is a diagnosis without a treatment? Apologies to those readers who came away from that post less than satisfied. This post makes up for that shortcoming.

Deciding What to Do

The first thing to recognize is that all revenue increases must come from one or more of the following four sources: 1) introducing new products, 2) stealing market share from competitors (new account wins in your current markets), 3) the natural momentum of your current markets or 4) penetrating new markets.

New Products:

If you have a new product-development initiative in the works, good for you. But pursuing this option for increased revenue typically takes time and money. Both are in short supply these days for small to mid-size businesses, exacerbated as our clients currently relate, by the challenge of tightened banking requirements.

New product development initiatives typically fall into one of three categories: a) improving what you already offer, b) meeting some new customer requirement or c) launching a breakthrough.

Meaningful overnight revenue upsides are rare from new products as it takes time to develop, tool, test and introduce a new product. It then takes time for the market to become aware of it, understand it, change their old ways of doing things (and who they may be buying from) and begin to adopt your new product. There are ways of accelerating this adoption rate, but only if the product is a breakthrough – something that fundamentally turns the market on its ear. Even in that case, time is the challenge. Twenty-five years into its existence, I still meet educated people who don’t own a personal computer, and it took 50 years for the automobile to be completely adopted by consumers.

Don’t get me wrong, new products are strategically important for a firm. I strongly encourage new product development, particularly if the product fills some need the customer didn’t even know they had – a real breakthrough. Breakthrough products typically bring sustainable growth, give customers a meaningful reason to change and provide higher margins. (More on this subject in a future blog post on the subject of Innovation).

So, keep developing; keep considering new ideas; just don’t expect the heavens to open and revenue to come raining down quickly.

Stealing Market Share from Competitors:

One of the fundamental principles of military strategy is, “The hardest ground to capture is the ground that is occupied. It typically takes anywhere from 3 to 6 times superior resources to take over a position from an occupier. Interestingly, most of the initiatives that small to mid-size companies attempt (unwisely) to increase sales fall into this, the most challenging category.

These days, there are a number of popular marketing initiatives that are all the rage – search engine optimization, the use of AdWords, re-branding, social media and database marketing – to name a few. These are not inherently bad or good. However, the key to achieving significant growth with any of them is to assure their use in a focused way combined with growth options #1 (Introducing New Products) or #4 (Penetrating New Markets). Using them in a focused way assures maximum return for minimum investment.

Some of you may decide that this option, stealing share from competitors, is the only one available to you and that you don’t have time and money for new product development or to try to penetrate a completely new market. If you do, the road will be difficult and certainly take more resources and time than you anticipated. If you can’t be dissuaded, here are some tips to make it easier:

a) Try to fragment your competitor’s market: Find and target sub-sets of customers that have a common dissatisfaction with the competitors’ offerings. The Japanese didn’t attack the US auto market all at once on all fronts. They focused first on the most vulnerable and receptive set of customers with a quality small car offering. After establishing this foothold they expanded based on their proven quality reputation.

b) Tailor a market-specific benefits story to the customers in the specific target market fragment you wish to penetrate. You may even wish to set up a separate website for that specific market. At minimum you will need a focused sales presentation.

c) Focus your sales team on that segment and train them to tell that market-specific story. Make a concentrated effort for 90 days with frequent feedback from the sales team to see if the story is gaining traction. The test of traction is a growing sales pipeline.

d) Never lead the penetration effort with pricing reductions. You’ll hurt yourself.

The Natural Momentum of Your Markets:

This is the primary problem most small-to-midsized businesses are dealing with. It is true that all boats rise and fall with the tide. That doesn’t mean that some boats don’t move around the bay faster than others, whatever the tide situation. There are always segments of a market that trend opposite, or move faster than, the overall economy. If the economic momentum of your primary target market has slowed, and doesn’t look like it will return quickly, then it’s time to consider growth option #4 – penetrating new markets.

Penetrating New Markets

The requirements for a successful penetration of a new market are: a) a good set of target market attractiveness assessment criteria, b) a high degree of focus in your attack on the market and c) rapid feedback and re-targeting process to use as required. You need not make a big, costly production of launching an initiative at a new target market. Assessing attractiveness, focusing and gathering intelligence about receptivity (basically validating the market’s attractiveness) is not a big deal.

For each of the following questions, start with the phrase, “To what degree..” and score on a scale of 1 to 10.

… does this market exhibit sustainable economic, demographic or regulatory momentum?

… do customers in this market have a compelling problem that can be solved by our product?

… does our product offer a clear competitive advantage in solving that problem for the customer?

… does solving that problem reap a meaningful reward for the customer – economically, emotionally or physically

… is there a competitive leadership position available in the market?

… can we easily reach customers in this market?

… is there strong intra-market communication between peers in this market?

… can we sell into this market profitably?

These criteria will provide a starting point for a relative attractiveness assessment. You may wish to use more, or different, criteria.

Doing it:

It is common in slow economic times for sales teams to increase their activity in trying to sell to a wider range of prospects, try to penetrate large accounts that competitors own, campaign for price concessions to win new business and chase opportunities that are a marginal match for the firm’s capabilities. As driven by the survival instinct as these activities may be and as resourceful as they may appear on the surface, they are typically non-productive. In fact, they can be hugely counter-productive. The results of such efforts are typically depressed profitability, unsustainable success and trapping the firm into businesses and/or products it cannot maintain. Such activities can also dilute customer support resources, jerk around product development and operations resources, damage the firm’s quality reputation, start price-wars and cause a distraction of the business from what it does best. It can take many years to recover from the negative consequences of impulsive sales actions taken in the fever and panic of an economic crisis.

I state the case in a dire scenario because the real key to success is focus and feedback. Focus means staying focused on the target market you decided upon using the criteria above. Feedback means monitoring progress, receptivity and success frequently and adjusting quickly.

The discipline of a limited number (one or two) highly focused initiatives targeted at specific new markets, followed by rapid sales feedback, has consistently produced good results. When followed-through with discipline the results have been significant. Our subject firms have won new clients, avoided price competition, found new ways to provide additional value to customers, increased selling prices, reduced the hysteria associated with trying to respond to every quote that comes within 100 yards of the door, achieved double-digit increases in win rates and made rapid strategic adjustments that saved them from economic disasters.

The approach we suggest requires the adoption of three basic process disciplines: 1) rapid market assessment, 2) rapid and focused launch initiatives and 3) disciplined and frequent field sales feedback. While these disciplines may be different than what your organization has used in the past, they are easy to learn, cost-effective to deploy and yield a higher probability of success – in both challenging and healthy economic times.

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We invite you to read our related blog posts “Diagnosing Stalled Sales” and “Finding New Markets“

Don’t Give Up on the Top Line (no matter how tough things get)

Posted on August 8, 2011August 25, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

The Most Common Reaction to Economic Turmoil: Expense Reduction

There’s a line in the Willie Nelson tune “Nothing I can do about it now” that goes like this:

I’ve survived every situation
Knowin’ when to freeze and when to run.

Two years into the current economic downturn, there is plenty of evidence that companies are trying to do both. Firms continue to take aggressive steps in reaction to reduced demand. Cisco just announced layoffs of 6,500 employees. Other big name firms such as Merck, Lockheed and Boston Scientific also announced staff reductions. Borders finally threw in the towel, closing its last 400+ stores. It once had 1,200 outlets, employing more than 35,000. And most recently, HSBC indicated it will let go between 25,000 and 30,000 employees.

Small to mid-sized company layoffs typically don’t make a lot of news. But a quick informal survey at the other end of the corporate spectrum, showed that smaller firms, particularly those without an international earnings contribution to their performance, have experienced a down-turn in revenues of anywhere from 25% to 40% from their peaks in 2007 and 2008. They’ve aggressively cut expenses and conducted layoffs as well.

Of course, there are exceptions. Companies with specialized innovations targeted at niche market problems are doing much better than firms depending only on their traditional products and markets. But by-and-large, corporate “economic adjustment” initiatives focus on operational expense reductions.

Instability in Europe continues, the DOW is down more than 1,500 points since July 1, unemployment and underemployment in the U.S. remain high, Asian demand for US exports will decline as a reflection of reduced US demand for their imports, and the US Congress is mired in finger-pointing politics vis-à-vis problem solving. Under these economic conditions, can you blame anyone for immediately reaching in the first aid kit for the expense reduction tourniquet?

Taking a Second Look at Revenue Upside Options:

Stemming the bleeding is crucial under these economic conditions. However, in the frenzy to cut expenses, the potential for revenue upsides gets short shrift. Why? Expense reductions can be swift and easily seen in reduced cash outlays. Revenue upside strategies, on the other hand, even in good times, carry with them risk. Financial executives and conservative CEOs will opt, almost every time, for the less risky, faster impact, sure thing. Revenue-upside options fall to the side of the road.

Nonetheless, there are a handful of strategies for realizing revenue upside in a down economy. Due diligence and responsible managerial behavior should compel managers in serious economic times like these to, at least consider the revenue-upside options that follow. An impulsive, headlong rush into any one of them would simply be unwise. Rather, we suggest a serious vetting exercise, followed by execution of the best.

Upside Potential #1: Market Focus

Focus is typically rejected, out of hand in tough times. When the business is hurting why would anyone in their right mind “narrow” their focus? Shouldn’t we be casting the net further?

Not necessarily.

Spending time to reconsider the market segmentation of your customer base and the unique conditions extant in each of those segments helps you identify areas that might benefit from additional focus and re-deployed resources.

Not all the market segments served by your business are affected equally by the economic winds. Not all market segments have adopted your products and services to the same degree. Not all market segments are afflicted with the same competitive infestation. And most importantly, not all segments of the market receive the same economic value from your product offering.

For example: Let’s say that, in general, customers in a particular market segment garner a 10X economic benefit from your product in a relatively short time frame. That is, the economic return on what they buy from you is 10 times more than they paid. In other segments, the return may be less. It is more likely that focusing additional effort in the market for which your product yields the highest return to the customer would have a higher probability of success than expenditures in other areas where that return is less.

In contrast, broad-brush marketing initiatives intended to expand a firm’s reach are less efficient because they: a) dilute resources, b) dilute the economic return differentiation of your brand, c) begin to encompass more competition in each new segment and d) don’t adequately leverage your greatest successes. Focus is likely to be more effective and profitable.

Upside Potential #2: Pricing

This alternative has two options: 1) holding prices and 2) increasing prices

Holding Prices: The competitive nature of tough economic times inevitably presents opportunities for price cutting, particularly as a means to close hotly-contested deals. The reasons for this are many. First, weak, undifferentiated competitors are starting price wars. Secondly it’s the easiest option for the sales person and requires the least amount of sales effort. Third, it typically doesn’t make much of an impact on sales commissions, unless the commission is tied directly to the profit margin of a deal. Fourth, sales people are not trained or disciplined enough to sell on value. Fifth, in tough times customers (particularly purchasing managers) know they can request price concessions and “work” one vendor against another. Finally, owners and managers frequently don’t have enough good first-hand information or a well-enough established relationship with the key customer decision-makers to mitigate price discussions.

The truth is, allowing price cutting, even in tough economic times, is really an admission of several foundational weaknesses. The product is may not be providing a differentiated economic value to the customer (wrong target customer). Management may be out of touch with customer decision makers. The strategic market segment focus is one that has too much competition. Or managers don’t understand how to direct their sales team on how to avoid price-based competition.

In a mini-workshop, I asked CEOs of small to mid-sized B2B firms to imagine their best product being purchased and used by their best customer. I then asked them to pencil out what they thought the 3 year economic impact would be on their customer – that impact being the amount of profit their product would drop to the customer’s bottom line. For example, if their product was of very high quality, what would the economic impact be to the customer for purchasing the high quality product vs. a lower quality product from one of their competitors?

In this 15-minute exercise, not one CEO was able to arrive at an answer. If the CEO can’t describe it, how can they expect their sales people to? If the sales people can’t explain it, how can price-based competition be avoided?

Raising Prices: A number of years ago we were working with a client whose new product adoption was stalled, gaining virtually no traction in the marketplace no matter their continuing effort to increase distribution agreements. It was priced 3X higher than the most popular competitive approach. Of course, the sales people thought their job was futile and continually pleaded for significant price reductions.

A brief assessment showed that a certain portion of the tiny installed base went to a segment of the market whose needs were unique. Only this product could meet those needs, for a myriad of reasons. (Interestingly, initially the market had found my client, not the other way around.)

Rather than reduce prices we suggested the business refocus their efforts to this one segment, highlighting to potential customers the unique fit and match of the product to their unique needs. After focus and redeployment of time, money and energy (no increases), adoption took off, with no accompanying price reduction.

Now some people would call this just another version of Revenue-Upside, Option #1 – Market Focus. That’s largely true. However, the rest of the story is that while focused and penetrating this particular segment, customers began to request additional features and functions – which in turn led to increased selling prices. In the end, the average price point rose to 4X its original. (Remember, the original was 3X the competitive approach).

At no time was there a need for a price reduction and the business turned completely around, growing much faster than anyone had anticipated. By focusing on market segments where the economic value and unique characteristics of your products are understood, the opportunity exists for improved performance products at increased prices.

Upside Potential #3: Fragmenting Offerings

Sometimes fragmenting your offering into more affordable pieces makes it more digestible for clients. Increased revenue accrues when decisions that otherwise would have been delayed can be made with smaller financial commitment by the customer. This provides your firm at least a small amount of revenue vs. none. It also sets the groundwork for follow-on purchases.

When fragmenting your offering, selling prices of the fragmented pieces need to be set so that the sum of all the pieces of the fragmented offering sum up to more than what would be charged were the product/service sold all at once. Is this “sum-of-the-parts pricing” gouging? No. The costs of doing business associated with the planning, coordination, administrative management and handling of multiple orders justifies the increased pricing – and you can be honest with customers about that price penalty. They understand that it costs more to do business that way and might even be encouraged to buy larger chunks to avoid paying that premium.

Depending on the type of product or service, fragments or phases might be identified as any on the following list: planning, design, testing, tooling, manufacturing, test, integration, set-up, training, service and/or recycling. The bottom line is that fragmenting your offerings should make it easier for customers to buy something rather than not buying a more costly nothing.

Upside Potential #4: Adding Services to Product Lines

Have you noticed that, these days, nearly every durable-good purchase comes with an offer to buy a replacement or service contract? Last week I bought a 16GB PC thumb-drive for $27.99. The checkout clerk asked if I wanted to buy the replacement warranty. I declined, but certain types of renewable service warranties can be very profitable add-ons.

Upside Potential #5: Acquisition or Licensing

Opportunity to acquire businesses and intellectual property during major economic downturns increase as companies struggle and values are depressed. However, as with any acquisition at any time, there is reason to be cautious.

Buying a competitor’s business to capture their customer base (barring SEC denial) is not necessarily a coup, even at a bargain price. Your competitor’s customers may be receiving a technologically obsolete, poor quality or functionally inferior solution. In such a circumstance, you would be wiser to boost investment in your own product development effort vis-à-vis buying your competitor.

Opportunities for acquiring intellectual property may arise more frequently in tough economic times as well, as challenged companies look to find sources of cash. Turning IP (purchased or licensed) into products and then into cash, however, doesn’t typically happen quickly. A better way to ensure a speedy IP-to-cash transition is to acquire IP that can be integrated quickly into your current product offerings, increasing their functionality, their value to the customer and their selling price.

Just Don’t Do Something, Sit There! Think!

In most businesses the ratio of execution-driven people to strategic-thinking people is low. Of the two roads to survival in a downturn, expense reduction and top-line, the expense reduction road is best travelled by the tactically driven, the top-line by the strategy-minded.

The strategy-minded are often those at the top of the organizational pyramid. So, it’s only self-discipline and personal values that will compel people at the top to consider revenue upside.

George C Scott in the movie Patton said this to his troops.

“I don’t ever want to hear we’re holding anything. We are advancing all the time.”

Be brave. Seriously consider the revenue-upside options in the face of adversity.

*****

Learn more about the QMP Marketing and Sales Engine and how it can revitalize both top and bottom-line growth

The Big Deal: Sorting Fact from Fiction in the Sales Pipeline

Posted on August 4, 2011August 25, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

The Big Deal

Every sales manager, business owner, general manager and CFO, at some point in their careers, have been entertained by the overly-enthusiastic sales person describing the “Big Deal” that was about to close. And unless those managers were completely naïve and inexperienced, a twinge of skepticism should have arisen. Was what they were hearing, in fact, real?

When hearing about a “Big Deal”, managers must confront the challenge of what to do about it – ignore it, or prepare. Preparation may comprise some or all of capacity planning, inventory commitment, equipment capacity increases, cash planning and workforce planning. Failure to anticipate these factors can result in an inability to deliver to the customer what they want, on time, should the deal actually break. On the other hand, a knee-jerk financial commitment based on the potential of the deal, can leave the firm with a lot of unusable inventory should the deal fail to materialize.

So, how does a manager judge the reality of the “Big Deal”?

Here’s an old joke that serves as a guideline for the most skeptical.

Question: How do you know when a sales person is exaggerating?

Answer: His lips are moving.

While this approach may appear easy, it is not dependable. There is a better way to sort through the reality of the “Big Deal”.

Ask Six Basic Questions:

The likelihood of closing a “Big Deal’ can be assessed by answering six basic questions. As you answer these questions, keep in mind is that the answers to the first five are only valid from the customer’s perspective.

Question 1: Compelling Need

To what degree is the prospective customer confronted with a real, compelling problem or challenge that needs to be addressed quickly or can the customer do nothing?

Research has shown that between 30% to 50% of all opportunities in a sales person’s pipeline never actually close. The customer simply never buys anything. These are called “No-Decision” outcomes. The sales person seems to be the only one convinced that there is a customer compelling need that will result in a buy. No matter how convinced your sales person may be that the customer has a need, the only opinion that counts is the customer’s.

To further pursue this line of inquiry, you might continue by asking: Is there a deadline by which the customer problem must be fixed? Is there a significant economic penalty, safety consideration or other obvious consequence if the customer problem isn’t fixed? Another revealing question is, “Can the customer do nothing?” Or, “What is the economic or other consequence to the customer of doing nothing?”

The lack of a compelling need, leads to the large number of “no Decisions” in a sales persons pipeline.

Question 2: Economic Benefit

To what degree is there a significant economic benefit to the customer if the problem / challenge is resolved or the need filled?

Businesses, too often evaluate the economic value of a sales opportunity only from their own perspective. How much revenue or commissions will it bring to us? While this is a good way to evaluate attractiveness in terms of the bottom line, how much money your firm can make is completely irrelevant to the likelihood of the deal closing. In most business-to-business environments, decisions to buy are made by customers based only on the degree to which “they” believe that “they” will make money. In other words, there must be a significant economic benefit in their favor, well beyond the cost of purchasing your product or service, for the deal to close. The economic balance must be disproportionate in favor of the customer. This is the basis or all ROI.

Question 3: Match

To what degree do your capabilities (products and services), precisely and completely meet the needs of the customer?

As convinced as you may be that you have a significantly well matched solution which solves every dimension of their challenge, you only score closing points if the customer believes it.

Question 4: Competitive Position

To what degree does the customer believe your solution is the best of all the alternatives available?

While a number of competitors may provide a reasonable match to the problem or need, all alternatives are rarely equal. Let me repeat for emphasis. Convinced as you may be that you have a significantly advantaged solution, you only score points if the customer believes it with the same conviction. And unless you can translate that differentiated position into a differentiated economic benefit to the customer, you miss a great opportunity to solidify your advantage in the customer’s eyes.

Question 5: Champion

To what degree do you have a high-level, influential and authoritative decision maker believing your solution is best?

A “Champion” is a person in the customer organization that likes your solution, believes it is in the best interest of their company to select it, wants it to win and is working toward that end. All Champions are not equal. The only Champions that really count are those with the highest composite score on three dimensions: Influence, Power and Affinity.

Influence is the degree to which they can influence a decision. The degree of influence may arise from technical expertise, seniority, family influence, organizational rank or some other source. Authority is the degree to which they can unilaterally make the decision and Affinity is the degree to which they are attracted to your solution.

Champions that are likeable, who like you, and are always willing to have lunch with you, are not “real” Champions unless they score high on the Influence-Power-Affinity scales.

Question 6: Leverage:

To what degree does winning this opportunity bring additional benefit to your company?

This is the only one of the six criteria that; a) doesn’t increase (or decrease) the credibility of the opportunity and b) is only important from your perspective, not the customer’s.

Leverage may exist in several forms: straight out earnings, a new first-time market capability, a first-win at a new account or a technological breakthrough that can be leveraged to other customers.

Even though it’s not customer-centric this factor is good to evaluate, so you can assess the benefit of concentrating and/or redeploying assets to winning this “Big Deal”

Getting to Reality:

The word confrontation can have a bad connotation, but for purposes of analyzing the “Big Deal”, let’s agree that confrontation simply means getting to the reality of it in a respectful, yet determined, way.

Some managers find it difficult to confront a sales person about the reality of a “Big Deal”, particularly when others are in the room. Presumably this is out of respect, to avoid the embarrassment of seeming confrontational, or to avoid appearing not to trust an employee. One way or another, these emotional barriers to assessing reality need to be overcome.

A highly respected local CEO was participating in panel on Performance Management recently. He was asked how he avoided hesitating and how he handled the discomfort associated with confronting these and other kinds of important issues. His response, “I was always more afraid of the consequences of not confronting the issues.”

There’s typically a lot riding on a “Big Deal”. The six areas of inquiry listed above will help you and your organization stay focused, concentrate where the opportunity is truly best and allocate scarce resources appropriately.

*****

Learn more about the QMP sales process for accurately qualifying and closing sales opportunities.