New Primary Intelligence Corporate Website

This week, I have to give big kudos to our design department, and especially to Mark Larson who had a vision for our company website and usability. While our previous site was very usable and conveyed our value well, it was very product oriented. Sometimes, visitors had to work too hard to figure out how we fit into their world.

Now, the website has been broken down into three major categories:

1. Who we help
2. What we offer
3. Who we are

Under each of these, visitors will find a great deal of information that is focused right on their needs.

1 – Who we help – Here, you will find information for C-Level Executives, Sales Managers, Marketing, Sales Professionals and Market Research professionals.

2 – What we offer – Our intelligence services are easy to access and understand. Here, visitors will find information on our competitive intelligence and sales intelligence services such as Win Loss, Sales Confidence Index, Target Prospecting, Competitive Analysis and Client Retention

3 – Who we are – Provides information about our company and thought leadership. Here, visitors can see our newsletters, blogs, articles, webinars and information about our company.

The whole redesign was accomplished with the goal of helping business professionals find solutions more quickly. We hope you’ll give us a visit and let us know what you think. (http://www.primary-intel.com/)

You can leave a comment to this blog entry or send me an email with your thoughts. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sales Intelligence – Increase Market Share (Learn from Past Mistakes)

The sales world is an interesting place, especially in a complex sales environment. So much effort on the part of so many people comes together to accomplish the goal of selling a measure of value to a prospective company. In reality, the only thing a business can do is create revenue and profit. The services and products offered are the tools to accomplish the goal of the business entity.

But things don’t always work out as you would like. Prospects often zig when you expect them to zag. Sometimes, a lost sales opportunity looks like wasted time and expense. But, there is much more to a lost sale than lost time. There are lessons to be learned. Improvements in performance should be made. If mistakes caused the sales opportunity to die, those errors should be corrected. Otherwise, they will end up being very costly mistakes indeed.

Most companies perform some sort of sales debrief with the sales reps involved in the lost opportunity. That’s a start, I suppose. But, really? Shouldn’t you spend your time with the prospect, understanding your company’s performance from their point of view? After all, they have the money. Who cares what the sales reps say? The only perception that matters is that of the prospect. So, ask yourself, “How well would you be able to understand how to win a similar account in the future based on your experience in this recent opportunity?”

Benefits
Market share is built one account at a time. An increase in sales win rate today will equate to significant increases in market share in the near future. Great companies are those that learn from past experiences and translate them into future successes.


Marketing
Understanding those things that work most consistently in different industries and segments ultimately provides your company with the ability to execute more effectively. Would you rather be a company that follows best practices in your industry or that establishes them?

Sales
The least likely outcome of most sales losses is a thorough, honest debrief from the prospect. By the time most deals are done, the sales professional has moved on to the next opportunities and the prospect is unlikely to proactively reach out on their own to provide feedback on the sales performance. However, a consistent feedback program has the potential to show a sales professional how to be more effective next time around.

Recommendations

Make time to follow up on a large percentage of recent sales opportunities

Establish an expectation with sales management that these efforts will be distributed to the sales professionals

Review sample win loss opportunity profiles from Primary Intelligence to determine whether the intelligence is useful and packaged in a professional format.

Sales Intelligence - Competitive Positioning

Especially in B2B sales, most companies that sell products, services or solutions have to compete against other vendors to gain a new client. Everyone in the deal works to differentiate themselves. Not only do you need to know how to position your product in the prospect’s company. You should also know how to anticipate the messages provided by competitive vendors in order to give your efforts the best chance. In your sales opportunities, how well are you able to identify what the competition says to position itself specifically against you?

Benefits
Differentiation: the first step in avoiding the curse of commoditization. Your company seeks to demonstrate value propositions that help move price further down the decision chain, but that’s not all. Proper positioning of your company and offering provide an advantage over the competition. Just remember that each of your competitors has the same goal. Knowing how each competitor positions itself against you reveals strategic direction, differentiation, and their perception of the current “hot buttons.”

Marketing
Gauge the effectiveness of your message versus the competition’s. Watch for changes in their positioning over time while monitoring the effectiveness of your value proposition. Understanding how your prospects react to your message and that of the competition provides an immediate tactical advantage.

Sales
What is the word on the street about you and the competition? With intelligence geared toward revealing the positioning of your competition, you gain the upper hand. Use this knowledge to beat the competition to the punch and steal their thunder. Know how to weaken their position before they arrive to the opportunity.

Recommendations

1. Use primary research methods to communicate with prospects
2. Prospects may not think like marketers or business intelligence specialists. Make sure to ask specific questions
3. “When [competitor] demonstrated its [feature], what did it say to justify the ROI?”
4. “What kind of emphasis did [competitor] put on its new [solution]?”
5. Engage Primary Intelligence to work with recent prospects to uncover the real message. A third-party vendor can usually approach this topic more easily than your company.

Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sales Intelligence - Competitive Positioning

Especially in B2B sales, most companies that sell products, services or solutions have to compete against other vendors to gain a new client. Everyone in the deal works to differentiate themselves. Not only do you need to know how to position your product in the prospect’s company. You should also know how to anticipate the messages provided by competitive vendors in order to give your efforts the best chance. In your sales opportunities, how well are you able to identify what the competition says to position itself specifically against you?

Benefits
Differentiation: the first step in avoiding the curse of commoditization. Your company seeks to demonstrate value propositions that help move price further down the decision chain, but that’s not all. Proper positioning of your company and offering provide an advantage over the competition. Just remember that each of your competitors has the same goal. Knowing how each competitor positions itself against you reveals strategic direction, differentiation, and their perception of the current “hot buttons.”

Marketing
Gauge the effectiveness of your message versus the competition’s. Watch for changes in their positioning over time while monitoring the effectiveness of your value proposition. Understanding how your prospects react to your message and that of the competition provides an immediate tactical advantage.

Sales
What is the word on the street about you and the competition? With intelligence geared toward revealing the positioning of your competition, you gain the upper hand. Use this knowledge to beat the competition to the punch and steal their thunder. Know how to weaken their position before they arrive to the opportunity.

Recommendations

1. Use primary research methods to communicate with prospects
2. Prospects may not think like marketers or business intelligence specialists. Make sure to ask specific questions
3. “When [competitor] demonstrated its [feature], what did it say to justify the ROI?”
4. “What kind of emphasis did [competitor] put on its new [solution]?”
5. Engage Primary Intelligence to work with recent prospects to uncover the real message. A third-party vendor can usually approach this topic more easily than your company.

Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Use Competitive Intelligence to Determine Positioning in Sales and Marketing

In a standard win loss project, one of the exercises we at Primary Intelligence perform during the interview process is to allow the respondent (a recent decision-maker that evaluated our client) rank the top three company, product and sales performance areas. The result is often a chart that looks like the one below:

Quickly, our client was able to see how to rework the sales message to be more effective. They changed their talk from customization and implementation to technology, functionality and integration. They used those topics to build the value proposition and outmaneuver the competition on cost.

It should be noted that, in this case, our client was one of the higher-end vendors. If they addressed price in the first sentence, they rarely made it to value.

Interestingly, Technology was rarely rated as the #1 criteria, but it was the second most mentioned criteria in the list overall.

Do you have this kind of visibility into your sales and marketing messages? If not, let’s do a couple of post-sales analyses free for you. Give me a call and let’s set something up. (Chris, 801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Why are Sales People so Stupid (or are they)?

I recently read a blog posting from last year by Scott Santucci where he talks to marketers about their perception of sales people in general. It starts like this:

"Come on, admit it.

"It’s what you think, isn’t it?

"If I had a dollar for every time I heard “our sales people lack the skills
or ability to (insert any of the following: cross-sell, sell higher, sell to
value, get ahead of the RFP)” I would be a very rich person. But is this really
the problem?"

Then, he goes on to point out how sales people don't live in the simple world that many marketers might assume. Just trying to manage sales messaging and collateral can be much more complex than might be assumed at first:

"Assuming your company has 10 products that all can be sold by your sales force, lets try to determine how much information a sales person must process and manage on any given account they are pursing.

•10 products
•5 key value propositions for each product (50 different value propositions)
•Messages must be delivered to 5 different client stakeholders (250 different messages)
•Each value propositions has a set of 5 questions to uncover and they are different from stakeholder to stakeholder (the degree of difference is not important) – 1250 different messages
•Each value proposition has one competitive knockoff per competitor and you have 4 key competitors (50 different value propositions x 4 competitors = 200 +1250 = 1,450 different messages)
•Each product has a minimum of 5 different collateral pieces that exist about various aspects of the product (5 collateral pieces X 10 products = 50 different collateral pieces to locate, which equals 1,500 different information elements to manage)
•Each stakeholder has a set of 5 personal goals and 5 business goals that must be matched with their corresponding value propositions (5 personal goals + 5 business goals X 5 stakeholders = 50 unique goals + 1,500 information elements = 1,550 information elements.

"So, in this scenario, a salesperson is asked to manage over 1,500 different forms of information for each account they deal with."

So, what is the takeaway? Mr. Santucci suggests that marketing needs to better understand what the sales team is up against. Marketing should produce tools that will help simplify (rather than complicate) the sales process.

Personally, I think that marketing and sales need tighter integration. Put some marketing people in the sales department for a couple of weeks. Let them attempt to use the tools and messages that sound so good in marketing's ivory towers. When they return, they will probably have a better appreciation for the needed materials. They might also want to return occasionally to sales as a source of inspiration.

And, don't let the sales team off the hook. Let them spend a little time in marketing. Some cross-pollination and discussion will do them good, too.

In the end, both teams have to work hand in hand. It's all about selling. And, if anyone in sales or marketing forgets that, big obstacles are looming on the horizon.

Happy selling, and let me know what you think. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050, www.primary-intel.com)

Why Sales Professionals Don’t Use Competitive Intelligence

Every sales professional in the world may provide a different answer to the subject question. But, overall, sales professionals themselves may be mostly to blame for the lack of use of good competitive intelligence.

1-Sales Professionals already know everything – This is probably true. But, it isn’t necessarily good.

2-Intelligence programs are run by marketing – This doesn’t inherently make the data evil, but decontamination procedures are time-consuming and costly.

3-Current intelligence isn’t available in a convenient format – Who has time to hunt down info when we’re too busy selling

4-Sales Reps are creatures of habit, not learning – I’m not implying that sales professionals aren’t smart, but the general methodology of prospect, build relationships, present value, close contracts (lather, rinse, repeat) doesn’t include much in the way of intelligence gathering.

But, as you refine your craft, you have to look for better ways to differentiate yourself. To do so, competitive intelligence (the right info delivered at the right time) can give you the advantage.

Even if you don’t sell competitively, intelligence will show you the highest value propositions to create higher conversion rates. If you Value Sell, S.P.I.N Sell, VITO or Solution Sell (or whatever your methodology), some very simple feedback mechanisms will refine your message and increase your effectiveness.

I have some tips. You might be interested. Contact me.

Skills + Knowledge = Power

I read a sales newsletter by Shamus Brown. He sends a topic each day, which is pretty ambitious if he is writing all of his content himself.

On March 21st, he wrote about The 3 Biggest Assets of Your Sales Career

He lists Selling Skills, Industry Knowledge and Customer Contacts. I wouldn't dare argue with the value of any of those 3.

I would expand on the second point, Industry Knowledge. There are so many facets to this idea and you can't rely on yourself to explore them all. I mean, if you spent your time collecting all of the data that could be categorized as "useful for gaining an advantage, when would you sell?

Value selling makes the most sense to me. Identify a pain that is causing grief (or a benefit that would be VERY significant) and show the solution. Make your clients/prospects repeat back to you the benefit to be gained and the consequence of not using your solution.

And, if you really want to move ahead, make sure that your organization supports you with additional marketing data to tell you precisely how you can most effectively differentiate yourself.

If you are serious about improving your effectiveness, don't forget the benefit of intelligence.

(Primary Intelligence would be happy to help you)