Sales Intelligence: Fixing the Pain Points with Value

It is said that a company makes a purchase decision for one of two reasons. Either, the company has a problem that is painful enough to be solved or the presented solution offers so much value that it would be foolish not to purchase. This is the most basic of sales. But, the problem that exists over time is that marketing believes it understands what the value proposition SHOULD be when, in fact, the prospect sees things in an entirely different light. In fact, the prospect could not care less what you think the value of your solution is. They are only concerned with how the solution will apply to their own problems within the workings of their own company.

Have you ever undertaken a 3rd-party evaluation of your value proposition and compared the findings with your current messages? How often are you able to identify the factors that were most important to the prospect in the decision-making process?
Benefits
At their root, businesses don’t make purchases (especially substantial purchases) without either having a strong pain that needs to be fixed or pursing a vision that will bring great benefit. The vendor that solves the problem most elegantly is likely to win the value proposition battle.


Marketing
While most marketing departments focus their message on the accepted value proposition, few of them look to recent sales successes to discover those specific nuggets that are making the difference for their company right now. It’s one thing to understand which messages play well among the marketplace. It’s another level completely to know what is tipping the prospects’ decisions in your favor.

Sales
With this intelligence, sales can bring pressure to bear directly on the pain points. Communication will revolve around the highest areas of value with peripheral differentiators being brought into play. The best sales professionals know how to communicate value. Now, you can provide more consistency.

Recommendations

Look to your current new client base and understand what caused them to choose you over the competition.

Interview those companies that chose the competition. Discover their perceptions of all value propositions in play and refine your message. Then, push it down to every sales professional in the organization

Consider the fact that Primary Intelligence generates more sale intelligence with measurable ROI.

And, if you have an thoughts along these lines, let's chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

Sales Intelligence - Misalignment between You and Your Prospect

The greatest chance of sales success for your company is to propose a solution that clearly matches the needs of your prospect. In a perfect world, the only thing that would matter would be the product, service or solution your company offers. But often, the sales process hits a snag.

Where you thought an opportunity was headed down the right path, suddenly, it is stalled, or worse… you are informed that your role in the sales process has ended. This is a reality of sales, but do you ever really get the feedback you need to understand what happened and why? How well is your sales management able to identify when something unusual happens during the sales process to help or hinder your chances of success?

Benefits
For an organization to succeed, intensely managing service quality is absolutely essential. It is only through customer alignment that the organization is on track toward a single, shared vision of customer focus and customer value—a vision that energizes people and the organization to accomplish extraordinary things. The point at which your company ceases to show tight alignment with the prospect during the sales process is likely to be accompanied by the sound of a door closing.

Marketing
Alignment is one of the most important goals of marketing. When marketing can show how the company’s solutions parallel the needs of the prospect, lead generation efforts will function more efficiently, competitive forces will be weakened and commoditization avoided.

Sales
Sales professionals often know when they have lost a sales opportunity, but they rarely receive consistent, straightforward feedback telling them where their effort weakened and the competition surged ahead. Feedback on the moment of truth will help increase the likelihood of a positive result in a similar future situation.



Recommendations

Provide new clients and lost prospects the opportunity to discuss the event horizon of the opportunity.

Be ready to listen without defending misunderstood messages.

Primary Intelligence typically includes this question line in its Win Loss Analysis solution.

Perhaps, we should chat about a process that would help you find answers to this type of question. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence Newsletter – Make Intelligence Relevant

In this edition, Adam Dunford makes the case for intelligence that makes a difference. The blog entry backs up the idea by showing a case of intelligence that wasn’t effective, and wasn’t going to be from the start.

If you would like to subscribe to this free newsletter, simply send a request to newsletter@primaryintelligence.com with your name and email address. You can also register for the same subscription online in the margin of any of the stories below.

Cover Story
Justifying Your Existence (and CI's too!)
By Adam Dunford, Primary IntelligenceSo you've spent the last several weeks and months gathering your CI data. In your presentation, you nail every important point on each of your 40 slides and can answer every question you get asked. As you finish, you hear it's the "best CI presentation ever". A few days later, fresh off your triumph, you ask for the budget to expand your CI program, only to be told, "It's interesting stuff, but we got what we needed." Ouch.(For more, click here)

BlogCentral
You Couldn't Make Competitive Intelligence So Irrelevant if you Tried
If your idea of effective competitive intelligence is gathering a bit of information, consolidating that information into a brief doc (perhaps on an attractive company letterhead) and sending that doc off to a distribution list, please stop reading. Go back to your cube, surf some more web sites and live a happy life...(For more, click here)
The A-List Archive

Sun Microsystems Decides that Two Companies are Better than One
Originally Published in February 2005.
Sun Microsystems, which was already outsourcing many of its HR business processes, including its 401(k) plan, payroll, and benefits administration, wanted to explore the idea of outsourcing additional HR functions...(For more, click here)

Competitive Intelligence and Decision Cycles

How long has a prospect been in your pipeline? What are the odds that your company will make the sale after time has elapsed and is the likelihood increasing? And, do you even know how long it takes the average prospect in a given industry to make a decision? Your CRM/SFA doesn’t really tell you. You only know from the point that you are engaged; not the actual moment that the evaluation begins.

Benefits
How does a prospect make a decision? Do different industries or company segments take different amounts of time to come to a conclusion? How does your company decide when to maintain an engagement or withdraw from a low probability opportunity? The answer to these questions can save your sales department large sums by identifying those opportunities that are likely to move to decision vs. eternal shoppers.

Marketing
With a constant flux of prospects in a dynamic marketplace, it is difficult to remember that each prospect begins with the end in mind. To each company, the buying process is a discreet event that needs to be completed to solve a specific problem. If Marketing can shed light on this aspect of the buying process, your company can work to more effectively meet the evaluation needs of different companies in various industries.

Sales
The advantages are twofold: First, knowing the window of time when an opportunity is likely to close in your favor helps to identify when the pipeline is too full of non-producing fluff. Second, with this type of information, you can identify key events in the sales process that correlate with positive decisions.

Recommendations

Communicate with prospects to determine their start/end points in the buying process

The prospect may have engaged your company later in the sales cycle. Data from your CRM/SFA may not be accurate enough to show evaluation cycles.

Talk to Primary Intelligence. Our Win Loss Analysis and Account Retention solutions typically demonstrate where the key decision points occur in different industry and company size segments.

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)

Sales Intelligence - What Problem are You Expected to Solve?

As a sales professional, your solution is only as valuable as the problem it solves. In a given opportunity, how well are you personally able to identify the business need that prompted them to shop for a new or replacement coverage plan?

Benefits
Addressing the cores needs and values of potential clients has a direct impact on sales success. It’s one thing for a client to face a choice between a group of competitors and quite another if one of the options is presented with an understanding of her core needs. This approach gives sales people a definite competitive advantage.

Marketing
Individually or in aggregate, do you understand what the prospect wants? Marketing organizations that do their homework on this point outperform those that don’t by presenting a solution that helps to define the need.

Sales
The sales organization tends to live squarely in the middle of understanding needs. Sales organizations that don’t practice this part of their craft flounder, failing to understand the need before attempting to provide a “square peg in round hole” solution. Understanding why similar companies decided to evaluate vendors helps sales professionals with context for future discussions.

Recommendations

Use post-decision interviews with recent opportunities that entered the pipeline to understand what your prospects want and what they are not receiving.

Using the same audience, find out why they include BCBS on their initial vendor list. What are the signals that BCBS send that create a general level of interest in the marketplace.

Be cautious of relying too heavily on sales professionals, agents or brokers for this information. Their attention is usually focused more on the middle and endgame than these initial sales stages.

If you can't consistently answer this question about all of your accounts, consider Win Loss Analysis from Primary Intelligence to create a consistent flow of information. Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)