Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Episode 5 - Business Skill 3 - Market and Sell - Part 1


Podcast Episode 5: Sales & Marketing Show Notes - AppsJack Capable Communities Podcast

 

SECTION 1 - WHAT IS SALES AND MARKETING?


  • Introductions to Andy Scott and Alan Andersen
  • Marketing gets people interested in being *willing* to hand over their money
  • Sales extracts the money and seals the deal
  • Sales and marketing has been around forever
  • The channels have changed
  • There's still oftentimes a need for face-to-face interactions for some large transactions
  • There's a cap or threshold for some transaction sizes
  • The trust of the buyer is a big issue
  • There's also a threshold at the bottom (cost of entry) which has gone way down for suppliers/producers
  • Is the playing field per se "level" now for the little guy to compete with the big guy?
  • Andy: you can't compete on basic requirements and expections.  Need to compete on guarantees, outcomes, promises and value.
  • Hard to look at sales and marketing exclusively without considering delivery, supply chain management, customer service and the rest of business.
  • Doing the marketing and sales strategy activities should define the actual scope, size scale of delivery (size of the project).
  • Size and scale of a company determines the size and scale of go to market strategies and approaches.
  • Need to get extremely clear on the target audience for the product overall and project/phase.


SECTION 2 - MARKETING STRATEGY AND ACTION PLANS


  • Steps include market research, determining target markets, your positioning and uniqueness, competitive analysis, methods and how (marketing mix), budgeting, measurement of success, improvement plan
  • Still need to create a business structure/rhythm/cadence and probably have an outside party review performance on a regular cadence to identify what to adjust
  • Need to look at the present activity system (what's happening) and identify what to change / do more.
  • Marketing may not always be the most important measure, depending on the maturity of the business.
  • Andy: "I don't want to help someone provide a bad service."
  • Alan: People should "sell the right thing".
  • What are the buying criteria?
  • Pre- and post-facto lenses, being proactive vs. responding.  Need to do both.


SECTION 3 - SALES AND SELLING, SALES STRATEGY


  • Alan: The brain is Teflon for anything positive and Velcro for anything negative.
  • Buyers do need to beware and do their own due dilligence.
  • Buyers should seek to find a place of trust.
  • Need to differentiate to overcome people's objections about usales and selling (giving up their money).
  • People want to be able to purchase without risk.
  • Alan: "Need to design guarantees and the brand promise in such a way that you can absolutely deliver."
  • Important for the sales person to see what they do as literally helping get value in exchange for money (an ROI).  Get more out that when they put in.
  • Overpromising and underdelivering is common for some employees in employment interviews.
  • Sales strategy is defined by Alan, incentive structure and rewards are discussed.
  • Charisma seems to be quite required for good sales
  • Eric lists attributes of good sales people.  Actions and behaviors: help, educate, inform, inspire, empathize, facilitate  Attributes: honest, forthcoming, competent, confident.
  • Issue between the good attributes of a person and the performance context that could create issues.
  • Andy lists 5 types of sales people: relationship builders, hard workers/grinders, lone wolves, problem solvers, challengers.
  • Challengers were the best because they: understood customer well, understood customer's business well, educated, understood fit between their product and customer's needs, understood customer's buying process, pushed back and created some degree of tension.
  • Customer loyalty driven by "their rep offers unique perspective", "rep helps navigate through alternatives", "rep helps avoid problems", "rep helps them through the buying process", "rep has support of full organization behind them".
  • Andy: "There's more to it than (just) relationships."
  • Alan: "Go out and be helpful."
  • Help people understand how the process and experience will be going forward.  Help them feel and be comfortable.
  • Need to move beyond relationship as cliche.

 


Check out this episode!

Posted by at