The Sales Blog Customize Training Consultancy

Creating the Marketing Mindset

Jul 23rd, 2010
by Customize.
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There are numerous diplomas, degree courses and masters programmes all aimed at maintaining the status of marketing as an academic subject, although in truth, marketing is largely a vocational area of study. Marketing should be viewed as a practical activity that explores the nature of customer expectations and requirements, so that organisations can attempt to meet these demands better than anybody else.

The Objective of Marketing Training

The role of marketing training is therefore to create a Marketing Mindset: a unique way of looking at the dynamics of the relationship between buyer and seller in order to identify and maintain a competitive advantage.

In today’s business environment, there are five key elements involved in the development of this marketing mindset:

The Objective of Marketing Training: The marketing Mindset

Bringing the voice of the customer into the organisation

The importance of this element cannot be over-stated. Too few marketing organisations get their hands dirty by actually talking to customers about how they use products, what they think of them and how they compare rival offerings.

It should be a rule that marketing people interview at least six customers a year to understand their views and to incorporate them into marketing decision making.

Creating a unique place in the customers mind

The essence of marketing is to create a positive perception in the mind of the organisations target customers.

A clear understanding of the totality of the organisations customer proposition is the starting point for the identification of those aspects of the competitive offering that are unique, that add most customer value and are the most difficult for competitors to copy. Such things are the holy grail of marketing

Delivering the required customer experience

All areas of the organisation must work to deliver the required customer experience.

This includes billing and customer service which often deliver a very different message to that being communicated by marketing and sales.

There is often a problem that the customer promise is very different from the reality the customer experiences. Nothing hurts the reputation of a seller more than these mixed messages coming from different areas of the organisation.

Exploiting the new communications media

Marketing communications have changed forever. The rise of electronic media and social networking creates a very different communications environment for all organisations.

All selling organisations are now judged by what they actually do rather than on what they proclaim they will do. It is not longer possible for organisations to hide poor product performance or substandard customer service; as such information is now flashed around the world at the speed of light.

Renewing the product & service offering

Product and service renewal is the lifeblood of any business and must be focused on the requirements and expectations of customers, rather than on the ego and whim of individuals within the selling organisation.

New product development must therefore be focused on creating real customer value that can be easily compared with rival offerings

Implications for Success

The creation of a Marketing Mindset is the necessary starting point in the organisations ability to deliver Customer Value, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty – all of which are directly linked to long-term success and profitability.

Rennie Gould

Customize, July 2010

Posted in: marketing, marketing training.
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Managing Sales Performance

Jul 23rd, 2010
by Customize.
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The sales management role is the most important job in the sales. It is responsible for developing the sales team to create outstanding sales performance.

Lack of Professional Development

Unfortunately, the training of sales managers has been largely ignored, and they have been left to their own devices to manage sales activity in the best way they can, often without formal training or professional development.

As a result, most sales managers use only a small proportion of the tools available to them and concentrate purely on the achievement of targets and on the delivery of the numbers.

This means they only focus on the ends of sales performance, but largely ignore the means, which is how these targets and numbers come to be delivered in the first place. What is required therefore, is for sales managers to focus on the means of sales performance as well as ends.

Sales Management Tasks

Those elements most responsible for sales performance include leadership, motivation, coaching and team development, which together create the necessary environment for sales success.

This can be illustrated in the diagram below:

sales management tasks: managing sales performance

Managing Sales Performance

Vision

Sales management must create a sense of direction or VISION, which articulates the Overall Goals of the organisation and the role of sales in helping to achieve them. They must then provide Leadership to ensure these goals are translated into the appropriate sales actions and behaviours.

Mission

Management then need to instil a sense of MISSION, which is how the vision will be achieved. The mission includes the Values & Culture adopted by the sales organisation and the Sales Strategy which specifies how target customers will be approached and engaged.

People

Ultimately, it is the actions of PEOPLE that determine sales success and therefore management must ensure that all members of the sales team understand how they contribute to this success. This implies the definition of Key Tasks & Roles, but also recognises the need for Structure and the importance of Teams.

Performance

People also need to know what levels of PERFORMANCE are expected of them.  This is not just in terms of Targets & Activity (The Ends), but also in terms of those key sales Skills & Behaviours (The Means) needed to be successful.

Motivation

Having created a sense of vision and mission and ensured that salespeople understand their role, sales management needs to understand the art of MOTIVATION, particularly the use of Incentives & Rewards that the nature of the Psychological Contract that exists between each salesperson and the organisation.

Development

Finally, sales management are responsible for the DEVELOPMENT of the sales team and should provide Performance Feedback on a regular and early basis to enable salespeople to manage their own performance. Sales managers must also be skilled at Coaching to improve the knowledge, skills & behaviours of the sales team.

The combination of all the above management tools and techniques will ensure that sales managers utilise all means available to create outstanding sales performance.

Customize Sales Management Training, July 2010

Posted in: sales management.
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The Customer Journey

Jul 23rd, 2010
by Customize.
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As essential pre-requisite of sales strategy is an understanding of how targeted customers make buying decisions. This Customer Journey will influence the sales process that ultimately seeks to match customer requirements and expectations with the selling organisation’s own product and service offering.

Typically, the Customer Journey has a number of essential stages as illustrated below. At every stage in this journey, the sales organisation needs to know: What happens? What’s important? & Who’s involved?

This Journey can vary in length from a matter of minutes in some cases, to several months in others.

Need

Customers have requirements and needs. These could be negatively based in order to avoid some issue or problem, or positively based to achieve some ambition or aspiration.

The sales organisation should identify what requirements their chosen customers typically have and how these typically surface in the buying organisation.

Search

Customers then look around for what might be available to help them meet their requirements. This process of Search might include the Internet, it might include visits to exhibitions and trade shows, it might include formal requests for information and might include discussions with other customers.

The typical ways that customers obtain their information should be reviewed as this information will influence how the selling organisation should communicate their products and services in the marketplace.

Additionally, the Decision Making Unit (DMU) should be identified: Who is involved in the purchase process during its various stages, together with their specific business and personal agendas, which may be different.

Evaluation

After the search phase, customers will then evaluate the best purchase option by comparing rival offerings.

It is sometimes possible to influence this decision making criteria by engaging with the customer at an early stage and by encouraging the buying organisation to create its ideal solution around the sellers own proposition.

Decision

Finally a purchase decision will be made. Although much of the decision will be made on objective technical and performance data, the decision will also be influenced by subjective perceptions of the selling organisation.

These subjective perceptions derive from the selling organisations reputation and overall positioning in the marketplace, together with any perceived values inherent in the selling organisations brand.

Review

Organisations review their purchase decisions from time to time, some every year. These reviews take into account a number of factors: The actual performance of the product or service in question, the after-sales or service experience and how the selling organisation has conducted itself.

Additionally, competitive offerings may well be evaluated again to see if they present any advantages over their existing solution.

The upshot is that selling organisations need to be just as attentive after the sale as they were whilst the sale was being made.

Rennie Gould

Customize Sales Strategy Consulting, July 2010

Posted in: sales strategy.
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Strategic Sales for Business Growth

Jun 17th, 2010
by Customize.
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In his new book, Strategic Customer Management, Professor Nigel Piercy from Warwick Business School, champions the role of Sales in the business hierarchy when he writes:

For many companies, the strategic management of customers & customer relationships has become a higher priority than conventional marketing activities… The challenge is to reposition sales as a core part of a company’s competitiveness, where the sales organisation is closely integrated into a company’s business strategy.

So why has the sales function suddenly become more important, rather than being seen as just a poor relation of Marketing, hidden away in one of the 4P’s?

Possibly as a realisation that the most important relationships are those the business has with its customers and that it is the sales organisation, particularly in the b2b arena, that is the key area where these relationships take place.

What is Strategic Sales?

Given that most customers can now serve themselves online or by telephone, organisations should now target resources on those important customers that provide them with most of their existing business and nurture those that promise to be equally important in the longer term.

This is the arena of Strategic Sales and requires a number of interlinking elements to ensure both the Creation and the Management of a strategic sales organisation.

The Strategic Sales Value Chain below, illustrates all the elements involved in Creating and Managing Strategic Sales.

Creating Strategic Sales

There are three essential elements for Creating Strategic Sales.

The Value Proposition

This represents the entire scope of the organisation’s total product & service offering & how this forms the basis of the organisation’s unique value proposition & competitive positioning.

Customer Strategy

This reflects the understanding of customers, their requirements and expectations, relative importance & how they make buying decisions.

Sales Process

The insights gained from the development of the value proposition & from an understanding of customers, should be reflected in how the sales organisation engages with customers and specify whether activity management or account planning is appropriate.

Managing Strategic Sales

The Strategic Sales Value Chain then identifies those elements for Managing Strategic Sales to give sales strategy the best possible environment in which to succeed.

Vision & Mission

These elements recognise the key sales management role in providing the leadership and direction for the sales organisation as a whole.

People & Performance

This element specifies the people required to implement the sales strategy, together with nature of the performance required to be judged successful.

Motivation & Development

This final element ensures that sales management provides the necessary support to create a high performance sales organisation with highly motivated individuals and teams.

Implications for the Organisation

In this strategic sales environment, salespeople will need to be better educated and better trained to relate to customers in a more strategic way. They will develop specific value propositions for individual customers and need the necessary internal clout to ensure their own organisations deliver on customer requirements and expectations.

These strategic sales assets need to be managed in a more enlightened way, as the old command and control systems will fail miserably to inspire and motivate such people.

Finally, there will need to be more emphasis on recruitment, motivation, coaching, training and team development in order to foster the necessary supporting environment for strategic sales professionals to flourish and to deliver what customers really want.

Rennie Gould

Customize, June 2010

Posted in: sales strategy, strategic sales.
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Reading List & Star Ratings

May 30th, 2010
by Customize.
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Business & Marketing

The Marketing Imagination *****

Theodore Levitt
The original and best for what marketing is all about.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing *****

Al Ries & Jack Trout
A practical take on marketing – a little book, full of good stuff.

The Long Tail *****

Chris Anderson
Discusses how electronic means of production and distribution have changed the communications / commercial world.

Positioning: The battle for your mind ***

Al Ries & Jack Trout
Further development on ideas in their marketing book.

Principles of Marketing ***

Philip Kotler
If you want a big, fat textbook, this is it!

The Tipping Point ***

Malcolm Gladwell
Discusses how ideas, trends and social behaviours develop.

Organisational Behaviour & Economics

Organizational Psychology *****

Edgar Schein
Analysis of how people interact in an organisational context.

Naked Economics *****

Charles Wheelan
A modern look at how economics can explain how things work.

Rennie Gould
www.customizeuktraining.com

Posted in: marketing, marketing training, reading list, resources.
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