- From a reader: [The] Suspense is killing me. Geoff, PLEASE tell me you will address the alternative to selling a thing/solution soon (ie the proper way to describe the value you are selling.) Is it stories about customer success? Is it positioning a system as a “tool” or “means to an end result?” I agree with what you are saying and face the challenge of obliterating the word “solution” from the marketing collateral I help write every day.
Excellent question.
Decision-makers seldom, if ever, read brochures or product data sheets or any of the traditional marketing materials. If they’re needed at all, such materials should be specifically targeted at lower-level folk (gatekeepers and speedbumps) who worry about such details. When a company decides to sell M2M — which is where the big B2B money is located — they’re making a decision to operate on a level where mass-produced marketing materials are ineffective. What’s important in these high-level sales situations are:
- The credibility of the sales rep as a potential manager of a function. This comes from the education, background, experience and appearance that the rep brings to the table. The rep must look, act, talk and think like a manager who would be responsible for that function inside the customer’s organization.
- The reputation of the firm as a provider of a function more effectively than if provided within the customer’s own firm. This reputation comes primarily from colleague-to-colleague referrals rather than specific marketing materials.
Here’s an example. Suppose you’re selling Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Nearly every CRM vendor in business today sells CRM as a “solution” using brochures, canned presentations, and websites to communicate the technical superiority of their product or “solution.” They typically take a bottoms-up approach and either try to get line sales managers or IT managers interested in their product, and then help them sell the software purchase up the line, in order to secure IT budget dollars.
Contrast that with the approach taken by BearingPoint, the $3.4 billion-a-year management consulting firm. Their CRM practice comes into an account with the message (backed by testimonials and references) that they can make the client’s selling process more productive. They study the customer’s current sales process and technology, provide recommendations for improvements, and then implement those improvements through a combination of sales training and technology. They use whatever outside-built products (like Oracle Siebel) that are required to achieve that goal. Essentially, BearingPoint takes ownership of the cultural and technological change effort that would otherwise need to be driven from within, had the customer elected to simply purchase a CRM license.
Needless to say, BearingPoint sales reps call at the CSO level and above. To satisfy the product-oriented thinking in the lower levels (like the IT manager who’s concerned with compatibility), they simply use the product brochures supplied by the CRM vendors. The software “solution” is thus a detail — an element in an entire programme of outsourced change management that leads towards greater sales productivity.
Does this mean that software companies can’t make money selling just software? Not at all. But since CRM is not yet a plug-and-play application and typically involves the redefinition of sales processes, extensive training and behavioral changes, CRM vendors must either:
- Supply those services themselves and become an outsourcer of the “sales process transformation and evolution” function.
- Become an “outsourcer” of CRM software to organizations (like BearingPoint) who are themselves outsourcers of that function.
- Depend upon the customer to provide the bulk of that function themselves, drawing upon the customers (probably meager) expertise.
The third option, which is practically universal among CRM vendors, carries a large risk of failure. Customers wrongly think that adding a CRM “solution” is like adding word processing or email, and have no idea of how to make the changes in sales process required to make CRM into an effective tool. Not surprisingly, CRM implementations have an high failure rate (i.e. > 50 percent), and CRM software often ends up as shelfware that never gets used.
The correct sales and marketing approach for each of the above strategies is:
- M2M selling at the executive level inside customer accounts. All marketing materials will be customized — like RFP responses. Referral selling will play the major lead generation role.
- M2M selling at the Value Added Reseller (VAR) level. Marketing materials will center around the vendor’s ability to support the VAR in the selling and delivery of the “sales process transformation and evolution” function.
- Pretend that CRM is a plug-and-play application, convince the customer of same, cross your fingers every time a system goes in, and pray that the entire project doesn’t turn into a gigantic PR disaster.
About 90 percent of the CRM vendors have product-oriented marketing programs appropriate to support strategy 3, but are trying to pursue either strategy 1 or 2, or a combination of both. That’s why CRM marketing tends to be so ineffective, a point I’ve made repeatedly in this blog.
Now back to your question. Obliterating the word “solution” from your marketing materials isn’t going to help, if you’re still trying to pursue a product-driven market strategy. What’s important isn’t what words are used in the brochure but how your company’s capabilities are to be positioned in the minds of decision-makers. Does that help?
