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Marketing Cart Before the Sales Horse
| Talk About What They Need, Not What You Sell |
By Sarah Woods |
Several years ago, a successful banking services firm hired me to
create marketing materials to support their efforts on sales calls to
major banks and at industry trade shows. They were growing fast, and I
was looking forward to helping them reach their growth projections.
I spent an afternoon with the CEO of the firm, who also happened to be
their top sales person; sitting in on sales phone calls and learning
about their products and process. I sat in on their weekly sales
meetings where the management team and sales reps discussed major
target accounts and how to land them.
What I learned was that the CEO had hired me to put the proverbial cart
before the horse. He knew his sales organization had a pressing need
for materials to leave with the client, but what he hadn’t noticed was
that each and every major prospect was being handled differently, and
there was little to no sales process his reps could follow to get to
the close.
After the first contact, what would they send out? How would they
tailor their mailing to the specific client’s needs? Should they
schedule a meeting at their offices? What if their contact wasn’t the
final decision-maker? Should they bring in their CEO for the first
meeting?
To cover their bases, they had built a sizable PowerPoint slide deck
that was sent to every prospect early in the sales process. The idea
was that somewhere in the 125 slides, they’d hit on something the
client was interested in.
As an “outsider,” I was quickly able to identify the company’s
challenge. While the company was the only one offering the products and
services they had developed and they were on the verge of expanding
nationally because of the referrals they were receiving from well
served clients, something clearly wasn’t working.
Why wasn’t it enough to create brochures with well written copy that
described their products and services, laid out in sharp graphics with
their logo prominently positioned?
Here’s why: Your prospect only cares about what they need, not about what you have.
Many companies get caught in the trap of offering too much information
to their audience in the hopes that they will search through it and
find something meaningful to them. Have you ever asked yourself, “what
if we don’t mention that we offer that? Will they assume we can’t do
that for them, and look elsewhere?”...
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More about Sarah Woods
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