Have you seen this hilarious video of how B-to-B negotiations would play out in “real world” situations?
We’re almost so used to B-to-B purchasing demands that we forget how ridiculous they are. This video gives us a chance to step back and laugh, but, it doesn’t change the reality of your customers’ buying habits.
What can you do? Do these battles always have to occur? According to The Corporate Executive Board’s Integrated Sales Executive Council, only 9% of brand preference and loyalty decisions are based on price. Meanwhile, 53% of a prospect’s decision to choose you comes from their sales experience.
So you are saying I’ve got a chance
What these percentages mean is… in a world where everyone sounds and looks the same, your prospects and customers are saying: “Would someone please cut through the clutter and present a clear path to value that will result if I partner with your company?”
Unfortunately, too many salespeople wallow in parity with their presentations and proposals, leaving customers with the perception that everyone is a commodity. Freeing them up to bring the hammer of B-to-B purchasing down.
Avoid these ugly and ridiculous confrontations by preemptively showing the contrast between you and your prospect’s status quo, as well as you and your competition.
Value Lives in the Contrast between Pain and Gain
Here are three easy ways you can use contrast to show value:
1) Focus on what you do that’s unique: Don’t waste precious conversation time playing the “me too” game. If you’re in a job interview, would you talk about how your resume is exactly the same as the guy who interviewed before you? Of course not! Your prospect already knows that your solution is on par with others in the industry… that’s why they agreed to talk with you in the first place. Instead, identify some unmet or under-served customer pain and talk about what you do uniquely or better to turn that pain into gain.
2) Before and After Stories: When presenting references, don’t just show off the end results your customers realized using your solution. That’s only half the story. You need to show contrast. What was your customer’s life before they implemented your solution and then after? Showcasing the pain first provides the foundation for understanding what value your solution brings by helping the customer visualize their current situation and see it getting better.
3) Use colors and space to make emotional connections: Don’t stop with the content of your message. Make sure the way you deliver your uniqueness and value is engaging and memorable.Work the room… or the web conference. Remember, value lies in the contrast between the pain and the gain, so make the contrast as apparent as possible. Use different flipcharts placed at opposite sides of the room, or split your PowerPoint slide in two, to show the pain and the gain. And use different colored markers or different colored fonts. In Western cultures, use red for bad and green or black for good. (Adjust the colors based on what significance they carry in your culture.)
Don’t fall for the same old B-to-B buying tactics. Establish your solution as the one your prospects need by leading with your uniqueness, clearly showing the contrast between you, the status quo, and your competition, and proving it with a before and after customer story that makes your value come alive.
It’s amazing what you can achieve when you’ve got a high performer showing you exactly what to do. Check out this 30-second clip that shows the impact of coaching and modeling — at the moment it’s needed.
Salespeople are no exception. In a recent survey, Corporate Visions found that 87% of salespeople want more field-level, just-in-time coaching from their managers, especially in differentiating their solution from the competition.[1]
The best learning takes place outside the classroom
While investing in a good training program help reps meet and exceed quota, even the best training fades over time. In fact, 87% of what’s learned in sales training classrooms is forgotten in just four weeks.[2] So, just-in-time coaching and reinforcement is critical to maximize the often substantial investments companies make in training their sales forces.
As evidence, two recent studies from Pfizer and American Express confirm that managerial involvement, post-training, has a positive effect on learning, retention and impact. Participants who achieved significantly better results after training were four times (4X) more likely to have had a conversation with their managers about how to apply their newly acquired skills once they got back in the field. [3]
Unfortunately, we hear that front-line managers are increasingly overwhelmed with other expectations. On top of quota pressures, they are tasked with translating company-wide initiatives to field-level tactics, HR management obligations, and maximizing pipeline health.
This leaves them with precious little time to provide specific coaching, reinforcement and examples of how to create and deliver your best message to your prospects and customers.
Here are four examples of best practices we’ve seen to help in this area:
One hour a week – That’s all. Set aside one hour, early on Monday morning to get your teams on a conference call. Each week, have one of the sales people in your territory walk the team through a recent or upcoming presentation they are going to make. Use a web presentation tool to share the content. This gives the manager an opportunity to coach, as well as peers to provide input. Together, you can learn each week how to sharpen your customer messages for greater impact.
Best practice examples – With FLIP™ video technology, the advent of YouTube™, along with simple on-demand, multi-media presentation tools such as Brainshark (www.brainshark.com) there’s no excuse for not capturing some of the best messaging practices and examples and sharing them throughout the company. You don’t need fancy, expensive videos or flash demos to get this great coaching content online.
Tribal knowledge sharing – Web 2.0 is a fancy term for social networking, which is a fancy term for what used to be a “copy all” and “reply all” email request in the field. Problem is that many of these one-off archeological digs for stuff that works in the field were rarely captured and managed as company assets. So, a lot of these became redundant requests. You need to look at technologies such as Savo (www.savogroup.com) and StreetSmarts (www.streetsmarts.com) that are harnessing the collective would-be, one-off genius of the organization and making it easily available to everyone who needs it.
Field message coaching – How important is it that you get your biggest presentations, pitches and proposals right? Some companies are designating regional field marketing, sales or training resources to come alongside field sales managers and serve as the designated expert on making sure your customer messaging is working in the field, inside the deals, where it counts. It’s a big commitment, but companies are justifying it by tracking the improvements in deal sizes and close rates on the opportunities these experts work on versus the ones they don’t and seeing trackable improvements.
Here’s some just-in-time coaching help for Power Messaging alumni:
Corporate Visions recently launched Power Connection, a just-in-time coaching and messaging reinforcement tool designed exclusively to help you master Power Messaging as part of your sales craft. It’s a combination of modular, multi-media refreshers (5-15 minutes) on each of the key Power Messaging techniques, a set of additional practice examples and helpful hints, along with access to a Corporate Visions messaging expert, when you need it.
Check it out now: http://www.brainshark.com/cvi/PC4PM4Alumni?tx=Feed
The Top 5 Sales Readiness Initiatives with the Greatest Impact
Sales Readiness means many things. Lots of initiatives can fall under that banner.
Wouldn’t it be great to know which five (5) have the greatest impact on Sales performance?
The world’s largest online training community, TrainingIndustry.com, recently released the findings of its major Sales Readiness survey. In it they identified 14 “sales readiness” initiatives, and then asked the respondents to rate them based on perceived impact.
Here are the top 5:
Value Propositions –creating differentiated positioning that helps create competitive separation
Product/Service Information – providing accessible, usable solution information not just feature/function
Executive Communications – help communicating with executive buyers not just user influencers
Overcoming Common Sales Objections – reframe concerns to take them off the table or turn to advantage
What do all of these top sales readiness initiatives have in common? They all revolve around creating and delivering great sales or customer messaging. In other words…messages matter most when it comes to impacting sales performance. What are you doing to fine-tune your messaging? What is your organization doing to leverage their messaging as a strategic asset?
Here’s a quick, 5-minute executive summary review of those findings to help you focus on the Top 5 Sales Readiness.
Can’t click on the image above? Copy and paste this link into your browser:
There’s an ever growing challenge on the horizon that is threatening sales effectiveness in the area of sales messaging. It’s the prolific expansion of web meetings and presentations. Getting on-line to present to a faceless group of people as you stare at your computer and talk into the telephone is a daunting task for sales people who have come to rely on their abilities to present in front of a customer, face-to-face.
You need a different perspective.
Many of the charming, personal techniques you use in-person go out the window. You can’t just think about you — the author of the presentation. You need to re-think the perspective of the person on the other end of the presentation. How is this coming across to her and her colleagues?
In one of my favorite movies, “Dead Poets Society,” the instructor, played by Robin Williams, challenges his students to break out of the traditional approach and view their work from a different perspective.
It’s the same with your online presentations. You need to think about the impact on the audience on the other end. They are staring at their computer screen, waiting to be inspired and pulled away from doing their email.
Whether you’re a newbie or a veteran of online messaging consider these 10 tips and take advantage of the opportunity you have to inspire your audience.
1.Don’t rush in to your slides or demo. Do something different, first, to grab their attention. Then take some time to establish rapport. Ask some questions. Get your audience talking. One of the biggest mistakes people make when doing web-based presentations is rushing into presenter mode and not having a conversation with the people on the other side.
2.It’s NOT about your solution. Often, not knowing your prospect’s needs can lead to information dumping. Make sure that your solution, technology or capabilities are proof points to the message you’re going to convey, and are not the entire presentation. Your presentation should reinforce no more than three key, customer-focused messages; even if the presentation is a technical demo. Make sure what you’re showing is relevant to the prospect’s needs.
3.Visual cues set the pace. The pace of the presentation is not determined by how quickly you talk. It is determined entirely by how quickly you move from slide to slide. If you leave a slide up for over 60 seconds, without any visual changes, the customer perceives the presentation as slow and boring. Make it invigorating by changing visuals, often. (For an example see the video at the bottom of this article.)
4.Use more photos and videos. A picture’s worth a 1000 words and will help tell your story. Use large photos, not clip-art, to support and tell your message. A great picture or rich graphics will grab the attention of your customers on the other side of the computer and will keep them engaged with your message. A movie clip or commercial that supports and reinforces your message is a great way to grab attention. A well placed video will connect with your customers and go along way in supporting your message.
(Not all web presentation vendors support video and some just don’t do it very effectively – so verify, test and practice ahead of time. Also, there are copyright laws you need to abide by, so check with you legal department.)
Sites like www.freefoto.com are great resources to search.
(Make sure you always check the usage rights, so you’re not violating copyright law when downloading and using images.)
5.Use more slides. Really, MORE slides?! Notice it doesn’t say more content!
Rather than having a slide with 4-5 messages and “sitting on it” for 5-10 minutes while delivering, have only one key thought per slide supported by an image. You’ll increase the number of slides, but you’ll make it easier for your customers to connect to your message and remember it. (You can even try having one word per slide, check out the video at the bottom for an example.)
Don’t get caught into the mundane, traditional and predictable. Be different.
Food for Thought
Watch this presentation, pay attention to the delivery style, not the content, and think about how it differs from what you’re doing today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E
Very different than your typical presentation, isn’t it? Did you notice any techniques you maybe able to use in your next online presentation? I’m not suggesting you should start presenting exactly like this! But this quick and witty delivery style is very effective at keeping attention.
There’s an ever growing challenge on the horizon that is threatening sales effectiveness in the area of sales messaging. It’s the prolific expansion of web meetings and presentations. Getting on-line to present to a faceless group of people as you stare at your computer and talk into the telephone is a daunting task for sales people who have come to rely on their abilities to present in front of a customer, face-to-face.
You need a different perspective.
Many of the charming, personal techniques you use in-person go out the window. You can’t just think about you — the author of the presentation. You need to re-think the perspective of the person on the other end of the presentation. How is this coming across to her and her colleagues?
In one of my favorite movies, “Dead Poets Society,” the instructor, played by Robin Williams, challenges his students to break out of the traditional approach and view their work from a different perspective.
It’s the same with your online presentations. You need to think about the impact on the audience on the other end. They are staring at their computer screen, waiting to be inspired and pulled away from doing their email.
Whether you’re a newbie or a veteran of online messaging consider these 5 tips and take advantage of the opportunity you have to inspire your audience.
Don’t rush in to your slides or demo. Do something different, first, to grab their attention. Then take some time to establish rapport. Ask some questions. Get your audience talking. One of the biggest mistakes people make when doing web-based presentations is rushing into “presenter mode” and not having a conversation with the people on the other side.
It’s NOT about your solution. Often, not knowing your prospect’s needs can lead to information dumping. Make sure that your solution, technology or capabilities are proof points to the message you’re going to convey, and are not the entire presentation. Your presentation should reinforce no more than three key, customer-focused messages; even if the presentation is a technical demo. Make sure what you’re showing is relevant to the prospect’s needs.
Visual cues set the pace. The pace of the presentation is not determined by how quickly you talk. It is determined entirely by how quickly you move from slide to slide. If you leave a slide up for over 60 seconds, without any visual changes, the customer perceives the presentation as slow and boring. Make it invigorating by changing visuals, often. (For an example see the video at the bottom of this article.)
Use more photos and videos. A picture’s worth a 1,000 words and will help tell your story. Use large photos, not clip-art, to support and tell your message. A great picture or rich graphics will grab the attention of your customers on the other side of the computer and will keep them engaged with your message. Sites like www.freefoto.com are great resources to search.
A movie clip or commercial that reinforces your message is a great way to grab attention, too. A well placed video will connect with your customers and go along way in supporting your message.
(Not all web presentation vendors support video and some just don’t do it very effectively – so verify, test and practice ahead of time. Also, there are copyright laws you need to abide by, so check with you legal department. Make sure you always check the usage rights, so you’re not violating copyright law when using images and videos.)
Use more slides. Really, MORE slides?! Notice it doesn’t say more content! Rather than having a slide with 4-5 messages and “sitting on it” for 5-10 minutes while delivering, have only one key thought per slide supported by an image. You’ll increase the number of slides, but you’ll make it easier for your customers to connect to your message and remember it. (You can even try having one word per slide, check out the video at the bottom for an example.)
Don’t get caught into the mundane, traditional and predictable. Be different.
Food for Thought: An inspirational example
Watch this presentation, pay attention to the delivery style, not the content, and think about how it differs from what you’re doing today.
Very different than your typical presentation, isn’t it? Did you notice any techniques you may be able to use in your next online presentation? I’m not suggesting you should start presenting exactly like this! But this quick and witty delivery style is very effective at keeping attention and transferring information.
The Messaging Feed contains easily digestible ideas you can immediately incorporate into your messaging, presentations and other client connections.
More about Corporate Visions >>
2010 Executive Conference
MARKETING & SALES ALIGNMENT EXECUTIVE FORUM
OCTOBER 7-8, 2010 in Lake Tahoe
>> Free Marketing and Sales Alignment Audit with every registration.
>> Keynote by Geoff Colvin, author of "Talent is Overrated" and "The Upside of the Downturn".
>> Real-World Case Studies presented by ADP, CA, Dell, GE, NCR.
Share This Post
Network with Corporate Visions Alumni and, if you like, you can expand your professional network to include the people you know and trust.
Join Now. Currently only Alumni (past participants of the training or consulting engagements) are eligible to enter the group.
What's on your peers' wishlists for 2010 initiatives? Better value propositions, messages, and customer conversation skills training beat out sales methodology, CRM implementation and training, and branding efforts combined.
Posted by Corporate Visions Inc. 
