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One of the paradoxes of marketing and sales is "monetizing relationships."
We typically hate to be sold. The harder the sell, the more we hate it. However, we typically like to buy. Any person who has had an experience of spending their own money knows this. Many of us have been blessed to be able to buy something from someone we found ourselves liking.
This is no accident.
On the other side of that transaction, the sales person has to build trust, rapport, peer-to-peer credibility, some level of personal connection. An emotional connection. A relationship, if you like. That goes triple for the B2B complex sale, where a company is buying big-ticket, high-risk items from another company. (I believe that it's also true in many other types of sales where the stakes are much lower.)
We who are selling stuff want people who are in the market to buy to be confiding their problems to us. Unless they trust us to let us in on those problems and help them solve those problems, nothing is going to get bought. At least not from us.
Why would a buyer trust me [a marketer, sales person, company PR representative, executive leader, etc]? Because he or she believes at some level I am willing and able to act in their interests as well as, and possibly even counter to my own (at least in the short term). There's some human vulnerability going on. They tell me what's really going on, and I tell them what I really can and can't do to address their situation. Because we have a relationship.
Now, in addition to all of this, the sales person is also on the hook to monetize that relationship.
How can I maintain your trust (which implies vulnerability) and still do things that move you toward buying something from my company (which implies control)?
If you've ever wondered why so many startups fail, it's because selling is a lot harder than it looks. Most startups are not run by people who can sell. And sales (including repeat business from happy customers) are what keep companies in business.
If you ever wondered why great sales people make a lot of money, it's because the ability to monetize a relationship is worth a lot of money.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Someone sent me a Seth Godin post, so I will blog about it now.
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The post:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.html
The B2B sale is a relationship sale. What Seth describes is selling into referrals. This is the way most businesses actually grow. Better than 70% of sales come from or through existing customers in many companies and industries.
To scale up in that sales environment, the key is applying a process mentality to figure out what activities further those relationships. What activities can we control that speed the buying decision? What are we doing that unintentionally lengthens the sales cycle? Identify problems. Try to discover root causes. Test ways to improve.
Relationships are relationships - can't standardize them. But human nature is human nature, too. This allows some activities (and not-doing certain activities) to be adopted as standard practices. See also: behavioral finance.
Dumping a lot of volume into a leaky process just creates a bunch of work and chasing after the wind. So, like Seth says, start with small investments. Look for things to try that you can afford to repeat if they work and won't kill you if they don't. Pull back fast from activities that don't give sustainable results - either tweak them and try again, or move on. Find a few small things that seem to help. Do more of those. As repeatable results become evident, begin to add volume to the process inputs.
The post:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.html
The B2B sale is a relationship sale. What Seth describes is selling into referrals. This is the way most businesses actually grow. Better than 70% of sales come from or through existing customers in many companies and industries.
To scale up in that sales environment, the key is applying a process mentality to figure out what activities further those relationships. What activities can we control that speed the buying decision? What are we doing that unintentionally lengthens the sales cycle? Identify problems. Try to discover root causes. Test ways to improve.
Relationships are relationships - can't standardize them. But human nature is human nature, too. This allows some activities (and not-doing certain activities) to be adopted as standard practices. See also: behavioral finance.
Dumping a lot of volume into a leaky process just creates a bunch of work and chasing after the wind. So, like Seth says, start with small investments. Look for things to try that you can afford to repeat if they work and won't kill you if they don't. Pull back fast from activities that don't give sustainable results - either tweak them and try again, or move on. Find a few small things that seem to help. Do more of those. As repeatable results become evident, begin to add volume to the process inputs.
Labels:
accountability,
analytics,
behavioral finance,
grassroots,
process
Friday, April 03, 2009
Buying is irrational...like investing
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Tip: for marketing inspiration, read up on common traps in investment management psychology and behavioral finance. The same emotional wiring kicks in just about any time people buy stuff.
A quick example from both the Miller Heiman world of sales training and the Warren Buffett world of investment management:
Emotional capital.
Just like monetary capital, emotional capital is a finite resource. The more I expend, the more committed I am to my course of action. This can make an obviously bad deal difficult to unwind. It means that the further two (or more) parties go into a dealmaking process, the more either (or all) will be tempted to act against their own interests in order to reach a given outcome.
This is reportedly why Warren Buffett has played a lot of card games in the course of his career. He saves up emotional (and financial) capital for good deals by ignoring most deals as much as possible.
Savvy buyers and savvy sellers walk away as quickly as possible from deals, because they know that this conserves emotional capital. It helps hold down the error rate. We're only human, after all.
Related article
Tip: for marketing inspiration, read up on common traps in investment management psychology and behavioral finance. The same emotional wiring kicks in just about any time people buy stuff.
A quick example from both the Miller Heiman world of sales training and the Warren Buffett world of investment management:
Emotional capital.
Just like monetary capital, emotional capital is a finite resource. The more I expend, the more committed I am to my course of action. This can make an obviously bad deal difficult to unwind. It means that the further two (or more) parties go into a dealmaking process, the more either (or all) will be tempted to act against their own interests in order to reach a given outcome.
This is reportedly why Warren Buffett has played a lot of card games in the course of his career. He saves up emotional (and financial) capital for good deals by ignoring most deals as much as possible.
Savvy buyers and savvy sellers walk away as quickly as possible from deals, because they know that this conserves emotional capital. It helps hold down the error rate. We're only human, after all.
Related article
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