It is certainly true that the life blood of any company is its sales; I would not want to make a fetish of this as some companies do to the extent that everybody else is made to feel a second class citizen. Clearly, the well run organisation focuses on sales and sees all the other departments as crucial in supporting that activity. Equally, and more pertinently for this debate, I don’t want to fall into the other trap either: namely, of subordinating sales to the marketing function. So far as all non- web businesses are concerned it seems to me that there can be a massive over-reliance on marketing that can be fatal in the long and not so long run.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that there is a lot of theory and academia around marketing that can bamboozle the unwary into thinking they are making progress, thinking they are working on the business, when all they are doing is crossing ‘i’ and dotting ‘t’s in trying to formulate the perfect brand and ideal marketing collateral. Don’t get me wrong, getting a great brand, and getting first-rate collateral is a major spur to sales, on or off the web. But I have seen individuals and companies spend so much time trying to get all this right, they go bust before the sales occur that might have saved them.
Compared with marketing, sales is dirty and practical. Yes, there are some theories and models which are useful, but ultimately it’s as simple, and as challenging, as having a product or service and asking someone else if they wish to purchase it.
There is one question I have found that constantly helps the sales process, however, and which I have also found that marketers frequently have no good answer to. It is for a company or an individual to ask themselves this: give yourself three reasons why anybody should buy from you? And I have found that in answering this question, 95% of the time individuals and organisations make the classic mistake of talking features rather than benefits and outcomes. Further, they frequently too relapse into talking about themselves and their own greatness rather than having any sense of what’s in it for the purchaser. I guess this is a natural enough tendency: we get excited by what we are offering, failing to see how we need to see it from the consumer’s point of view.
So, typically, when I ask individuals why should I buy from you the answers I get are: because I/we are the best, because I/we have been in business for 25 years, because I/we are certified/qualified/have an MBA/PhD Doktortitel kaufen, because I/we are quality, even because I/we go the extra mile for our customers. Yes, but what does going the extra mile actually mean?
There are five great words that everyone in sales needs to engrave within their sentence structures if they want to hit benefits: improve, increase, gain, save, and reduce. And these five words need to link to true benefits, not to features. Take a training company offering to engage or motivate the staff of their clients. They say: we increase the motivation of your staff. Is that good? Or, is this better: we increase the motivation of your staff, typically by 10-25% when we run our programs. Yet neither are any real good, since motivation is mostly a feature for companies and not a benefit they actually seek.
The benefit of motivation is either performance, or productivity or profit
Those are what the CEO is interested in. And so the real reason why somebody should buy from such a company would be: because I can increase the productivity of your staff, typically when we run the program, by 10-25%. Now, that grabs the attention of the CEO if that – lack of productivity – is the specific pain they are experiencing.
Coming back, then to the five words: we link them (increase, improve, gain) with performance, productivity or profits (or sales), or we link them (reduce, save) with efficiencies and cost-cuttings.
Why should I buy from you? I can typically increase your sales by 15% within 6 months; I can improve the quality of delivery of your key staff by 10% in three months; I can help you gain 20% more productive time in a week to work on more important elements of your business; I can reduce your average staff turnover by some 50%, thus saving you £’000s in one year; I can save you from losing your top 10 key staff to competitors by implementing this engagement process I use.
Clearly, all these benefit type statements have one thing in common: they are solution to a problem that the CEO has. Your having an MBA, or being in business for 25 years,or being a great guy (or gal), isn’t. So ask yourself this question before you leave this article – and if you are in business – and make sure you answer it if you want a great 2014: what three reasons are there why anyone should buy from you?
If you are a business coach or management consultant or people development or HR expert who wishes to grow your business, access unique and proprietary motivational technology, be able to recruit and retain sub-licensees, join a growing family of motivational experts across the globe, then speak to James Sale.