Four things a b - to - b salesperson could do to create loyal customers

   

Last week, was at a b - to b sales intervention for a glass company. Key concern of the salespeople - how do we ensure a set of loyal and happy customers? What we have right now is a bunch of customers who negotiate every inch of the way for prices and if the price is not OK, then the order is shifted to someone else. Even though our product quality is good, but then so is the competition:

a. In a b to b situation, there are multiple decision makers in every company. While purchase and technical buyers are of course to be contacted all the time, how about talking to buying influences within the company from where the need emerges eg if you have a new design for a glass bottle, talk to the brand manager who handles perfumes and cosmetics. Understand his brand plan for the next year - how many products does he plan to launch this year, where are his products selling, what are the gaps in the product portfolio, etc?

b. Study the business challenges (pain areas) for the company: This could be - falling sales, poor brand image, delayed payments, low profits, attrition amongst key people etc. Link your solution to these problems. eg a consulting company used to sell training programs on the basis of skill improvement. The CEO used to be more worried however about retaining his star performers. The consulting company started connecting better with the Sales head and CEO when the the solution was demonstrated as a retention tool and not a skill improvement tool.

c. Convert product benefits to specific financial benefits for each customer in $$$. eg a auto paints company designed a new formula which had better flow ad viscosity parameters and tried to sell it technically. But the client said No to the 30% price increase. Things were stuck for about six months till the technical team linked the better product to financial benefits to the customer. The superior product would result in faster cleaning of the paint shop, leading to more machine uptime, leading to higher production of $5.2 million dollars, and profits of $1.1 mn. The company's sales team researched all this information and presented their findings to the senior leadership at the customer. They got a 22% price increase. They did a similar activity and created customized cost benefit calculations for their top five customers and got an average price increase of 24%.

d. Use social media to position your company well: If you are a packaging organization. Create a blog where you regularly post articles that talk about your technical ability - eg a new packaging solution that your company has designed, a success with a customer, etc. Connect with your customers on Linkedin. Post these articles on the blog and send a link to your customers. Do this once every ten days and over a period of time your customer forms an opinion about you.

Maneesh Konkar is a sales strategy and leadership consultant. Subscribe to his blog "young leaders at every level" or connect with him at maneesh@directiononeonline.com. Follow him on twitter @youngldrs 

Set Smaller Goals, Get Bigger Results

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BY DAN & CHIP HEATH

What do you dread at work? Maybe it’s filling out expense reports. Making a cold call to a sales lead. Giving a long-delayed performance review to T.J. (aka “the Crier”). You dread it, you avoid it, you procrastinate. You check out Google News instead.

There’s a way out of this cycle, and it comes from self-help books. (We read them so you don’t have to.) Start by thinking about housecleaning, the most unpleasant part of our everyday existence, other than forwarded kitten emails. Here’s a surefire way to fight chore inertia. It’s called the 5-Minute Room Rescue, and it was proposed by the FlyLady, a “home executive” turned organization guru. You set a kitchen timer to five minutes. Then you rush to the dirtiest room in your house — the one you’d never let a guest see — and, as the timer ticks down, you start clearing a path. When the timer finally buzzes, you can stop with a clear conscience. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

The trick, of course, is that the dread is always worse than the thing that’s dreaded. So once you start cleaning house, you probably won’t stop at five minutes, especially when you see progress. You’ll get Big Mo on your side — or at least Big Mop — and an hour later, things will look great. By scaling down the goal — just five minutes! — you can overcome your own inertia.

In One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Dr. Robert Maurer of UCLA’s School of Medicine writes about his patient Julie, a divorced mother of two, who was 30 pounds overweight, depressed, and fatigued. He knew that the solution to her problems was exercise. He also knew that talking about thrice-weekly aerobics was likely to get him slapped. So he gave her a challenge: “How about if you just march in place in front of the television, each day, for one minute?”

That was the kick start she needed. One minute of low-intensity exercise did nothing to improve her health but everything to improve her attitude. When she came back for her next visit, she asked, “What else can I do with a minute a day?” Within a few months, as Dr. Maurer slowly stepped up Julie’s challenges, her resistance to a serious exercise program disappeared.

We’re all used to hearing about stretch goals, and when you feel empowered, stretch goals are useful ambition teasers. But when you feel overwhelmed, stretch goals are a recipe for paralysis. Michael Phelps needed a stretch goal. Julie needed a whisker goal, a target that was a hairsbreadth away from the status quo. We need these more modest steps because they help us get past the “startup costs” — the apprehension and fear — that deter us from doing the tasks we hate.

Ken Blanchard, author of the classic The One Minute Manager, knew that managers hated having to give feedback to employees. So he gave managers a whisker goal that he called “one-minute praisings.” He pointed out that most managers put off giving feedback until something goes very wrong, and then they swoop in with criticism. He called it “seagull management”: Managers fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, and then fly out. He challenged managers to give frequent, quickie assessments. Concentrate on catching your employees doing something right, he counseled, and then reinforce it with immediate, specific praise.

Whisker goals are particularly well suited to our current moment. Adversity taps our strength. When you’ve just laid off someone, it feels like too much to bear to offer constructive criticism to another employee. When you’ve given up your bonus and had your budget cut, it feels like too much to consider going back for that master’s degree. In hard times, we retrench. We maintain. We certainly don’t stretch.

But retrenchment is the wrong response to adversity. Adversity calls for change, and change doesn’t arrive via a miracle: It arrives via a kick start. During World War II, the government needed to orchestrate a massive increase in industrial production at the exact same time as its most talented industrial minds were being called away to fight. Government officials trained new people to look for tiny steps forward, not big leaps. A training manual advised workers to “look for hundreds of small things you can improve. Don’t try to plan a whole new department layout — or go after a big new installation of new equipment. There isn’t time for these major items. Look for improvements on existing jobs with your present equipment.”

Change can start with small measures, and it can be rewarded with small prizes. Maurer cites a Toyota employee-suggestion program. The carmaker receives 1.5 million employee suggestions every year, and it holds an annual awards ceremony to celebrate the single best idea. The lucky employee gets a fountain pen. (Lehman Brothers handed out million-dollar bonuses. How’d that work out?)

Dread and inertia are the enemy. But you have a powerful ally: the kitchen timer. Set it for five minutes and get to work clearing a path.

FILED UNDER GOAL SETTING, PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCTIVITY · TAGGED WITH SMALL GOALS, SMALL STEP, STRETCH GOALS