By John Holland, Chief Content Officer,CustomerCentric Selling® – The Sales Training Company
I was involved in a lengthy meeting this week that was primarily about creating demand in light of the fact that visitors to my client’s website are lower level staff whose primary interest is learning about products/offerings.
The fact is these people can’t buy and they have little or no idea of what potential payback or value offerings they’re interested in can provide.
That caused me to realize that for the vast majority of Key Players there is no demand for offerings. Marketing and Sales organizations have to back into creating demand for people that rightfully have little or no interest in their offerings.
The stark reality is that Key Players have latent needs for business outcomes they can’t achieve (goals) or for business problems (pains) they don’t know how to address.
The key to creating high level demand is to identify desired business outcomes that can be achieved through the use of offerings.
Getting away from an overarching focus on offerings is difficult to do, but companies that can target specific titles with high probability business problems or goals will enjoy several advantages:
- They can start buying cycles with Key Players that can fund unbudgeted initiatives.
- They can give sellers an excellent chance to start opportunities as Column A (preferred vendor).
- They are likely to close larger transactions because these buyers aren’t budget-constrained.
- They should have shorter sales cycles.
- They should have higher win rates.
KEY: Products can create demand for lower levels. Potential value creates executive level interest.