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Acquiring New B2B Clients and Customers – a
three-phase process
Three
phases occur whenever you attempt to sell a complex product or
service to a new client or customer. These phases can be expressed
in the question most likely to be in the prospect’s mind at the
beginning of each phase.
1. Who Are You? Since business-to-business selling is relationship driven, start with the relationship itself. From the prospect’s point of view, that means learning who you are. The challenge is that you have no relationship at this point. If you meet a prospect at a trade show or other event, the odds of that person remembering who you are five minutes after your encounter is low. As a result, your job in phase one is to focus on building a personal relationship with the prospect.
While your company needs to do all the marketing communications things that inform, persuade, and motivate a prospect to action over time, your sales team needs to be about the business of adding value on a personal basis. This involves offering advice, helping to solve problems, answering questions and when the time is right, offering invitations to networking or non-business functions. The idea is to become a business friend to the prospect. At some point, this personal relationship building process slops over into phase 2…
2. Are You Still Here? Once you have built a reasonable business relationship with someone – they know who you are and are usually willing to speak with you or respond to your e-mails, you are ready to focus on selling your products and services. At this point, you are feeding into the prospect’s natural reaction when reminded about you – “Oh, are you still here?” or “Oh, are you still in business?” During this phase you are continuing to build the relationship while strengthening prospect awareness of how you can be of service through the products and services you offer.
In addition to direct marketing activities that build awareness of your company, build the relationship with credibility building marketing communications activities such as publicity placements in trade publications and online. Now that the prospect knows who you are and what you do, you want them to start seeing your company name frequently in the business world.
3. What did you say you do? Okay, the prospect now has some degree of trust in you and your company as a viable potential resource. The final question arises when the prospect is ready to make a purchase. Notice that the prospect is in command, not you at this point. The question on the prospect’s mind involves clarification of how you may be able to solve the specific problem at issue. “What did you say you do?” The prospect is looking for confirmation that you can solve the problem they need fixed.
In complex sales, the communications materials don’t always line up with the problem as the prospect perceives it. In this phase, the focus is on your ability to customize and sell a solution that solves the problem at hand. Think of this as the proposal stage if you like, although the idea of relationship selling is to bypass the normal bid process as a single-source provider if you can.
If done right, you’ll notice that price is not the main issue. Solving the client’s problem is. If you attempt to rush the process… or if the buyer is rushing the process… without going through these three steps, the focus is more likely to be on price rather than solution. That’s because the buyer won’t have the confidence, trust or knowledge to recognize the value proposition you are offering. Why? Because your value proposition includes you as an individual and your ability to instill confidence that your proposed solution will indeed solve the problem.
Zuk-Lloyd
Associates, Inc.
Zuk-Lloyd Associates
creates better sales and marketing materials to make it easier for
you to inform your prospects and customers about the products and
services you offer.
Special
Offer
As a thank you for
visiting this e-mail landing page, we are offering your choice of
one of the following:
1. Ten percent off your next (or first) invoice from Zuk-Lloyd Associates, Inc.
or…
2. One free consultation lasting up to two hours. Paul Lloyd will meet with you to help you plan your marketing activities, answer questions or discuss any business issues you have. Take advantage of Paul’s creative mind and extensive business experience. You are welcome to invite other staff members to the meeting.
Offer expires: December 1, 2008
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