How well do your B2B salespeople know your customers? I’m
not enough just to know where they’re located, who the purchasing manager is
and how long they’ve been in business. Your salespeople must know more. They
must become ingrained in the customer’s decision making process. To help, here
are five things B2B salespeople must know about their customers in order to
become that all-important trusted advisor.
1. Gap Analysis: One of the simplest tools all salespeople should use is a gap analysis. Simply put, the analysis defines the business you have now, versus what is left to be pursued. You use the gap analysis to define the opportunities with a given customer, across an entire territory, and ultimately, within your market.
Performing a gap analysis on a customer account forces the salesperson to delve deep into the customer’s business, both in terms of their current and future volumes. It defines the value of the customer’s business, their importance to your enterprise and helps in sales forecasting and budgeting. Ultimately, it is a tool that helps to prioritize sales efforts, while also simplifying how the salesperson manages his or her time.
Use separate gap analyses to define the gap within the territory. Combine all territories until you've defined your market gap. To learn more, please go to: Use a Sales Gap Analysis to do a Market Gap Analysis
2. Decision Makers: By now you’ve likely heard about the importance of identifying key decision makers and how dealing solely with purchasing isn’t likely to help you become embedded within your customer’s business. However, the fact is, no two customers have the same decision makers. Better put, no two customers have the same decision making process. It’s not inconceivable to assume that the only decision maker your salesperson needs speak with is the purchasing manager.
Ultimately, it depends upon the customer. Who is involved in making a decision on a purchase? Are these decisions made by engineers, project managers and or technicians in charge of separate projects? Are products approved by engineering and then passed on to purchasing? Or, do multiple individuals take part in deciding which vendor to go with? In the end, your salespeople can’t just assume that purchasing should be avoided. Instead, they must define the specific decision makers within each account.
It's not enough just to know who makes decisions. Your salespeople must know how those decisions are made and how best to position themselves to win business. You can read more by going to: B2B Decision Makers: Three Steps to Tailoring Sales Strategies to Specific Prospects
3. Financial Stability: It simply goes without saying that in today’s economy, your salespeople have to keep tabs on your customers and their financial health. In many instances, customers will max out their credit limit with one vendor before maxing out their limit with another. In this case, the customer is treating its vendors as a bank and is doing everything it can to extend its terms and lower its costs of financing. Ultimately, the customer is in trouble.
Your salespeople should pay close attention to sudden and unforeseen spikes in volume, the kind that seems out of place with respect to your business cycles. It can easily be a sign that the customer is experiencing cash flow problems, or worse, on the verge of bankruptcy. However, it’s not just about the customer’s credit limit, but also about how their facilities look and what rumors abound within the market. It’s a reality of managing customers in an economy where bankruptcies and defaulting on amounts owing is becoming commonplace.
The best way to gauge an individual customer's financial standing is to include it within your overall assessment of their account. A great tool to applying a grade or value to your customer's business is with a scorecard that takes into consideration volumes purchased, invoices paid and types of products purchased. You can read more by going to: Sample Customer Scorecard Excel Sheet: Grading Your Customer’s Value
4. Fears and Concerns: All customers have fears and concerns. Some are rooted in price. Others are rooted in quality and yet, others are rooted in service and turn times on delivery. Every customer in every industry has some prominent fear and concern.
Your salespeople must understand those customer-specific fears and confront them head-on. These fears are often masked, hidden or ignored by the customer. But, if the salesperson listens closely, he or she will easily be able to spot them and remove them as going concerns.
The above is taken from: Sales Negotiation Training: Identifying a Customer’s Fears & Concerns
5. Competitors and Incumbent Status: The best salespeople keep a watchful eye on their competitors and the position they hold with all customers. Your salespeople must be able to tell you whether they are the incumbent supplier or a secondary or tertiary source within each customer account.
A critical aspect of success is to have a market intelligence gathering strategy, one focused on identifying how and why business is won or lost and at what price. Keeping abreast of your competition helps to identify customer buying influencers and emerging market trends. This competitor information should be a part of the gap analysis.
It means keeping abreast of the customer’s financial standing. It means understanding the customer’s culture and their specific fears and concerns, ones that are part of how they decide to award business. Finally, it means understanding what position your company is in, what your competitors are doing and who is considered the primary vendor.
To learn more about customer management and becoming a primary vendor, please read the following:
B2B Sales Strategies: Importance of Market Data in Price Negotiations
How Can a Competitor SWOT Analysis Improve Your Customer Service?
Stop Losing Business to Overseas Competitors: Define Your Customer’s True Purchasing Costs
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