But let’s take these lemons and make some lemonade. If you’re out of work, volunteer 8 or 10 hours a week with a local nonprofit. Donate your time or energy or your expertise to a struggling business.

I’ve recently volunteered my time to work with several nonprofits. While the pace of change is excruciatingly slow (compared to my experience with software startups!), I can see that these organizations are making a difference in my community. I’m using my sales and marketing skills to help these organizations improve their communications, increase memberships, and raise money.

If you’re out of work, I am truly sorry. But don’t sit home and whine about it. Get out and use this extra time to make a difference – and to help make this a better world. Explore your passion. Now, more than ever, is the time to find something you believe in and put your heart and soul into it.

You’ll be surprised at the results.

I just had that happen to me on my computer – and it occurred within one of my favorite applications (Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software by Nuance.) This past week I was interrupted by an Important Message within a dialog entitled “New updates & messages.”

Thinking that it might be a notification of a major bug fix or a security update, I opened up the dialogue to look into this “Important Message.” I was perturbed to see a promotional ad for a different application, under the heading “Important.”

Important!!! To whom?

 I receive one or two e-mails from Nuance with similar messages every month. Annoying, yes, but at least they are in my Inbox and don’t interrupt the use of their software. But, with this latest incident, Nuance has abused their use of “permission marketing.”

Does anyone at Nuance realize this is the equivalent of trying to start up MS Word, but then an “Important” message pops up trying to sell you Excel? This is not free software. I paid for this software – drop the ads – please.

Another word of advice to Nuance. Maybe you should hire someone in your marketing department who understands the meaning of the word “Important…”

People are not stupid. They can tell if you are passionate about what you are selling. If you don’t truly believe in the benefits of your product or service, it is time to find a new job.

2) Listen to your customers.

If you follow Tip #1, it can be difficult to refrain from explaining to your customers that your product is the greatest invention since sliced bread. I know it’s hard, but control yourself. Seek to understand – listen. There will be plenty of time to talk – once you understand your customer’s situation and they have indicated a desire to engage with you.

3) Be honest – all the time.

Enough said.

4) Respect your customer’s time

If a prospect says they have to go in 5 minutes – end the conversation in 5 minutes. As a VP of Sales I used to receive about a dozen cold calls a week. If I was busy, I would ask the salesperson to please call me back between 5:00 and 6:00 PM (when I am usually at my desk.) After forcing them off the line (“this will just take a minute…”), less than one in five bothered to call me back during the time frame I suggested.

5) Do what you say you will do.

Read the preceding example again. Don’t tell me you will call me back and then not do it. And, don’t make promises you don’t plan to keep (see rule #3.)

“We provide e-mail marketing services. We work with our customers to identify their target audience and then help them develop email marketing campaigns. We craft a series of e-mails to reach these customers and we send them again and again. We keep hitting them with our message, and we don’t stop sending them until they send us a restraining order.”

I was dumbfounded. I realize, of course, that he said this in jest (but he did use the term restraining order!) I suspect there was a lot more truth to his statement than he would probably like to admit.

This isn’t marketing. This is bothering people. If this is your approach to e-mail marketing, please stop now. Besides populating peoples inbox with useless clutter, you are doing long term damage to your company’s reputation.

The truth is, you can close a lot more sales by listening to your prospects than by bothering them.

If you have been working closely with your customer for many months to develop an RFP that is tuned to your products and services, by all means respond. In this situation your company is clearly the vendor of choice and the odds of winning the contract are stacked in your favor.

However, if you receive an e-mail out of the blue that suggests that your company is being invited to participate in the RFP process, you better think long and hard before you decide to respond. It’s quite possible that you’re being included just so this prospect can fulfill the Purchase Committee’s requirement that three or more vendors participate in the RFP process.

Instead of just walking away from this opportunity, I usually try this tactic, which, I call the “half-baked” RFP response.

I inquire as to what are the most critical aspects of the RFP that need to be addressed and if there are any showstoppers that would eliminate a vendor from being considered for the project.  I then have my team author a very simple two or three-page document that shows how our product and service offerings can meet their most critical needs.

We send this document (our “half baked RFP”) attached to an e-mail cover letter which outlines our company’s success in similar projects. I also attach other credibility-building material, such as PDF versions of our company’s annual report,  technical product and user manuals, white papers, brochures, and closely related case studies or success stories, etc.)

I have had several successes with this approach, one involving my company winning a contract in excess of $200,000. And we spent less than 5% of the time that we would have in completing the entire 150 page detailed RFP.

I strongly suggest you give this a try – what have you got to lose?

The most elemental sales and marketing strategy is to find buyers who are experiencing needs that can be satisfied through the purchase of our products/services. But there are never enough buyers whose needs are so strong that they are knocking down our door (or downloading our Free Trial’s.)

So savvy sales and marketers have developed another strategy to hit our sales quota. We seek individuals who are experiencing problems or issues that are likely to develop into a full-blown need.

Interacting with a prospect before a need becomes active requires that you understand the challenges and concerns that the customer is experiencing. This type of selling is far more difficult than describing the advantage or benefits of a particular feature.

A salesperson must be able to help a buyer recognize the severity of their issues and the impact of not resolving them. If this occurs there is a good chance that a specific, identifiable need will emerge. If that need persists and becomes strong enough, a buyer will become curious as to how the need can be resolved.

In the early stages of a complex software sale, focus on just two things:

1) Developing a buyer’s need (and once this is accomplished)

2) Arousing curiosity as to how the need can be resolved

Now, the question becomes, what is the most effective way to do this for your products and services?

NEED: a state in which something necessary or desirable is required or wanted.

News Flash – Needs are simply a state of mind!

Needs are not a list of capabilities in a formal RFP (Request for Proposal.) Those are technical requirements. Needs are not benchmarked, measured or described in a data sheet. Those are specifications.

Needs are a completely different animal – a state of mind. And that means effective marketing and sales efforts (not product marketing or engineering teams) can help develop a buyer’s needs.

The ability to develop customer need is the most important sales/marketing skill you can master. But how many salespeople really understand how and why a customer’s needs originate and grow?

A CFO does not just wake up one morning with a burning desire to purchase a web-based automated inventory management system. But are we aware of the specific problems or concerns that caused this issue to emerge as a fully developed need?

All successful sales and marketing strategies revolve around this one simple question:

How do your customer’s needs arise?

Greg Johnson
greg@honorableselling.com

How do your customers make a purchase decision?

Or, to use a phrase that I coined, what is their Natural Buying Process?

What is it that they think, say or do – long before they have visited your Web site, read the latest Gartner report or attended one of your Webinars. Do you know – do you even care?

You should.

Most sales teams spend an inordinate amount of time and money defining and implementing a sales process to improve their sales efforts. Often, these “sales processes” are in direct conflict with how their customers prefer to buy. Here is an example.

I own a Condo that I rent. Right next door a new Condo complex was going up. I called to inquire about “ballpark pricing” for a 2 bedroom Condo. I was told that I could not get that information until I submitted paperwork that proved I was pre-qualified to buy – before I even knew the price! Wow – that is a sales process gone horribly awry!

What about your customer’s buying process? Are you certain that your sales team is focused on reducing customer risk and helping a buyer move through their buying process (not your sales process – their buying process!) Are you confident that your company does not place unnecessary hurdles that can cause a buyer to look elsewhere, someplace where it is easier to buy?

Take a look at this description of the Natural Buying Process. Feel free to download and use this template to help you analyze how your customers make purchase decisions. Now, compare this to your sales process. Are they in alignment? If so, great!

If not, maybe it’s time to adjust your sales process so that it is in alignment with your customer’s Natural Buying Process.

Greg Johnson
greg@honorableselling.com