Tips for Fine Tuning Your B2B Strategy – Issue #3

Support Your B2B Strategy With a Portfolio of Smart Tactics

Leaders avoid status quo thinking.  They continuously apply ideas for elevating a feature of their business to the next level.  This issue offers new ideas for you to consider in nine "smart tactic categories".

Read the Entire Blog Post

By John Bernardi

Every Company in Every Industry Has a Walmart Type Competitor

No Need to “Out-Walmart” Your Low-Price Competitors

Walmart type competitors cause a "down economy" for companies that rely on low hanging fruit for their revenue source.  They blame low-price foes for eroding the value that their higher priced products offer.  Not all low-price competitors are as prolific as Walmart, but this type of competitor inspires companies who practice solid marketing principles to thrive while others fall by the wayside.

Read The Entire Post

By John Bernardi

Marketing Practitioner Competency

Has Your Company Achieved Marketing Practitioner Competency?

Marketing practitioners don't consider "marketing" to be a department.  Instead, it is a concept and belief that is wholly embraced and executed throughout the organization.

Read The Entire Post


By John Bernardi

Separate Vs. Unified Marketing, Sales and Support Teams For Each Product Line

Benefits and Disadvantages of Consolidating Customer Facing Processes

I have been involved in situations where clients have separate marketing, sales and support teams representing different product lines that are often purchased by the same buyers.  What do you think are the advantages to this approach?  What are the benefits of consolidating customer facing processes?

Read The Entire Blog Post

Expand Your Comfort Zone To Leapfrog The Incumbent

Meeting The Chairman Of The Board Is Outside The Comfort Zone Of Most Sales Reps

Following A Well Planned Account Development Strategy Will Earn This Right

Search for self-confident business leaders and influencers whose personal response mode is either growth or trouble.  Avoid even keel or euphoric buyers and people who want to place you in a box where your value and ideas will be squashed.

Recruit a coach within the customer organization who will help you to tailor your value proposition to address the business, application and political obstacles you’ll be facing.

Introduce yourself early in their new application buying cycles as a valuable educator and problem solver.

Display a willingness to share account position with the incumbent.  When you confidently believe that you have consistently exceeded customer expectations, you have earned the right to adjust your account plan from a divisional strategy to an indirect strategy that changes the ground rules from which customer value decisions are made.  This will set you on a new course to becoming the incumbent.

My example: As a national account manager, I was responsible for a growth mode F500 customer where we shared a niche position with two other vendors.  I recognized how far we had to go in order to be considered a true competitor to their primary vendor who owned the account relationship and $120 million in annual sales.  After eliminating the secondary competitors and owning the $1 million niche, my next goal was to penetrate the core business.

My solid reputation for facilitating an excellent customer experience [and for business acumen and product and industry knowledge] that I had developed in the niche area established strong horizontal and vertical relationships throughout their company.  My internal customer coach guided me in the right direction. I believed that I had earned the right to meet their chairman of the board.  I approached him directly to let him know about the value we were providing to his company.  I knew that he loved to play golf.  He accepted my invitation to play on a nearby world class golf course in an event that I organized where he’d play with my company president and senior executives from my company were paired with his company’s senior managers who were amazed that I was able to make this happen.

This set me apart from all other vendors who would never think to go outside their comfort zones to this degree.  VP level decision makers felt more comfortable allowing my company to share business with their long-time incumbent since their chairman opened the door to a reduced risk decision.  This set the stage for my company being awarded a $15 million contract that in the past would have been a natural add-on for the competition.  From that point forward, the incumbent considered my company as a legitimate foe to be dealt with in this account. [They even tried to hire me.]

By John Bernardi

Expand Your Comfort Zone To Develop Existing Accounts And Land New Ones

Speak at Events Attended by Target Market Decision Makers and Influencers

Most people have stage fright so they’re glad it’s you on stage and not them.

My example: As a 29-year-old sales rep and working for a F500 tech company, I was invited by an industry association to meet with its members.  Rather than discussing features and benefits of my product line, I chose to present a strong business acumen that spoke to how CEOs in the audience could improve the typical KPIs for their industry by implementing solutions that leverage my category of products and services.  Within a week of my presentation the president of a company, [whose VP level executives had never responded to my approaches in the past,] invited me to discuss how I could specifically help his business. He signed a long-term contract and we delivered on our promise.

By John Bernardi

Are Your Sales Reps Emotionally Involved?

Emotionally Involved Sales Pros Win More Big Deals More Quickly. They Also Earn Repeat Business And Referrals.

Emotionally involved sales reps are better equipped to differentiate themselves. It starts when they invest time researching a business and its power base prior to making contact.  The knowledge gained enables a solid customer-centric conversation, which sets the stage for a prospect to ask how your product or service can provide the value and benefits they need.  This knowledge can be weaved into your proposal and price negotiations.

Emotional attachment continues after the sale and throughout the customer relationship cycle.  As customer ambassador, the sales rep ensures extraordinary support and listens to customer ideas for product/service enhancements, new products and services, and suggestions for improving your touch points and making it easier to do business with your company.

When sales reps have a lot invested, it is more difficult for them to give up. What are your chances of real success, if you can't get emotionally involved?

By John Bernardi

The Top 20% Ask For Customer Feedback

How Do You Receive Customer Feedback?

Why don't companies request feedback at each stage of their customer relationships?  Is it because they fear negative feedback and an inability to deal with it?

Why wouldn't a CEO want to understand how their company is performing at each touch point along with how their product or service lives up to its brand promise?

Without this knowledge, how can you expect to continually improve and generate the profit that you think you deserve?

If you measure repeat business and referrals as KPIs, but you are not achieving these goals, why aren't you asking for feedback?  In person quality reviews and online surveys are great tools for gaining insight and for building a raving fan base.

By John Bernardi

"I Am Not My Target Market"

You Probably Don't Match Your Ideal Customer Profile

It's tempting to make intuitive marketing decisions based on your own preferences.  But, you're likely to either miss out on a great opportunity or follow a path to unsatisfactory results.  All it takes is a few false starts and your aspirations for moving your company to the next level will fade into the sunset.

What happens is that - the product or service that you've designed, or the campaign you've developed, or the channels and locations you've selected, or the price points you've chosen - are based on your perception rather than being aligned with the facts associated with those to whom you are marketing and selling.

Research, surveys, interviews and testing will enable you to define and understand each finely tuned B2B segment or B2C persona.  First, understand their pain points, objections, information sources, and what's important to them.  Then, you can innovate ways to solve problems, enhance experiences, place content where their they will discover it, and create raving fans.

Armed with a value proposition tailored to each segment or persona, you will be ready to generate, qualify, nurture and convert leads to sales ready status.

You need someone who encourages you to consider this principle every time you make a marketing decision.

By John Bernardi

The Benefits Of Routine

A sales and marketing lifestyle means that you have quality time for building relationships with mavens and connectors, for content marketing, for helping team mates, and for taking the right actions to grow your business.  Routine enables your day-to-day basics to be performed well and on time so that you can allow your antenna to always be listening and your peripheral vision to always be watching.

An Effective Routine Will Enable You To Wisely Progress Towards Your Goals

Daily routines prevent knee jerk reactions and wasted time.  I produce my best results when I follow my routine in a heads down fashion.  But, I periodically look up to stay on track, adjust to new opportunities or threats, improve a process, acquire better tools and navigate unexpected surprises.

Routines Create Confidence, A Key To Success

A routine that spans goals, action plans and workdays builds self-confidence.  You become well rounded if it contains the right amount of time for work, passion, learning, and enjoyment.  You will become more friendly and interesting, and people will respect you for being consistent and dedicated.

How Much OF Your Time Is Freed Up By Routines?

Customer Facing Roles Need Powerful Routines

• CEO routines develop innovative and customer-centric cultures for achieving financial, customer and employee goals.
• Marketing routines ensure lead generation and nurturing to sales-ready status while existing segments are penetrated and new ones are developed through a well managed mix of products and services.
• Sales routines ensure that qualified opportunities are closed, while key accounts are nurtured and territories are developed.
• Call center routines enable you to delight customers and channel partners.

Routines Must Be Constantly Upgraded

As your routine becomes muscle memory, tweaking it with new ideas will enable you to rise to the next level.

By John Bernardi