Market Profile Sheet
Customer Name: Positron
Profit Levels: 30%
Market Segment: Global computer manufacturers
Economic Sensitivity: Cyclical due to their manufacturing status
Annual Sales $: 3 Billion
Organizational Characteristics: 7/24 operations, high-dollar down-time, critical manufacturing tolerances, on-time deliveries and inventory levels critical, sensitive to competitors, receptive to state-of-the-art-technologies, revenues of $3 billion, 20,000 employees
# Of Employees: 20,000
Annual Growth Rate: 28%
Contact Name: Olivia Ontime
Position: VP of manufacturing
Current Use Of Similar Products or Services in $: 2 million
Previous Success Stories: Advanced Computer Co., Star Computers, PC Power Ltd., and Computer Giant Inc.
Potential Use Of Similar Products or Services in $: 3 million
General Goal Category (broad groupings)
Typical Goals (more specific by position)
Benefits of Achieving Goals (in time or money; insert an “I” for internal benefits, an “E” for external ones, or a “B” for both)
Systems of Evaluation (calculations to determine if goal is achieved)
Products
Unique Strengths or Features with Their Benefits (features are in italics;check marks denote a unique strength)
Reduce downtime
Prevent production stoppages (B) and lost revenues (I)
Hours of downtime
Predicto Services
Variance Alerts prevent unscheduled breakdowns
ü
Tolerance Checks prevent unscheduled breakdowns
Operations
Increase productivity
Lowers manufacturing costs (I) and product costs to distributors (E)
Man-hours used
ProdoGain
ü
Single-Operator Controls eliminate need for current two operators
Increases revenues (I)
Amount of production capacity
ProdoGain
ü
200-Unit Capacityincreases capacity by 15%
Reduce operating expenses
Eliminates budget deficits (I)
Amount of unallocated expenses
Predicto Services
Variance Alerts prevent major equipment failures
Frees up money for equipment upgrades (I)
Dollar value of repair costs
ProdoGain
5-Year Warranty eliminates repair parts costs
Administrative
Ensure compliance with laws and codes
Protects company against fines or forced shut downs (I)
Amount of code violations and fines
The CodeCheck Program
ü
Computerize Program analyzes operations for potential violations
Top Two Competitors
Competitive Unique Strengths
PricePoint Services
Low price
FastShip Technology
Fastest delivery
Exhibit 3-6: Market profile sheet for Positron.
Note When you create a target list of customers you want to pursue, start from the bottom of the list, not the top. With the bottom-up approach, you’ll have little to lose (there’s only upside), you’ll hear every customer concern in the world, you won’t be practicing on your best prospects, and you’ll be prepared for a good opportunity when you see one.
Strength Through Knowledge
Market Profile sheets help to make your sales become planned events rather than random occurrences. When you review their wealth of information before contacting customers, all your questions have one target: making customers’ goals measurable. Then, you see whether you can help customers to achieve them.
Yet, one more issue remains in your pursuit of providing customers with more value than competitors and getting compensated for it. You need to know if the customers can achieve their goals, let alone you. Chapter 4 can help you in this endeavor.
Summary
Focus on the value of goals, not on the pain of needs.
Needs are product focused, goals are customer focused.
Goals provide opportunities to create sales where no evident pain exists.
Knowing customers’ goals when they do not will position you as being a customer expert.
You make the progression from needs to goals by knowing:
How market segments choose customers and goals
How customers calculate the value of achieving their goals
How customers make goals measurable
How customers achieve those goals via your unique strengths
Market segments are groups of customers who share the same organizational characteristics and goals. Know your competitors’ strongest market segments so that you can avoid them whenever possible.
Organizational characteristics and the position of the person involved with the purchasing decision determine a customer’s goal.
Customers’ professional goals reflect their personal goals.
Systems of evaluation (SOEs) are the methods customers use to assign value to goals.
If you establish SOEs that accurately assign value to the customers’ goals and match them up to your unique strengths, you dominate those market segments.
You use SOEs to convert perceived value into measurable value.
You make goals measurable by making the customer’s benefits measurable.
Measurable goals empower you to fulfill customers’ expectations by building your products from their goals down, not from your features up.
You want to motivate customers to prioritize goals that are realistic for their circumstances, have a self-imposed sense of urgency to achieve, and are advantageous to your unique strengths.
Market Profile sheets highlight which customers share goals that place the most value on your unique strengths—and on those of competitors.
Chapter 4: Tests of Reasonableness
Overview
Your sales opportunities look great. You have customers expressing interest in achieving goals that might connect to your unique strengths. Yet, one question looms: Do customers have the capability and resources to achieve their goals? You need to know the answer to this question before you are able to consider whether your products can help them to achieve their goals.
This chapter empowers both you and customers to perform tests of reasonableness on each other’s ability to achieve their goals by explaining:
How to motivate customers to share purchasing information
How purchasing requirements revolve around customers’ measurable goals
How nine purchasing requirements (filters) influence every sales opportunity—whether you are aware of them or not
How the three types of customers share information differently
The End of Qualifying As You Know It
Past sales training taught you the importance of qualifying your customers on the first sales call. You want to “discover” (using the more popular and softer term for the harsher-sounding “qualify”) the answers to four questions. You usually start with the first question, and then ask the other three in any order that pops up:
Do they have a need to buy your products?
Do they have the money to buy your products?
Do they have the authority to buy your products?
How soon do they want to buy your products?
Finding the answers to these questions makes perfect sense. Neither customers nor you want to waste time and effort on opportunities that do not pan out. Yet, one slight problem exists with this traditional view of qualifying. You should not qualify customers first; they should qualify themselves first—but not about whether they can buy your products (notice how the four qualifying questions end).
Let customers qualify themselves on two points. First, on whether they chose the correct goals; and second, on whether they have the ability to achieve them. Once they gather enough facts to confirm both, you qualify (but not in front of them) any potential product selections by using the same information. You do this step before you mention any specific products to customers. When customers qualify themselves first, they discover new things. They discover that you can help them to make wise purchasing decisions, which fulfill measurable expectations. You will discover how customers reward you for providing this service.
As a customer expert, therefore, your initial responsibility is to help guide customers through this self-qualifying process.
Note If you find that you are disqualifying more than qualifying customers on initial contacts, rethink your choices of whom to call on. You are probably in market segments where customers’ goals do not connect to your unique strengths.
Motivate Customers to Share Information
When customers qualify themselves, you ask them to share information. Sometimes, they consider this information confidential. For instance, customers often consider topics such as funding and their roles in the decision-making process to be private information. A customer’s biggest disincentive to share information is the fear that it weakens his or her negotiating position. It does when you mention specific products before customers state their goals.
Customers know how the game works. They quickly realize that any information they supply you with always ends up helping you to position your products as the right choice for them. You further diminish their faith in you when you offer specific products as remedies to their problems with little or no knowledge of their goals. It is time to change the rules to benefit both you and customers.
Trust replaces tension when you let customers know that you too share their destinations. Customers gain more control, not less, when your questions seek to make their goals more measurable. As specifics about their goals emerge, their resistance to share information about their purchasing considerations (referred to as filters) decreases. Also, the more transparent it is to customers how goals and filters affect their purchasing decisions, the more they will feel that they have been treated fairly and the more willingly they will share information. (Dr. Martin G. Groder discusses the concept of transparency in his book Business Games: How to Recognize the Players and Deal with Them. [1])
Contrary to past selling philosophy, you give up manipulation so that you and customers gain control. Otherwise, you end up with sales calls running out of control on emotions and chance rather than on clear thinking and planning. You do not wrestle with customers in order to manipulate details to fit your products. Instead, you share control with customers to ensure that your combined focus is on achieving their goals. However, this control is different and positive. It is a version of management by objective (MBO) followed by you and your customers. Where do they want to end up (their goals)? Moreover, are you able to help them get there?