Commercial teams benefit from clearly understanding three things…who the customers are, why the customers care about you, and how customers want to engage with you. These become the foundational beacons for sales, marketing, and product development teams, their strategies, and their plans. Always.
Who
Identify the “who” by creating personas, a market segmentation schema, and an opportunity filter.
Personas. In marketing terms, a persona is a written description of a typical member of the customer decision making team that includes things like job title, age, business goals, personal goals, values, and challenges. Personas help the commercial team rally around a common understanding of the customer.
Market Segmentation Schema. A market segment is a portion of customers that may be reached with distinct products, prices, positioning/channels, and messaging. Customers that make up a segment seek different benefits and are therefore responsive to a distinct combination of products, prices, positioning and messaging. Segments must be accessible (i.e.: effectively measured, separated, and reached.) The market segmentation schema is a collection of lenses or filters by which one might identify a specific group of customers or prospects.
Opportunity Filter. An opportunity filter is a description of what the organization can and cannot do, will and will not do, and wants and does not want to do so that sales and marketing seek and nurture the right opportunities. After all, it’s not fair to blame a team that brings in bad deals if they haven’t been told what a good deal is!
Why
Identify the value proposition of the offering, which is essentially the benefit that the buyer will experience upon implementation of what you are selling. Yes, there is an economic component to a value proposition and being able to articulate this is a must. The more powerful value proposition has to do with the values that might be found on a list of “core values.” There might be a list of company core values on the customer’s website, but go deeper. Think more about the core values of the key influencers who will benefit most and authorize the purchase of your offering. The list of possible motivating values is long. There is a good list of personal values online from Scott Jeffrey (link).
How
Modern sales professionals and marketers use the term “Buyer’s Journey” to describe the process through which a customer progresses from becoming aware of a problem and a potential solution to deciding to buy something to address the identified problem. A huge mistake is forgetting this is called the buyer’s journey not “the-journey-I-impose-upon-the-customer.” People love to buy but hate to be sold. Ideally, commercial activities facilitate the buyer’s journey rather than push, pull, persuade, or convince.
Who, why, and how are the foundational questions for focused and on-point sales, marketing, and product development teams in all companies and industries. Heck…these questions are even applicable to internal customers.
“It’s not fair to blame a team that brings in bad deals if they haven’t been told what a good deal is”
Need help putting the who, why, and how together for your organization?