“Sales Process “is a dirty word to many technology vendors, because they interpret it to mean a slow sales approach that delays the sale of your product, and causes Reps and Sales leaders to miss their number…
As I discussed in my post, “What 3 Questions Indicate Whether You Need to Sell Solutions”, and “Are you Jumping to the Product Sale too Early (and missing revenue…), product selling works best in a few situations early in the sales cycle, and is required late in the sales cycle in nearly all tech business– but in most situations, tech vendors market and sell based on product too early in the sales cycle – causing vendors to miss revenue opportunities.
So what are proven approaches to market and sell in situations where Solutions Selling is required? That is the topic of my post today.
Figure 1 below outlines the steps of a process I call, “Vision Quest Solution Selling”. This approach is accelerates product/service revenue by both 1) promoting a vision for the future, and 2) showing how your products/services can help customers get to that vision. To be effective in creating customer pull, the “Hook” must be:
- Compelling – a high value, enticing “destination”
- Viable – a “real” option with proof points that show it can be achieved
- Actionable – with defined short-term steps that move customers forward toward the destination
Figure 1: Marketing with a “Vision Quest” — Creating the “Hook”
I recall a sales director for a company I worked with a number of years ago who made every sales rep in his territory do a company “vision” presentation for him as part of their training, and to new customers.
Why was this important to the sales director?
Because he understood that customers buy products faster when they have a specific destination they want to reach, and the product you are selling, helps them in that Journey!
As shown in Figure 2 below, a “destination” dissolves a lot of uncertainty for the customer, and creates excitement and impatience (maybe we can solve this long term problem!) Yes, they want to buy solutions to their current problems, but if they can solve a current problem and pave the way for a better future, that provides a big win (for both the customer and the rep.)
Figure 2: Fullfilling the “Vision Quest”: Providing a Path to a “Destination”
3 Steps to “Vision Quest” Marketing and Selling
- Communicate a strong “hook” that provides a vision for how your company offerings can address a big customer challenge and vision for a better future
- Communicate how customers can take concrete and realistic steps to move toward this “destination”
- Map your products to solutions that address with some concrete steps
That concept actually pretty basic – provide a compelling vision for the customer AND help them achieve that vision – but think about the tech vendors you have observed in the past year. How many of them do both of these things in their marketing and sales messaging?
A company like VMware…
- Does a very good job of creating a vision for how their products can help customers, with concepts like “Private Cloud” (first time I heard it was from former VMware CEO Paul Maritz, though others could have been earlier), software-defined data center (a great way to go beyond software-defined “compute” to push into selling their virtualized networking products and more management)
- But do they tell you how to get there with their products? I would propose that although their corporate message is about SDDC, most of their customer-facing sales materials are product-focused, with relatively little reference to how the products help you get to SDDC. Ironically, the products are actually designed to fit together and their core vSphere business is part of an SDDC business unit – but this link is not obvious when they talk to customers…
A company like Symantec is at the other end of the spectrum…
- They have a corporate vision around information (security and availability), but it seems to me to be high level and difficult for a customer to act on. I attended the Symantec Vision conference a couple of years ago and they had a very effective session illustrating the many aspects of cybercrime. But looking at the faces of the customers in the room, I could tell that they were not convinced that they or Symantec had a comprehensive approach that could actually solve these problems (and were asking themselves, how does the point product that the Symantec Rep is trying to sell me help with all this?
- Not surprisingly, the corporate vision does not fit into their general sales approach and Symantec has been much-criticized in the press and gone through 2 CEO changes – at least partly based on a perception that their product offerings don’t really provide a path for customers to achieve anything big or important. Former CEO, Steve Bennett said as much when he held a webcast for customers a few months after he started, and outlined his high level plan to unite Symantec products into “Solutions to solve big customer problems…
Many tech veterans will tell you that one of the biggest challenges inside tech firms is how to “upsell and cross-sell” their products within their customer base. Vision Quest Marketing and Selling is an ideal approach to address this challenge – by selling your products based on how they advance customers toward a strategic destination. To Up-Sell and Cross-Sell effectively, you have to be able to create a path that includes a number of purchases. Where does that path lead – to the “Destination” that is part of the vendor vision.
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