I’m in the process of reviewing a client’s go-to-market messaging, sales and marketing documents. It’s part of a new product launch that the company is planning a significant part of company revenue and success on. There is a lot at stake as you can imagine.
After 25+ years leading sales teams and consulting with hundreds of sales organizations, I’m still struck by how brutal the translation process from product to marketing to sales documentation and messaging is.
It is so vital a process to sales and company success – and yet one which is done so poorly.
And it comes down to this.
The inability of someone (who is creating the documentation and messaging) to step into another person’s shoes - whether that is product getting into marketing’s shoes, marketing getting into sale’s shoes and sales getting into customer’s shoes. (Think playing the children’s game of Telephone. A LOT gets lost in translation)
Neuropsychologists call this “Perceptual Positioning” – the ability (or inability) to see the world from another’s point of view.
This process is torturous for many organizations. Tons of meetings, revisions, lost productivity, slow time to market and product/sales failures.
Why?
Simply because product, marketing and sales aren’t taught how powerful a technique for influence Perceptual Positioning is.
Sales teams and people who don’t have a powerful value proposition and message struggle with the same issues:
· Not enough meetings in their calendar
· Emails and voicemails that are never returned
· Call reluctance – sellers don’t believe in their own value
· They sound just like every other provider of [product/service/solution] aka Commoditization Trap
· Slow sales cycles or deals that go nowhere
· Low proposal to win rates
· Discounting to get the deal
As a former sales leader and company executive and now consultant and coach, one of the first exercises I like to do with a sales team is to take a deep dive into their sales messaging. It’s often overlooked and is a keystone when it comes to improving a team’s results, very quickly.
Fresh and effective messaging help sellers to;
· Dramatically increase their confidence
· Fill their calendars with high quality and probability meetings/opportunities with SENIOR decision makers – often within seconds, minutes or a couple of hours and without time consuming and onerous follow ups
· Position themselves as subject matter expert so that they have a BUSINESS conversation vs product conversation (here lies commoditization)
· Guide their customers to openly share what it is they believe will create value them vs falling into “show up and throw up” behaviour
· To name but a few positive outcomes
If your sales team could be more effective and you’ve been struggling to come up with the “keystone” initiative that makes all the difference in performance improvement – your messaging may need a refresh.
And, if you’ve been wresting with this for 30 days or more – it’s time get some outside help.
Contact me.