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Be a Thought Leader Not a Vendor
by Paul DiModica
Today, more than ever,
salespeople are looking for qualified inbound leads and
shorter sales cycles.
One process that we
recommend to our consulting clients is called the "Value
Forward Marketing" model. It shortens sales cycles and
increases inbound qualified sales prospects for the
sales team.
Don't be a vendor and
have prospects.
Instead, be a peer and have clients.
Value Forward Marketing is a
planned process of rotating prospects through a series
of marketing devices that communicate your
specialization as a thought leader who subliminally
educates them about why they should buy from you instead
of your competition. The content used in this approach
teaches your prospects how they can increase their
business success, and does not focus on your product or
service's attributes. In a sense, you give 5% away of
your thought leadership to get your prospect to pay for
95%.
The goal of this program is
to put your business value in front so prospects turn
themselves into qualified leads who buy.
By using a Value Forward
Marketing model, firms can move short-term buying
prospects into an interactive education model to induce
them to buy faster while simultaneously not wasting your
sales team's time chasing prospects who are at the end
of the rainbow.
Brand Identification does
not mean
Brand Acquisition!
Today, most companies spend
a disproportionate amount of their marketing budgets on
branding and feature-function advertising that creates
minimal inbound lead generation for the sales team. This
is vendor marketing at its worst. Microsoft and
Coca-Cola are the world's two best known brands.
Yet, both firms' stocks are flat and neither is creating
any organic revenue growth from its primary market
brands. Just because your firm name is known to buyers
does not mean buyers will buy.
Value First, Brand Second
When buyers make decisions
on product or service acquisitions, their selection
process is driven by need, desire, ego, financial
resources, fear, and knowledge.
Yet, many companies today
have an incorrect perception of their business value
based on their perception, not the buyer's actions. As a
result of their perception, they focus on pulling their
value behind them by continually telling prospects that
their offering is the best, or the cheapest, or that
their management team is customer centric.
When a company's value is
different from the buyer's perception of value, this is
called a Value Variation Gap. Value Variation Gaps occur
because company management teams are emotionally
connected to their product or service offering's
capabilities and then project their needs onto the buyer
and ultimately into their marketing approach, regardless
of the prospect's true perception of why they will buy.
The benefits of Value
Forward Marketing are:
- You interact with the prospect until they move
into a buying mode.
- You educate the prospect to understand more
about the business pains of their industry through
an education source (your firm).
- You help prospects see your firm as a specialist
and reduce their need to "check out" your
competition.
- You accelerate the prospect's need to buy from
your sales executives sooner by communicating
business value of your offering in a non-sales
environment.
How do you deploy Value Forward Marketing?
- Develop multiple marketing engagement tools to
move prospects through a continuous series of
interactions with your company (white papers,
eNewsletters, seminars, teleseminars, webinars,
etc.) that are based on business improvement . . .
not your product or service.
- Have the sales team qualify all prospects.
- Segment all prospects into passive marketing or
active marketing categories. (Active buying if they
plan to buy in 90 days, passive marketing if they
plan to buy later than 90 days).
- Continually engage prospects with a value
forward thought leadership until they are within 90
days of buying, and then have the marketing team
"pass" them from a passive marketing mode to an
active marketing mode so the sales team can sell
them.
To sell more, Value First,
Brand Second!
The Marketing Value
Variation Gap Assessment
1 Does your marketing
communication talk about the quality of your offering's
support or follow-up as key differentiation
characteristics of why prospects should buy from you?
Yes • No
2 When you lose a deal, do prospects tell your sales
team more than 50% of the time that your price was too
high?
Yes • No
3 Do you market your firm's products or services
horizontally to everyone or do you market vertically to
specific markets each with separate positioning?
Horizontally • Vertically
4 Does your firm lead with price as your sales value
proposition when marketing to a prospect?
Yes • No
5 Is the word "price" mentioned anywhere on your web
site, advertising, sales brochures or direct mail to
prospects?
Yes • No
6 In the final sales cycle steps, do prospects seek
information from you on how you are different from your
competitors more than 50% of the time?
Yes • No
7 Is your price based on your competition's price?
Yes • No
8 On repeat sales to existing clients, do clients hold
you hostage for discounts to get add-on business?
Yes • No
9 Does your web site's home page talk about how you can
help your prospects?
Yes • No
10 Does your marketing communications emulate the
marketing messages of your direct and indirect
competitors?
Yes • No
Recommended Answers
1-no; 2-no; 3-vertically;
4-no; 5-no; 6-no; 7-no; 8-no; 9-yes; 10-no.
Scoring
Each correct answer gets 10
points. Each incorrect answer gets 0 points. Now add up
your score.
The higher your score, the
more your prospects value your offering.
Value First, Brand Second!
Rick Erling
President The CxO Group, LLC and
Publisher of The CxO News
www.thecxogroup.com
info@thecxogroup.com
(972) 727-6880
Recommendations provided are to be used at your
discretion and are provided solely as an independent
opinion. |
