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Good Is No Longer Enough
For at least the last 20 years, businesses have had a wind at their back that has driven growth and forgiven many mistakes. With this wind at your back, good was good enough. As we head into 2010, you can no longer count on the wind to drive your growth efforts, and good is no longer good enough.
This is true in every aspect of your business. It’s especially true when it comes to your sales efforts. Never before has there been more pressure to succeed, and more urgency that your selling efforts be great, than there is today. Mistakes are punished as never before. That is probably why I’ve been writing so much about selling efforts recently.
I’m going to continue the conversation I started a month ago when I asked if your salespeople were pests, peddlers or demand creators. My question today is what type of approach do you need to be successful.
There are three types of approaches that selling organizations take:
- Order-takers. This approach isn’t selling so much as it is, at best, servicing.
- Catchers. In this approach, you are selling (and you may even be selling well), but your sales efforts are limited to the pre-acknowledged needs of your buyers. An indication that you are a “Catcher” is when you find yourself (or one of your salespeople) saying that, “once I’m given an opportunity I know how to capture it.” The problem with this approach is that your opportunities are limited by your buyer’s ability to become dissatisfied with the status quo, and further, that dissatisfaction must be in line with your offerings and positioning. This can be quite a challenge today if you have a premium offering, as the natural “dissatisfaction” today is being driven by the need to cut costs, and price is often a proxy for “cost.” In my experience working with hundreds of sales teams over my career, the vast majority of “great” sales teams fall into this category, and when there is a wind at your back and demand is naturally increasing at faster and faster rates you can be very successful as a catcher. When there is no wind, let alone a head wind, “catching” is not enough to drive growth.
- Demand Creators. This approach creates business opportunities. It stimulates and creates demand. Demand Creators do extraordinarily well when there is a wind at their back, but the real reward of this approach comes when there is no wind. Demand Creators create opportunities. They stimulate dissatisfaction in the status quo. They’re not salespeople so much as they are business people who sell. Their business acumen enables them to become resources to their buyers. As a result, they can have conversations that no one else can have. They’re also extraordinarily proficient at winning competitive business – an uber-critical skill for the future.
The vast majority of selling organizations take the catcher or the order-taker approach. Their systems are built to respond to customer demand – not to create it. The trouble with this approach is that its efforts only work effectively after the buyer has decided they need something. With fewer buyers and lower budgets, purchasing decisions are being delayed and avoided. Additionally, selling organizations are most vulnerable to competition and commoditization in these situations. When demand was jumping, you could get away with it. Sure, there was lots of pressure on margins, but that could be made up in volume. Today, there’s even more pressure on margins and volume is down.
Creating demand is tougher. It requires better strategy, better execution, and better people, but, as they say – if it were easy, everyone would do it.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by Doug Davidoff: Good Is No Longer Enough http://su.pr/2TZjy9 (Today’s Post)…
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[...] build reasonable equity value and you could grow – without the sacrifice of being great. Today, that is no longer true. Today, the drought makes business tough – almost impossible – for those unwilling to [...]
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[...] Recruiting salespeople is harder that selling your product or service. It’s an interesting riddle. First, there are a finite number of great salespeople. Second, there’s a finite number of great companies. You’d think it would be easy enough to match the two – the problem is that it is not, actually it’s quite to the contrary. (For those thinking, “Gee, I don’t need a “great” salesperson, good will do,” should read this post immediately!) [...]
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[...] especially in The Drought we’ve been in for 3 years and counting, is a marathon run at a sprinter’s pace. You [...]
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[...] especially in The Drought we’ve been in for 3 years and counting, is a marathon run at a sprinter’s pace. You [...]
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There is a fourth type of selling organization called “Demand Identifiers.” They understand that the vast majority of demand is creatored by Information Overload.
We are exposed to millions of informational messages, including marketing and sales, each year. Demand creation has everything to do with the way our brains filter that information.
It is far easier, and more profitable, to find prospects who already want what you are selling than to create demand.
Jacques,
Thanks for the comment. I think I’d classify the “Demand Identifiers” as very good catchers. The problem of waiting until a buyer has decided that they need to buy (and please note I agree that buyers buy on their time not on the sellers’ – and sellers need to accept that) means that sellers must wait until buyer have self diagnosed.
Humans (and buyers are no exception) are horrible self diagnosers. We confuse correlation with causation and we focus on symptoms not causes. This is why so few buyers ever actually get the results they desired when buying.
As buyers self diagnose, sellers are increasingly commoditized and work from a position of weakness as opposed to strength.
While I agree with you that creating demand is hard, I can’t agree with you that it’s not (insanely) profitable. Just look at the performance of such Demand Creators as Apple, Netflix, Fedex, and in their hey days Starbucks and Sony – to name just a few.
Thanks again for the comment and I look forward to continuing the conversation.