Stop Selling!

Who is this madman? You’re in a recession, sales are falling and I’m telling you to stop selling. On yer bike!

Seriously though, think about it. In your home life do you like being sold to? Do you have the ‘No Sales Calls’ sticker on your front door? Have you used the BT service to stop sales phone calls being made to you? Do you steer clear of shops where over-enthusiastic sales assistants pounce the minute you walk through the door?

For most of us the answer to one of more of these questions is yes. In a world full of sales messages these techniques are too intrusive, and for the most part we aren’t ready to buy anyway, with the result that we find them deeply annoying.

Those senior executives you are trying to reach to convince them to buy your product, solution or service are really no different. They don’t like being sold to. As a marketing director in a large IT services company I know I didn’t like being constantly bombarded by calls and emails attempting to sell me something I was not in a position to buy. The badly planned calls with inappropriate offerings were bad enough, but easy to deal with. At least you could laugh at the ineptitude.

I might at least remember them positively
What were worse were the calls where someone had obviously done some reasonable background on our company and had an offering that sounded good, but because of lack of budget or bloody-mindedness elsewhere in the company, I was unable to do anything. If they got the message, wished me all the best, and got off the phone, I might at least remember them positively if and when I was able to move forward. But as often as not the person on the other end went into objection handling mode and tried telling me that if I wanted to use ‘best practice’ or some such term I had to look at their offering. In other words, ‘you’re not doing your job properly’. Either I did think I was using best practice, in which case I thought the sales person was an arrogant so-and-so, or I knew I wasn’t and wasn’t in a position to do anything about it, in which case I felt impotent, embarrassed and ultimately angry. Either way, that company was never likely to get my business.

It isn’t just me.

Recently I took part in a focus group meeting with a number of CIOs from well known UK organisations in the retail, logistics, construction and services sectors. They all receive hundreds of emails and calls a week from suppliers trying to sell to them. If you are lucky enough to get your message past the protective defences of the PA or the spam-filter, all the CIOs agreed that they would most likely bin the communication unless they happened to have a pressing related issue just as they received the mail or call. In that case they might consider putting you on a potential review list. In other words, you might get invited to a beauty parade if the 1000-1 shot came up that you got your timing right.

It was the only thing my father couldn’t argue with me about
Why has it become like this, and why does it feel particularly acute in IT? 25 years ago when I first started in sales in the IT industry there were certainly no CIOs and precious few IT Directors. IT managers generally reported to Finance Directors and most business executives were uninterested in, unaware of or frightened of IT, or all three. My brother, who predated me in IT by almost 20 years, said he went into IT because "it was the only thing my father (a corporate F.D.) couldn’t argue with me about." In that sort of environment sales were free to push their latest proprietary gizmos to IT managers already struggling to keep up technologically.

As the impact and cost of IT grew, business executives realised they needed to get more involved. However, for all the claims about business and IT alignment from the late 80s onwards, the proprietary nature of hardware and software solutions made it difficult for non-technical executives to make informed buying decisions. It took the explosion in personal computing and the growth of first open systems, and then open source, to really start to tip the balance of power in favour of the buyers.

IBM (I Blame Microsoft)
To most people the letters IBM refer to a large US IT company based in Armonk, NY. But to many in the industry, used to being in control of the sales and marketing process, the letters might have more resonance if they spelled out ‘I Blame Microsoft’. The ubiquity of personal computing, its accessibility and lower costs were stripping away the mystique of IT and showing what it could do for the business. Children were showing their executive parents how accessible, and therefore not-scary, it was and what could be achieved, while at the same time the growth of hardware independent systems drove an inexorable commoditisation of that market.

All-in-all buyers had become far savvier about technology and the emphasis switched from technical excellence to business outcomes. Selling technology features, even dressed up as benefits, no longer worked. Ironically, at the point at which customers became as savvy and aware as the vendors, the explosive growth and development of technology that can be applied to almost any business issue, and the volatile nature of business caused by globalisation and then recession combined to give most executives information overload.

So what about our CIOs at the recent focus group? They all agreed that they are now business rather than technology managers, trying to help the CEO execute against his strategy. If you are in any doubt about this dig out the latest Conference Board report from late last year which puts consistent execution of business strategy at the top of the CEO agenda. For the CIO they have too much information flying at them, and not enough time to make sense of it all.

We asked them what they needed from their vendors and in particular how new vendors could and should interact with them. The unanimous messages that came back were, 'deliver me business value and look to build a relationship with me'. When we dug a little deeper this resolved itself into providing information to them about trends and thought leadership that could help their business, and by implication them, and information about what their peers were doing and thinking.

Before the advent of sophisticated digital marketing tools you would have been forgiven for thinking that such an arrangement for providing valuable information and insight without any pre-defined quid-pro-quo was a recipe for high pre-sales costs with little tangible return. If you hadn’t noticed, the best retail websites such as Amazon, eBay, Play.com etc are getting good at suggesting items you might be interested in. This is because they know what you are buying and browsing. This can be applied in the B2B market.

Leverage your experience, those expensive analyst contracts and your customers’ and partners’ experiences into the rich content your customers crave. Track what they read and keep going back to and then provide them with more tailored information that gives a deeper insight into the issues that affect them. Their needs, issues and interests become evident as the information they receive becomes more focused and targeted. Before you know it they will be calling you because you have an uncanny ability to hit their pain points with valuable insights and which you know you can help them with.

Does this really work? Robert Clara VP Marketing Europe at Hybris, a software company providing retail platform solutions thinks so. "Despite difficult economic conditions and targeting a struggling retail sector, the campaign delivered response rates nearly ten times higher than previous activities and achieved the same results in one month as telemarketing achieved in six."

Steria found that they were engaging at board level very quickly in companies they hadn’t previously touched. Janet Lennon, Head of Commercial Marketing commented, "Think Smart helps us to think more strategically. We can move quickly from strategic thinking into execution. Not only do they deliver creative programme concepts, but are able to execute them with precision. They are our eyes and ears in the marketplace too and they’re not afraid to create waves."

So what’s the bottom line? Your customers are knowledgeable and sophisticated in terms of IT and are no longer amenable to that old sales pitch. They are also under tremendous pressure and lack the time to make sense of all the information out there to take sound business decisions. If you can help them by providing timely and insightful content that enables them make more informed decisions, when they are ready to buy they will come running. Don’t push, just pull them gently. In other words...stop selling and they will buy.

Contact Think Smart Marketing.