Relevance Sells

Notice, I will talk about what B-2-B can learn from Mal-Mart Marketing, not just from the company Wal-Mart. There is a difference in this case.

Earlier this week I attended the NARMS Conference in Tampa. NARMS stands for the National Association for Retail Marketing Services, and they are to be congratulated for stating what their acronym stands for several prominent places on their website. It amazes me how many associations fail to do that.

NARMS members sell merchandising related services to retail companies both large and small. They are B-2-B companies who sell to B-2-C companies.

Carol Spieckerman from New Market Builders (Twitter @retailxpert) spoke on overall marketing trends for major retailers. You might think such a recognized industry pundit might hang her shingle in New York, Los Angeles, or perhaps Chicago. But no, she’s based in Bentonville Arkansas.

Half of the population will scratch their heads at this and wonder why she chooses to live and work in this small town in this small state. The rest of you know Bentonville is the worldwide headquarters for Wal-Mart. Now you all know why Bentonville is a brilliant place for Carol to be.

Getting to Wal-Mart Marketing’s Lesson for B-2-B

Carol quoted the Chief Marketing Officer of Wal-Mart, John Fleming, and his ten words stick with me to this day:

“Everyone thinks what they have is the most important thing.”

If you sell or market you MUST be convinced your products and/or services are essential to your clients’ and prospects’ future. Sales, and marketing to a lesser degree, meets with tremendous negative responses on a percentage basis, so your bulletproofing has to come from belief in your wares.

HOWEVER, you must understand that your prospects and clients have other priorities.

Relevance Marketing seeks to align itself to what’s important to your prospects. “Alignment” was the big buzzword for this conference. They could use it interchangeably with the word “relevance.”

Wal-Mart tops the Fortune 500 with over $378B in sales. They are globally the 900-pound gorilla of retail. What they think is the most important thing to them and should be to any who hope to sell to them.

Yet, why would Fleming say such a thing if most of those who approach him and his company don’t think and act like they have the most important thing for Wal-Mart to listen to?

Whoever is the number one vendor in the world to Wal-Mart, it can still be said that what they have isn’t most important to the huge retailer.

Whoever you sell or market to, they individually have their own agendas for their companies. If you don’t know what that agenda is for each prospect, then you miss the boat.

You might think you know Wal-Mart’s agenda – Low Everyday Prices. Wrong. That’s their advertising position, and it has paid off nicely for decades – never better than in these hard economic times. But those who shop Wal-Mart and competing stores know they are not the low price provider in all products.

Wal-Mart’s agenda includes efforts in going green and being technologically the most advanced logistics company in the world. Surprisingly, by design Wal-Mart’s product mix encompasses products that win the market, those that place in the top three, and products that just show they are in the game without being big winners.

Relevance Marketing insists you sell and market to your prospects’ agendas.

Or, you can continue to cut your prices until you go under. Then your prospects will buy from whoever is the next lowest bidder.

But they will partner with companies whose relevant sales and marketing aligns with their agenda.

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If you are looking for powerful reasons for a prospect to buy, ask those who have already bought from you.

I’ve been pondering the need for companies to interview their satisfied (and not so satisfied) customers. I say interview instead of visit or make a sales call. Relevance Marketing can find loads of ammunition to relate to prospects from those who know your product/service from the other side of the table from you.

Customers Know What They Know, and You Need to Know It Too

It is so effective people try it once and then never try it again. Everyone knows the satisfied customer can give them a ton of useful info on why they bought and why they like your offerings. Customer interviews may also tell you what they don’t like, which might be the most important info you’ll gather from the effort. It is human nature that when something works this well, we rarely ever use it again. Go figure.

Interviews with Satisfied Customer will provide:

• Great benefit statements for toe-to-toe selling
• Powerful quotations for brochures, sales letters, your website, etc.
• Insight into how customers/users think about your wares
• Understanding about how they use it that you never imagined
• Ways to help them learn to use your products/services better
• New uses for what you sell you’ve never thought of
• Places where you’re not delivering like you think you are

Customer Interviews with the Not Quite Satisfied will provide:

• Insight into where and how you’ve failed
• Corrections to make in training and support
• Corrections to make in your products/services
• How you’re over promising in your sales and/or marketing
• People who might not be putting your company’s best foot forward

The Interview Process

You have to make it a relatively formal interview to produce the proper mindset in the client. If you are the sales person, make it so you are NOT the sales person in your mind and your demeanor when you’re talking to them. Either get yourself out of thinking like a sales person or have someone else in your organization do the interviews.

I’ve suggested before that reps should trade territories – Rep 1 interviews Rep 2’s customers and 2 interviews 1’s. No one ever agrees with me, but it is a good idea. Field reps recognize what would be helpful in selling before anyone else would, but by working in another’s territory, there will be no personal reason to cover up whatever is discovered. You do have to offer blanket amnesty to all your reps and mean it.

Thinking on it, that’s probably why no one has ever agreed to do it my way.

Questions – Create open-ended, how, what, and why questions to gather info. When you hear, “You guys are the greatest,” it’s complimentary, but useless for your purposes.

1) Ask a broad “How do you like it” question to get people to open up.
2) Then ask why questions on those answers to go for details.
3) Next ask your specific questions in areas you feel are very important to all customers – these are the features of your offerings you feel causes everyone to want to buy.
4) Finally as questions such as, “What else do you feel is important that I haven’t mentioned?”

If you need help defining these questions for your use, call me.

If you’d like an outsider to perform these interviews, call me.

When the Customer Isn’t Always Right

Quite often you will have some capability in your product/service that you know is startling, amazing, perhaps even revolutionary – and yet your customers don’t get it.

The ones that buy do so for all the other features and benefits, and either use your killer attribute only occasionally or not all.

Do some true soul searching and determine if this capability is as astounding as you feel it is, and if it is, bear down hard to make some customer or prospect truly see what you see.

In the early days, people bought PCs because they were more powerful than typewriters and cheaper than dedicated word processing systems. Many of you have no idea what I’m talking about.

I’ve written on the amazing power of digital presses and how so many printing companies missed the opportunity they afforded. Most have purchased them because they were lightning fast and lower cost for printing short run jobs. They were great on such work, and those who bought them and mostly used them that way found themselves fairly quickly in bidding wars with other printers who used their new digital presses for that same purpose as well.

But a few of the early buyers invested in the data and design expertise and equipment to turn their digital presses into major marketing machines for their clientele. These companies tripled and quadrupled the profit percentages they made with their presses as opposed to the “short runs only” guys.

Such innovators are still racking up substantial profits because they sell their prospects verifiable methods to succeed in business, not printing – sounds like Marketing with Relevance to me.

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These are two examples of users not getting a great concept and missing out because of it.

The flip side is that perhaps you don’t really have the great innovation you think you do. Or perhaps you are before your time.

Regardless, your only hope to make your case for your powerful innovation is to use Relevance Marketing to capture your prospects’ imagination, not just get enough attention to barely sell your goods.

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Like many other marketing techniques that have been around for a while, the elevator pitch idea has become stale. By stale I mean that prospects are aware of these phrases and are tired of the obvious usage.

Stating “Value-Add” was effective but is now cliche
Asking, “Please tell me about your business,” worked but is now irritating
Cold calling in person used to work but is now stupid

I’ve heard sales people say, “But we’re a Value Add company,” as if just using those two words makes a poorly delineated presentation of customer benefits magically acceptable.

However, if you truly present the value you add to your products, your prospects will be delighted – just never again say, “Value Add.”

The theory is that an Elevator Pitch IS supposed to be all about you, and not about your prospects. However, which is more important, talking all about yourself or gaining the favorable attention and interest of your listeners?

In researching published techniques for this article I’ve read more than one format for elevator pitches. They almost universally start something like:

• Your name
• Your title
• Your company
• What your company does

Then they list a variety of other info for you to give. I’ve seen examples where you’re supposed to also tell people who your competition is – I say let my competitors show up if they want their names in front of this person or group.

In several examples the last thing they tell you to do is give your Unique Selling Point or Value Proposition. That should be as close to the start as possible. It’s truly all any prospect is interested in.

Relevance Marketing Principles Applied to the Elevator Pitch

Elevator pitches are used in two ways: a) in one-on-one or one-with-a-few situations in cocktail parties or networking gatherings, and b) as a way to introduce yourself in a crowd such as a seminar, business group luncheon, etc.

Both can be virtually the same pitch, but in a group you cannot apply to your pitch what you’ve heard from the individual(s) you’re talking to. With one or a few others, try to get them to go first, and pay attention to what they say; don’t plan what you’ll say while they talk. If you do need a moment, ask them a less important question that might be easier to follow while planning what you’ll say.

When giving your elevator pitch to a group, think ahead of time about what the members of the group have in common, and pitch to those commonalities.

Remember, in one definition Relevance Marketing is marketing prospects can identify with. To give a Relevant Elevator Pitch you need to not so much talk about them, but set up a scenario where they can identify – where they can say, ”I’ve thought or felt that,” or they might say, “I’ve been in that situation,” or perhaps they might think, “I know someone dealing with that problem.”

Three Suggested Elevator Pitch Techniques

I usually reject the “Start All About Myself” approach. I’ll give my name if it’s the large group scenario – usually you’ve already introduced yourselves in one-on-one or one-with-a-few. In this small number situation the opportunity usually goes something like this, “So tell me about yourself.” It’s best if you ask this question first as I’ve stated.

The “Do-You-Know-How/Wouldn’t-It-Be-Great-If” Approach

Prepare for your pitch in this way:
1) Always start with a major way you can really help your viable prospects.
2) Then identify how someone suffers without your product/service.
3) Next, figure out the wording that let’s those listening understand the problem as succinctly as you can.
4) Finally describe the solution you provide in a conversational manner as if you’ve just thought about it.

“Do you know how a lot of businesses on the edge between small and medium sized have a hard time providing benefits to its employees without costing an arm and a leg in support staff expenses? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to take care of this that cost those companies less than doing it themselves?

“Well, that’s what my company does…”

You then need to succinctly tell how you do whatever you do – SUCCINCTLY being the most important word to remember when delivering any elevator pitch. I’ve seen any number of group scenario elevator pitch situations where the first few to stand give their pitch in 30-40 seconds, but each following pitch takes longer and longer, until the last one takes 3-4 minutes. Remember, an elevator pitch should be roughly 30 seconds.

Granted, my suggested scenarios take more than 7 seconds up to this point, but if you drone on about yourself and your title and your company and what your company does… you’ll probably see the “glazed eyes look” in that time.

The “Have You Ever…” or “Do You Ever…” Approach

The preparation first steps are like above: 1) Think about the major way you can really help your viable prospects. 2) Then identify how someone suffers without your product/service. 3) Next, figure out the wording that let’s those listening understand the problem as succinctly as possible.

However, then 4) Create two to four “Have You Ever…” or “Do You Ever…” questions highlighting their problems. I like this technique when giving my pitch in groups:

“Have you ever wondered if anyone reads your brochures? Do you ever leave a number of voice mails and few if any ever returns them? Do you ever receive a decent response from your sales letters? Are you disappointed in the low number of visitors to your website?

“Well, if you have, we need to talk. I’ve found the key to solve this is…”

The “Let Me Tell You About My Friend…” Approach

“Let me tell you about my friend, Mary. She’s a client of mine. She runs a business about the size of yours, and she was pulling her hair out over the cost of supporting her company’s computers. She’s good with them herself, and did her own IT work when there were just four in her company, but now there are eleven of them, and she can’t grow her business and keep her people productive. She figured she was only to the point where she could justify a half of an IT support person, and they don’t exist.

“Well, my company was able to…”

In all of these approaches, you create a way for those listening to identify with what you can do for them or their businesses, or for someone they know. So what if you don’t tell them all about your company or all about yourself.

If talking all about yourself is what you’re there for, forget what I’ve said and brag away.

Just don’t expect the people you talk to, to return your calls or agree to meet with you – unless they want to sell you something and will use the appointment you set to turn the tables on you. No offense meant, but the practice of making an appointment to listen to someone else’s sales presentation and then pitch your own, is a common ploy for some people in insurance and in multi-level network marketing.

Relevance Marketing helps you capture your prospects’ favorable attention and interest in all sorts of situations – including the elevator pitch. You just have to think about what you’re doing and apply the principles.

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