At the nicest B2B marketing company, Find New Customers, we’ve really cranked up marketing.  That’s important for smaller businesses in this noisy world of today.

Frankly, in our long history, it’s something I’ve never done before. But since my major fall and lots of time in the hospital, I had lots of time to think and reflect on how to take control my own destiny. Thought leadership was my idea.  No sales pitches.

It’s also important to touch people multiple times using multiple media: direct mail, phone calls, email, and videos.

Find New Customers is now planning to become a full-time marketing company.

Below is the second thought leadership article sent out by Find New Customers to our prospective customer list. Note that it’s thought leadership and not a sales pitch.  The goal is to educate people and earn their trust.

The Second Letter

Profit Heroes: Breakthrough Strategies for Winning Customers and Building Profits, a great book on new challenges faced by sales people everywhere, including «COMPANY_NAME» salespeople - by noted sales expert Bob Rickert. I strongly recommend you buy and read this book.

Chapter 3 of the book is entitled “It’s all about Profitability – How Customers are Changing.” Bob says economic challenges have created a new financial culture “What salespeople are experiencing at many customers is the emergence of a new financial culture…focused on their overall financial goals.”

Here’s what a business school professor had to say about these ideas.

“Bob’s focus on ‘profit’ could not be more on target. In a recent dialog with industry CEOs, there was a ‘table-pounding’ agreement that all employees, including sales, marketing, finance, operations and IT, must all know how they impact profit improvement.” Dr. Douglas A. Fisher, Marquette University.

If your company is trying to sell to business buyers, your company sales team needs to know how buyers are changing, so that you can win more deals and improve «COMPANY_NAME»’s profitability.

I want to help you understand how they’re changing, so that you can improve your company profits and win even more deals than you do today.

The changing demands of buyers – from simple needs to improving profitability means you need to train your salespeople in new ways.  Rather than training them in features and benefits of your company offerings, you need to teach them to read a 10-K report and bios on LinkedIn, for instance, so they can discuss the profit changes possible and competitive advantages with your company offerings. And to use tools like YouTube to find internal speeches potential buyers made.

The book featured a nice chart on how Sales evolved over time:

Sales Strategy Evolution
Sales Strategy	Product Centered Selling	Solution Centered Selling	Valued Centered Selling	Profit Centered Selling
Differentiation	Product/Price	Product/Service Bundling	Opportunity Payback	Customer Profitability
Your Role	Product Expert	Operational Expert	Business Problem Solver	Earnings Contributor
Your Relationship	Vendor	Valued Supplier	Preferred Supplier	Peer
Business Outcomes	Survival	Remain a Player	Stay Relevant	Own the Relationship

 

Bob believes it takes a high level of commitment to become a true profit-centric company. It requires executive sponsorship, a process champion, and the investment of resource – think of a profit calculator that runs on an iPad.

In addition, special financial goals need to be set for your process. You undoubtedly need both a coach and good information, «FIRST_NAME».

Wouldn’t you like your salespeople to win more deals and bring in more revenue? If so, you’ll need to teach them these new techniques and how to talk profits.  We certainly can help you.

In fact, I won a multimillion dollar deal with the Home Shopping Network in St Petersburg, FL using these techniques long before this book was written.

Want to know my secret? Then just visit www.findnewcustomers.com  and sign up for a free 30 minute conversation with me.

Let’s adapt to these buyer changes, so the better off we’ll be…and profitable «COMPANY_NAME» will be.

This sales and marketing expert is happy to discuss your unique needs on the phone. Just visit www.findnewcustomers.com and sign up for your FREE ½ hour phone meeting so you can share your thoughts and feedback.  I’m here to help you.

To contact this award winning marketing expert, just fill out the form below.

What do you think? Love comments here.

This blog is written by the award-winning marketing expert Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor - President of Find New Customers. You can follow me on Twitter at @fearlesscomp