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What remedies are we offering and selling to companies?
Sometimes our client has a terrible headache and does whatever it takes to get a quick solution at any cost.
Other times he seeks an answer to non-urgent needs under the promise of better health. Either they seek to prevent the risk of illness, or even pleasure.
These latter necessities are apparently expendable. For this reason, in this case, unlike the first situation, it proceeds to a more considered decision-making, including its price.
Do we know how to attend or look for the client when he is in each situation?
We must assume that the client’s times are not those of our company, and that the key to selling is to do it at the correct time. Right product or service at the right time.
In the first case we sell “solutions-with-prices”, while in the second we offer “solutions-at-what-prices”. That is why here we have to prepare ourselves to justify to the client that the product / service we offer corresponds to a reasonable price. Since by the nature of the need it is usually perceived as high.
Because price is perceived value, and its elasticity is branded by the customer. Therefore, it is about managing the expectations of him.
The company’s response and remedies can be described as a composite of different solutions. An offer with different cost and degree of valuation by market demand, as expressed in the illustration.
¿What does my client need?
Stay, plan for the future, be able to negotiate, have a good name, innovate …
Maslow (an American psychologist of the 20th century) defined human needs in a hierarchical way in his pyramid.
He placed the most basic or simple needs at the base of the pyramid and the most relevant or fundamental ones at the top of the pyramid.
He was referring to the needs of physiology, security, belonging, recognition, and self-realization.
According to him, only unmet needs influence behavior. And as needs are being satisfied or achieved, others of a higher level arise.
Other authors defend that needs can appear together, despite the fact that the basic ones predominate over the higher ones.
It appears that basic needs require a relatively short motivational cycle for their satisfaction. While higher needs require a longer cycle.
This would be just as valid if we made a simile with the needs of a company, which we could classify according to the following graph.
For example, the company’s need for self-realization can be channeled into its ability to innovate. Clearly, this satisfies the need to secure your future income at the same time.
Similarly, its need for recognition in the market occurs when it certifies the benefits of its products or its business model. Especially when it anticipates the demands of its customers to differentiate itself from the competition.
Offer from an active demand point of view
When we design the offer of products or services of the company, its mission must be to satisfy needs in a different way. And try to capture as much market value as possible.
Where do customers want us to go? Do we understand and respond to your needs and expectations? What is our point of view?
For this it is important to know the market well, to have an active point of view from the demand. Anticipate, deconstruct the demand, the satisfied and unmet needs of customers. Build the offer or even co-create it with the client, giving him just what he needs.
And of course knowing its size, sector, geographic area, trends in each category, the business context: technology, competition, market, legal framework, channels, brands, …
The company must be true to itself, to its essence and genetics, to its core business, but abandoning a passive point of view from the offer.
The company must have a vision to lead and be a reference. Focus on what you do best, on your differential value and specialization. Generate an offer of customizable, creative, imaginative and innovative solutions based on your strengths and DNA.
It is a question of knowing how to surround the traditional product with small innovations – to avoid losing its added value, or expanding its range. Small leads to large.
You can even offer free services to capture customer behavior and better retain them.
The company must seek to lead the different market needs niches that suit it, which will make it position itself as different and irreplaceable.
The key is to diversify without trying to solve all those needs with your offer. As well as anticipating or going around the edges of the niches already occupied by the big competitors.
If the company is late to a niche occupied by other competitors, it must at least do very well.
Another important point for the positive evolution of the offer and results of the company is the well-managed competition. Where the competition is, there is traffic and new opportunities.
Strategic customer segmentation
The strategic segmentation of the client (A, B, C, …) is key, either through the experience and history of the acquisition and sales funnel, or because of their profile regarding company size, number of employees and people who decide.
Delimiting allows us to maximize the value that we can capture in the market, stimulate demand, individualize the offer, personalize prices, carry out a positioning and commercial action plans by segments. Feed the best customers.
A good segmentation of the commercial history, the analysis of the client’s profitability allows to predict a variable demand, promote the safe sale, the probable one, the crossed one and even an extrapolation strategy to new clients with similar characteristics.
Segmenting leads us to increase the volume per product, its profitability, and the linkage or depth in the range of products within an account.
It is important in this to be able to use artificial intelligence tools or at least business intelligence tools for decision making.
The ABC of customers should allow us to direct the commercial effort and distinguish companies with high volume, profitability and ties with the company (A), from which having some of these characteristics are less linked (B), and from the rest (C)
The internationalization of the client portfolio is also normally a great opportunity to achieve greater profitability.
NOTE. This article is an adaptation and excerpt of my final course work within the Supersales ABC program of EDEM business school
Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash
