Here’s what Marketing Managers say to us:
- “Our sales people need to understand the problems our products can solve for our customers.”
- “Our product training and product launches are not getting us the early post-launch traction that we need.”
- “We have a well defined value proposition but I think it is getting lost somewhere in the translation.”
- “We are hitting our product sales targets but we can’t seem to sell at the target price.”
- “I need my Product Managers to work more effectively with the sales team.”
Research conducted by B2B Magazine, CSO Insights, Aberdeen and others reveals that:
- Effective value positioning occurs in less than 10 % of sales opportunities
- 70-80% of marketing materials go unused
- Less than 50% of sales people make quota
- The half-life of typical training, including product training, is 30 days
This tells us there is more to effective selling than the salespeople themselves. But simply calling products solutions doesn’t help either. A ‘solution’ must have a clear and direct linkage with a specific customer problem or opportunity.
In addition, the solution must address the actual causes of the problem and have a traceable impact on causal outcomes. Becoming truly solution-focused as an organisation requires more than superficial packaging manipulations or the bundling of products and services. At the same time, ineffective value positioning and sales and marketing disconnects are additional common significant contributors to poor sales performance.
Talk to Level Five today about our Solution Centric Framework which has helped many of our clients make the transition from pseudo solutions to becoming truly solution-centric.
Contact us for a highly confidential initial discussion on these or any other challenges or opportunities today.
