Thursday, August 13, 2009

Are you offering a Merc when he's looking for a Maruti? – Are you scaring your clients away?

It's but natural that given the economic situation, companies are selling hard and aggressively in the market. But all the hard selling and aggression can be futile if this does not match the need of the market. Given the crisis in the industry, most companies have evolved methodologies and processes to strengthen their systems. This in turn means that their sales teams are under double the pressure to market these competencies as well as fetch business. Here are some pointers from personal experience about how to make a customer-focused pitch without diluting your core competency or making an overkill.

a. Are you scaring your clients away?

Often, more than the cost, an overly grandiose proposal can scare your clients away. Recently, when we were sending out a proposal to a client, Rahul our director sales and marketing upon receiving the proposal called back frantically saying that the proposal looked quite daunting. The detailed description of our methodology could scare the potential client who is looking for a very specific part-solution. Well, although our intention is genuine wherein we want our clients to know the depths of our processes but too much information for a busy client can overwhelm them. Some may equate extensive details with high project cost and shy away from proceeding with the proposal.

b. What is your motive? Offering a solution to the client or generating additional business for yourself?

Many believe it is good business sense to create additional needs for your client and in the process generate more work for themselves. However, I believe it is foolhardy to make the client spend more that what they currently need (more so given the economic situation). In fact, I believe the solutions that we offer our clients should not just meet but always surpass their expectations. Only then will your clients trust you and respect your ideas.

c. Have you captured your clients' needs before proposing to them?

Am sure most of us practice this. But what I want to emphasize is do we really probe and discuss with our prospects to understand their 'real' need? Here's an example. A client comes to us saying that they want us to train their telesales about some basic technical concepts. The usual practice would involve understanding the domain, gathering information about telesales and subsequently designing the training. However, the key here is to understand 'why' does the organization need this training? If they have internal trainers why are they looking outside? If they have had this training before, what is it are they expecting to be 'different from this training? It definitely helps if you can gather informal information about their expectations, their experiences from earlier training etc.

d. Do your clients need what you are selling?

Are you offering a solution because you have one and must sell or are you offering it because the solution best fits your client's need? In the past, eLearning earned a bad reputation in the Indian market because many eLearning companies pushed eLearning to clients who were not ready for it. Many of these clients got carried away by its sales spiel (cost-effective, no geographic constraints, no recurring cost etc) only to realize later that this mode of delivery was not right for their industry or their employees. Consequently their investment in eLearning went waste. This led to distrust and loss of credibility for eLearning and other training providers in the industry.

You may have a solid methodology, a great product, and a fantastic development team. However, over-pitching may scare your clients away!

5 comments:

Rashmi said...

Also when we overpitch, it can lead to unrealistic expectations from a client where the client demands a Merc for the price of a Maruti!!

Amit Garg said...

Geeta,
You talk sense here. Though all the points you mention boil down to this thought - 'identify needs properly and sell appropriate solution'. And I agree with that.

I would like to pick on your statement -"Many believe it is good business sense to create additional needs for your client and in the process generate more work for themselves."

I am one who would like to do this always. Why? Many clients don't know their needs. Not so strange I guess. We need to keep asking 'why you need this?' to discover the real needs (you too mention this in the next point). If we can discover the genuine needs (and we can consider that as ‘creating additional needs’), we are only helping the client invest in a solution that works. A cheaper solution targeted at a perceived need is in any case not going to help.

I think you probably meant this only. I just wanted to point out that creating additional (genuine) needs is actually a desirable part of the sales process.

Geeta Bose said...

Thanks Amit. Absolutely agree with your thoughts but generating additional business should not be the 'only' motive driving a sales person.

We being in the consulting business should at all points try to identify the client's needs to propose relevant solutions and not 'push' our solutions just because we have to sell them.

S (Sam) Santhosh said...

Good post.

But I think if you have a Merc, you should be able to directly or indirectly let the customer know that; even though you are now selling him a Maruti only.

I think your point C captures the approach well.

Why no posts since Aug 2009?

Geeta Bose said...

Thank you Sam. Yes, you are right. Over time, our clients have begun to realize and appreciate our capabilities. But yes, it's a very slow and gradual process.