How customers buy has completely changed.
The goal for sales today is not to close a deal, but to open a relationship with customers who are profitable promoters.
Customers feel they have access to all the information they need, and a huge megaphone to provide negative or positive word of mouth. We need to align our customer engagement practices with how the customer now buys and makes decisions. We need to ensure our practices are aligned with the new goal.
The Architecture for Customer Engagement provides a framework for assessing all the factors required to design a conversation with customers that engages them. The process will then align how customers buy, with how you are engaging with them. This will then support the goal of building a customer portfolio full of people who are profitable promoters of what you do.
When we get specific about the engagement activity, we can be clear about the what the salespeople need to be doing and saying.
Want to know more about this approach, try these blog articles:
You need to know what your customers value
The sales stereotype is still dominant, but in today’s market it is irrelevant.
Are your customers profitable promoters of what you do..?
Our customers have changed in how they buy and how they provide word of mouth.
We need a method to align the key business activities for customer engagement and a two-way exchange of value.
Profit by Design is a 2-day workshop that looks at how we can build a profitable business in this age and economy. Profit by Design is founded on six key principles and then applies the Architecture for Customer Engagement to achieve higher levels of business profitability and resilience. By creating a customer portfolio of profitable promoters. Profit by Design is offered in a public format and in-house for your business.
Read more about Profit by Design in this blog article:
Profit by design – build your business for the experience economy.
In this experience economy, our customers have changed
They are more sales resistant than ever, more information available to them and they have a greater voice to share their opinions. In this video Mark describes the eight traditional mindsets of sales, that misleads us in how we approach sales today.
The Top four tips on B2B sales.
- B2B sales is a process for all business buyers. We need to focus on working through the process in a way that is logical for the buyers.
- Our goal today is not to close sales, but to open relationships with people who are profitable promoters of what we do.
- Never tell the price, until you have fully explained the value.
- Stop telling customers about the features. Don't tell them anything they can Google about you. Learn to communicate important insights and value in the way customer defines it.
Traditional mindsets of sales mislead us.
This whitepaper describes the four key ways of how customers have changed recently and the eight traditions of sales that mislead people to make poor decisions about their approach to sales. A set of new mental models is provided to allow you to upgrade your approach to sales so that it is relevant for customers in this age.
Other blog articles you may be interested in:
Are you using personas..? The one thing you are missing.
The top three things for entrepreneurs need to know to build a profitable customer portfolio
Social Selling
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All the latest from the Mark Hocknell camp
How to Close the Strategic Gap
