When small businesses grow up into ‘adult’ companies (more on that another time) their scale, dependencies and sheer number of moving parts make them trickier to manage.
I’ve seen it in Wasteland, Gateway and other organisations that the original business models, systems and processes used to successfully establish a business are not there to scale the business.
For successful small companies it’s seductive to continue to use the ad hoc processes, that after all grew the company, for evaluating new business development initiatives. Scale has a new set of issues and a new set of solutions which are needed to transform the organisation. One thing that can help greatly is an understanding in management about who your core customers are and where they sit on the spectrum of from relationship driven to transactional.
Without this customer profiling new sales can only be attributed to blind heroism in the field and what's more any successes will further blind management to the limits of its sales process and delay or prevent scaling of the business.
Every company works hard to make itself easier to do business with (and for some tribes that means it will be harder to engage), so knowing who your target customer is before you start to invest is really important, and more so if you’re a challenger or little known brand.
Our head of sales constantly reminds us that effective customer selection focuses on the buyer — addressing the problems or opportunities that effect their business. So why do sales managers think its OK that our target account list should be allocated by geography, or through a paid for list?
So, in my previous blog I said that Relationships Matter. Now I’d like to rephrase that because courting the attentions of transactional customers with a solutions sales approach is a gross error of judgment. You’ll let buyers know all there is to know about the solution, the technology and the service wrap to expect, only to see them wonder off and purchase form your competitor with a full loaded specified wish list! OUCH Leave transactional buyers to buy online, and leave the sales people to relate to customer needs.
And businesses always overestimate their ability to acquire relationship buyers and underestimate the role of brand and brand building in building relationships. Good marketers can help with that.