The 10 Critical Smarketing Opportunities Hiding In Your Business

I propose that there are 10 opportunities in any business, including yours, for Smarketing to support and enhance your success. 

These ten opportunities are ideal for your Sales and Marketing people to come together and to co-create your future business success.

Let me elaborate on these ten opportunities for you:

Opportunity #1: A Brand that Differentiates Our Business

Now, I don't mean that you must be a household name, or that your logo needs to be of a certain color. 

The main thing is that you have a distinct brand that Customers can recognize and identify you by. Your Customers also need to be crystal clear on what your brand stands for, what its purpose is and what its values are. What do you stand for? What is your brand promise to your Customers?

This is a great opportunity for your sales leaders to not only gain a taste of what marketing means, but also to make a contribution in an area that they traditionally are perhaps not hugely comfortable with.

Can you see a Smarketing workshop coming up for your teams?

Opportunity #2: Well-defined Products and Services  

How well can you articulate your products and services? 

Is it a matter of: “We can do anything.”, or do you have clearly identified products, services and solutions? 

This may sound like a silly question at first, but I have seen large multinational corporations (particularly in the IT services sector) with the attitude I described above: “Our Customers know what they want. They will tell us, and we’ll build it for them.” 

Of course, this approach was so flawed that most of them have now changed their ways, and everything is more or less productized.

If your Product Management or your Marketing team has not got this quite right, I encourage you to consider running a Smarketing workshop to find the right solution for your organization.

Opportunity #3: Our unique Selling Proposition (USP) and Killer Introduction

In my experience, this is the one area where most businesses and reps have a huge opportunity for improvement. This is the one that can make a real difference to your sales success, your business and your customers.

To get you started, here are some useful questions for you to ask: 

• How clearly can we articulate to our Prospects and Customers the benefits of our products and services, and the business outcomes that they will enjoy from them?
• In our customer conversations, do we mostly talk about our business and about the features of our products and services, or about our customers' benefits?
• Do our Customers truly understand their WIIFM (“What's in it for me?”)?
• Can we clearly state what makes our business, and our offerings, unique and why a Prospect should absolutely be interested in us?
• What makes us different from our competitors and any other business out there?
• How do we convey that difference at the first point of contact with a new Prospect?
• How can we intrigue and engage our Prospects right from our opening introduction? 

You see, your USP must not just be a motherhood statement, such as "We really care for our Customers", or “We are the best”.

Rather, it needs to be specific, as well as credible, and you need to be able to back it up. 

So, what is YOUR unique value proposition? 

This is critical: How do you get them to lean forward and say: "Tell me more."?

This is critical: How do you get them to lean forward and say: "Tell me more."?

I call this “The Lean-Forward Moment”. It is really important for your business to be able to capture your Buyers’ attention quickly, to intrigue them to the point where they want to know more. Then, you can really capture their imagination with the potential outcomes your products and services can deliver to them. If your teams are unable to achieve this you’ll be missing out on sales and on repeat business.

If your teams are unable to achieve this you’ll be missing out on sales and on repeat business.

To get a Smarketing co-creation workshop underway on this point, I suggest that Marketing will contribute the segmentation, targeting and positioning of your products and services, while Sales will share intimate knowledge of how your Customers use your products and services and what business problems they solve. 

By working together, you can really distill down to a core message that will truly resonate with your Buyers and attract them to your brand and to your business. You will fill your pipeline and make more sales.

Opportunity #4: Our Ideal Customers and Prospects

You would agree with me that there is little point in engaging with the wrong kind of Prospects? So, how clear are you on what your ideal Prospects and Customers look like? What makes them tick? Their perspectives, concerns, challenges and opportunities?

Creating buyer personas is a great way to unite your Sales and Marketing people into one Smarketing team that can really drive up sales revenue.

Go on, give it a try.

Opportunity #5: Where Will We Find Them?

Once you know who your ideal Buyers are, you then need to know where they hang out. What media are they consuming? What associations do they belong to? What conferences do they attend? Which social media platforms do they favor? 

So, how well do you know where to find your ideal Prospects and Customers?

A Smarketing workshop session can rally your Sales and Marketing people to unearth the hidden habits of your Prospects and turn that information into actionable market intelligence.

Opportunity #6: Access and Engage Our Prospects Effectively

It's no longer enough to know where to find your ideal Buyers. 

You need to know how to get to them and gain their interest in your goods and services. Then How effective and how scalable is your sales process? Do you even have one? How well does it leverage your unique value proposition (see Point 3 above)?

A good sales process should be effective and scalable. In other words, it should work well to close a good percentage of the opportunities, and the more leads you put into it, the more sales should result from it.  

It's no longer enough to know where to find your ideal Buyers. 

Here is another excellent example of how leveraging the combined expertise of your Sales and Marketing people should result in vastly improving the sales results and financial performance of your organization. 

Opportunity #7: Eliminate Our Competition

Rarely will your company be the only one in the race to a deal. 

Instead, you will most likely have to beat off any number of competitors. So, how do you fend them off and end up your Buyer's preferred, final and only choice?

It helps if you know two key players really well: Your Buyers, and your competitors. 

You need to know your Buyers’ key buying criteria, their buying process, the buyer personas (as mentioned above) and their attitude towards risk. Then, if you also know your competitors, you can do a gap analysis and find out the points your competitors are likely to miss.

Putting your Sales and Marketing minds together into a Smarketing session is a great way to identifying your own, as well as your competitors’ gaps, placing your sales offers ahead in the race.

Opportunity #8: Sales Proposals That Close More Deals

In most B2B sales situations you are likely to be asked to submit a formal sales proposal to your Buyer. 

Do you get excited by the fact that the Buyer asked for a proposal, use a standard template and send it off to them asap? 

Or is there a better, smarter way? 

Further, how can you ensure that a) your proposal covers exactly what the Buyer needs, and b) that you have maximized your chances of your proposal being the last one standing, the one that gets the deal?

Well, there are two aspects to proposals: 

? The proposal content

? The proposal delivery

Obviously, the proposal content should reflect the needs of the buyer and clearly articulate the value of your offer, as per the above points.

One advantage that is often missed is in the way you deliver your proposal to your Buyers. Of course, if the proposal is part of a tender process then your hands are tied. But, in almost any other scenario, you have an opportunity to influence buyer in your favor by NOT rushing it to your buyer as quickly as possible.

There is a specific technique I coach salespeople on that leverages the proposal delivery as a strategic selling tool to extract an advantage. The people I have taught this technique aside, it amazes me on a regular basis how few salespeople use this simple technique, and as a consequence how many reps are missing out on closing more of their deals.

Talk to me if you'd like to know more.

Opportunity #9: Our Superior Pre, During and Post-Purchase Customer Experience 

How important are Customers to your business?

Right, that's a rhetorical question. They are super important. 

Without Customers your business would not exist. I guess that's a given, because if you ask any CEO these days about their attitude to their Customers' experience, it is likely that they will quote Jeff Bezos, CEO at Amazon: 

"Everything we do, we do with the Customers in mind."

- Jeff Bezos, Amazon

"Everything we do, we do with the Customers in mind."

- Jeff Bezos, Amazon

It's funny then that, according to research by Lee Resource and IBM, 80% of companies surveyed claimed that they offer superior Customers service, but only 8% of their Customers agreed with them. 

Ouch!

It is undisputed that negative Customers experiences cost your bottom line. 

Have a look at these customer experience (CX) statistics:

? For every Customers complaint, there are 26 other Customers who have remained silent. (source: Lee Resource Inc)

? A dissatisfied consumer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their experience, while about 13% of dissatisfied Customers tell more than 20 people. (source: Lee Resource Inc) 

? Attracting a new Customers costs 5-times as much as keeping an existing one. (source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC)

? Happy Customers who get their issue resolved tell about 4 to 6 people about their positive experience. (source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC) 

? 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad Customers experience. (source: Harris Interactive, Customer Experience Impact Report)

It's no wonder then that Customers-centricity and Customers experience (CX) are hot topics in business right now. But just saying your organization is Customers-focused is not enough. It’s got to be credible, authentic even. If you reflect on the Customers experience statistics above you will understand just how mission-critical your Customers' perceptions and experiences are to the success of your business, at every step of the way. 

What about your business? Just how Customers-centric is it? How successfully are you managing your Buyer's interactions with your business?

Is this an opportunity for your Sales and Marketing teams to collaborate in a Smarketing workshop to create a superior pre-, post- and during-purchase experience?

Opportunity #10: Keeping Our Customers Loyal And Win Their Repeat Business 

Your Customers' experience does not end with a purchase. 

In fact, their post-sale experience is so critical that it will determine whether they will choose to come back to do more business with you, or not. 

So, ask yourself how your Prospects and Customers perceive their interactions with your business at every touch point. Is their experience a pleasant one that will make them rave to their friends and colleagues about the Customers care of your business? Or, is it one that will more likely make them warn people off you?

Often, if you get opportunity Opportunity 9 above right, then number 10 should automatically follow.

Why not run a Smarketing workshop to finesse this important and lucrative point?

Conclusion

So, there you have them. The 10 critical opportunities for Smarketing in your business. 

Now, be honest with yourself and get to that Perfect 10.

Ask:

• Which of the above below are already firmly under control?
• Which will need more work?
• Which ones are missing altogether? 

Call To Action

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 About Peter

Peter Strohkorb is a highly experienced sales and marketing specialist adviser in the IT, Technology and Services sector, acclaimed Amazon book author, blogger, thought leader and influencer. 

He has helped people and organizations like yours to achieve significant sales revenue and market share growth.

Contact Peter to discover what he can do for you, too.