Three Reasons Why Salespeople Should Align by Vertical Markets

We often take on projects to define and document an effective sales process. One of our first questions is “How are your salespeople aligned?” When working with system integrators, most of the time the answer is that there is no alignment. Once a salesperson has a relationship, they are assigned to the account, regardless of size, geography, or vertical market.

Sometimes salespeople evolve into certain experts become “the healthcare person” or “the downtown salesperson”. However, there is no strategic or proactive planning – it just happens. We believe that this approach misses a huge opportunity for salespeople and their companies. First, being aligned in any manner is helpful. Taking it further, we believe there is an enormous advantage to those that are aligned vertically.

Before proceeding there are three misnomers that I want to clarify. First, salespeople can own more than one vertical market, but you probably want to limit the list to three or less … and three is stretching it. Second, your company doesn’t have to cover every vertical market – select the ones with the most opportunities for your success. Finally, salespeople can sell into accounts that are not included in a targeted vertical market. They’re proactive and strategic toward the targeted vertical markets, and reactive and responsive to accounts in the other markets.

Below are three reasons why you should be aligned vertically.

1. You will become an expert in those markets.

As end-user customers evolve, they will continue to get more of their information from sources other than salespeople – search engines, social media sites, group chats, etc. In this type of environment, the best way for salespeople to maintain credibility with their customers is to become perceived as a subject matter expert. They must see you as more useful than Google. The only way to earn this level of credibility is to know the specific problems that your solutions fix for their type of business.

It's no longer good enough to be a subject matter expert on your technology. You must be an expert on your customer’s industry. You must know their business as well as you know yours. You can’t do this unless you focus on vertical markets.

2. You will become well-known within those markets.

Another outcome of focusing on vertical markets is that you become part of the market. Your focus allows you to join their industry associations, follow their LinkedIn groups, speak at their events, network with other industry providers, and ultimately become known as one of them.

While you’re becoming known within their world, your competition continues to look like an outsider trying to win business.

3. The growth is exponential.

For salespeople that don’t focus on vertical markets, a successful sale equals one successful sale. That’s it. When you’re focused on vertical markets, one successful sale means a potential case study, a testimonial, a happy customer that will refer you, anecdotal evidence of your solution, etc. Of course, you can get these things from a general customer, but it doesn’t matter to a hospital what a retail store does, but they certainly care about the words of another hospital.

When you focus on vertical markets, one plus one equals four.