Selling to Small and Medium Businesses – It’s All About the Messaging

06 Feb Selling to Small and Medium Businesses – It’s All About the Messaging

Call it a narrative, a script, or a message. Whatever you call it internally, this ‘pitch’ is the cornerstone of your sales operation. When you get it just right, you are the Hero, the big Kahuna, the top dog.  

We do this all day long. Here are our learnings for making that critical connection with your prospect.
Remember: they are human just like you. So channel THAT.

“What you think is intuitive may actually be counterintuitive to your audience.  So you need to test and test again.”

1)  Question assumptions – ask yourself what are the assumptions you are making about your offering and your customers? How have you validated/invalidated those assumptions?

“There were aspects of the product that we thought would be, by far, the most impactful and effective, but the way in which we presented them turned them into a negative. And one of these instances was right at the start of the presentation, which turned people off from the start.”

2)  Customer, you are not (repeat in Yoda voice) – where do businesses often go wrong with how they communicate with their customers? Typically, it’s thinking that what you think about your company and your offering is the same as what the customer thinks.

“You’ve got to understand that you and the people that create these products are not your audience. What you think is intuitive may actually be counterintuitive to your audience. So you need to test and test again.”

The client also found that a do-it-yourself calculator tool, was too complicated for most people to use. A more effective alternative was creating a personalized statement for each contributor that clearly laid out all the financial details in a more visually understandable layout. The feedback from the testing directly fed the development of a “document on demand” tool that generated the type of personalized statements that effectively made the case for the contributors.

3)  Don’t simply rinse and repeat – how many times have you fallen into the trap of doing something just because that’s always how it’s been done. Well, if sales are through the roof, then it’s probably good not to muck up the works. But if you’re not seeing results, then it’s time to buck convention.

“Retirement services groups, like ours, fall into the trap of getting too comfortable with how things have been done in the past—even when we know what we do is not working. Here’s a situation where we decided to try something completely unorthodox and see how it measured up to the status quo.”

The other was a test approach that utilized an unconventional meeting, incorporating elements designed to create a relaxed environment with a focus on helping participants better understand the need for retirement planning and create a vision of what their retirement could be.

4)  Get “testy” – If you’re asking yourself if now would be a good time to test your sales pitch and messaging, then the answer is yes. Products and services evolve. Your customers’ needs change. The market is dynamic. So, regular testing of your sales presentations, pitches and messaging is the only way to keep pace.