In any business, you have to find a way to differentiate your business from your competitors. You need to show how your company, people, and products/services are better and more effective than your competitors’ firms.
From all my years in B2B, I’ve found that great marketing and sales companies had the three major building blocks important to becoming successful. These three building blocks, of any marketing, whether you are selling products and/or services are;
- Generating Results
- Creating Value
- Building Relationships
Prospects and clients expect you to be credible and capable, but these are baseline expectations. These are not differentiators. The differentiators are building that trust by resolving this particular person’s issues, and demonstrating the value you can bring to him. These steps help you build the relationship that is so vital to becoming more than a simple vendor to that person.
And like any three legged stool, if you take one factor away, the entire marketing system can fall apart.
When you are selling services, you need to have all three building blocks aligned, or you will become a commodity supplier.
There is an order to these blocks, before you can have great marketing, and that is the order mentioned above. You must show your client quantifiable results from any assignments and projects you complete.
Generating Results
You achieve results by offering solutions that help your clients and prospects reach their goals, and also solve their issues. You can also achieve results by offering ways to help your clients and prospects do their jobs better. This may also help them resolve issues they may not know they even had.
At the beginning of any assignment, you need to find out what this person’s goals are. You should also find out what the issues are that your client or prospect is trying to solve that are stopping him/her from reaching their goals. Only by talking to them about their issues, and how deep they run, can you begin to generate results. Once you know their goals, and the issues that need to be resolved for them to reach their goals, you will then find it easier to show the quantifiable results that are so critical to long term success with your client.
Creating Value
You must work with your client to decide what value your efforts did for the client, both from a personal viewpoint, and a company viewpoint. The value you bring, from your client’s personal perspective, is very important and should never be omitted. Sometimes it is difficult to quantify this type of value, but it should never be left out. I have built a system that helps you get at your client’s goals and issues, especially from a personal perspective.
You must also put a value on the work from your client’s business perspective. This should be quantified. Many people have trouble quantifying the business objectives reached. But you must find a way to show the quantifiable benefits reached, in order to show the real value your work did for the client. The best time to do this is upfront, by asking your client then, what quantifiable benefits he expects to receive after the work is completed.
You need to do this in order to build the relationships that will make you, at the very least, one of the very few suppliers they will call for other assignments. And if this is done right, you will eventually become the first, and possibly only supplier they will call.
Building Relationships
The next building block is of course relationship development. In order to build a long lasting relationship with anybody, whether it is personal or in business, you need to establish and build trust with that person.
You build trust by resolving issues and offering value to them. You do not build solid relationships simply by offering good service, or showing a your company’s resume to your prospects and clients. You must also be aware of not thinking that your competency has built trust with your clients.
Building solid business relationships means you need to establish a number of factors in order to become a trusted advisor. These other factors include such things as experience, competency, quality of work, and responsiveness. Relationship development is discussed in a later section. It is the real basis for becoming a trusted business advisor with any of your clients.
I have built a system for discovering goals and issues, and building that relationship that is so important to any successful sale.
If you are struggling with your growth, or want to grow more than you think you can, please email me, through my email below, and let’s discuss how you can grow faster and still be in complete control of that growth.
Kind regards,
Ian Dainty
Ian Dainty’s Email
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