Sales and marketing business to business Phone: 0121 663 1011 Email: info@achaleon.com Web: www.achaleon.com

Features, benefits and emotions Emotion are deep and powerful How do your customers want to feel? How can you reflect that? Benefits are the flip-side of problems Start with needs and your benefits will be convincing Features are the nuts and bolts of what you deliver Use them as evidence of how you can keep your promises Structure communications to be consistent in this hierarchy Emotions underpin almost all human interactions – good or bad. What emotions do you want your customers to feel? Confident, clever, relieved, excited, smug? How do they feel now? Anxious, fed-up, envious, angry, neglected? You need to use language, demeanour and a consistent approach to help make them achieve that transition. It’s not easy, but keep it in mind, as you brief creative agencies, create marketing and sales materials and design your software or apps. Benefits are the flip side of needs – problems solved/ opportunities unlocked. They set out why someone would spend their hard earned cash/budget on your stuff. Features are the nuts and bolts of what you deliver – the evidence of how you can deliver better than the competition can. Remember that the customer probably won’t care how difficult it was to create all the different aspects of your product/service; they will only want to know about what is directly relevant to solving their problems. Very few customers care about the kind of competitive differences that are about better technologies or approaches; they want to know how you solve their problem more comprehensively, more permanently, more reliably, more cost effectively. Structure your communications to be consistent in structure – typically: need -> benefit -> feature -> competition

Key characteristics of B2B marketing Need to justify decisions to colleagues Sometimes very formal process, especially public sector Often involving multiple people Timeframes often longer Tip: Could you get under the price threshold for purchasing without higher approval?

Champions, saboteurs and other corporate animals For a big sale, like major software, you’ll need to win over several people Some have nothing to gain and plenty to lose Some want to drive prices down arbitrarily Some want to exercise control and impose their world view A champion is essential, but don’t rely on them to sell on your behalf Create sales literature which talks to different people in different roles with different priorities Tip: Could you get them paying for your advice early on, such as requirements planning?

Partners and distributors Particularly attractive for international selling Company culture and ethics need to be compatible Market knowledge is key Are you something special or one of many? How much input/support will they need? Be wary of exclusive deals How to avoid channel conflict

A pipeline of opportunities Should have many opportunities to track Need to make contact at all the right times Some kind of system is essential to track: Contacts and roles Dates and actions Expected value and close date Probability of winning (e.g. 2 others bidding => 33%) Start with a spreadsheet or almost any CRM system

Breakout: who’s involved in your sale? Who is likely to be impacted by your product (users, managers, project team, ...) ? Who else may be involved in the sale (finance, purchasing, ...) ? What are their most likely emotions, motivations and needs?

Final thoughts Business buyers are just human – but they do need to appear rational Find out ways to make it easier for your champion to buy Manage the process; stay in control

Questions philip.jones@achaleon.com 0121 663 1011 07796 441297