How Sales team can be your biggest asset for Market Leadership
Every entrepreneur wishes to build a successful business. Journey starts with finding great product ideas and evaluates its viability through market research. Based on the initial research about customer, market as a whole and competition, entrepreneurs build products that they believe will be appealing to the market but the fact is 90% of startups fail.
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A well-researched product and business model is the key to success but testing and improving it is decisive between failure and success. Customer Insight and adjusting your business model according to it is what makes a business successful. Your sales team can be of strategic importance to deliver the insight since they are the closest to the market and well placed to derive and deliver the insight.
However, it is equally important to understand what insight is of strategic importance and how to gather it from them sales team through discussion and analytics. It is also important that information should be organized to make it actionable.
Market Segmentation
Entrepreneur’s first focus should be to identify the early adopter business segment that is completely ready for your solution including features, pricing, packaging etc… If you have precisely identified your early adopter segment and adjusted your model to their needs then you are well on your path for early success.
a. Is your sales team facing challenges in engaging prospects? Or
b. Do they have trouble with maintaining prospect’s interest and converting them even after generating enough marketing leads? Or
c. You sales team members consistently mention to you that prospect is interested and delighted but you don’t find real business coming in?
I have seen managers relating it to team skills but this can be an early sign that your target audience might just not be ready for your solution. Your market research may confirm that they may have a need for it but realizing the need might require you to invest efforts through thought leadership and content marketing before you can penetrate the market.
This can be done if you have resources, expertise, time and funds but if any of it is missing then it’s a clear message that you should shift your focus to the segment that is already matured and ready. This will help you focus on the right customer segment.
Market Penetration
Identifying right market segment that is ready for your solution is the first step towards success. This is followed by market penetration when you would like to extend your reach within the market by offering them what they desire. Your sales team can play a crucial role here in bringing you the insight about the gaps in your business model that once filled will help you extend your reach deeper in the market.
Gather insight about:
a. Product features meets their requirements?
b. Are there any changes to the current feature sets?
c. Do prospects need any additional features?
d. What are the priority features that are of immense importance to their business and what is good to have?
e. How do they see the pricing model?
f. Is the current product and services packing right for their business model or there are some additional products and services that need to be added?
Your sales team should deliver this insight to you at the early stages of the business for better market penetration.
Unique Value Proposition
Building a unique value proposition is what separates you in the market and market rewards you by delivering customers as your business advocate. Your Sales Team can bring your this crucial insight about your competition strengths and weakness from prospects.
Salesmen are all the time in touch with prospects, talking to hundreds of prospects and hearing valuable inputs about your business model and your competitor business model like
a. Competitor product offering,
b. How your competitors are delivering value to their customers,
c. Gaps in competitor business model, Sales and Support model, brand positioning, their shakeups, financial situations, company culture etc…
Entrepreneurs can use this insight to build SWOT analysis (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity & Threats) and identify opportunities that they can tap to make their business value proposition unique in terms of product features, pricing, packaging, additional support services etc.. as well as fill the gaps that poses threats for your business offering.
Brand Building
Customers associate themselves with a brand and not a product. They invest on a brand. They are loyal to a brand and not a product. Establishing brand authority help business give a winning edge. It is quite important to build a strong brand for businesses to conquer market. But before this, a business owner should know how his brand is perceived by prospects and market. What are the brand element that has a perceived positive value and negative value?
Your Sales Team can unlock this secret for you. They can reveal this insight with questions like why prospects prefer competitor over you. What are customer reactions over your product and technology? How prospects and customers are reacting to your value proposition? What prospects and customers have to say about customer experience and culture? What are the decisive factors on which prospects base their purchase decisions — is it product, technology, price?
Answers to these questions will help you decode your perceived brand value as well what customers expect from your brand.
Organizations that have been strategically deriving this insight from their sales team through discussions and analytics are always on the way of success and ahead of their competition.
Would be very interesting to hear from entrepreneurs who are already exploiting the insight from the sales team to build company’s strategic directions and how do you do it?
