ZERO-IN ON THE ONE WHO SAYS YES (AND NO)

There are many "buying influences" in today's solution sales situations. There are a lot of people who can say yes--but only one can say no.

He (or she) is the benevolent dictator.

Every company has one, but when it comes to marketing products and services, companies trying to close a sale often forget that this person is pivotal to their success.

Certainly, we have to promote the benefits of the products, and we have to reach what is termed the decision-making team, but all too often, we're playing to the stands and ignoring the person in the box seat.

The result?

Everyone is "amazed" when the sale goes to a competitor ... a competitor who didn't have engineering, manufacturing, operations, MIS, administration, purchasing and finance "sewed up."

Dictator at Work
It's fascinating to watch benevolent dictators at work. They allow others to do the basic research and make the preliminary judgments, but they reserve the final say for themselves.

As people in the industry become increasingly sophisticated in their marketing and sales approaches, advertising, public relations and sales promotion efforts must be expanded to do more than just sell the concept of advanced technology. Those efforts must also sell the product's and services' proprietary benefits to all of the benevolent dictators.

Company managers realize that the products they buy are not purchased simply because they meet certain specifications. Managers are buying the supplier's total capabilities. That includes, the firm's technical aspects, their business, marketing and support reputation.

The buying decisions made by new and old customers alike go far beyond simple technical persuasions. Success is no longer assured by offering technically superior products. Markets are
so competitive that comparable products are always available. For example, Windows and Linux-based systems can be found on almost every street corner. Low-, medium- and high-end printers abound. Memory of every shape and size can be bought from hundreds of suppliers. Cameras, camcorders and production software is virtually everywhere.


For this reason--if for no other--it is vital that a firm's advertising and PR activities communicate both their business and marketing aspects as well as the technical features of their products.


Highly Placed Advocates
One of the key objectives of your promotional and sales efforts should be to build advocacy within the prospect's organization. An advocate is anyone who really wants to buy from your company. If your advocate is too low in the organization, his or her suggestion simply runs up through channels as a recommendation. However, if a highly placed advocate sends the same idea down the organizational chart, it becomes a directive.

Unfortunately, today's marketing and sales resources are finite. We have to use them carefully to reach the key benevolent dictators. We have to concentrate on making the benevolent dictators our advocates. They don't make all of the decisions ... just the ones that count.

In their book Winners: How America's High-Growth, Mid-Sized Companies Succeed, Richard Cavanaugh and Donald Clifford, Jr. discussed a two-year study on what's right with American business. This book went the next step beyond that of Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, Jr.'s, book In Search of Excellence.


Cavanaugh and Clifford studied how mid-sized growth companies have outpaced the rest of the nation's businesses in almost every sector. They found that management of these companies focus on the value of their company, their products and their services, and often get premium prices.


Market Niche
These mid-sized companies find market niches with new products and new ways of doing business. They quickly create new paths, while conventional firms elbow each other on the same timeworn roads. They are creative entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats or professional managers.

These are the people who push, pull and force their organizations to grow. Obviously, they represent a tremendous opportunity (and risk) for those who are able to keep pace with and be
attuned to their growth paths.

In his book High Output Management, Andy Grove spoke of leveraging as it relates to management. Simply stated, leveraging means contacting those who are most influential in a given
situation and allowing them to pass the work to others who are responsible for decisions and actions.

By reaching the right contact, you can affect communications throughout the organization with minimal time and effort.

As a result, successful marketing, advertising and PR campaigns have a high degree of leverage because astute marketers and communicators address and reach the benevolent dictators.

Since reaching the benevolent dictator is an important marketing goal, we have to question the traditional methods of measuring advertising/PR effectiveness.

Quantity can no longer replace quality. Management, ad/PR managers and agencies should not, and cannot, use piles of inquiries as proof of promotional value.

Bingo cards may bring you a few hot prospects, but big sales don't result from someone following up on a bingo request.

Advertising's Mission
Unfortunately, most managers don't understand the true mission of advertising and public relations. Many don't fully understand, or simply don't believe, that product specifications alone won't sell the product.

But they are learning. They are learning that the company and people behind the product carry as much—if not more—weight than its specifications.

Marketing expertise, a commodity in dramatically short supply, is being grafted into top management teams.

There are lessons to be learned from consumer marketing, but there are just as many unique aspects of business-to-business marketing. Aspects that only business marketing people can bring to the table. Niche marketing is dramatically different from mass marketing. Benevolent dictator marketing is also different from mass marketing.

Until firms really learn, understand and believe the importance of marketing, we will continue to see management demand communications efforts based on the wrong marketing premises and targeted for the wrong people.

These poorly directed efforts will reinforce, in the minds of a few, that advertising and PR are really a waste of money. Only the creative entrepreneurs who understand the concept of
benevolent dictators and know how to make these individuals their advocates will survive and grow.


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ZERO-IN ON THE ONE WHO SAYS YES (AND NO) - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Marken's Website.

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