Becoming The Clients' Most Trusted Advisor

Guest Contributor: Michael Hepworth
Michael's Posts - Michael's Website


Most businesses, tend to fall in love with their product or service, rather than falling in love with their clients. If you sell to small business this can hurt you!

The first sign that this is happening is a tendency among sales people to say to themselves; "What do I have to do to get this customer to buy?" With this attitude, there is a tendency to become manipulative and coercive or just plain boring as you spend time talking about yourself.

Neither of these approaches works well with strong minded entrepreneurs and business owners. No one wants to be manipulated or taken advantage of.

A more appealing approach is to make the business owner feel you care, that they are important to you and that their well being matters to you.

To accomplish this, suppliers have to review their purpose. If train your staff to believe your firms purpose is to contribute great value by giving them the results they are looking for rather than to simply take their money, you'll begin to see an interest transition in your customer relationships.

The objective is to enter every customer relationship with a commitment to leaving their customers better off than when they found them. This commitment changes the way you interact and the way you sell and often changes how you package what you sell.

This may seem a little soft, but typically companies that adopt this approach find
That positive word of mouth spreads rapidly, clients are more loyal and sales are easier to close. Think of examples like Nordstrom, Ritz Carlton and four Seasons.

This does not have to be the domain of high end retailers and hotels, but can infuse every business.

If your product or service is of high quality and delivers on your promise, then it is likely that it is in your customers' best interest to buy more, because it will enhance their situation. Thus it makes sense to buy more because there will be a better pay-off.

One of the unexpected benefits of this strategy is that employees and managers are no longer ambivalent about what they do. They love what they do, because ant some level helping others is hard wired into most human beings. Their jobs become easier and your customers love them because they care so much. More importantly your customers will love you and your business because of what it stands for.

"People Don't Buy What They Need, They Buy What They Want!"

Guest Contributor: Michael Hepworth
Michael's Posts - Michael's Website


Owner operators are one of the most time starved groups in the world. Mostly because they have a tendency to see time management as a process of cramming ever more activities into whatever number of hours they are prepared to work. Many never discover that success is more about deciding what to give up rather than figuring our how to do more.

This is compounded by the volume of information we are all exposed to every day. Some reports have it that the average decision maker deals with more than 30,000 commercial messages a day. We have information coming at us in every conceivable form: TV and Radio ads, newspaper ads, the internet, billboards, packaging, trucks and direct mail.

Herbert Simon - Winner of Nobel Prize for Economics summarized the impact of this information overload perfectly:

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients."

"Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it."

This means that the busier your target audience, the harder it is to reach them. They have no time or interest in self serving mass media promotions. To stop them in their tracks and gain access to their minds, you have to talk to them about the issues they are dealing with, the things that keep them awake at night. Show them how you can help them make more sales, give them more time for themselves and their families, how they can make more money and they will listen.

When selling to small business, it is important to remember the old marketing adage: "People don't buy what they need, they buy what they want," and most times people don't want a product or a service, what they want is an outcome.

I may need an accountant, but what I want is to pay fewer taxes.

Show them how you can help them get what they want and you'll almost certainly get what you want!

Marketing To Small Business Owners

Guest Contributor: Michael Hepworth
Michael's Posts - Michael's Website


If you were at a cocktail party and were introduced to someone who did little but talk about themselves, you'd soon become bored and wander off to find more stimulating company. So it is with business owners are disinterested of marketing approaches that are self serving. i.e. marketing that is all about the vendor and little about the buyer.

If you look at the marketing from big corporations in most cases it does little except scream; "Buy my product, buy my product!" This does not cut it with the average entrepreneur, so what can one do to get their attention and win them over?

They generally don't care how good you are until they know how much you care!

Unfortunately most corporate marketing does little to put business owners at ease because it often misses these vital ingredients.

Let's assume you sell a commodity like stationery. If you are totally focused on your category, about the only thing that distinguishes you from your competition is the paint on your walls and your signs; hardly compelling reasons to choose a supplier!

A number of firms have discovered that most business owners feel the need to educate themselves and their teams on various aspects of business success. However they feel they lack the funds and the time to get this done.

One of the most important skills is marketing.

Intellectually business owners know this is one of the most important skills to master, but most spend precious little time on this critical element of their business. In these competitive times they all share a common desire to upgrade their marketing skills but unless helped along few do anything about it.

This presents suppliers with a great opportunity to provide value added service in the form of marketing education for small business. It fulfills the old proverb; "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

A supplier that claims the high-ground by investing in a long term relationship and showing business owners how to grow through cost effective marketing, will be long remembered for their added value.

The challenge for most corporations will be to switch from the corporate mindset of brand marketing to the concept of local marketing and lead generation for small business. Small business needs low cost creative ideas that bring customers in through the door, gets them to buy more often and gets them to buy more each time they buy.

Concepts like branding and using mass media, the staples of big corporate marketing, generally do little to help small business succeed. And too much attention to these can result in sub par performance for small business.