Question 1

What is the undesirable state, your customers are in, prior to buying your product or service?

Explore your industry, markets and customers (Your TRIBE) and identify the undesirable state they are in, before they buy your product or service.

Please list all of these below:

Example:

Before engaging my organisation, to develop and deliver a “Sales Enablement Solution“, my customers have sales teams, in the B2B space, who have the following challenges:

• Their sales teams are stuck and unable to move their sales to the next level.
• Their sales teams are performing below expectations
• Their sales teams are demotivated
• Their sales teams lack the basic tools and sales skills needed to grow
• Their sales teams work in a very competitive environment and need help to stand out
• Their sales teams are under performing in a growing market

I think you get the gist of it.

Think about your own industry, markets and customers. What is their undesirable state, before buying your product or service?

Question 2

What transformation, do your customers expect or need, when they buy your product or service?

Explore your markets, industry and customers. What ‘TRANSFORMATION” do they need or expect, when they buy products or services, similar to the ones you sell?

Example: 

My customers want a Sales team, which performs optimally, where all their sales team members, consistently “WOW” their customers, create an unforgettable customer experience and where they consistently all smash their sales targets every year.

Think about your markets and customers, what is the optimised state your customers want to be in after purchasing them?

Question 3

List all your Products and services, below and then list the transformation your customers can expect as a result of using your product or service.

This is a simple exercise, where you examine your current products and services, by doing the following:

• List each product
• Describe the features of each product or service
• Now describe each products, feature in terms of what they do for your customers.
• This will allow you to identify the benefits associated with using your product or service.
• Now apply the “SO WHAT” test and describe the advantages associated with using your product or service.
• This will allow you to uncover the “ADVANTAGES” associated with using your product or service
• Examine the advantages associated with each product and now describe the “TRANSFORMATION“, your customers will enjoy, as a result of using your product or service.

List all your Products and services, below and then list the transformation your customers can expect as a result of using your product or service.

Question 4

Consider how your industry, markets and how your customers needs, values and expectations may have changed.

Are your current products and services, still adequate to meet these changed needs?

Example:

The change I have noted in my own markets is listed below:

Organisations, no longer view Sales Training as a must have. Due to bad experiences, when attending one, two or three day sales training events, where little or no improvement in sales performance was achieved. Organisations are starting to view Sales Training as a grudge purchase.

How we responded to these changes?

We have introduced a blended “Sales Enablement Solution”, which takes the best sales practices within a sales driven organisation and then by using a blended “Sales Enablement Training Solution”, we then drip feed the “Sales Enablement” resources and training over an extended period, to ensure meaningful learning occurs and the sales professionals, actually adopt and apply all the new “Sales Enablement” resources on the job.

Explore all the changes that have occurred in your industry, markets and with your customers.

Now take a thorough look at your product and services. You explored them in the previous question.

Are they still able to meet these changed needs?

Question 5

Examine your current product or service.

Please list all the suggested improvements or changes that need to happen, to ensure that you can meet their changed needs

Example:

Imagine if Blockbusters video, had focused on their customer’s needs, instead of focusing on the products they had to sell to them. They would have realised that people, still wanted to consume movies, as means to entertain themselves. They just did not want to have to go through the hassle of going to a store to collect and drop them off. They could have been Netflix.

Instead they were so attached to the products and method of delivering those products to their customers, that they missed a golden opportunity to change their deliver method from stores to an online digital one.

Warning:

Please don’t make the same mistake as Blockbusters video, where you are so focused on what you currently sell and how you deliver these to your markets, that you miss out on new opportunities that may be staring you in the face right now.

I know that you may not have control over the products and services your organisation provides to the market. This does not mean that you have to just sit back idly and try to sell something to your market that is not suitable.

If you find that the products or services your organisation are no longer effective. Highlight this to your leadership, with a solution and I am certain that they will consider your idea.

If you feel that the products and services offered by your organisation are no longer suitable and your leadership is not prepared to make the suggested changes. Then you have two options:

• Try to sell something that the market no longer needs. This is very hard
• Find an organisation, that has suitable products and go work for them

Please describe any improvements you need to make to your current product and service has below: