Part 1 of our Making Yourself Indispensable blog series focused on building an understanding of
Business Acumen, while part 2 featured tips on becoming a stronger leader. The last part of the series will discuss the importance of understanding the role of the commercial side (marketing, sales, service) of the business. While this blog post is essentially written for people on the commercial side (Key Account Management, Account Managers, Marketing, Sales Professionals, etc.), in today’s newly evolved business environment everyone sells. The more you can support the sales process, the more indispensable you are to your company.
Strategic Business Selling is defined as the capability of leveraging business acumen into the sales process so that you are seen by your customer as more than “just a salesperson”; you are a trusted strategic advisor, and you are offering a full value proposition.
Know your Customers
The most important thing that you can do to make yourself indispensable from a selling perspective is to invest the time in knowing your customers. Here are a few basic questions you can consider to answer as you go about the process of doing everything possible to know your customers. The answers to these questions are the essential “tickets to the party” and give you the basics to be an effective partner:
- What business are they in?
- Who are their customers?
- How are they doing financially?
- What are their goals and objectives?
- What are their key business challenges? What are their key business opportunities?
Know Your Own Solutions and How They Help Your Customers
Understanding your own products and services is the foundation to effectively helping your customers. If you don’t fully understand what your own products do and how they help your customers, you are dispensable. This takes work and dedication to keep up with your own solution portfolio but it is worth the effort.
Know The Business Impact Of Your Customer Not Solving Challenges Or Taking Advantage Of Opportunities
The next step of the process is to understand the business impacts of what happens to your customers if they don’t solve their challenges or if they don’t take advantage of their business and market opportunities. This capability is the essential foundation of Strategic Business Selling. This is what separates organizations that just make products from organizations that add real business value to their customers.
Again, this takes work and commitment to think about these things, and the further away from direct customer contact you are, the harder it is. However, no matter what function you are in, you should think about and know the answers to the questions as they will help drive your daily work.
Build And Nurture Relationships
Relationships are at the heart of the bond between customer and vendor. No matter what your function, you should always:
- Be responsive to customer requests
- Have a sense of urgency when working with or supporting customers
- Understand the culture and styles of different customer organizations
Build Your Brands
There are two different types of brands you want to build; the brand of your company and the brand of you.
From the customer perspective, there are a lot of different factors that go into the perception of the brand of your company including but not limited to:
- Quality
- Price
- Levels of service
- Ease of doing business
- Your sustainability strategy
The more that you can build the brand of your company (and the more the people you work with see that) the more indispensable you will become.
In terms of the brand of you, there are several things to focus on including:
- Your physical presence (are you dressed professionally, on time to meetings, etc.)
- The value that you add either directly to customers or indirectly to your function
- The insights you provide
- The extra effort that you make that differentiates you
- Your passion
In summary, the future of your company is going to depend on the way you market, sell, and grow your customers. Everyone in your organization sells, and the more you can support the sales process, the more indispensable you become.
