The 14 items to know about your business and products
In order to succeed in business with your business or sales you need to know your business and your offering by identifying:
1. The value proposition:
What value does your business or solutions bring ?
What is your value proposition ?
2. The uniqueness:
Many companies have me-too products. Still most of them have at least one unique function or feature that sets them apart.
3. The no competitors:
If you have a completely unique offering then be aware people won’t know about the offering or solution you bring. You will have an uphill battle to explain your solution as hardly anybody has ever heard of your solution.
It is better to have some competitors than none.
4. The perception:
How do you want your business or products to be perceived ?
Outstanding, high quality, low cost, cheapest on the market, exclusive, average but without any risk, market leading, innovative, conservative, …
5. The match with perception:
How does the reality matches with the perception you portray ?
If there is a discrepancy or a gap between portrayed perception and the real stuff, you will need marketing to fill the gap.
6. The business specialty:
Does business have a specialty ?
If your business is common and plain, then how will it get noticed ?
What sets you apart from the rest ?
If your business has a specialty then your marketign can focus on this making it easier and less costly.
7. The target market:
Have you identified your target market ?
The more precise you can identify your target market the better, cheaper and more effective your marketing campaigns can be runt successfully as you don’t need to address to the masses.
8. The target market demographics
Your target market consist of companies who are staffed with people. You should know the demographics of the people that advice on the type of solutions you offer (influencers) and the type of people that take the decisions like:
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Personal interests
Don’t offer free football tickets in a golf or sailing environment. Know your demographic profiles.
9. The proposition:
According to the type of people you address and communicate a different message is needed:
- Users want functions
- Influencers van features
- Managers advantages
- CXOs want benefits
What change or improvement can your business or solution bring for the people in each of these subgroups of your target market ?
Who will get you the easiest or best to a successful deal ?
Who do you want to promote too and who do you avoid to address ?
10. The SEO:
As your website is an important part and tool in any B2B lead generation and sales process, you need to make sure you use the best SEO in order to get the people from your target market based upon the demographics and the proposition.
11. The channels:
Besides the website you need to consider other channels that are appropriate to send out your marketing messages as they need to match your the demographics of your target market and be suited to carry your proposition.
This can be email, online ads, printed ads, direct mail, cold calling, trade shows, conferences or even social media.
try to figure out which channels are likely to be used by the people in the demographics of your target market.
If they don’t read newspapers then don’t advertise in newspapers.
If they don’t visit trade shows then don’t waste money on trade shows.
12. The lead qualification:
Can you define the qualities or characteristics your lead has to have in order to qualify ?
The better and earlier in your sales process you can qualify your leads or you can dismiss your leads the lower your sales costs will be.
At the same time your feedback to marketing will be faster allowing marketing reacting or adjusting their marketing campaigns.
13. The distribution:
If there is/are a middleman(me) in your distribution (distributor and/or resellers), you need to know how profitable your business is for them. Is it worth for them to invest time (training) and money (storage space) in your business ?Can they make enough or more money on your business or products compared to competing products and solutions.
If there is noting in it for them you won’t sell.
14. The feedback:
All feedback from your channel (distributors or resellers) and end-users is utmost important as you always can improve.
Find ways to get feedback. Even if it comes at a high cost.
The better you understand your business, the better you can promote your business and sell more.
How good do you understand your business ?



































