Customer Centric Marketing...B2B Sales Secret

Reduce Small Business Marketing Costs & Increase Your Customer Base...

The best kept secret for small business selling consultative products or services to other businesses is customer centric marketing. Before we explore what makes customer centric marketing the choice for small business B2B marketing, let's first understand what most businesses use as their approach to marketing.

Where marketing comes from...

Most of our marketing methods come from large corporations selling their products or services to consumers. This is B2C, or business to consumer marketing. After all, we are all bombarded everyday by American Express, Capital One, and Proctor & Gamble, etc…telling us what we need or want.

Ninety-nine percent of all companies and individuals market their products and services based on B2C marketing. Why, because it is what we are exposed to everday and then we mimic it and apply to every other marketing situation rightly or wrongly. However, when selling to other businesses, this is definitely the wrong approach.

The marketing approach that big corporations employ in selling to consumers is capabilities and capacities. They say we have this capability or this capacity to _________, fill in the blank. What does this mean? It means that most people can’t wait to tell you what they can do for you. Even though they don’t know what it is you really need, they just want you to buy what they are selling.

Most business-to-business marketing and selling approaches are also, either capability/ capacity, or a derivative called information selling. This approach is let me educate on why you should buy from me. I am smart and I know what you need, that’s why I know best and you should therefore buy from me. Unfortunately, neither of these approaches comes close to addressing the heart of why someone actually buys from one-person verses another, relationship.

Customers do not want to buy based on what you have to sell no matter what your features/benefits, or even because it’s on sale now. Fooling them into buying something they don’t want or need may result in a one-off sale, but does not create a customer.

You may be creating barriers to sales if...

• Potential customers do not respond to your marketing because it all sounds, looks and says the same thing.

• People avoid meeting with you because they do not want to “be sold” anything.

• Prospects lack trust because they are tired of sales people will say or do anything for a sale.

• Prospective clients take a defensive posture because they don’t want to be hustled into purchasing unneeded or wanted products/services.

Long-term, loyal customers buy based on the power of a relationship you forge or don’t forge with them. Things like creditability, trust, integrity, and putting your client first are essential.

Why customer centric marketing.

Customer centric marketing is as its name says; it centers on the needs and wants of the customer, and not about what the person doing the selling wants you to buy.

It focuses on understanding the problems, concerns, needs and wants of your customer not yours. It recognizes the sale is the natural result of forging a solid relationship built on listening and problem solving, not forcing someone to buy. It begins with building customer rapport and ends with a lasting business relationship that generates continuing sales.

Create relationship sales with customer centric marketing…

1. Ask a lot of probing questions to understand the real problem issues of your client.

2. Seek to gain insight into the all concerns of your potential customer, explicit and implied.

3. Focus solely on building a well-satisfied customer and a mutually beneficial relationship will follow.

4. The sale is the natural result of forging a solid relationship built on listening, caring and problem solving. Prospects ask you to help them. Never ask for an order.

5. Don’t fixate with over coming objections, avoid any objections in the first place. Trying to over come objections often leads to arguments & lost sales opportunities.

6. Customer acquisition begins with building rapport and ends with a lasting business relationship.

People often confuse the method used to deliver a marketing message with a type of marketing. Many people equate telemarketing, direct mail, print advertising, radio, TV, public relations, seminars, newsletters, audio and video presentations, email, and Web sites as marketing. These are not marketing approaches they are delivery methods used to distribute marketing messages. People can and do use all of these delivery methods to send various types of marketing messages. You can send a capabilities/capacities message, a consultative/informative message or a customer-centric message using any of these delivery methods.

The key to successful B2B small business marketing is not about how you deliver the marketing message, it is all about the marketing message you deliver, to the right audience, at the right time. We call delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time achieving "perfect marketing message alignment".

Understanding the differences between and among marketing approaches, (capabilities/capacities, consultative/informative, or customer centric), the application of the appropriate approach to your target audience, (B2C or B2B), and a multi-layered approach to utilizing delivery methods all at the proper time is the formula for marketing success.

Customer centric marketing gives small business a competitive sales prospecting edge. It will produce face-to-face sales meetings on a small business budget. Why? Simple it builds trust because your focus is on helping your prospective customers first, before you sell them anything.

Benefits of the Customer Centric Marketing Approach to You

1. Selling becomes effortless because there is no sales pitch. You simply offer to help a person become more successful and by doing so you benefit too.

2. Enjoy increased referrals, the best form of marketing and least expensive.

3. Reach prospects before they begin to seek solutions from others.

4. Eliminate wasting marketing dollars on ineffective marketing approaches

5. Pre-qualified prospects will actually call you.

6. Focus on profits not response rates. Quality not quantity is the way to a profitable ROI on your marketing investment. One hundred responses and no sales = $0 profits, but ten responses and three sales is money in the bank.

Bob Hennessey is President of MyMarketingDept Inc. MyMarketingDept. Inc helps small business selling business-to-business services and products to obtain face-to-face-sales meetings affordably by having sales prospects actually call them. Using customer centric lead generation principals and inbound marketing techniques MyMarketingDept is leading the way in generating B2B sales leads to help small business sell more products and services affordably. MyMarketingDept. Inc is online at www.mymarketingdept.com. Before you spend any money on your next small business marketing campaign, check their free small business SmartMarketingCampaign analysis tool.

Contact: Bob Hennessey
Email: sales@mymarketingdept.com
Contact Phone: 1-866-875-2534