CHAPTER 7
Marketing and Sales: Which Every Organization Must Do

Table represents the seven sub-playbooks.

The marketing and sales component of the commercial playbook gets at how to drive organic revenue growth with customers. With a new merger and acquisition (M&A) or private equity (PE) deal, this is the lifeblood of driving incremental value and coupled with the other playbooks driving success for your deal.

As noted before, every marketing and sales funnel there ever was is a variation of AIDA: awareness, interest, desire, action. It's all about helping prospects move through the funnel. This chapter lays out the basic steps of AIDA to do that by working through four tools:

Tool 7.1 Purchase and Sales Funnel Management—essentially an overview

Tool 7.2 Marketing Planning

Tool 7.3 Creative Brief

Tool 7.4 Strategic Selling—elaborating on more complex sales

Note the most up-to-date, full, editable versions of all tools are downloadable at primegenesis.com/tools

Tool 7.1: Purchase and Sales Funnel Management

Awareness: Step 1 Is Making People Aware of Your Offering—You to Them

This is going to be different depending on the size of your target audience. If it's a small set, you can reach out to them and those influencing them directly. If it's a broader set, you'll likely need some sort of mass media like TV, radio, print, online, and streaming. In any case, remember the objective is awareness—broad and shallow. So don't invest too much in any one person. This is generally a marketing function, with sales less involved.

Interest: Step 2 Is Fueling Interest in Your Offering—You and Them Together

Some of those aware of your offering will express an interest. This is where you start a conversation either live or virtually. By definition, conversations are two-way. You want to learn more about them as they are learning more about you and your offerings. Note some of these conversations may go on for extended periods of time.

If it's a more sophisticated, complex business-to-business (B2B) sale, this is where sales gets involved:

  • Identify buying influences: economic, user, technical buyers, coaches—their response modes (growth, trouble, even-keeled, overconfident,) and their win-results and red flags.
  • Develop a sales strategy to get the right people in front of the right buyers with the right messages at the right places at the right time over time.
  • Think through and deploy components of conceptual selling: understand the customers' concept1 of what they want to happen, generate ideas to help with that, and select the best option.
  • Implement with single sales objectives for each sales call moving people from unaware to aware to understanding and interested to believing and desiring to action step by step—outline proposition, presell proposition, propose solution, close, follow up.

Desire: Step 3 Is Responding to Their Desire for Your Offering—Them to You

In general, what triggers the jump from interest to desire is a change in their situation or ambition. At this point, your job is to help them understand how your offering can meet their needs better than any other option. If it doesn't, point them to an offering that does. If it does, help them move to action.

Action: Step 4 Is Closing the Sale and Moving the Prospect to Action—You to Them

If your offering meets their needs better than any other option, consider the momentum close. Make it as easy as possible for them to say yes at every step. Often this involves a trial offering to let them get a taste of what your full offering can do for them on the way to making ever larger and larger commitments.

Notes on Building Up Your Sales Team

  • Recruit with the right strengths, including hunters, innovators, and strategists (to bring in new accounts); farmers (to nurture and develop existing accounts); managers (to direct efforts of salespeople); and an operational team to recruit, train, coordinate, track, support sales, and serve customers.
  • Build the right tracking systems to understand activities, the impact of those activities, and the effect of those impacts as prospects move through the funnel.

Awareness building

Awareness-building activities (costs)

Leads generated by activities (cost and prospect)

Attempts to connect with leads

Connections with leads or opt out

Interest

Agreement to receive further information (opportunities) or opt out

Agreement to meet or opt out

Desire

Proposal

Action

Purchase (cost and order) or opt out

  • Train your sales team on potential prospects’ hopes and needs, on your offering and how it meets those hopes and needs, and on your tracking systems.
  • Leverage your tracking systems to understand what's working well and less well so managers can redirect sales efforts and training as appropriate.

Tool 7.2: Marketing Planning

Environment: Where to Play?

Context

Start with a 6Cs analysis:

  • Customers: Revisit your thinking on customers from Chapter 6 and lay out first-line customers, the customer chain, end users and consumers, influencers. Look across geographic, demographic, behavioral, and market segments. Dig into growth rates, trends, preferences, needs, hopes, commitment, strategies, price–value perspective by segment.
  • Collaborators: Look at suppliers, business allies, outsource opportunities, government and community leaders, allies—needs, hopes, preferences, commitment, strategies, price–value perspective by group.
  • Culture: Behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values, and environment.
  • Capabilities: Core human, operational, financial, technical, and key asset capabilities.
  • Competition: Look at your direct, indirect, and potential competitors. Look at the different types of competitors, in different locations, for different products. Understand your competitors strategies, profit-value models and their profit pools by segment, as well as their source of pride.
  • Conditions: Social, cultural, demographic, political, governmental, regulatory, economic and technological, market definition—inflows, outflows, and substitutes; health; climate trends.

Then look at your:

  • Current position: Markets, market share, buyers, why buy, life cycle (introduction, growth, maturity, decline, exiting).

Bring it together with a SWOT analysis if not already in the plans section: => Insights regarding leverage points and business issues

Values: What Matters and Why?

Purpose, including the organization's overall mission (Why?) vision (What?) and values:

  • How marketing fits within that and helps move things in that direction.

Attitude: How to Win?

Overall organizational or commercial strategy including value proposition:

  • Marketing strategy: Broad choices (How?). Be clear on what aspects of marketing need to be predominant (top 1 percent), superior (top 10 percent), strong (top 25 percent), competitive (above average), good enough or not do (outsource or not do at all).
  • Positioning: This may be the most important marketing tool. Get this right:
    • Target: Customer and problem the customer needs solved.
    • Frame of reference: Other choices the customer could or should consider.
    • Benefit: Promise—meaningfully unique. All benefits are ultimately emotional.
    • Support and attributes: Permission to believe (product, service, system proof).
    • Brand character, attitude, and voice: Who we are.

Why It's Crucial to Align Brand Positioning with the Essence of Your Organization

Everything communicates—everything you do and say and don't do and don't say internally and externally. Given that, aligning what you say about your brand with what you do and what you are as an organization has to make sense. Do that by connecting every aspect of your brand positioning with the essence of your organization.2 Apple and the Four Seasons do this particularly well.

This happens at the intersection of three frameworks:

Brand positioning: Target; frame of reference; benefit; support and attributes; brand character, attitude, and voice.

Core focus: Design, produce, deliver, service.

BRAVE leadership: Where play? What matters and why? How win? How connect? What impact?

Positioning is all about setting yourself apart from your competition in the mind of your customer. There is an old Procter & Gamble list of ways to be competitive. In descending order of impact, that list is:

  1. Superiority on some benefit or attribute that meets customer needs significantly better than competition or than an enlarged or reduced set of competition, perhaps going all the way to focusing on one competitor's point of weakness—claims, comparisons, side-by-side demos.
  2. Distinctive product benefit, emotional benefit, attribute, or character that no one else is offering or talking about.
  3. Communicating your offering better than your competition through a distinctive selling idea, claim versus a standard of excellence, leveraging loyal customers, portraying before and after situations, torture tests, setting up a special problem only your brand can solve, expert endorsement.

Aligning Brand Positioning

Now, let's cross the three frameworks:

  • Target is another way of asking where to play.
  • Frame of reference sets up whom you need to beat to win with your target.
  • Benefit must, must, must match up with what matters and why and your design, produce, deliver, or service focus. This is the heart of be–do–say integrity and exactly what Simon Sinek gets at in his why–how–what golden circle TED Talk.3
  • Support or permission to believe is all about how to win.
  • Character is to your brand what culture is to your organization. People care what they buy and whom they buy from. Make your external brand character match your internal brand culture or pay the price when you get found out.

So, as you think through your brand positioning, make sure:

  • Your target matches the set of customers and problems the organization chooses to serve.
  • Your organization is actually competing against those called out in your frame of reference.
  • Your organization delivers the benefit you're promising. Promises of new or innovative require design focus. Promises of reliability or confidence require production focus. Speed promises require delivery focus. Experience promises require service focus.
  • Your organization is investing to win by being predominant (top 1 percent), superior (top 10 percent), or, at least, strong (top 25 percent) in the areas supporting your promised benefit while being above average or competitive, good enough or scaled, or outsourcing or not doing other things.
  • Your brand character fits the organization culture.

Aspirations

This is, of course, harder for organizations at points of inflection. In these cases, there may be a gap between the aspirational and current organization and culture. It's tempting to jump to an aspirational brand positioning at the same time. Be careful not to get too far ahead of your truth. It's better to underpromise and overdeliver than the alternative:

  • Product/services: Features and benefits like quality, scope, warranty, packaging, and service.
  • Packaging: Which serves both as a primary container, secondary container, and communication channel or display. Witness how much time children spend looking at cereal boxes.
  • Pricing: Premium, penetration, economy, bundling, promotional, list, discount, bundling, payment terms, leasing, and so forth.
  • Place: Distribution channels, channel margins, locations, logistics—transport, warehouse, order fulfill.
  • Promotion and advertising or communication: Networking, direct marketing, advertising, training programs, writing and articles, publicity and press releases, trade shows, fairs, events, website, newsletters and e-zines, e-books, affiliate programs, search engine optimization, sampling (i.e., charity auctions), sponsorships, contests, online auction, merchandising—collateral you'll need.
  • Promotion strategy: Trial, repeat, continuity, stocking.

The creative brief, Tool 7.3, can help here.

Sales strategy: Who's going to contact whom, when, how frequently, and so forth.

Sales team training: Keep reading, and also see Tool 7.4 on strategic selling.

Strategic relationships: Who's going to help you.

New business development: Either selling more to existing customers (farming) or bringing in new customers (hunting).

Launch plan approach: Pulling together all the aspects of the work effort.

Ongoing research, insights: To keep learning and evolving.

Marketing budget and allocation across efforts: Because strategies are theoretically elegant and practically useless until they are resourced.

Relationships: How to Connect

There are choices to make about how to spark relationships to (1) build awareness, (2) deepen relationships at interest level, and (3) turn prospects desire into action.

  • Sales approach: What getting done by when by whom with what resources?
  • Buyers: Build relationships with the different types of buyers: economic, user, technical, and coaches. Understanding the business results and personal wins each seeks.

Behaviors: What Impact

  • Specific plans to move people through AIDA funnel with checklists, milestones, and timing.
  • Expected competitive reaction: Because you can't gain share without someone losing share. Think through how others may react and what you're going to do then.
  • Other risks: Think through the things you can't control, the unintended consequences of your actions, and contingency plans.

Tool 7.3: Creative Brief

Begin with a project description. This is much more than a summary. Each part may be important:

  • Opportunity: The problem to be solved or the opportunity to be captured, leading with why this work needs to be done in the first place.
  • Approach: The general approach to solving the problem or capturing the opportunity. Is this advertising, public relations, external or internal communications, or something else?
  • Output: The specific creative expected to be delivered whether it's a page, poster, complete program, or something else.
  • Timing: When the output should be delivered.
  • Logistics: How the person or organization being briefed should work with the person or organization briefing them.
  • Decision-making: Clarity around who will make key decisions. A RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) can help here:
    • Commissioning authority or customer
    • Accountable: The person called to account. Overall ownership of results. Drives decisions. Ensures implementation.
    • Responsible: Does work defined and delegated by accountable person.
    • Consulted: Provides expertise-based input (to be considered) and/or direction/concurrence (to be followed)—Two-way conversations.
    • Informed: In advance or after the fact—One-way communication.
    • Support: Assist in completing the work.

Resources

The people that will be involved full-time, part-time, or as part of the RACI

Budget for the work itself

Operational tools to assist the person being briefed

  • Accountabilities: Specific accountabilities of the person being briefed including milestones and their timing on the way to the overall deliverable.
  • Consequences: Expected impact on the universe, world, customers, the organization, and the person being briefed.
  • How to leverage the win: What will happen after the work is completed.

Environment: Where to Play—Context (with More Rather Than Less Detail to Spark Ideas)

  1. Customers: First-line, customer chain, end users, influencers—needs, hopes, preference, commitment, strategies, price and value perspective by segment.
  2. Collaborators: Suppliers, business allies, partners, government and community leaders—needs, hopes, preferences, commitment, strategies, price, and value perspective by group.
  3. Culture: Behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values, environment.
  4. Capabilities: Core human, operational, financial, technical, and key asset capabilities.
  5. Competitors: Direct, indirect, potential—strategies, profit–value models, profit pools by segment, source of pride.
  6. Conditions: Social and demographic; political, government, and regulatory; economic; market definition; inflows, outflows, and substitutes; health, climate trends, and implications.

    => Insights drawn from these (So what?):
    Maybe the most important part of the brief

Values: What Matters and Why

Purpose including the organization's overall mission (Why?), vision (What?), and values as well as how this project fits within that and helps move things in that direction. Summarize this as “To [do some mission] so that [some vision is achieved].”

  • Objective: General statement of what trying to accomplish.
  • Organization's overall purpose: Write down so those being briefed have it in front of them so they understand why they need to do what they are doing.
  • Fit: Be explicit about how this work will move the organization toward its purpose.

Attitude: How to Win

  • Strategy: Broad choices (How?). Be clear on what aspects of the work need to be superior, parity with the best, strong or above average, good enough or minimum viable, or out of scope and avoided. If this is advertising, this is where you would capture the copy strategy. If this is communication, this is where you would capture the communication strategy. And so on.
  • Overall organizational or commercial strategy, including value proposition: Write this down so the person, team, or organization being briefed has it in front of them so they understand how the strategy for this work fits into the overall organization's strategy.
  • Positioning: Target, frame of reference, benefit, support and attributes—permission to believe; brand character, attitude, and voice.
    • Target: Customer and problem the customer needs solved.
    • Frame of reference: Other choices the customer could or should consider.
    • Benefit: Promise—meaningfully unique. All benefits are ultimately emotional.
    • Support and attributes: Permission to believe—product, service, system proof.
    • Brand character, attitude, and voice: Who we are.
  • Posture goes hand in hand with strategy and adds richness to the strategy choices. Get at the organization's bias to be proactive: either fast follower, prepared or responsive.

Relationships: How to Connect

Mandatory elements focused on the few critical elements that will drive the connection with the target audience. These could include components like visuals, selling idea, look, voice, communication points, information, and media and channels. Be clear on mandatory brand equities and mandatory execution equities like the mandated inclusion of a “psssss” sound when the Folger's coffee can was opened and we see the steaming coffee pour. Tell the people doing the work where they have freedom and where they don't:

  • Visuals (or sounds): Be specific about logos and images that must be included.
  • Selling idea: If this is a piece of an already existing campaign, be specific about the selling idea.
  • Look: Be clear on any guidelines, preconceptions, or biases around the overall look and feel of the creative.
  • Voice: Be clear on any guidelines, preconceptions, or biases around the overall voice of the creative.
  • Communication points: Be clear on any guidelines, preconceptions, or biases around specific communication points that should be included.
  • Information: Be clear on any guidelines, preconceptions, or biases around specific information that should be included.
  • Media and channels: Be clear on any guidelines, preconceptions, or biases around specific media or channels in which the creative will be deployed.

Behaviors: What Impact

  • Desired response: How the target will move through AIDA (aware–interest–desire–action) after experiencing the creative.
  • AIDA progress: Lay out the “from–to” progress this creative should accomplish, such as:
    • This creative will make the target aware.
    • This creative will spark interest in those already aware.
    • This creative will fuel desire in those interested.
    • This creative will cause the target audience to act in this way.

Tool 7.4: Strategic Selling

This is a cheat sheet for Miller and Heiman's strategic selling steps.

  1. Set the single sales objective:
    1. Make it specific, measurable, timelined, outcome focused
    2. You'll want one single objective for each sales call, moving people from unaware to aware to understanding and interested to believing and desiring to action step by step.
    3. For each sales call or step, set a specific objective, know how you're going to measure success, set a time target, and drive toward an outcome.
  2. Identify the buying influences involved (economic, user, technical, coach):
    1. Economic buyers give final approval as the single person or group who can say yes when others say no and can veto other buyers' approval.
    2. User buyers use the product and their success is tied to it, make judgments about impact. There may be several.
    3. Technical buyers screen out options. They focus on the product and service, can't give final yes, but often give a final no. May be several.
    4. Coaches help you navigate the buying organization and identify other buying influences. May work for buying organization, your organization, or neither.
    5. Response mode of each buyer (growth, trouble, even-keeled, overconfident) and their needs and wants:
      1. Growth buyers are motivated by making things even better.
      2. Buyers in trouble have problems they think must be solved to survive.
      3. Those with an even-keel think things are fine as is (and hard to sell).
      4. Overconfident buyers think things are fine (and hard to sell now).
    6. Win results for each buyer:
      1. You'll need both business results (impact and effect that are good for the organization) and personal wins (good for the buyers personally) to make the sale.
    7. Red flags
      1. Missing pieces of information, uncertainty about information, any uncontacted buying influence, buying influences new to the job, reorganizations
  3. Develop a sales strategy:
    1. Strategy is about creating and allocating the right resources in the right way to the right places at the right time over time. When it comes to a sales strategy, this is about getting the right people in front of the right buyers with the right message and the right places at the right time over time.
    2. Start with the right prospects, allocating your time to those who need and know they need your product or service and will be good, valuable customers for you over time.
    3. Then get the right people from your side connected with the right people from their side at the right time in the right way.
    4. Think through components of conceptual selling:
      1. Understand/get > generate/give > select best/commit
      2. Customer's concept: Their image of what they want to happen as a result
      3. Sales call plan
  4. Outline the proposition:
    1. This is about positioning and communication and the framework for your offer.
    2. Positioning:
      1. To specific buyer (economic, user, technical, coach)
      2. X is the brand of frame of reference
      3. That benefit (Result for organization, win for buyer)—matching their concept
      4. Because of support (attributes)
  5. Presell the proposition:
    1. Testing and consulting with buyers and influencers.
  6. Propose the solution:
    1. Marrying the framework with the customers' concept and win–win solution ideas.
  7. Close and follow up:
    1. Get to yes and implement with excellence.

As a reminder, the marketing and sales component of the commercial playbook gets at how to drive organic revenue growth with customers. With a new M&A or PE deal, this is the lifeblood of driving incremental value, and coupled with the other playbooks driving success for your deal, the following tools will help you lay out your thinking and help build your commercial plan.

Notes

  1. 1   “We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” Samuel Johnson
  2. 2   Bradt, George, 2022, “Why It's Crucial to Align Brand Positioning with the Essence of Your Organization,” Forbes (January 18).
  3. 3   Sinek, Simon, 2010, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” TED Talk (May 4).
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