CHAPTER 3

Marketing Mix: The 4 P’s

Introduction

This chapter covers the 4P marketing framework which is a useful ­organizing tool to ensure that you are complete and systematic in your new product launch. Additional fundamental concepts to consider include lifetime customer value, the Rogers adoption curve, and an ­analysis based on The Tipping Point. Other critical components of a new product launch include direct selling and a customer service mindset.

Marketing Mix

The product introduction team needs to ensure that all marketing mix options are considered. The traditional 4P—product, price, promotion, and place—framework continues to be an effective and easily understood framework that ensures consideration of activities that can help the product launch.

Product Decisions

All elements of the product need careful consideration so that when taken in their entirety, they compel customers to purchase. “A company aims to make the product or offering different and better in some way that will cause the target market to favor it and even pay a premium price” ­(Kotler 1999, 97). The product introduction team needs to create the most attractive and profitable mix of product quality, variety, design, features, brand name, packaging, sizes, services, warranties, returns, life cycle ­management, product portfolio, standard costs and variances, and ­security of supply chain. This Table 3.1 shows detailed activities for each of the 4 P’s.

Table 3.1 The 4P framework

Category	Activities
Product	Quality, variety, design, features, brand names, packaging, sizes, services, warranties, returns, life cycle ­management, ­product portfolio, gross margin ­management including standard costs and variances, security quality, and cost of the supply chain
Price	Pricing strategy—value, penetration, or competitive, list price, volume discounts, event- or date-driven discounts, allowances, payment period, credit terms
Promotion	Segmentation and targeting, sales force (personal selling) composition and management including materials, advertising, sales promotion, public relations, industry conferences, speaker’s programs, direct marketing (hard copy and electronic), Web site, online marketing (social media), reference centers, advisory groups, ­customer and technical service
Place	Channels, coverage, assortments, locations, inventory, transport

Source: Adopted from Kotler (1999, Exhibit 6-1, page 96).

Product Names

The product naming process can be simple or complex depending on the orientation of the leadership team and the influence that the name has on the customer purchase decision. A company can spend a little or a lot of money and time in its quest to find a name that will optimize the products’ success. An effective process includes generating names and getting feedback from high-value target customers. Ideally, the name will leverage existing brand equity, convey its unique positioning, imply the brand’s benefit, and motivate customers to ask for the product or the treatment. For products and companies new to the market, there are examples of names that do not convey positioning or benefits and over time the benefits are attributed to the product name, for example, ­Google^® and Yahoo^®.

Beyond the Product

The product introduction team also creates competitive advantages beyond the physical product, including packaging, additional services, warranties, maintenance contracts, and return policies.

Product Enhancements or Development

If modifications to the product are required in the short term, then the product introduction team provides an analysis of the product’s strengths and weaknesses and its opportunities and threats related to the market and competition. Potential modifications are analyzed for their financial impact on the company. This analysis is combined with timing, qualitative benefit, cost, and degree of difficulty for the modification, all of which help set the priority for each modifications. As a part of the product development process, a product requirements document defines features, benefits, and monetized benefits for each modification. There are required (must-have features or the product will not be launched) ­attributes and desired (features that would increase the product’s value and that can be left out if they have significant negative impact on quality, timing, or cost) attributes. As the product goes through the development process, the product introduction team can use this analysis to guide ­decisions on when to make modifications. For example, a desired attribute can be dropped, whereas an issue with a required attribute could need extra resources and senior management approval.

Market Segments and High-Value Targets

Market segments are groups of customers with similar characteristics. Characteristics can be defined by usage level such as heavy, medium, and light; demographics such as gender, age, and geography; or ­“reasons for use” such as flying for business, pleasure, or emergency reasons; ­lifestyle such as soccer moms or pick-up truck macho males; or any other ­characteristic that will help the company better understand and reach its most profitable customers. Each segment has high-value targets that are ­institutions or people who bring the most lifetime value to the company. Lifetime value is defined by the company over a ­meaningful time period and is often set at three to five years for short-term ­analysis. Lifetime value is the present value of future profits (revenues minus all costs ­associated with the individual customer) expected from the ­customer over the ­designated time period.

An example of just the financial assessment is shown as follows:

Revenue and profit
Estimated annual revenues from the customer	$50,000
Estimated number of years of purchases	×5
Total customer revenue	$250,000
Company profit margin	20%
Lifetime customer profit $	$50,000
Costs
Cost of securing this customer for the first purchase	$5,000
Cost to keep and grow this customer per year	$2,000
Number of years	×5
Cost to keep and grow this customer for five years	$10,000
Cost over the lifetime of this customer	$15,000
Lifetime customer value (lifetime profit less lifetime costs)	$35,000

Source: Johnston (2009, 79).

Lifetime value is calculated with this type of analysis of potential total company revenue and profit as well as nonmonetary terms such as speaking on behalf of the company, being a reference, giving ­feedback to improve products, providing testimonials, participating in study ­development and implementation, writing publications, speaking on webinars, creating podcasts, and any other method that helps the ­company be more successful.

Figure 3.1 Rogers adoption and innovation curve

Source: Rogers (2003).

The most successful launches map high-value organizations and ­individuals on the Rogers Adoption and Innovation curve to prioritize and use discipline to concentrate on innovators and early adopters while continuing to learn about the different needs of the early and late ­majority. The organization reaches and focuses on the innovators first, then early adopters, and then the early majority. As you move to the right on the innovation curve, the customer segment often becomes more resistant to change so the messages and objection handling can become more challenging as the company interacts with ­customers and moves toward the late majority on the adoption curve. For example, ­innovators may already be dissatisfied with the incumbent supplier or the status quo and are generally receptive to a new product that can make their lives better. The early majority may have high loyalty to their incumbent provider and may need more compelling clinical and economic data in order to consider a new product and switch from their present situation.

Innovators seek new technologies and take risks that other customer segments would not take in order to be among the first people to try and gain the benefits of new products and services. Early adopters are people, including thought leaders, who want to try new products and services and validate them with careful use or study. The early majority are people who want the benefits of new technologies after they have been confirmed or proven to be useful. The late majority are people who are more risk averse and need more proof before trying the new technology. Laggards are the slowest customer segment to change and may never adopt the new technology.

Thought Leader Roll Out

The thought leader roll-out plan can create significant value for the ­customer and company. Proving the value of the product with ­influential people (e.g., heads of training programs, past and future leaders in professional organizations, and high-volume customers) adds credibility to the product due to their respected positions and can accelerate the product introduction. These thought leaders can bring a highly critical yet supportive perspective and help formulate and execute studies that prove the clinical, economic, and quality-of-life value of the product. This approach works best when there are strong personal relationships between the thought leaders and leaders in the company so that expectations are clear and transparent, conversations are open and honest, and responses to issues can be handled within an existing trusted relationship.

Tipping Point Review

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell described how ideas, diseases, and product adoption spreads. It is useful and informative to assess your strategy against the key factors described in this book. The team analyzes each factor to determine how well it is addressed. If a criterion is not met, then the team can create a plan to fill the gaps. These criteria are as follows.

Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen

•Connectors have ties in many different realms and act as ­conduits between them, engender connections, relationships, and cross-fertilization.

•Mavens are people who have a strong compulsion to help other consumers by helping them make informed decisions.

•Salesmen are people whose unusual charisma allows them to be extremely persuasive in inducing others’ buying decisions and behaviors.

Stickiness

•A unique quality that compels the phenomenon to stick and influences future behavior. Often counterintuitive or ­contradictory to the prevailing conventional wisdom.

Context

•Environment or historical moment in which a trend is ­introduced enables the tipping point to be attained.

•Groups of 150 or less usually display a level of intimacy, ­interdependency, and efficiency that begins to dissipate markedly as soon as the size of the group increases over 150 (Gladwell 2002).

Direct Professional Selling

Professional selling is helping the customer improve his or her work life. This can include helping him or her get the job done, keep the job, or get a promotion. ­Professional selling requires motivating others and includes the following:

•Persuading, influencing, and convincing others

•Convincing someone else to part with resources—time, attention, effort, and money—and leave them better off after the transaction

•Convincing someone else to give up something they value for something you have (Pink)

•“You can have everything you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”—Zig Ziglar (2003)

Professional sales people care about their customers, learn what they need and want, take the time to find out what will motivate them to buy, and inspire them to buy from them. Professional sales people have personal face-to-face, phone, and e-contact with customer to move them to an action or purchase that the customer may not have otherwise done.

Sidebar

Congratulations, You’re in Sales!

If you think personal selling is only for salespeople, think again. Everyone in every walk of life uses personal selling (some more effectively than others!) Selling is what makes people successful. We all have to sell our ideas, our points of view, and ourselves every day to all sorts of people—and not just those related to our jobs. For example, when you work on a team project, you have to sell your ideas about how your team should approach the project (or, sometimes more delicately, you will have to persuade others as to what you should do about a lazy team member). When you are with your friends, you have to sell your point of view about which movie you want to see or where you want to go to eat. When you pitch in for a friend’s gift, you have to sell your ideas about what gift to give. You are selling every day whether you realize it or not. (Richmond 2002, 10–11)

Professional selling is not

•Misrepresenting the product or company;

•Telling lies or omitting important information about the product or company;

•Manipulating another to buy something that doesn’t help them;

•An infomercial or an advertisement or pitching a product.

Professional selling builds long-term relationships and is also called relationship selling. The central goal of relationship selling is:

Securing, building, and maintaining long-term relationships with profitable customers. Relationship selling is oriented toward the long term. The sales person seeks to keep his or her customers so satisfied with the product, the selling firm and the salesperson’s own level of client service that they will not switch to other sources for the same products. (Johnston 2009, 5)

This means providing credible, compelling reasons for the customer to buy versus taking no action and versus competitive alternatives. These reasons are included in the “value proposition.” Value represents the net bundle of benefits the customer drives from the product you sell and the service you deliver. Value is the total benefit less the total costs to the ­customer. The net bundle includes price, quality, service, reliability, and the sales person’s expertise and problem resolution.

The problem with the phrase value proposition is that there are so many definitions that each business person may perceive a different ­definition. The question that needs to be answered is simply why buy from me now?

The reasons why the customer should buy from you now need to be described in terms of three value categories: (1) raising the customer’s revenue, (2) saving the customer’s cost and time, and (3) improving the customer’s quality of life.

Putting the customer at the center of the firm’s attention is a key component of professional selling. Customers pay money for ­products or services, which makes it possible for the organization to exist. A ­customer mindset is a requirement for sales people. Descriptors of a ­customer mindset toward external and internal customers is shown in the following table:

Test your customer mindset

External customers (people who are involved in the process to buy your products)	Internal customers (employees of your company)
I believe that …	I believe that …
I must understand the needs of my ­company’s customers	Employees who receive my work are my customers
It is critical to provide value to my ­company’s customers	Meeting the needs of employees who receive my work is critical to doing a good job
I must understand the person who buys my company’s products and services	It is important to receive feedback from employees who receive my work
I can perform my job better if I understand the needs of my company’s customers	I focus on the requirements of the person who receives my work
Understanding my company’s customers will help me do my job better
Score yourself from 1 to 6 on each item. 1 = strongly disagree and 6 = strongly agree. The higher the score, the higher the customer mindset you’ve achieved.

Source: Kennedy et al. (2002, 159–71).

Highly effective sales people make it a habit to use the following seven strategies:

1. Look to the customer for the solution—although product ­knowledge is important, it is only a baseline, and your solution needs to be ­tailored to the specific customer need
   
2. Be committed to presentation improvement
   
3. Embrace new ideas
   
4. Focus on helping. Helping is the overarching strategy—the hallmark—of the highly effective salesperson.
   
5. Possess a vision and attitude focused on customer relationships
   
6. Think of themselves as marketers
   
7. Pull customers ever closer to a partnership model in business (Graham 2008)
   

Sidebar

Profiles of Sales People: Challengers Are the Stars

The Sales Executive Council launched a global study of sales representative’s productivity three years ago involving more than 6,000 representatives across nearly 100 companies in multiple industries (by Mathew Dixon and Brent Adamson).

1. Every sales professional falls into one of five distinct profiles.

Quantitatively speaking, just about every business to business sales representative in the world is one of the following types, characterized by a specific set of skills and behaviors that defines the representative’s primary mode of interacting with customers:

•Relationship builders focus on developing strong personal and professional relationships and advocates across the customer organization. They are generous with their time, strive to meet customers’ every need, and work hard to resolve tensions in the commercial relationship.

•Hard workers show up early, stay late, and always go the extra mile. They’ll make more calls in an hour and conduct more visits in a week than just about anyone else on the team.

•Lone wolves are the deeply self-confident, the rule-breaking cowboys of the sales force who do things their way or not at all.

•Reactive problem solvers are, from the customers’ standpoint, highly reliable and detail oriented. They focus on postsales follow-up, ensuring that service issues related to implementation and execution are addressed quickly and thoroughly.

•Challengers use their deep understanding of their ­customers’ business to push their thinking and take control of the sales conversation. They are not afraid to share even ­potentially controversial views and are assertive—with both their ­customers and bosses.

2. Challengers dramatically outperform the other profiles, particularly relationship builders.

We found that challenger representatives dominate the ­high-performer population, making up close to 40 percent of star representatives in our study. What makes the challenger approach different?

The data tell us that these representatives are defined by three key capabilities:

Challengers teach their customers. They focus the sales conversation not on features and benefits but on insight, bringing a unique (and typically provocative) perspective on the customer’s business. They come to the table with new ideas for their customers that can make money or save money—often opportunities that the customer had not realized even existed.

Challengers tailor their sales message to the customer. They have a finely tuned sense of individual customer objectives and value drivers and use this knowledge to effectively position their sales pitch to different types of customer stakeholders within the organization.

Challengers take control of the sale. Although not aggressive, they are certainly assertive. They are comfortable with tension and are unlikely to acquiesce to every customer demand. When necessary, they can press customers a bit—not just in terms of their thinking but around things such as price.

3. Challengers dominate the world of complex “solution selling”

When we cut the data by complexity of sale—that is, separating out transactional, product-selling representatives from complex, ­solution-selling representatives—we find that challengers absolutely dominate as selling gets more complex. About 54 percent of all star ­representatives in a solution-selling environment are challengers. At the same time, relationship builders fall off the map almost entirely, representing only 4 percent of high-performing representatives in complex environments. For any company on a journey from selling products to selling solutions—which is a migration that more than 75 percent of the ­companies I work with say they are pursuing—the challenger’s selling approach represents a dramatically improved recipe for driving top-line growth.*

Transactional Compared to Relationship Selling

Transactional selling is focused on meeting the needs of buyers with ­little or no attention on creating a long-term relationship. From the ­customer’s perspective, he or she usually does not perceive that the ­selling ­organization can add value beyond the basic price, convenience, and acceptable quality of the product. From the seller’s perspective, he or she usually wants to quickly persuade the customer to purchase and then move on to the next customer.

Relationship selling includes two fundamental selling concepts: ­consultative (or solution) selling and enterprise selling. Consultative ­selling is a discipline that includes skills, strategies, and approaches that help the salesperson to deeply understand the customer’s needs and help the customer succeed by using the product as well as services that may or may not be charged to the customer. Consultative selling requires the customer to want to invest time with the salesperson and the salesperson to be able to offer ideas that will help the customer and that the customer could not have easily accessed on his own. There is a mutual investment of time and effort by both the seller and the customer. Probing questions and listening are dominant skills in consultative selling. A consultative seller helps the customer in three ways:

1. Understand problems and opportunities in new ways that enable new insights.
   
2. Arrive at better solutions than they would have discovered on their own.
   
3. Act as the customer’s advocate inside the selling organization to rally resources that can deliver custom solutions tailored to the customer’s needs.
   

Diagnostic tools, sales processes, and other systematic approaches provided by the company can make the consultative salesperson more sophisticated and more successful.

Enterprise selling describes the process of connecting the many people in the selling organization with many people in the customer enterprise. In enterprise selling, the salesperson is the leader who diagnoses what the customer needs and connects the appropriate departments in his or her organization to the appropriate departments in the ­customer’s to ­maximize value to the customer and to his firm. The enterprise ­salesperson ­leverages relevant corporate assets of the selling organization to contribute to the customers’ immediate operational and strategic ­success. An enterprise relationship links both organizations together at multiple levels—CEO to CEO, VPs to VPs, directors to directors, shipping department to ­shipping department—and all levels in between. They have ­cross-functional teams with people from both companies and have many people and lots of resources dedicated to helping both organizations become even more ­successful (Rackham 1999, 25–27).

According to a survey of 134 sales managers, making the transition from transactional to consultative selling is the most frequent challenge faced by sales professionals. The survey asked “What difficulties do your salespeople have in the marketplace?” Results are shown in the following table:

Response	% Responding
Moving to solution—type sell	69
Selling value	67
Inexperience	63
Negotiating	58
Prospecting	55
Closing	55
Unable to get to decision maker	51

“The findings suggest today’s sales organization has a more sophisticated focus than a few years ago,” said Keith Eades, CEO of Sales ­Performance International. “While more than half of respondents still cite frustration with basic sales techniques, like prospecting and closing, more encounter trouble at the higher end of the sales process, ­specifically consultative and value-added selling. This reflects a shift in emphasis as much as the complexity of the tasks involved.” Solution selling is where leading companies want to be. Not only does a ­consultative approach afford a competitive advantage but it also makes for more ­honorable seller. The salesperson becomes a problem solver and builds a ­better ­relationship with the ­customer. The accepted dogma is don’t push ­product on ­customers—address their business problem and show value. Frequently, however, sellers have to deal with customers who need to be in control, want to define what they need, and seek the best price. And when all else fails, the seller falls into old habits and ends up shaving the price to win the deal. Effective solution selling requires a culture change, ­top-to-bottom engagement, and an organization-wide commitment. Otherwise, the organization doesn’t speak a common language and gives out different messages (American Salesman 2006).

Another study asked 215 sales managers to rate the importance of 60 key success factors. The following are the top 20 success factors (scale of 1 = no importance at all in hiring decision, 7 = of the utmost ­importance in hiring decisions).

Score	Skill
6.50	Listening skills
6.36	Follow-up skills
6.32	Ability to adapt sales style from situation to situation
6.11	Tenacity—sticking with a task
6.01	Well organized
6.05	Verbal communication skills
6.00	Proficiency in interacting with people at all levels of a customer’s organization
5.98	Demonstrated ability to overcome objections
5.94	Closing skills
5.94	Personal planning and time management skills
5.83	Proficiency in interacting with people at all levels of an organization
5.83	Negotiation skills
5.79	Dresses in appropriate attire
5.72	Empathy with the customer
5.69	Planning skills
5.67	Prospecting skills
5.67	Creativity
5.55	Ability to empathize with others
5.53	Skills in preparing for a sales call
5.50	Decision-making ability

Source: Marshall (2003).

Listening and Questions

Good listeners ask good questions. So “listening skills” is actually “listening and asking skills.” Good sales people continually work on creating questions that help them better understand what will most help the customer and validate that their proposal will be accepted by the customer. Listening skills seem basic and easy to implement. However, it can be extremely challenging to consistently use good listening skills to every conversation. These basic good listening skills include the following.

•Truly focusing on the person who is talking.

•Listen to the words, tone of voice, and body language.

•Encourage the speaker to complete and expand on their thoughts and feelings.

•Hear the words and meaning being conveyed, and hear for the overall meaning as well. For example, a customer may say “I have tried to order this product 3 times and was kicked off your web page each time.” This means what was said and depending on the tone of voice, may also mean “I am frustrated by your company’s inability to help me.”

•Demonstrate that you are listening by verbal and nonverbal cues. Verbal cues can be ok, got it, uh huh, yes, or when appropriate asking “can you please tell me more” or “how did that affect you.” Nonverbal cues can be smiling, nodding, and leaning forward.

•Listen to understand, do not agree or disagree.

Hear What People Are Really Saying

Research suggests that we remember between 25 percent and 50 percent of what we hear. That means that when you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers, or spouse for 10 minutes, they pay attention to less than half of the conversation. This is dismal! (by James Manktelow and Amy Carlson)

Turn it around and it reveals that when you are receiving directions or being presented with information, you aren’t hearing the whole message either. You hope that the important parts are captured in your 25 percent to 50 percent, but what if they’re not?

Clearly, listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving. By becoming a better listener, you will improve your productivity, as well as your ability to influence, persuade, and negotiate. What’s more, you’ll avoid conflict and misunderstandings. All of these are necessary for ­workplace success!

About Active Listening

The way to become a better listener is to practice “active listening.” This is where you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, try to understand the complete message being sent.

In order to do this, you must pay attention to the other person very carefully.

There are five key elements of active listening. They all help you ensure that you hear the other person and that the other person knows you are hearing what they say.

1. Pay attention

Give the speaker your undivided attention, and acknowledge the ­message. Recognize that nonverbal communication also speaks loudly.

•Look at the speaker directly.

•Put aside distracting thoughts.

•Don’t mentally prepare a rebuttal!

•Avoid being distracted by environmental factors, for example, side conversations.

•Listen to the speaker’s body language.

2. Show that you’re listening

Use your own body language and gestures to convey your attention.

•Nod occasionally.

•Smile and use other facial expressions that support the speaker.

•Note your posture and make sure that it is open and ­inviting, sitting up straight and alert.

•Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal ­comments such as yes and uh huh.

3. Provide feedback

Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can ­distort what we hear. As a listener, your role is to understand what is being said. This may require you to reflect what is being said and ask questions.

•Reflect what has been said by paraphrasing. “What I’m hearing is” and “Sounds like you are saying”” are great ways to reflect back.

•Ask questions to clarify certain points. “What do you mean when you say.” “Is this what you mean?”

•Summarize the speaker’s comments periodically.

4. Defer judgment

Interrupting is a waste of time. It frustrates the speaker and limits full understanding of the message.

•Allow the speaker to finish each point before asking questions.

•Don’t interrupt with counterarguments.

5. Respond appropriately

Active listening is a model for respect and understanding. You are gaining information and perspective. You add nothing by attacking the speaker or otherwise putting him or her down.

•Be candid, open, and honest in your response.

•Assert your opinions respectfully.

•Treat the other person in a way that you think he or she would want to be treated.

Be deliberate with your listening and remind yourself frequently that your goal is to truly hear what the other person is saying. Set aside all other thoughts and behaviors and concentrate on the message. Ask ­questions, reflect, and paraphrase to ensure that you understand the message. If you don’t, then you’ll find that what someone says to you and what you hear can be amazingly different!

Start using active listening today to become a better communicator, improve your workplace productivity, and develop better relationships.†

Six Questions to Help You with Your Listening Skills: Who?, What?, Where?, Why?, How?, and When?

“I had six serving men. They taught me all I know. Their names are Who, What, Where, Why, How, and When.” They can serve you just as they served Rudyard Kipling a hundred years ago. They are ageless. All they need to do what they did for him and countless others is to be used every day.

We are so busy telling people about what we sell and who we are, we lose sight of who they are and what they are selling.

Let’s find out what is going on in our customers’ world before we try to change it. Who is doing what? Where are they doing it, and why? How are they getting it done, by when?

Write out specific informational and directional questions for each sales call. (A directional question is one you think you already know the answer to but is asked to direct the conversation along the lines you hope to take it.) For example, “When is the current contract up?” You know the date, but want to move toward refining next year’s specs in your favor! “Who is the most important person in the process?” You know you are talking to them, but they would like to tell you how big they really are.

Use all six serving men every day on every call.

Sales Management Lesson

Few of us ask enough questions. We pride ourselves on being fast on our feet, a quick study, and a quick take. Don’t! We have to train our sales professionals to take things a step at a time.

Trial lawyers are taught never to ask a question for which they don’t already know the answer to. It is a great technique for building a case. We have to have our people build information on every call, but we also have to teach them to direct the interaction of their customers, otherwise they will just be visiting and not selling.

Directional questions are a natural progression of the informational questions we require to be asked on every call. We teach people to test the waters. Now we have to teach them how to jump in with both feet and make things move—often upstream, but that is what we are all paid for!

What directional questions work in your business? Don’t ask your sales reps to make a list. You do it! You are sitting there on all those dual sales calls dutifully keeping your mouth shut, as you are supposed to, but that doesn’t mean that you should not be fully engaged. What ­questions are being asked that are moving the process along? (Hopefully, there are some, and usually with your best people there are.) After the call, ­compliment the user originator, but then write them down.

If you are to head a sales force, you have to give them direction and also a means to get there. Directional questions are tools of the trade. They are best used, not generically, but rather as specific tuned queries that are professionally meaningful to customers (Falvey 2014).

Follow-up Skills

Follow-up is evidence that you care. At the end of your conversation, declare an action and do it. Continue to find ways to follow-up in ways that help your prospect or customer. This can include completing an action that you declared, bringing new information about the market or competition to the customer, or sharing information that you think the customer would find helpful even if it is not directly related to your ­business relationship. The key is to declare what you will do by when, then do it. Set and beat expectations. Each commitment that is delivered increases trust and builds the relationship between the salesperson and customer.

Sidebar

Underpromise and Overdeliver

One of the tenets of selling is establishing trust and setting expectations. The best sales people underpromise and overdeliver. In other words, they say that they will do something by a certain day, and then not only do they do it, but they also deliver it one day early. Here is a way to think about the power of this approach: If you order a new pair of jeans online and the estimated date of deliver is Tuesday, but you receive them on Monday, you are delighted. You are pleased that they came early. However, if the jeans were promised for Tuesday delivery, but they arrived on Wednesday, you would be disappointed and probably would not trust that websites for the timely delivery in the future. You can imagine how this strategy builds trust with customers—not only can you rely on the sales person to do what he or she said, but he or she never lets you down and even delivers earlier than promised sometimes. That is how trust is built between salespersons and customer, and the relationship goes to the next level: partnership (Richmond 2010, 67).

Ability to Adapt Sales Style from Situation to Situation

Different customers respond to different styles. Effective sales ­people learn how to read the room or assess how the conversation is going and adapt so the conversation focuses on mutual benefits. Advanced sales ­training often includes profiling the customer through ­personality types, or ­personas, and developing strategies to more effectively ­communicate with the ­customer depending on their style. Two of these profiling ­systems are DiSC and Myers-Briggs. The DiSC approach is a personal assessment tool and recommended behaviors used to improve work ­productivity, ­teamwork, and communication. The DiSC program requires ­completion of a series of questions that produce a detailed report about your ­personality and behavior. The program can help sales people better understand your natural style, the natural styles of others, and how to adapt your style to be more effective with any style. DiSC stands for the four styles: dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness.

Tenacity—Sticking with a Task

The process of developing and strengthening relationships can be long and require a lot of work before seeing tangible rewards such as a purchase. The sales person may need to advocate for the customer within his or her company to ensure that the customer’s needs are met. The sales person may encounter many challenges and setbacks along the way, and he or she needs to persevere as long as the potential benefits to the company and sales person outweigh the potential costs.

Summary

New product launch success depends on consideration of ­fundamental ideas such as the 4P marketing framework, lifetime customer value, the Rogers Adoption Curve, analysis based on The Tipping Point, direct ­selling, and a customer service mindset. Success depends on how well you answer these questions:

1. How well have you addressed the relevant items for your new ­product in the 4P framework?
   
2. What is the lifetime value of your target customers?
   
3. What are the profiles of your customers who are innovators and early adopters? How are you reaching these customers?
   
4. What is your direct selling approach?
   
5. What is the status of the customer service mindset in all relevant functions?
   

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