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ALIGNING
COLLATERAL TO THE BUYING CYCLE
The development of collateral is a focused, targeted,
precise process. Your overall collateral package must communicate
to each individual member of your buying community, at every point
along the buying cycle (the buying cycle, not the sales cycle).
And--most important--in most cases your collateral is going to have
to do all the work--most of the people you have to convince live
completely behind the scenes. Your sales force never sees them.
Consider this generic customer's buying cycle--using software as
the sample product--and see how closely it matches your own.
It begins with staff people casting about to find the largest list
they can of companies that provide solutions that meet their prospect's
needs. These folks will get you on the long list, but are going
to have little or no influence when it comes to the buying decision.
Your goal is simply visbility--advertising, web sites and trade
shows.
OK, now you're in the door, and you're making the first presentation.
Depending on the size and culture of the company, you may be meeting
the decision maker, or you may be meeting people the initial hunters
and gatherers who will be doing little more than getting information
to make a report or a recommendation. Your collateral goal is to
demonstrate product functionality and to assess prospect needs.
Behind the scenes, other people will likely get involved. For instance,
the non-decision-making end users have enormous influence (I'm sure
you've run into situations where the CEO thinks your product is
the bee's knees, but you're axed from the sale because the users
complain it looks too hard and they don't want to learn anything
new). You're not there to answer questions or allay anxiety. So
here your collateral goal is to focus directly on issues of usability,
training, and simplicity.
At some point along the way, the financial guys get involved. The
issue of licensing costs and structures, as well as investment considerations,
rears its head. Your collateral goal here is to demonstrate that
the investment makes rock solid business sense.
Once you manage to get past all those zones of resistance, you're
called back for another meeting. This time you bring technical people
with you to talk with the IT staff about issues of installation,
compatibility, future direction, maintenance and so forth. Your
collateral goal here is to present a powerful technical case for
the purchase.
And finally, you end up face-to-face with the decision maker. It's
short list time. Your collateral goal here is the most difficult
at all--to prove that his entire enterprise--all those people that
have been involved with the decision process so far--think you've
got a valuable offering.
Fair enough description of your process? And if it is, have you
created a tactical campaign that addresses all these unique needs?
Something that lets the end users know there's no trauma involved
with making a change in how they do things? Something that lets
the IT people know that you are a company that is as smart as they
are, and your product can slide in smoothly with the infrastructure
they've put in place? Something that lets the CFO understand that
you crunch through her spreadsheet with the kind of bottom line
she demands? Something that lets the stakeholder organization know
that you're going to solve its problem? Something that lets the
top people understand that you are the best choice?
Or are you working with the traditional "one-size-fits-all"
approach: a brochure and a data sheet--maybe a testimonial page,
some press releases, reprints from magazines--the usual collateral
set. And then are you distributing that same collateral set to all
the people that I've mentioned. Or worse, having the people you've
met at that company distribute it (and ultimately relying on them
to do the work of your sales force).
Multiple needs, multiple audiences, multiple backgrounds . . . and
one package of information.
What I'm suggesting here is that you carefully go through your existing
collateral package. Talk with the sales force and glean from them
the true nature of the buying cycle (again, not sales cycle, don't
let them tell you what they go through, make them tell you what
the prospects go through). Then redefine the structure of your collateral
strategy so that you begin to reach each member of your buying community
with information that they want to hear.
Have I
just increased your collateral budget by 500 percent in order to
build pieces that focus on 5 unique audiences, instead of a one-size-fits-all
strategy? Not at all. Use the same colors and paper and run them
at the same time, and the only increase in cost is plates and proofs--you'll
pay for a larger print run of course, but the cost to run 20,000
is not that much more than the cost to run 10,000 of anything.
A small
price to pay for the ability to reach all the people who will make
or break your chances of selling.
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