Resolution Selling

The impact of New Year’s resolutions on B2SLEd selling teams

As the new decade dawns, sales people are drawn to the ‘goal’ aspects of resolution setting. It’s funny, if you look at the timing around the advent of the New Year, seldom do companies fiscal years align with the calendar. Many companies have aligned their fiscal years with other logical quarters. There are those that split the year in half which tends to marry up well with most state and local governments fiscal years and buying patterns that start July 1 and end June 30. Then there are the odd balls that either don’t line up or have moved the year end out a month from that logical quarter, usually for some financial benefit. Whatever the case, when sales people are caught in the quagmire of what am I going to do different this year, chances are some portion of the year has already passed them by.

IN 1981, the Management Review journal authored the SMART factor of resolution setting. A resolution is either a decision to do something or not. SMART is a handy acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Bound. So what does this have to do with B2G public sector selling teams? Everything – times have changed drastically. Public sector customers are approaching buying differently. They have become savvy buyers, usually armed lots of detail around their needs and problems and very adept at what’s available in the marketplace.

Getting the attention of these buyers has migrated from traditional face to face selling to corporate marketing teams in conjunction with their sales counterparts embarking on a (B2G) comprehensive strategy that is ultimately designed to spark a conversation with these armed shoppers. This is the new paradigm of digital marketing. Not to trivialize the effort but often public sector selling teams (B2SLG) do not reap the full benefit of these efforts. The question is why and what can we do to insure that this modern day of means of attracting buyers helps meet the resolutions we embark on at the advent of the New Year.

These circumstances have involved companies deploying new tactics of attracting buyers, it really is ingenious. It has moved from art to a science. Unfortunately, the yardstick used to measure B2B success often does not work in the B2G public sector. So why? While public sector buyers frequently espouse to look more business-like in their approach to problem solving, there is a disconnect and corporate marketing along with their counterparts in sales need to focus on helping these prospect bridge the gap that is being created.

So what does this have to do with sales resolutions for a new year? Those resolution need to start with the entire selling team coming together to look at how they are going to serve this marketplace. Messaging, collateral and events all need to be aimed at needs of these new buyers and need to be assessed at every measurement point to determine market fit.