Do you speak SLG?

It appears that a number of states have signed on to the concept of requiring high school graduates to pass a citizenship exam. With this in mind, we have visions of the ‘man on the street’ question and answer segment where a beleaguered news reporter is asking students on a college campus to name the three branches of government. Surprising or not, statistics say only 20% are able to get it right. – In case you are wondering, the answer, it is executive, legislative and judicial. So where does this leave.

Today, many companies are diving into the fray of government as a sales opportunity. Be it federal (B2G) or state and local (B2SLG), while similar, there are differences. The federal government tends to have high concentrations of opportunities in geographical areas, making it easier to develop a plan to pursue (DC, Denver). State and local government on the other hand are geographically dispersed and getting to them with a consistent story that will address their problems is far more difficult.

Add these two facets of launching a sales campaign focused on state and local government (B2SLG), more problems occur. The biggest being personnel. With only 20% possibly being able to pass that citizenship exam, much less being able to articulate your company’s value proposition in a way that will address the needs of a state or local government department of agency begs the problem. Where do we find the talent to field the selling team to meet this need?

With the advent of the internet, customers are buying differently than they did 10 years ago. These customers often know more about a given topic, problem, need or solution than the members of your selling teams calling on these prospects. Take this new paradigm of the educated buyer and the new measure that modern marketing organizations are using of staying in front of these prospect and there lies the problem. Many selling team members miss the mark when initiating that conversation or do not understand enough about the prospect. This breakdown is far easier in a commercial setting around conversations with referencability and the existence to on hand tribal knowledge …… However, in a public sector setting, this breakdown occurs far too often, these prospects that identify themselves as SLG quickly recognize this deficit and often move on, suddenly becoming a lost opportunity, too many times we call it being ‘overcome by events.’

Where does that leave us, do the math, 3-5 geographically disperse selling teams with 2-1/2 to 3 FTE’s, each telling their own variation of the corporate message and after a while this marketplace gets thoroughly confused. With the incredible investment in sales enablement process, it’s a shame that more attention is not afforded this valuable marketplace. This author recommends Donald Miller and his approach to https://storybrand.com/. This guy gets it…..