 Use Fact Based Selling as a New Market Entry Tool
The low risk/least difficult choice for business growth (Cell 1): Market Penetration. Sell more product to existing markets that you already serve. Next, move to develop new product for those same markets (Cell 2). After which, sell existing product to new markets beyond those you already serve (Cell 3): Market Development. Entering Cell 3, although difficult, is considerably less risky than probably assumed.
That moves us to Cell 4: Developing New Products for New Markets in segments not yet reached. Here, the difficulty/risk scale increases. However, where does that idea take us and what is “fact-based selling” anyway?
We have found that new business presentations to prospective customers feature 1) background data on the presenting firm, 2) its capabilities, 3) product offering, 4) customers, 5) competitive advantage and 6) a long list of how that business cares for its customers. Nowhere does it discuss the market environment that the prospect currently serves! That prospective buyer is often starved for information about the usage of its products; what customers value; and what needs are being overlooked by existing suppliers. Here, fact-based selling moves in and is the proper lever to pull. Independent verifiable data to build your case with qualitative data to provide rationale can get you the order.
Our next issue will describe this process in detail. For now, let’s define our subject as providing market facts for inclusion in a sales presentation that builds your case and value proposition that you present.
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“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
Ronald Reagan liked to use the phrase “trust, but verify” to describe his negotiations with Mikhail Gobachev, the last Premier of the Soviet Union and indeed, he did. From satellite photos to good old-fashioned spying, Reagan sought out and based his decisions on the best intelligence available. But for Reagan the objectives behind these decisions were based on his personal convictions and experience.
Reagan had observed and lead others as the President of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1940s and early 50s. He read voraciously and traveled widely as a spokesman for General Electric in the 1950s and early 1960s. He honed his natural communication gifts giving speeches at GE plants and on behalf of GE at local Kiwanis and Rotary Club events. His political career as governor of California and president of the United States was formed by these convictions and experiences.
Convictions are important motivators, but without facts, they are mere emotions. Reagan instinctively based one upon the other and helped accomplish what many thought would never happen, the fall of communism in Europe. Indeed in November 1989, the citizens of both East and West Berlin tore down the wall that separated them, thanks in no small part to Ronald Reagan.
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