Page 173 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

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phase. In the next phase, the product presentation, the salesperson talks, finally, about their product. Not in a canned presentation for the ‘generic’ average customer. It must absolutely be adjusted to fit the needs, requirements and reality of the customer. This approach harnesses the great power of a sales rep which an ad, brochure or DVD cannot do, that is tailor your presentation to them.
During the product presentation or discussion the sales rep should make sure that they present benefits not features. Features are things about the product which the company cares about, for example the speed of the central processor for a computer company, or the strength of signal of mobile phone. In B2B marketing a key question you should be able to answer is how your product increases profitability – does it save them money, generate additional revenue, retain key employees – these are the types of benefits businesses want.
After you have presented the key benefits of your product based on what you learned earlier in the questioning phase you then summarize the key benefits of your product and how that will help your customer address some of their critical issues. If it does not address critical issues why should they bother? This is truer the higher you get in an organization. In most organizations, either private or public sector, the larger the amount you are asking the organization to spend, the higher up you have to go to get permission to spend. This is called signing authority. As you go up the organization chart of a firm, each successive manager has a maximum they can spend without having to obtain a signature from their manager. A first-level manager might be able to spend $10,000, but his manager might have a $50,000 limit. Depending on the spend the salesperson is looking for from the company defines to whom the sales pitch should be made. For a very large sale – $1,000,000 or more for a medium-size company or perhaps $100,000,000 for very large firm – a salesperson must go to the CEO and in some cases to the board of directors. Bombardier, the third-largest commercial aircraft maker in the world, has recently launched a new series of aircraft called the C-series, which carry between 100-130 passengers. Bombardier will spend at least $2 billion and five years to bring this plane to market. The board of directors met several times before they approved the project.