Strategy - Richard Gourlay Business Strategy, NED and Growth Consultant

What Makes Strategic Selling Successful

Strategic Selling

A good business is based upon a clearly defined business strategy. Strategy is the central or macro plan for any business. It the fundamental overarching plan which everyone inside the business is pulling towards. A business with a clear strategy in place knows where it is aiming for in its market sector. That clarity and purpose enables it to build a culture to support that. A key element of a successfully designed business strategy is that it translates into a clear sales strategy. That is the definition of successful strategic selling.

Sales Strategy What is it?

A sales strategy sets out clearly what the business intends to achieve and how. Rather than just setting out a simple cold and unexplained turnover goal, a raw number, it defines the market you are in. A coherent sales strategy combines a set of strategic metrics which build to a complete set of outcomes. A sales strategy is a clear direction to take for all business activities. It identifies: –

The structure and make-up of the market you want to succeed within.
Key major market drivers – what’s driving market’s existence and development.
Market dynamics – what’s setting the pace of change and evolution of a market
The profile of the major market players and their position in that market.
And ultimately the optimum customer profile for your target audiences.

Strategic selling is a sales framework that firstly identifies the market structure that you are operating within. While that sounds obvious, it provides that clarity of purpose that involves everybody within the entire company Ensuring that everyone is pulling in the same direction at the same time, a clear sales strategy unites a company behind the strategy. A sales strategy is not just for the sales team, it is for every department to be aligned with. It enables a sales team to build companywide cross-department relationships with multiple-decision makers in a potential customer’s organisation. It creates a buyer-orientated approach that focuses on the value the entire solution provides to the whole customer. This contrasts to transactional selling which focuses on just the product itself.

Strategic Selling in B2B Environments

Strategic selling it is particularly effective in B2B sales environments. This is where there are often multiple decision-makers coming from different departments that engage with the company. It moves selling from a salesperson’s role to a company wide responsibility.

Strategic selling aligns the company towards the entire customer’s needs and expectations. An average customer decision typically involves seven people, all from different parts of a business. Each potential customer comes with a set of unique specific needs, budgets, and decision-makers all in the mix. That’s why a well-defined sales strategy is essential to target and support winning over all the decision makers within target company.

Long-term Success

Strategic selling is focused on creating long-term, mutually beneficial relations with target customers. It breaks down complex sales processes into simple actionable steps which evolve as the partnership with each client develops. While traditional selling focuses on the narrow and immediate benefits of the product, strategic selling’s emphasis is on the complete value it provides to the customer over a long period.

Strategic selling is mainly applicable in B2B organisations where there is a high value stream relationship. Often there are multiple decision-makers and an evolving relationship or partnership between the two companies. Selling strategically is therefore a business culture tailoring the product and or service that gives the optimum solution to all these problems.

Strategic Selling Approach

A strategic selling approach requires a good understanding of the market and who the key players. That knowledge also identifies who will resonate most and align with your brand best. This market alignment is fundamental to strategic success. Prioritising and focusing resources on target customers and their value streams. Where a company can add value is where they might positively respond and engage with you. It is an essential to understand behaviour traits, and as identified above, what is driving their sector within a market. This is where customer competitor assessments identifies opportunities for possible company entry. Even if it is no clear opening or immediate need for your product entry.

A company market entry strategy is an approach that focuses on building alignment rather than peddling product. We align with and understand the target client landscape and strategic challenges they are facing before trying to sell. Learning how we can work with them to resolve them, putting us in the driving seat in their solution search.

By developing a tailored and even joint solution, we skew or even actively remove the competition from the equation. The most obvious point is where a target customer wants to move into a new venture, or market area. That opens an opportunity to develop an entry strategy with a partner. This can be undertaken either as a joint venture or as their preferred partner. This locking in is the most obvious model. For strategic selling it can at any level of development of the target customers business evolution. Whether that be scaling up, service evolution, cost reduction, adding new value; the opportunity is there if a strategic selling culture exists.

Classic Drivers Customer Change

Growth: The target customer is essentially aware of the desire to grow within a market or segment. Where their existing model is not suitable or competitive enough, so they will look at alternative models to get growth within their market.

Problem Solving: The target customer has an issue, or an underperformance with their existing model. This is where they maybe open to new ideas and solutions. This is where they are researching how do something different to remove know pain points.

Passive Observation: Here the target customer does not see a performance gap between what they desire and the reality, but they are aware that change is happening and potential for their position to become eroded opens doors for possible exploration of new approaches.

Key Elements of Strategic Selling

The key elements of strategic selling start with developing a strategic mindset by the leadership team. That clarity of purpose and position within a market, typically a developed or mature market, where there is a structured market with major players either in place or emerging. Without that foundation stone strategic selling is unlikely to be achievable.

Win / Win / Win Culture

Strategic selling identifies the triple win culture (Win / Win / Win), the customer wins, you win and the relationship between the two companies win. This triple bottom line is at the heart of strategic selling. It builds multi-level relationships across the target customer, a collaborative sales process involving identifying and removing the customer’s pain points with them and finally uncovering the real value of the relationship of the partnership with them.

Decision Making Unit and Process

The second key element of strategic selling is that it involves working throughout the entire decision-making unit (DMU). This shift moves selling from a 121 narrow transactional engagement, the traditional selling model, to one where the entire DMU are identified and actively engaged throughout the sales process. That really means not just for the sales period but as part of developing a long-term relationship with them.

Understanding that while other stakeholders may not be actively engaged in buying but are in the decision-making process of whom the business works with, and what criteria buying decisions are made upon is vital for successful strategic selling.

The second element here is for any target customer to know their Decision-Making Process (DMP) how do they buy? No two companies have the same process, in steps, time and people engagement.

If strategic selling is going to be successful then it’s not just about the people but the process they go though, step-by-step and language they use which you need to know inside out. How do they score and decide? Who has what influence over whom and when?

In simple transactional selling the decided decides but in complex B2b sales there are multiple voices and different levels of power and influence which the decider must engage with and respond to. If many cases the decided is there to sign-off on a decision rather and make it.

Customer Centric Approach

This then leads to the third key element of strategic selling, implementing a customer centric approach. Meeting the unique needs of that customer, tailoring existing processes and sales approaching aligned with the customer priorities and needs to enable them to achieve their goals. The final part of this element is an on-going relationship. Not just a engage when selling approach which is the definition of transactional selling. Strategic selling continually engages and aligns with the customer. This is why it works most effectively with emerging and maturing markets and large players within it.

The Personalised Sales Strategy for each Target Customer

Strategic selling’s key output is the personalised solution which is presented over time to the target customer. It highlights firstly good alignment between the two companies and the measurable impact it will make to the target customer enabling them to achieve their short and long-term goals.

The win/win/win mentality should be at the heart to the solution, identifying how your USP’s could with your approach will solve and add value throughout the target customers’ business.

Strategic Selling Solution

Strategic selling solution focus’s a whole company approach tailored to the target customers’ needs, addressing all stakeholder concerns and how you will support the customer throughout the relationship. In complex B2B markets an effective solution highlights the key must have elements that the target customer has identified to you. While also focusing on the ongoing relationship and the next stage development of the relationship.

That move from a transactional relationship to strategic selling involves the whole team engagement and long-term often multiple project and product development. This creates a strategic alignment between the two companies develops within a market segment. An effective solution highlights these elements and draws in the entire strategy not just the immediate product or service in question.

Strategic Selling Summary

Strategic selling is a clear business strategy. It relies upon developing a culture of long-term relationship building with large complex companies in maturing markets. Targeted customers ideally need to be in the early adopter or early majority element of the market where the value-added elements can be easily identified.

Engaging with target customers must be undertaken throughout the company. Not just at the buyer selling point but from top down and throughout the decision-making unit. Identifying not just immediate needs, but longer-term strategic goals and target customer development plans, identifying stakeholder needs and value requirements in the partnership.

Once this is undertaken the presentation back to the target customer must reflect strategic goals as well as immediate quick wins. This is most effectively when seen as a multiple step or phase building programme, often by finding the door opener and trust builder before trying to move into the longer and more significant purchasing phases. Always focus on the value-added in the joint relationship and lifetime value which will out compete any transactional relationship that transactional competitors can offer.

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Turnaround Your Business: The Garden Rooms Case Study

Case Study a Garden Rooms business in Scotland

A Garden Room

Background

The owner of a Garden Rooms business in Scotland approached me to help turn his business around. Operating in a potentially growing market designing home garden rooms, such as offices, bedrooms and gyms while also still building home extensions. He was struggling to run these businesses, spending most time running around firefighting and dealing with unhappy customers.

Situation

The owner was trying to run too much at the same time, which put him under: –

Financial pressures: no real financial model and limited systems in place. With little cost management or operating and margins in place, putting continual pressure of the business’s finances and margin impacts.
Operational issues: with no operating systems in place each project ran differently, which lead to a wide range of quality and complaint issues, including legal disputes.
Quality issues: with staff firefighting onsite with suppliers to get components to site on time, impacting upon delivery times, production and cost and quality impacts.
People issues: of unhappy and unmotivated staff, no one really knowing what they were being asked to do and good staff leaving.
Ultimately there was little customer focus and significant firefighting, unfinished jobs with a long list of snagging issues to be resolved.

Our solution

Working with the key people we developed a clear business strategy and culture shift for the business, identifying the businesses core value proposition and a customer focused ethos.

This led to a complete process of change and focused team actions to re-invent the business around its core value proposition and improvement plans to redesign out all root cause issues within the business.

Following this process we then developed a customer process map. This identified every customer value added step and supported the customer through the entire process. With a new marketing strategy also in place we were able to improve: –

Customer engagement and acquisition which led to an improved Average Order Value (AOV) of 55% in one year.
Ownership of issues by frontline staff to get it right for the customer, reducing snagging and issues to a controlled minimum, with everyone pulling together.
The development of product improvement and a full product range to support customer retention and conversion, making the business the dominant player within the target market.

This enabled

We worked with the owner developing his business and his skills to lead his business more successfully, providing support and guidance throughout. This was supported by clear business planning with the owner with a full strategic and operational business plan in place.

Clear success goals shared with the team.
A forward annual business plan covering every aspect of the business.
Sales goal setting which supported and underpinned the financial plan.
A comprehensive financial and cashflow model to ensure the business is cash positive and profitable for the first time.
The owner was able to positively look at a trade exit strategy from this business.

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The Growth of the Garden Rooms Scotland Business

The Growth of Garden Rooms Scotland

The Growth of Garden Rooms

2022 was a great year for Garden Rooms Scotland. A Dumfries success story, with business doubling over 2021 as more and more people look to add a garden room to their home. The success in 2022 was not a one off, the confirmed order book in January for 2023 alone is more than the turnover achieved in 2021.

That success is not just down to a great front of house team’s solution design mentality, or the construction team’s hard work in quality construction. Garden Rooms Scotland provides a whole business solution. So where is the growth for Garden Rooms coming from?

The growth comes not from just a great company but also from several major factors within a market. The growth for Garden Rooms Scotland is no different. For many established companies’ growth within the outdoor living space sector is significant and is here to stay. Well, at least for the next five years or so if all market projections are to be believed. Why garden rooms are growing, is not down to just one factor, but many inter-related factors which is why growth is not just a blip but a long-term trend for companies set up to maximise this growth market. In response Garden Rooms has built a business to meet that growth curve.

Rising Demand for Garden Rooms

By far the biggest driver for people buying a garden room is in response to the demand for dedicated work from home space. While 2020 may have been the year of remote working due to Covid, it was just the icing on the cake in growth for the garden room market as work from home became the new normal.

Demand for garden buildings went up by 500% between January and May 2021 at the height of the Pandemic. But it was not a Covid blip, but an emerging long-term trend. A recent TUC survey discovered that more than 38% of people in 2022 in the UK now work from home at least one day a week. By 2025, it is estimated that 70% of the workforce will be working remotely at least five days a month.

The work from home garden office, provides a separate “workplace” replacing the kitchen table worktop. It not only enables people who want to their Zoom conference call in private, but want a permanent workspace differing from their home life.

Modern buildings provide a series of tangible benefits over old refurbishments. From WIFI, heating and cooling, well insulated and functional design the space works for business people. Garden Rooms also provide a steppingstone to work but without the costly time and financial commute for many professional workers. Garden Room offices also provide a tranquil workspace, looking out at your garden, creating calm and relaxed workspace, within a few steps of your home.

Space to Add a Garden Room

In places like Dumfries and Galloway, Cumbria, and Northumberland there is also space around many homes. Not just in rural housing but also in towns where many homes until recently were built with sizable gardens and surrounding spaces. This creates options for owners to utilise their spare space for an additional living or work from home space, either as accommodation or for a dedicated activity, from yoga space, music room to art studio.

Diverse Outdoor Living

Another major factor for many people choosing to add an additional living space is that it adapts what people have saving them having to move to find extra space. “If only we had a …….” Is solved by installing a garden room. Just the cost of moving home is often as much as adding in a new room to an existing property. Creating a new modern living space within an existing home is also easier as recent planning restrictions have been amended to favour garden room addition.

Creating dedicated spaces within a garden also creates privacy and can bring a function to a garden as well as a focal point to a garden. Creating a separate functional space brings structure to a garden, adding new functionality to the entire living space without disturbing the existing home.

Cost Effective Extensions

Starting with the cost of renovation, which has risen our of all expectations, due to labour and materials, with materials alone having risen over 40% since 2020. This makes adapting an existing house now significantly more expensive than adding a garden room option. A comparable construction cost comparison makes an equivalent extension typically 25% more expensive than installing a garden room.

Coupled to that many older buildings have significant limitations in adaption. Think of old houses with thick load bearing walls, and limited internal room sizes and the attraction of a bespoke design with modern spacious living spaces, well insulated and quickly erected and the rationale for a garden room becomes self-evident.

Garden Rooms Solution

Designed and built in Dumfries at their dedicated joinery shop, Garden Rooms are designed to be built as modular units which are then constructed onsite. Bespoke design with innovative solutions Garden Rooms solves people’s living space challenges. Using clever solution such as ground screw foundations and modular construction saves time and money for customers. This makes the time on site shorter and with low impact on existing gardens and customer’s lives.

With two showrooms providing a huge range of garden room solutions, customers can visualise and select the size and features they value most in their new garden room. For 2023 Garden Rooms has added new products and features to extend the range and scale of what can be offered. Garden Rooms is a business going the right direction in the right market at the right time.

To learn about how Richard Gourlay supports and develops successful businesses then contact him by clicking here

Successful SaaS Solutions Start with a Robust MPV

Successful SaaS Solutions Start with a Minimum Product Viability (MPV)

Achieving Minimum Product Viability (MPV) is an essential first must have goal for any SaaS business. But an MPV SaaS solution is not just a working model, but one that delivers the real value proposition which your SaaS solution must deliver. Therefore the ‘real SaaS MPV goal’ is not often fully understood as to what it must achieve early enough on to avoid pre-launch failure for SaaS businesses. Too often SaaS MPV’s are half hearted aspirational “nice to have features, rather than a successful SaaS solution of must have’s SaaS solutions. Therefore successful SaaS solutions start with a robust MPV.

Business leaders’ are often told is that shifting to a SaaS model ‘build it and they will come mentality,” but they won’t come, if you don’t achieve a robust SaaS MPV. You won’t compete within your chosen market. Just being an online SaaS product does not make your business achieve success. If the MPV does not actively compete, then it will not succeed. So MPV is often a misunderstood market entry goal. MPV means your software as a service actually wins target audience customers making you a player within the market. Once you get this right then you can look at your SaaS pricing model.

Launching without a MPV

Too many companies start trading without achieving a clear MPV. They build it, launch their marketing and sales plan and start trading but the SaaS fails to deliver to their target audiences, trials do not convert, partners and channel partners do not actively resell, and cost per customer acquisition continually increases, which leads to high burn rates of cash.

SaaS Require Robust MPV

SaaS MPV metrics must be clear. MPV must be a tangible goal with a viable product offering. If you take your service online is must do more than just exist. Now I am not saying it needs to be perfect, over-polishing a SaaS solution is one of those very dangerous assumptions we will come onto shortly, but simple migration of a product online is not a SaaS MPV.

For Minimum Product Viability to be achieved, a SaaS solution must successfully compete within its market(s). It must win new customers for it to achieve MPV status. Too often the model of lower cost looks good on paper, to the accountant, to the competitor analysis and trend analysis but without actually being able to win target segment customers.

Don’t Hit and Hope with SaaS

The built and they will come mentality often leads to the knee jerk reaction from companies to offer discounts to customers to gain traction right from the start. The downside of that tactic is that the predicted customer revenue targets aren’t met if you give it away. Giving it away also means that customers do not value your SaaS offering results in poor customer quality, poor engagement, and low retention damages the SaaS product. The other major challenge of giving it away on day one to gain traction is that once the opening price perception is set it is difficult to reset. Initial target audiences are typically early adopters who usually are your target premium customers, they expect certain valuable features within the MPV that tie them in, which if not immediately available mean that they will abandon the SaaS solution. It is also difficult to recover your market or premium market price unless you have large marketing budget to support the opening offer discount.

Measuring MPV requires leaders to not only check it works (and that is never a given with IT) but also that it achieves MPV as an offering. Does it do what it needs to do for the customer.? Does it meet the complete customer requirement of the value proposition? So do not just focus on the pure IT but on the whole value proposition to measure the MPV status. Test it with pilot groups, measure not only it looks good, but does it replace what they were doing? If not it needs to do more.

Over-polishing your SaaS MPV

I have worked with several SaaS start-ups and migration SaaS brands who face the eternal problem of over polishing their MPV. Failing to set a MPV goal with a timeline means that many companies keep playing and tinkering with their SaaS product rather than get it out there.

The challenge is that everyone has thoughts, features and layouts they want to see, so the more people involved the more the pull and push from 3rd parties to meet their expectations or perceptions. The nature of every increasing committees is to tinker and therefore delay. Continuing to over-polish is a major issue for many SaaS businesses. They ask too many people to review it and each has a view, but continual reviews and tweaks delay the acid test ill it work in teh real world.

Everyone has an opinion and no matter how valuable it is the MPV goal must define the MINIMUM, not the optimum or the ideally would like. These should be in secondary releases onwards as upgrades and add-ons. An MPV must to have a launch deadline in place with clarity of what that SaaS will deliver and how it will be upgraded over time to meet specific needs. A soft Beta test launch to a target audience will test and validate the MPV objective, which if you have followed the classic MPV creation model (below) will enable you to get to market with a credible SaaS solution.

SaaS Solutions Start with a Robust MPV

What makes a successful MPV? One that delivers the SaaS value propositions’ core elements. When entrepreneurs or leaderships teams are building their SaaS businesses model they must start by thinking through what are the core elements we MUST HAVE rather than those we would LIKE to HAVE. Those core elements must engage with their target audiences both directly and through whatever channels to market they intend to operate with or through.

That MPV, what you to to market with to prove the concept and launch your business with has to contain the MUST HAVE‘s that both challenge and disrupt the market your SaaS model is entering, if it is to succeed. So the MPV must be robust, not aspirational. It must do deliver the core value proposition, not be full of we will do this at a later stage. The phrase “You never get a second chance to make a great first impression.” Defines the need for a robust SaaS solution MPV within any market. If it is not robust in delivering those core value proposition elements then it won’t challenge or disrupt the existing players whether they be physical or SaaS competitors. Lets look at how to create a Robust MPV.

How to Create A Robust SaaS MVP: The Key Elements To Undertake:-

1. Identify and Understand The Business Needs

1a. Firstly identify the success criteria that will indicate whether or not the SaaS solution will be successful

1b. Then identify the business needs of the sector today and over the long-term.

2. Find The SaaS Opportunities

2a. Map out the customer / user journey(s)

2b. Then segment the core user groups (called the actors)

2c. Clarify the journey end point (end goal)

2d. Then mark all actions the user must take to meet that end goal, and then simplify them as much as possible, less is more.

3 Create a “PAIN and GAIN” map for each action

3a. Write down the action the user completes when using the product

3b. Write down the pain points for each action

3c. Write down the gains for each action

3d. Summarise the pains and gains into opportunity statements

3e. Use “How might we” statements or a similar method to summarise the pains and gains you have identified, prioritise and

4. Decide What Features To Build in to your SaaS MVP launch

4a. Use opportunity statements to finalise your core “must have” features and ensure they are built into a coherent MPV model.

4b. Provide a breakdown of the features to include in the product roadmap, identifying each feature element.

4c. Use a prioritisation matrix (or similar method) to prioritise features creating a complete MPV customer journey to build and launch with.

4d. Identify other features to be launched as 2nd phase onwards and use target customer audience or beta test launch feedback to validate these feature in subsequent launches.

4e. Identify Key SaaS metrics including UX, channel partner and disputer effect metrics to measure your MPV launch with.

SaaS MPV: Don’t underestimate its importance.

Get your MPV wrong and it is difficult to make a comeback. Understanding your core audience (it may not be big but it must be defined and reachable). Many SaaS MPV are done below the radar, with soft launches to target audiences either directly or through selected or exclusive channel partners to provide validity of model and ensure MPV has been achieved.

Going big too soon is often appealing but rarely successful. Think about achieving viability then scaleability with a proven model to solve a tangible issue for a target audience and you are more likely to succeed. Research your target audiences’ specific needs and plan points and ensure that your MPV focuses on delivering the results they need, rather than trying to do too much. Add value and then keep on adding more value is what makes a successful MPV for a SaaS business.

Richard Gourlay

Richard works with SaaS entrepreneurs in developing their SaaS solutions, to learn more and contact Richard Gourlay click here now