Sales Defined By contrast, I define sales as a continuous, closed-loop leadconversion process: 1. Make contact with receptive members of the profiled market segment; 2. Test the buyer’s willingness to acknowledge the demandtriggering problem or opportunity cited in marketing communication to this buyer group; 3. Investigate this stakeholder’s perceived cost of doing nothing, i.e., the presence or absence of a compulsion to act, e.g., the perceived strategic, operational, economic and emotional consequences of the demand-triggering problem or inability to exploit the opportunity; 4. Discontinue sales investment if the cost of doing nothing is low enough that the buyer has the option to delay or avoid action; 5. Identify all other decision stakeholders and facilitate aligning them behind a smart, self-interested business decision whether or not to commit to invest in a solution and take action; 6. Relate our solution offerings to the business situation, needs and limitations; 7. Obtain agreement that our solution will produce the desired outcome, and that our collaboration will be successful culturally; 8. Define the mechanisms by which the buyer prefers to implement the action decision; 9. Monitor solution implementation and client satisfaction; and 10. Feedback all of the above to marketing for inclusion in their process. Law firms need to define these functional roles in a way that separates their responsibilities clearly, and brings a hard business approach to the three major areas of acquiring and retaining clients: Marketing, Sales and Implementation. All three of these areas have tactical, strategic and competitive dimensions, which we can classify as follows: • Tactical: Issues relating to “product,” including features, advantages, benefits and differentiation. • Strategic: Issues relating to specific business and industry applications. • Competitive: Issues relating to relationships between you and the client or the competition. One critical element is knowledge of the client’s business and industry. To allocate the firm’s resources efficiently and minimize duplication of effort, the firm should focus on the differences among sales, marketing and implementation rather than their similarities.
Marketing’s Focus Marketing’s focus should be on service offerings and organizations. Targets include industries, market segments and demographically defined clients. A marketing campaign
should include the strategy and tactics involved in identifying and qualifying opportunities, while simultaneously positioning your services. (By positioning we mean: 1) Mind share— your identity in the client’s mind. 2) Competitiveness—your position in relation to competitors.) Marketing’s responsibility is to differentiate you clearly from competitors and offer reasons for clients to think of you first in your field. Marketing bears the front line responsibility of identifying who you are, what you do and what opportunities exist in the marketplace. Marketing must also establish a connection between prospective clients and you. It’s best if you can develop an actual dialogue with potential clients. On the other hand, Marketing must make the initial decision about who you want to select as potential clients. That is, which opportunities represent the best chances for mutual success and an estimation of general need and desirability as a future client. This also includes, at the tactical level, information regarding your services, the firm and benefits of choosing you. Finally, Marketing must present the unique business value of your services, and differentiate the firm apart from its products and services. This is where value selling begins. The result of good marketing should answer four questions: 1. Who are you? 2. What do you do? 3. Why are you different? 4. Why should I care?
Sales’s Focus Sales builds on the foundation laid by marketing to answer a fourth question: Can you win the business? The focus is on the intricate fit to the specific business and the political realities that determine your chances of future success. Sales realities include developing enough understanding of the client's business to be able to determine whether the problem under discussion is sufficiently important to require any decision and, if so, on what basis the prospect would find your solution more desirable than the competition’s. Sales must also determine if strong enough relationships of the right type exist at various levels of the buying organization to offer a realistic opportunity for success. Will your influence and relationship survive the inevitable problems of a business marriage? This means that sales must understand the political nature of both organizations and their potential compatibility during the initial engagement and throughout the hopedfor life cycle of the business relationship. Otherwise, serious account development will be very difficult, producing a shortterm, low-yield account. Sales must also gain access to and get to know the people who can articulate the prospect’s business problem in terms meaningful enough to enable a decision, and be able to facilitate alignment of the decision stakeholders around an optimal decision that allows each to succeed personally and organizationally. Sales must also determine mutually acceptable Attorney Journal San Diego | Volume 167, 2017
29