One of the most important Demand Channels is the salesperson themselves.  As  a salesperson you have a quota to make.  Your livelihood depends on it and at the end of the day it is your job to make sure you have enough demand to hit your number.  One of the best ways to accomplish this mission is to help your customers and prospect find and solve problems they don’t even know they have yet.

I think it is a three step process:

Challenge the way things are.  A great way to do this is by using third party or industry examples.  Companies like Forester and Aberdeen do a great job of providing information that can be helpful.  Your objective in this step is to create a question and hopefully a bit of fear and uncertainty in the prospects mind about the way things are.  By the time you are done with this step you should have the prospects attention and created their interest.

Paint a new picture.  Once you raise the awareness in the prospect that the problem exists you have to then show them the path to a solution.  As you paint your picture you have to get the customer to feel and see the way things could be.  This is the part of the process where you have to instill the desire to address the issue in the customer.

Provide the solution.  Now that the prospect has a clear view of the way things are and the way things could be it is time for the value.  You have to give them the solution.  When you get to this point you have driven demand.  You have  created a prospect with a defined opportunity now its time to jump right into the sales cycle and build your business case.

Of course this is not the only way for a salesperson to be a Demand Channel but it is one of the most effective.

In the past it was that great sales rep that always managed to get involved in sales cycle  before the competition.  That was important because that rep got to set the expectations and began to educate the prospect as to what could be expected from the solution.  The hunter was on the scene first and put themselves in position to drive the process and as a result won the most new business.

Another trait of this traditional hunter was the drive for immediacy.  When they engaged a client the objective was singular…sell something now.  If that objective can’t be met for some reason that lead is discarded and the traditional hunter is on to the next hunt.

Problem is that over the last few years the hunting dynamic has changed.  The old style hunter that’s out in the market trying to insert themselves into the process as early as possible will likely find a cool if not downright cold reception.   Customers today have access to information and like to do their research independently of the sales rep.  I have seen studies that indicate that sales cycles can be 60% to 80% complete BEFORE the prospect is ready to engage a sales rep and that changes the whole dynamic of hunting.

That means that a vital part of hunting today is content focused.  It’s the same concept as before.  Get your information in front of the prospect and drive the process.  In the past that was done exclusively via face to face sales calls.  Today you have to create compelling content then use and manage a variety of information channels to accomplish the task.  Now I know that when I say compelling content most of you are thinking that’s expensive, but it does not have to be.  Content can be anything from a text message to an email message to a YouTube video.  Compelling content is valuable not necessarily expensive.

In most larger organizations the Marketing Department creates some content and can even manage a lot of the pre-engagement information flow and lead nurturing.   In an organization where there is not a Marketing Department does that performs this function it is now up to the rep to manage that process.  In both cases that means changes to the traditional sales paradigm that I will talk more about in subsequent posts.

For now we will end with this thought…the trick for successful hunting in todays market is for the hunter to use content and a lead nurturing process to pave the way and then insert themselves into the process at the RIGHT time not just the earliest possible time.

Years ago I read a study on purchasing agents and their buying tendencies.  One of the questions was… How many calls does it take before you buy from a new rep?  The answer was seven calls.

A few weeks later I read another study, this one on sales reps.  One of the questions on this study was… How many calls do you make on a new account before you give up?  The average was four.

What does that tell you about how much new business an “average rep” drives?