Seems like a silly question, but it’s not and needs to be clear before selling your company
Ask yourself – who owns creating the demand for my brand (and my product or service)?
For businesses that sell primarily online such as BtoC (business to consumer), your salesperson is in essence your website so it’s your website and social media investment/activity that is trying to create demand for your brand. But for more business to business type sales where face to face selling is required, we often come across private businesses that aren’t effectively creating demand. We see these common scenarios negatively impacting the demand creation for a brand:
- - You sell thru a distributor or middleman. The issue is that the distributors believe your company should be creating the demand which they will fulfill. You believe they are responsible for creating the demand and fulfilling it and your team supports them but they believe you are responsible for building the demand which they will then happily fulfill. Well, which is it?
- - You have a sales or account management team that is focused solely on working with your distributor or other sales partners but not focused on themselves getting out to create demand. In this scenario, you believe you have sales resources on your team building demand for your product when in fact they are not. If you delve in to how they spend their day, they are focused on the middlemen, not creating awareness for your brand with the end customer.
- - Your team is out making sales calls on the end customer/consumer but each member of your salesteam has their own message they are delivering. The good news is you have resources out creating demand but the bad news is they aren’t consistent in how they are doing this. This means your brand isn’t being consistently messaged in the market and could be causing confusion for the end customer. A good brand has consistent messaging in the market, not inconsistent messaging because each salesperson has a different belief on what your company message should be. Meet with your salesteam and find out what messaging they are delivering – is it what you want them saying, is it consistent, is it effective?
- - You have a salesteam, but ask yourself out of a 40 hour work week, how much time are they actually selling, creating new demand for your brand. We often review this with new clients and very often we find that maybe a 1/3 of a salesperson’s time is spent selling. The balance of time is in meetings, following up on existing customer orders and questions, doing paperwork, etc. but not actually having quality sales time to create new demand. Meet with your salesteam and make sure you truly know how much time they have available each week for actual selling.
The bottom line here is part of exciting a future acquirer, who can then excite you with their purchase price and deal structure offer, is to ensure you have clarity around who owns creating demand for your brand and good proof it’s actually getting done. Don’t assume it’s being done. Don’t assume it’s being done optimally. Now is the time to sit with your team and review this because as owner and/or CEO, brand ownership at your company starts with you.
