Forrestal Consultants assists clients in improving selling and marketing performance. In solution selling, it is necessary to create, in the eyes-of-the-customers, a positive perception of the products and services offered in order to be differentiated from the competition. We quickly and accurately diagnose the customers’ concerns. We recommend definitive solutions that the customers believe will resolve their self-recognized problems.
Why:
In today’s intensely competitive and increasingly global markets, one way to gain competitive advantage is to have a thorough understanding of the procurement and decision process. There is much more to the buying process than product and price.
What:
We complement your knowledge of customers and competitors by defining, detailing and determining the important ways your value proposition is different and unique. This step can be an internal self-audit and implementation, an external analysis or a collaborative approach. We believe that solution selling is based on a solid foundation:
- Knowing your total product and service offering. (Specifications, customer-service, delivery, terms, logistics, packaging, value-added services, etc.).
- Knowing your channels. (Direct sale force, distributors’ strengths/weakness, commitment, on-message communication of value proposition, etc.)
- Knowing your customer. (Reasons for buying, buyer requested solution, etc.)
- Knowing your plan and message — and communicating with benefits defined.
How:
We often work with clients in a collaborative manner wherein we are part of a task force responsible for the external research within the customer-base and, as appropriate, the competition. For example, we address the following:
- What does the customer purchase that are allied to your product offering?
- What are the synergistic possibilities, both product and non-product related?
- Why do customers buy from your company and from the competition?
- How do your products and services differ from the competitors?
- What are the key customers concerns and how are they expressed?
- What are the customer defined and recognized solutions that can be addressed?
- How do the critical customer-defined concerns translate into quantitative benefits?
- How are the benefits to be measured over time?
- What are the programs to persuasively communicate the differences and benefits?
- What are the road maps, internally directed process steps and resources required?
Our approach is aggressive, and field-oriented, based upon primary information gathered from the marketplace (customers, competitive suppliers, distributors, former employees and other knowledgeable individuals). Internet searches, secondary information and published databases play a minor role in our work.
Focus:
We are experts in the consultancy space serving privately held companies, divisions and subsidiaries of major corporations, and foreign-based firms operating in local markets.