Customer growth strategies vary by vertical market. Your sales strategy should do likewise.

Amid economic headwinds, companies have largely focused on moving costs out of their organization. Now, as customers refocus on growth, readying your team to align solutions with growth and innovation should be a key organizational priority.

Almost all companies are actively seeking to innovate again, but few do it well. Not surprisingly, executives cite the lack of a fact base and the level of uncertainty as key roadblocks. Consider:

• 84 percent of executives say innovation is extremely or very important to their companies’ growth strategy.
• 43 percent said the top challenges included choosing which ideas to move forward.1

Our Buyer’s Perspective Report on Vertical Market Opportunities offers insights and considerations for positioning your organization as a credible, industry-capable business partner.

Vertical Campaigns

Sharing your firm’s experience working on growth initiatives creates value and a compelling reason to engage accounts. Executive and business decision makers want to partner with suppliers and technology firms to quicken time to market and reduce risk.

Successful sales organizations are creating demand by working with accounts to generate ideas, select the right ideas, and jointly develop business cases supporting your solution’s ability to drive innovation.  For example, selling to retail customers? Use these industry-specific metrics.

In contrast, to quantify your value with Financial Services customers a completely different set of metrics come into play.

Plan your Next Executive Conversation

Vertical selling strategies in today’s market have gone from business specialty to absolute necessity. Incorporate these best practices to change the conversation:

• Gain industry insights.
  External factors such as regulatory issues or interest rates, as well as industry-specific business metrics, apply to all accounts within a vertical. Learning this information offers one of the quickest paths to build CXO relevancy.
      
• Keep current.
  Industries continually evolve. Stale knowledge is one of the most common breakdowns we see when working with account teams. Invest today. Invest regularly.
       
• Socialize innovation.
  Ideas live under every scalp in your organization, not just managements’. Actively seek to convert ideas to revenue. Energize everyone to come forth. Offer rewards.  Bestow recognition.
      

It’s always easier to cut costs, than grow revenue.

But cost cutting belies sound growth. And it can’t continue forever.

Consult our Buyer’s Perspective Report on Vertical Market Opportunities and let us know what questions you have in formulating your vertical market selling strategies.

1 Source: McKinsey & Company 2010 Innovation and Commercialization Survey.