Make It Easy to Buy Your Product

All product managers think about making their solutions easy to sell. But we forget to make them easy to buy. Ask your sales reps if your company is easy to do business with. Or pose the question to a couple of customers.  Then, stand back. Things could get violent.

Marketers are often far too insulated from what happens once a prospect says 'yes'.

Get out more.
Accompany some reps on some calls – and when its time to propose and close -  offer to get involved so you can experience first-hand what it’s like to transition a prospect to customer. Additionally:

 Write shorter proposals.
An offer to do business contains four things: The solution, the cost, the schedule and the terms. Make these four things clear and easy to understand. Be sure your terms include what you expect of customers.

Or, skip the proposal and go right to the work statement. 
Nigel Edelshain of Ivy Technoloy Partners skips the long, drawn out, ego-driven proposal and just gets a statement of work in front of his prospects.  By making the SOW the proposal – he skips  a step, establishes expectations right away and makes it easy to get started.

Sharon O'Neill, senior account executive at Gartner, likes this idea, but reminds us that this tactic works when an trusted relationship is already in place.

Give options.
In IT, a one-size-fits-all type of offer rarely works. Give your prospect a base offer, but provide alternate ways to help them reach their goals. Don’t offer too many … one is good, two is okay, three is pushing it.

Use checkpoints to remain vigilant.
For those of you involved in services that renew periodically, be sure to conduct regular management checkpoints. Customers want to give you feedback, but you have to solicit it. We’ve all had customers cancel contracts for reasons we received too late to fix. Conduct periodic management checkpoints (some call them Report Cards) to continually take your customer’s temperature.

Make buying part of your value proposition.
One of my clients  has a slide in his standard pitch entitled, “We’re easy to buy.” It sounds odd at first, but in the tech space, especially software and services, buying is way too hard. Make it easy. Study your buying process, simplify it, streamline it, and use the web as much as you can to support the customer.

You can easily add more performance to your value proposition by making your products easy to buy.