Delivering the right messaging matters. Keeping it consistent and relevant throughout the buyer and customer journeys is a must. One methodology for supporting this comes from the Force Management Command of the Message approach we will explore in this article.
Who is Force Management (FM)?
Force Management is a consulting company focused on helping businesses increase revenue by working with their go-to-market teams.
The company has multiple services, but the four Command of The services is most relevant to this article:
- Command of the Sale
- Command of the Message
- Command of the Plan
- Command of the Talent
For this article, we will focus on the Command of the Message.
What is the Force Management Command of the Message
Command of the Message focuses on overcoming one of the most significant challenges businesses face: Providing consistency in message and experience with prospects, customers, and partners across all touchpoints.
- Marketing teams must create a message that differentiates them from their competitors.
- Salespeople take that same message and deliver it in the proper context to each prospective customer they meet, aligning it to the challenges they solve and the premium they charge for solving those challenges.
- Services, Customer Success, and Sales teams must carry that same message forward when speaking to clients, hammering in on the same differentiating elements.
The Command of the Message Framework Summarized
The FM team defines all of this simply as:
“being audible-ready to define your solutions to customer problems in a way that differentiates you from your competitors and allows you to charge a premium for your products and services.”
Those four critical sets of words are worth highlighting further as they speak to the core elements of the Command of the Message approach.
Audible Ready
Being ready means that you have practiced your messaging in multiple scenarios, role plays, on your own, as a sales team, and as an individual. And, that you know it so well that you can adjust it for a given customer’s business challenges and needs.
Note: This adjustment does not mean you create false promises and say yes when you should say no.
Being audible ready means you so profoundly understand your value proposition that you can translate it for others in a way that aligns with their frames of reference.
Suppose your solution works in any industry and has the capabilities to overcome multiple vital challenges. In that case, you can help someone in the manufacturing industry and someone in life sciences.
Customer Problems
Your salespeople should not be lost in your features.
No.
Your salespeople go deeper and understand the challenges that companies buying from you are trying to solve.
Understanding the environment within which these companies work and what organizations are doing to overcome similar problems can speak to these challenges in a way your competition will never be able to replicate.
This is differentiation at a business level and essential to your organization’s winning approach.
Differentiation
Your sales team knows it, and you do too.
You have competitors looking to eat your lunch, win the sales you should have won, and they know how you sell, how your products work, and every word on your website better than you do.
Differentiating from your competition means:
- You must know the challenges faced by your clients better than anyone.
- You understand how your company, solutions, and resources come together to create more value for your customer than they spend with you. You know your value.
- You never use negative selling in your sales process. You take the high road.
- You know how to differentiate what you do, both what you do that your competition does not, and what you do better or differently. And you can explain the value of all of that.
- Your sales team does its pre-work, not just in sales training and coaching, but you prepare for every conversation like it’s the most important one you will ever have.
- Every discovery call, every question, is done with purpose. Whether you are using a methodology like MEDDIC, BANT, or others, you are uncovering what you need to know to help support your client’s success.
Premium
The Command of the Message framework sets your business apart from the rest. Your sales teams deliver more value than many sales teams, a level of service others cannot match, and you can charge a premium price for your solutions.
The premium price also comes from all of the items above.
And the fact that your sales team can better quantify and articulate the value you create than the companies you are competing with within any deal.
How do you deliver the Force Management Command of the Message Framework to your teams?
The FM team is the right place to go, but consider the following: if you want to arm your salespeople with the same high value, consistent, and ready-to-deliver messaging without working with the FM team.
Command of the Message Alternatives for Audible Ready, Customer Problems, Differentiation, and Premium Pricing)
The core components of this level of preparation are core to the DNA of a successful sales Enablement function.
Coaching
Do your sales managers know how to coach their teams?
Either hire a certified sales coach or have your organization train your managers (front line through executives) and enablement teams to become effective coaches.
Training
As you think through your training, ask yourself the following and ensure that the training creates positive outcomes for the business and value for your sales team and your client.
- How do new hires learn the process? What is time to proficiency?
- Do you have reinforcement campaigns running? (Do you see any decay in performance quality over time?)
- Is the information available to employees, in context, at the time of need? How long does it take to find the information?
- Do you prepare managers to coach individual contributors?
Training and coaching are critical to being audible-ready.
So too is…
Content
Make it easy for customer-facing teams to stay on message with great sales content.
- Use competitive battle cards so sales can keep up with the competition.
- Leverage dynamic sales playbooks to help maintain the Force Management Command of the Message throughout the sales process and beyond.
- Ensure your website and other digital resources (including your blog) are regularly reviewed and audited. If you can’t control your Command of the message on this digital real estate, your teams won’t be able to do it with your customers in the field.
Finding The Best Sales Tools
Would you send an unarmed, unprepared soldier into battle against a high-trained army with every tool at their disposal?
Of course not.
When you think about arming the teams for winning during your sales process, and specifically with the Command of the message, consider:
- What tools are successful sales reps at the competition using? Tablets? Mobile phones? Certain types of software.
- The solutions you buy for your sales team should simplify their lives, allowing them to focus on spending more high-quality time with customers. Don’t buy the tools that make them focus on entering data in your CRM. For example, create value for your organization’s sales teams and other customer-facing groups.
- Remember to create value for the customer, not just your business. If. the tool helps customers get answers faster, creating more value for customers and their entire organization, you are onto something.
Check out our list of certified tech stack to learn more, and consider these recommendations as you arm your team to be audible-ready.
A few final thoughts on Command of the Message
Ensuring your sales team delivers clear value to each customer and client is key to your success in every interaction.
Ensure your marketing team has created website content that clearly articulates the value your business develops, the solutions you have for the customer’s challenges, and supports customer/partner/seller discovery.
Prepare your sales teams to make every call, email, and in-person meeting great.
Ensure your customer success teams, service professionals, and others understand your solutions, internal processes, customers’ challenges, and the value you create just as profoundly.
This will lead to better selling and business outcomes, differentiating you from all you compete with today.