Identifying needs has always been important for sales and marketing. Sales regard needs as the primary reason for why a potential client would want their company’s products or services. Marketers do it to identify possible candidates for lead qualification. So far, telemarketing still remains a common tool for both B2B market research and lead generation.
Today the demand for discovering needs couldn’t possibly be higher for two reasons:
- If needs aren’t found… your salespeople run the great risk of being pushy. Giving them a list of numbers just so the could start cold calling themselves will only have disastrous results in an age where out-of-the-blue selling is regarded as both disruptive and inconvenient.
- If needs are found ahead of you… your business leads wouldn’t automatically go to you. Instead, they could just end up looking up a solution on the internet or among their own business connections. There’s hardly any guarantee that you’ll be the first on their minds when they’re browsing for a solution. (In fact, there’s a chance that you’ll only lose to larger and more well-known competitors).
So in short, the challenge of finding needs is directed solely to you. You have to discover these needs before either your competitors or even your own target market. Does that sound impossible? Actually, not quite. All you need to do is think a little bit outside the box:
- Go back to basics – Instead of looking to the larger and more complex services and products you usually offer, go back to basics. What were the original goals of your company? Take the things that you’ve usually tried to market and break them down to their basic components. For example, if you’re an accounting firm, one of your basic functions is to create accurate reports.
- Venture into unfamiliar territory – Look into industries that you haven’t really done much business with. Once you’ve grasped the basics, you start asking around if they have needs that your most basic functions can serve. Use whatever tools you can to quickly get their feedback. You can’t research forever.
- Establish common ground – What you don’t realize is that once you’ve found needs that can be served by basic functions and products, you now have common ground with that industry. Your telemarketers now have something they can use to attract interest and hopefully raise it enough to qualify new B2B leads. Salespeople in turn now have a reason for why businesses in that industry would have a need for businesses like yours. For instance, a small toy manufacturer or wholesaler might find unlikely opportunities marketing to a few daycare centers or even children’s hospitals.
Sure you may not always have enough time to pursue something that’s so unlikely. Still, it’s something you should consider if you really want to be the first to discover and fulfill a need. It might also challenge you to learn how to quickly adapt to a new industry, to new businesses, and to new decision makers. Business needs themselves can be unlikely and they can be found in unlikely industries.
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