‘Why and why not target the resisting market segment’

Q:  We’re hoping that you won’t shift to another topic because we have our own question on market segment targeting.  That was what your last Friday’s column was about.

Here’s our dilemma about the resisting customer market segment.  We in Marketing and especially our Sales like going after this segment’s customers as a top and first-tier market segment target.  Our brand is a good No. 2 in its product category and we find resisting customers as our real marketing and sales challenge.

However, two of our top Sales Managers who attended your market segmentation seminar told us that at one point during your seminar you said that it was “pure waste to run after customers who dislike or strongly dislike you and your brand.”  But don’t you consider Sales people’s selling motivation important in this issue?  If our sales people will just go after “low lying fruits” kind of customers, where’s the challenge there?

This is what we meant by labeling our choice as a dilemma. Please help us find the best solution or at least a good solution.

A: Like beauty, dilemma is in the eyes of the beholder. What you regard as a dilemma under your sales motivation framework or model is not at all a dilemma but a welcome opportunity under another sales motivation model.

We’re not saying that your model is wrong. But the fact that it lacked sales motivation or what you called “challenge” with the pursuit of the resisting market segment as if that’s the only source of sales motivation is where the trouble is. That’s where the branding of your choice as a dilemma comes from.

Under another alternative framework, you have to start by first admitting that different sales teams are challenged by differing motivators. For most sales people, for example, meeting or exceeding their sales quota is the dominant or even overriding goal. On the other hand, pursuing resisting customers (or what one large research agency termed as “resistors”) becomes an obsession among top performing sales executives. These are professional sales reps who make sure they’re on quota within six months so that they can prove that in the remaining months of the year they can and will convert “resistors” into becoming brand “devotees” or even “advocates.”

So let’s look closer at this alternative sales motivation model. Start from considering that there are at least two sales motivation forces at work: (1) meeting or exceeding sales quota, and (2) measuring up to the challenge of converting resisting customers from non-buyers into becoming buyers.  Next, regard sales quota as a “minimum requirement” motivator.  This simply means that before anything else, sales quota has to be met first.  As we mentioned, to most sales executives this minimum requirement works as well as the primary motivator.

Then regard winning or converting “resistors” as a “satisfier” motivator.  As the Senior MRx-er explained in his User-Friendly Marketing Research book, a “satisfier” is something unexpected.  Its non-attainment does not make one unhappy or dissatisfied.  But because it’s not expected, its attainment is a source of delight, a true “satisfier.”  This motivator is particularly a “thrill-trip” among high and top performing sales execs.  Some of the quota-driven sales reps will sometimes want to experience this thrill-trip and they are free to try.

Under this broadening of options, your choice no longer comes as an “either-this-OR-that” form of a prisoner’s dilemma.  Such a troublesome choice says: “Either you focus on attaining sales quota and lose the challenge of winning resistors OR concentrate on converting resistors and risk sales quota attainment.”  Under our satisfier-dissatisfier model of sales motivation, the choice becomes a “both-this-AND-that” kind of decision:  “You can both attain or exceed sales quota and let this be the motivating challenge to your quota-driven segment of sales execs AND at the same time go after winning the resistors as the challenge of your top performing sales execs after they’ve met their own sales quota.”  This is the win-win model of sales motivation.

So the solution you seek is in your own converting your sales motivation model from an “either-this-OR-that” decision model into a “both-this-AND-that” choice model as we’ve explained above.  Also, don’t forget to segment your sales execs into these two: (1) those who are quota-driven, and (2) those who are resistor-customer-obsessed.  Then, rely on the quota-driven sales exec segment to meet and exceed sales targets, and encourage the resistor-attracted sales exec segment to win resistor customers but only after they’ve met their own sales quota.

Next, regard sales quota as a “minimum requirement” motivator.  This means that before anything else, both sales exec segments must first meet their sales quota.  Then regard converting “resistors” as a “satisfier” motivator, that is, as something whose non-attainment won’t make for disappointment because it’s something unexpected but whose attainment gives delight, a true “satisfier.”  This sales motivator is a “thrill-trip” among  top performing sales execs although some quota-driven sales reps are free to sometimes want to experience it.

Keep your questions coming.  Send them to us at [email protected] or [email protected]. God bless!