The word’s out. Companies are looking to consolidate their suppliers. They want to do business with fewer full-service vendors.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Now it’s going to be easier to get more business from each account.

Contraire!
The fact of the matter is, every time a company moves to fewer full-service suppliers, the next step is the establishment of some sort of buying committee to ensure that the diverse needs of the organization are met.

Some of these people know little about you. Some don’t know what you stand for. Or what you do. Or even who the heck you are.

And to make things worse, your salespeople probably don’t have access to many of them. Neither, we’ll bet, does your finely tuned, pinpoint-targeted CRM database. Because many of these purchase influencers are hidden inside the organization. Forgotten.

The committee as a clueless deal-killer
A new client of ours, who’s as close as you can get to selling a commodity, has done a wonderful job of differentiating themselves. They’ve added integrated services so they can help their customers improve profitability all the way through the customer’s value chain. They’re right on track with the emerging trend in their industry for buying groups to look at the whole value process. Not just the procurement part.

Problem is, they only have access to purchasing managers.

The people who can really appreciate what they’re doing and push the full-service purchase their way, like operations and marketing people, know little or nothing about them. Let alone how their integrated services can benefit them.

This is called irony
And if it weren’t for broad-based communications, it would be called stick-a-fork-in-us-’cause-we’re-done.

In addition to broad-based media like trade publications aimed at their job disciplines, there’s also dialogue-oriented ways of reaching different members of the committee, with things like productivity seminars, road shows and events.

At the very least, you can be sure to include benefits that will resonate with each member’s concerns in your literature. You can customize direct marketing packages to them according to their job functions.

You can also create special paths through your Web site to address each member's focus in the buying process. Give them special information and tools that can help them deal with their decision responsibility.

If you’d like to know more about how goosing fits into the planning and execution of communications programs, check out “Integrate your communications” in the Five Ways section.

Goosing also has a place in integrated business branding. See “Increase your brandwidth” in the Five Ways section.