Patterns & Signals: Your guide to thriving in turbulent markets
Selling to commercial fleet is facing turmoil, which is expected to continue in the months ahead. Fluctuating trade tariffs, possibility of recession, and volatility in capital markets are bringing this instability.
Further, unlike previous times of economic turbulence, standing still and hoping to ride this out may hurt your business.
Why?
- These changes are not affecting all industries the same way
- What is beneficial now may become a disadvantage
- Bigger companies can see entire segments wiped out
- For smaller companies, local markets or niches may disappear
How?
- Fleet operators may consolidate, divest or discontinue operations
- Patterns like switching from owning to leasing (or vice versa) means uncertainty in maintenance, finance, insurance, aftermarket sub-segment businesses
- Fleets can be either more proactive or more reactive with decisions
- Business models and operations may change to adapt
What now?
- Get very specific about which part of your business is growing or shrinking
- Understand short- and long-term changes in customer spending
- Identify which markets are responding in what way, and why
- Find new data to leverage and act on fast-moving trends
Will your current “tried and true” playbook still win?
Most companies have a few traditional “tried and true for them” approaches to prospecting and growing existing customer business that they stick with. In this environment, it’s possible to continue that approach and be left behind.
Taking a hard look at your current practices and making course corrections right now is critical. Where to start?
Sales Practices
- Traditional approaches: drive around, word of mouth
- What’s great about it: works well within a local market, familiarity with your business
- Why it may not work now: the best opportunities might not be in your current network
Marketing Strategies
- Traditional approaches: outbound emails, pounding the phones
- What’s great about it: consistent, reliable pipeline
- Why it may not work now: message becomes irrelevant quickly when there are turbulent forces
Data & Lists
- Traditional approach: Rely on a prospect list with account and contact info
- What’s great about it: when business is static/stable, it is predictable
- Why it may not work now: you don’t know much about fleets’ current, ever-changing needs
What are successful companies doing?
First and foremost, they are taking careful and calculated bets. Next, they seek and evaluate several data sources and options. Third, they take decisive action.
Here are some examples:
Success Story: From overwhelmed with a large market, to prioritizing a smaller target
A customer had a rather large TAM they were serving, in the tens of thousands of fleets. They had a wide variety of offerings so it was easy to segment and offer different products.
One of their products required that fleets owned their vehicles. As fleets adapting to this fast-changing market switched from leasing to owning in the recent quarter, it was difficult to know if they were still in market.
The customer then categorized the fleets by ownership mix and categorized them further into growing, shrinking and constant fleets. Now they were able to identify the fleets that owned more of their vehicles, and tailored the message to whether the fleet was growing, constant or shrinking total vehicles. This customer saved on marketing cost by narrowing who they were targeting and achieved higher conversion.
Success Story: Use patterns to find stronger target markets
Previously, a company was opportunistically targeting only fleets with vehicle-specific violations after the fact. The number of prospects were highly variable on a week-to-week basis. With declining routes and mileage, volume dropped correspondingly.
However, this company took a step back to look at the broader market, and identified more high-risk companies with similar patterns within the fleet peer group (fleet size range, cargo carried, industry and location). They were able to showcase to those prospects the potential impact to their business, due to changing trends.
They quantified the revenue impact of such violations and proposed proactive solutions, thus reaching prospects that their competitors could not (and were unaware of!).
Success Story: Gaining competitive advantage with signals
A customer offering fleet maintenance software saw that some companies were managing more of their fleets in-house.
The customer was able to identify specific markets where this trend was the strongest. Within the first three months they had a more relevant message, and saw greater conversion, while their competitors were sending out stale messages.
This allowed them to not only increase revenue when others were stagnant, but also increased average contract value by replacing competitor add-on products that these new customers were using, further shutting out their competitors.
Thriving amidst uncertainty
Let us face what may be reality for the foreseeable future. Markets and industries may change unpredictably. Old methods and practices become obsolete. A key to survival will be your ability to spot emerging trends, changing customer preferences, and acting on them before others do.
Here are actions to take now:
Get better intelligence on the customer buying journey
- Fleets are evaluating you, leaving data about website visits which you should track
- Stick to fleets most like your best customers; don’t chase others
- Test multiple messages, to see what resonates best
Leverage market trends as they are happening
- Track behaviors that may trigger purchase needs, within fleet peer groups
- Calculate short-term (i.e., monthly) and long-term (year over year) changes
- Identify relative change vs. peer group, industry and geography
Understand and adapt to fundamental business changes with fleets
- Go beyond number of fleet vehicles, and track changes in vehicle mix
- Understand operational changes (routes, cargo/capacity and ownership)
- Monitor growing/constant/shrinking fleets vs. their peers and industries
Acting on this intelligence can ensure that your business thrives despite uncertainty. Combining new term sales & marketing strategies with more dynamic data points is a winning strategy to capitalize on short-oscillations and set you up for long-term success.
