By now we’ve seen tons of advice from true sales experts about the importance of developing a value proposition and messaging that is focused on the customer, not us. You’d have to be living under the proverbial rock to not know this. I know this advice is too often ignored; product pitches still rule the day (unfortunately). But even when we make a conscious effort to be “buyer focused” our messaging and sales dialogs tend to emphasize why our product or service is better equipped to address the customer’s problems than other alternatives. Clearly that’s important and I’d be hypocritical if I said otherwise. There is, though, an important element that seems to get overlooked a lot in “complex” sales situations: how customers apply our product or service.
There are lots of decisions our customers must make during the buying process (and after the purchase is made) that go beyond selecting the best alternative. They need to figure out how to effectively and efficiently deploy our product into their work flow. They need to consider the impact on their people, processes and systems. And they need to decide on the logistics of the change; who needs to be involved in implementing and executing. They must consider the effect on their customers and suppliers, and so on. They have to plan for and manage the complexity of all these factors. They need to minimize disruption and risk. It is really a change management initiative. [Read more about change management here]
As much as we’d like to think our product is the best, in the customer’s eyes there are many products that can do the job. Sure, some have more or better features, but any viable competitive product can help customers achieve their business objectives. And they all have case examples and references to prove it. So our products really don’t matter as much as we’d like to think.
What does matter to customers is how our product gets applied to improve their business. This is where we as salespeople can offer tremendous value and set ourselves apart from our competition. To do that we need to:
- Talk about it! Discuss with the customer the potential risks and obstacles; resources needed; effect on people, processes, customers and suppliers; etc. And don’t wait until the end of the buying/sales process, because the customer is surely thinking about these things much earlier. And if they aren’t, they should be! Discussing the change process early also has the benefit of minimizing the chances that the deal will stall and end in decision not to move forward. Or it might help us to qualify (or qualify out) the opportunity.
- Understand (learn about) change management and project management disciplines enough to hold a credible conversation about them. We don’t necessarily need to go back to school, but there are plenty of resources online to help us.
- Become well versed on issues and challenges our current customers have faced while implementing our solution, mistakes made and successful approaches. If we’re selling something new and don’t have relevant history we can still collaborate with the customer to anticipate issues and plan the implementation/integration.
- Know enough about the customer’s business and specific situation, based on our pre-engagement research and early stage discovery, so we have the relevant knowledge and context to even have an intelligent discussion about the change process.
The significance of change and both real and perceived risks can have a significant impact on a potential customer’s decision whether or not to buy from us. And if they do, it helps ensure a successful implementation, which is how we create a loyal customer. So raising these factors and addressing them during the sales dialog just makes good sense. And it might just help us improve our sales results!
