I was making a sales call this week and got some great advice.
“Sell me what I need not everything your company offers.”
Sales folks like myself have many things in the tool kit to sell. When we get that opportunity to sit down with a prospect, we get excited and want to let them know about everything we have to offer….. Bad Idea!
In talking with a couple CIO’s before writing this blog I got a consistent message..
"Focus on my pain points and solve those problems first."
Do your homework, get an understanding of the business and technical issues/challenges that are their current priorities and sell them that first.
Present solutions not just products.
Teeing up a solution will minimize the need for detailed product evaluation, saving valuable internal resource time and money. It can also speed the time to sale.
As one CIO told me, “I had significant user experience issues. I had to put the fire out. I was looking for the vendor to wrap up the solution in a box and put a nice bow on it so I could pull the trigger and implement, instead what I got was a bunch of products for my team to evaluate. We didn’t have time to do that so we pursued an internal solution.”
Once you have achieved success with the point solution, the bing-bang will come down the road. Budgets are tight, the pressure is on these folks to provide immediate value to the business they support. Let’s make them a quick hero, achieve trusted advisor status, lock out our competition and enjoy a long fruitful relationship with our customers.
Good selling..
David