Classically, as we qualified and engaged our customers in solving their problems, sales people focused on understanding our customers’ needs.  Our questioning process was focused on identifying pains, needs, and problems so we could present a justified solution addressing those issues.

Don’t get me wrong, these are still important parts of the selling and buying processes, but if this is where we are first engaging the customer, then we aren’t maximizing the value we can create, and we aren’t maximizing our ability to win.

Intercepting our customers at this point of the buying process is too late.  By this time, the customer has already well defined their problem, they’ve organized to solve it, they have probably done a lot of research in assessing alternatives.  In fact, unless you are on their short list, there’s a high likelihood they won’t even want to see you or give you a chance to assess needs.

Sales people create the greatest value by engaging customers much earlier—before they even recognize they should do something.  Customers may be so busy or so sheltered they may not recognize they have a problem or there is a different way of doing things.  They are focused on their day to day operations and may be blind to the fact they might be missing opportunities.

Sales people get to see lots of customers and different ways of doing things.  Sales people have the time to look at emerging opportunities and understand how the customer might take advantage of them.  Removed from the day to day chore of running the business, sales people has a different view and may not be blinded as customers might be.

Customers expect sales people to provide insight, to help them learn how they might improve and grow.  Customers may not know they should have needs or what those needs are, because they haven’t recognize the opportunity.  They may be numb to the pain, so they don’t know their pains.
Sales people must engage their customers earlier, creating the awareness or vision to do something different, helping the customer discover they have needs and pain, helping the customer define the problem and what they want to do, helping the customer organize to solve the problem, and define their needs, requirements and priorities.

We need to understand our customers’ needs and priorities.  However, if that’s the first time we are engaged, your competitor may have been there before—creating greater value and positioning themselves to win.

Are you engaging your customers appropriately?

Let’s face it, customers really hate us.  They will tolerate our marketing content—as long as it isn’t too promotional—just the facts please.  Sales people, well that’s another story, we’re really a total waste of their time, unless the are looking for lunch or a golf game.  With the exception of the lunch and golf game, the web now can solve virtually all our customer problems.  Customers can find peers, other people who have the same interests, concerns, problems.  “Trusted sources,” that can provide much” higher quality information and insight” about vendor products than the we can.  Our role as suppliers is now to sit politely by the phone, wait for it to ring, then answer any remaining specific questions the customer may have, process their order (if we are fortunate enough to be the supplier selected), smile and thank them for their business.

Our buyers are so fortunate.  We know all that information is totally accurate.  We know those users or people who have experience know everything there is to know about our products and services, and how they apply specifically to the problems other companies have.  We know these are totally without agenda (or even being compensated).

We also know that our customers know exactly what they are looking for.  We know they have all the right questions and just need answers.  We know they know how to solve their problems, so they are just looking for data and information.  We know they have the time, ability, and judgement to invest in searching the web, engage in conversations with people they have never met, talk about their proprietary information and problems.  Imagine a web based conversation, “Our manufacturing process really sucks, we have too much scrap, bad quality, and poor customer satisfaction and are looking to reduce those problems…in your experience, what are the best solutions to that?”  Or “Our financial systems are a mess, we can’t close our books, we don’t know if we are properly reporting our results, if we are in compliance with government regulations…. what have you done to solve that problem?”

Yes the web is the answer to our customer prayers.  We need to transform our organizations to better serve our customers and to more effectively process those orders.  We need to spend more time encouraging our current customers to spend less time doing their jobs and more time participating in web based forums, maybe we can even provide them some copy they can use in their discussions.  (Perhaps this is the role for all the displaced marketing and sales people).

Frankly, I am getting PISSED OFF with all the apologists for sales and marketing.  I’m angry with all those naive enough to think that marketing and sales can bring no value or insight to our customers and they should be displaced by web based forums.  Finally, I am terrified for our customers who may not even recognize they have a problem or may be so busy just surviving they can’t spend the time solving their problems.

Sure, we deserve much of the criticism that is leveled at marketing and sales.  Every day, we are bombarded with an ever escalating volume of messages, promotional content, and stupid sales pitches.  Too many organizations seem to see the solution to this move to the web is to turn up the volume.  This only serves to piss customers off, rather than turning up the volume, we need to turn up the quality and customer experience.

If we can’t turn up the quality of the customer engagement, if we can turn up the quality of the customer experience, if we cannot offer real insight and value to our customers, then the web is probably the best solution.

But I think too much of our customers to succumb to that.  I think too much of our companies and shareholders to to succumb to this.  I think too much of the value we as sales and marketing professionals can offer to succumb to that.  We have to change and we are changing.  We have a huge amount to offer to our customer and can create real value.  We can provide our customers insight they can’t get anywhere else.  We walk the halls, visit the plants, talk to lots of people in our customers.  We see new possibilities, we see opportunities to help them grow and improve.  We can offer help and advice, we can create real meaning in helping them outPerform their competitors and better serving their customers.

If we aren’t prepared to change, we deserve what we get — but that’s always been true, the web hasn’t changed any of that.

Let’s stop apologizing for our professions, let’s not abandon our responsibilities to our customers, our companies, and ourselves to create great value.  It’s not time to give up, it’s time to get more aggressive in the changes we have to make in ourselves and how we engage our customers.

There are a huge number of tools available to help sales professionals be more effective and efficient.  Properly used and implemented they can have a profound impact in improving sales performance.  At the same time, used improperly, the provide the potential of causing great problems or creating crap at the speed of light.  Every tool has the opportunity, properly used to have great impact or improperly used to have great negative impact.

Too often, however, it seems the implementation of the tool in itself, is the end rather than just a means.  People implement CRM thinking “because we have CRM, we have much greater insight into our customers, pipelines, opportunities, and so forth.”  Or implementing powerful research tools to provide great sales intelligence–without providing a foundation the sales people can intelligently use these tools.  Or providing great content and email marketing tools that are used to blindly inflict content on people who have no interest or desire to get that content.

 We too often forget about the fundamentals–the basic blocking and tackling, the foundations of sales effectiveness.  None of these tools replace the need for this, but the amplify the impact of the sales person using it.  A high performing sales person, executing a well defined sales process will get phenomenal benefit and create much more value using these tools.  They will be able to leverage their time and presence in ways they couldn’t without the tools.

We have to continue to focus on building a sound platform based on the fundamentals:  Do we have a well defined sales process aligned with the customer buying process?  Do we know how to develop and execute high impact sales strategies?  Do we have the knowledge and business acumen that enables sales professionals to connect with their customers discussing their issues, concerns or helping them discover new opportunities?  Do we understand what customers value, how we create, communicate, and deliver differentiated value?  Do we understand how to listen and really understand?  Do we have the ability to confront the customer–appropriately, to ask for money in exchange for value and to defend that value without resorting to discounting?  Do we understand how to manage our time, leveraging it for maximum impact?  Do we understand how to prospect and gain the attention and interest of people we may have never met?  Do we understand how to create, build and maintain relationships?  Do we understand how to trust and be trusted?  As managers, do we understand how to analyze performance, how to coach and develop people to achieve their full potential, how to measure performance and hold people accountable for that performance?

All of these are the foundations of high performance selling.  Implementing tools, whether they are CRM, sales intelligence, analytic, content management/delivery, presentation or other tools on this sound foundation can magnify the impact and effectiveness of the sales team.

Absent these foundations the tools can be harmful.  Not only do we waste time, resource,  money on tools that aren’t used, used well, or used properly.  But we run an even greater danger–used improperly they can have exactly the opposite affect.  They can alienate and create great distance with customers.  They can magnify poor strategies and stupid execution.  Recently, I encountered a sales person selling a marketing/lead development tool–his thoughtless use of the tool he was selling caused him to spam 1000′s of people.  My feedback to him was that his use of his tool made me certain that I would never use his tool and would actively recommend people avoid his company.  He didn’t seem to understand.  This week, I get prospecting calls from a person selling a tool that was to provide great insight into customers.  His first question was, “What does your company do?”  I get endless offers for content, newsletters for thing I never requested, things that I have no interest in. 

I talk to people who are considering the acquisition of very powerful tools.  I ask a few questions.  For example, powerful analytic tools–but are you asking the right questions?  The quality of the analytics is dependent on the quality of the question you are applying the analytics after–or the quality of the data being analyzed.  Bad questions, bad data give you terrible answers.  The greatest presentation, storytelling, whiteboarding tools are meaningless if your people do not understand the customer, what they value and how to create value.

I can’t imagine any high performing sales professional not leveraging these tools to their full potential!  They are very powerful.  But the tools are the means, not the end.  If you don’t have a strong foundation in place, they are worse than useless.  Before wasting time, resource, and money on these tools, make sure you are building on a strong foundation.

I have to admit, I’m writing this out of a little bit of frustration.  I have a prospect, it’s virtually impossible to communicate with them — at least through the normal channels.  Now, you may say, “Dave, don’t you get it–they don’t want to talk to you!”  But they really do want to talk and communicate with me.  They say so, they get upset when it appears that I’m not communicating with them.

They originally contacted me a couple of months ago.  I got an email from a mid level executive in the company.  He wanted some information, I responded–rather than doing a simple reply, I wrote a new email, using his email address, and sent it.  30 seconds later, I get it bounced back, saying it is undeliverable.  I call the guy on his mobile, apologizing and explaining the problem to him.  He groans and say, it’s our security system.  You can’t send emails to us, we can only send you emails.  It’s best for you to email me at my personal email.  I’ve been using his personal email to send him emails, he always responds from his company email.

As I’ve met other executives in the company, the same thing happens.  They can send me emails, but the only way I can communicate back is to respond to their personal email.  Now whenever I meet someone new, it’s one of the first pieces of information I get.

I tried calling one of the executives once.  I didn’t have his mobile number, so I called the office switchboard.  I did the “spell the name” thing, the response was, “No one by that name works here.”  I was surprised, I called someone else to get the story.  “Oh, we have trouble keeping our name directory updated (The person I had tried to reach had been with the company over 3 years.).  He gave me the guy’s mobile number and his extension for future reference.

Recently, I met with the management team.  We talked about a project and got a lot done.  At the end of the meeting, I said, “I have another topic I’d like to talk about.”  I went on to describe the email and telephone problem.  They chuckled, looked at each other sheepishly, and said, “Yeah, it’s a real pain.  We just work around it, you’ve figured it out too.”

I looked at them and said, “What if I were a customer or a prospect?”  The room went silent for five minutes.

I’ll stop the story here.  It sounds outlandish, but it is–was–true.  Perhaps that was part of their sales growth problem.  While that was an extreme case, consciously or unconsciously, too often we make it impossible for our customers to reach us.  We may steer them through a specific channel.  This company had a form at their website, that someone was supposed to fill out and submit—but what if your customers don’t feel like filling out a form.

There’s another example, this time I was the customer.  I was trying to buy a pretty significant piece of software for our company.  I had made the purchase decision, but then I had to buy.  The sales rep presented me with a 27 page contract.  It covered all sorts of things.  Then there were the forms I had to fill out.  Not only the normal credit information, but information about each user of the system, all sorts or unnecessary information about our company—I think it was for the marketing people.

I had my lawyer look at the contract.  It was OK, though it was so long and poorly worded, it just took time for both my lawyer and I to go through.  On the other information, I called the rep.  I said, I’ll give you the credit information, but nothing else.  You want the order, make it happen!

Often the only differentiator we may have is how easy we are to do business with.  Selling is hard enough, but if we make it difficult for those who do want to buy, then we’ve made it much more difficult.

Are you easy to do business with?  Look at your phone systems, look at your email systems.  Do you have guidelines for responses to phone and email queries?  What about your contracts and all the other things needed from those who have made the decision to buy?  Are you making it easy for them?  Finally, when there is a problem, does the customer know how to get it resolved?  Are there people that own the responsibility for solving the problem?  Is it clear, simple, easy?

The media business is changing.  Traditional media–newspapers, journals, and magazines are struggling to refine their business models.  Figuring out how to make money and continue to grow is a challenge for all in the media business.  As a consumer of both traditional and new media, I want to see them survive, grow, and thrive.  I subscribe to a lot of “traditional” media as well as new media.

One of the great trends I see is publishers adopting “any time, any place, any device.”  For example I can read some of my favorite newspapers in hard copy, or, when I’m not home, I can look at that content on my laptop, Ipad, or phone.  For one simple subscription, I can get to the content in a manner that’s most convenient for the moment.

Companies are experimenting, some charge a premium for digital access, many provide it free with the hardcopy subscription. I’m not sure where I stand on that, but I know they need to make money, so I’m probably OK with a small premium for the combined digital and hardcopy access.

 The problem I have is when the company thinks its subscribers are stupid.  When they go beyond making money, to treating their customers with total disrespect.

I’m a long time subscriber and avid reader of the Harvard Business Review.  For years, I have anxiously waited each copy to be delivered to my office.  I devour it in the first evenning.  For years, with my subscription, in the past roughly $79/year, I have had free access to HBR online–along with archived articles (I no longer have to save all my old copies–it’s opened up three book shelves for me.)

This year, I get my subscription renewal and am a little shocked.  I can renew my hardcopy subscription for $79, I can get an online subscription only for $99 (wow, that used to be part of my hardcopy subscription–guess times are rough in Cambridge).  Or I can get a combined subscription for about $149–about double last year’s subscription.

Furthermore, to get content on my Ipad, I have to pay an additional $79.99!

This certainly isn’t content on any device, any time, any where!!

Well, the Ipad application is out!  There are so many equally good, even better,  subscriptions I have there-Business Week, Forbes, McKinsey Quarterly, Fortune, Wired, Fast Company, journals from INSEAD,  and more.  I can live without the Ipad version.

I swallow hard and look at the combined price of the online and hardcopy version—I really like the convenience of both, but the renewal rate—after I don’t know how many years of subscribing— is $149.

I research further, I discover, if I just let my subscription lapse, and start a new subscription, I can get the same deal for $129–$20 dollars less!  It’ snot a lot, but I’m glad to take it.

But I reconsider.  This is really shameless manipulation.  The publishers must really think the readers are stupid.  First, doubling the price on me.  Maybe I could swallow that.  But now I’m offended.  For weeks, my mailbox has been filled with “such a deal” renewal notices from them–all at $149.  Didn’t they think I’d check the price on line? 

Maybe there’s something I don’t understand about the value proposition.  Let me see,  a loyal subscriber for many years, OK, times are tough for publishers, so I’ll pay a super high premium for the convenience of hard copy and online, though doubling the prices seems a bit much.

BUT WAIT!!

I could get the very same thing for $20 less, just by being a new subscriber—yes their costs increase marginally, but why should I care?  They have to process me as a new subscriber.  And I’m sure, I’ll get another dozen, “last chance,” “sure hate to lose you,” offers at $149.  Then they probably have to purge my old subscription from their data bases, which has some cost.  Perhaps they make it up by selling that data—I’m not sure, guess I have to go back and review their privacy policy.

I’m confused, which deal should I take?  What’s the difference in value propositions?

As I look at the pricing policies, I can only come to the conclusion they must think I’m stupid, a sucker, or both.

Now I’m reconsidering everything.  I think, I’m in Manhattan quite frequently–maybe I can go downtown, stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign, “Hey buddy, spare a copy of HBR?”  Or I know the neighbor a few doors down, also subscribes, maybe I can borrow his copies after he’s finished.  Or maybe I can rely on other sources of really great content.  After all, many of their featured authors have their own blogs.

The Harvard Business Review isn’t alone in it’s practice, though it does stand out as the worst, at least of all the journals, papers, and magazines I subscribe to.

With policies like this, it’s no wonder media is in trouble!

The phone rang, I picked it up.  The voice on the other end went into it’s pitch, “Hi, I’m so and so.  Would you be interested if you could invest in a stock that could give you a cud-jillion-billions return in 60 days?”

Yes, it was one of those pointless boiler-room calls.  But is was a slow day, I was a little bored, so I decided to have fun.

“Yes, I’d actually be very interested in getting that kind of return.  However, before you go further, would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?”

I could hear the excitement in his voice, you could almost hear his thought process, “Caught another sucker, now I just have to reel him in.”  But he said, “Sure, I’d be glad to answer your questions.”

So, I responded, “My business is to help sales people close more business faster.  I can imagine, that you have to make hundreds of calls to get someone like me who is interested in talking to you and investing in your stock recommendations.  We happen to have a guaranteed method where I can actually reduce the number of calls you have to make by 75% and triple your personal income at the same time.  Surely that has to be something you are interested in.”

Silence……

“What do you mean, are you trying to sell me something?”  came the confused response.

“Absolutely not, I’m just want to show you a way to triple your income doing 25% of the work.  Surely, it would be foolish to pass up that opportunity.  Think of it, if you put in the same amount of work, your income could go up 12 times!”

“Wait a minute,” he said, getting a little impatient and frustrated, “Let’s talk about how you can make money with this stock!”

I interrupted, “I’m glad to talk about that, but would you please answer my question, wouldn’t you want to learn how you can increase your income by 12 times doing the same amount of work?”

He was clearly getting upset.  I guess my response wasn’t on his script.  “You can’t be selling me something — I don’t know you, why should I believe you!  Let’s get back to this stock!”

“Wait a second,” I replied, “I’m confused, you won’t talk to me, because you don’t know me and you are skeptical about my claim, is that correct?”

“Absolutely, now let’s…….” he continued.

“No, hang on, you won’t listen to me or buy from me.  But I’m confused, why should I listen to you?” I replied–trying to sound very sincere and very concerned.

Click…..

The line went dead……

He was probably busy dialing someone else, making one fo the 500 or so calls he has to make every day.

I’ve been chuckling to myself since then.  It was a fun call.  Sometimes, I just can’t help myself

These days, so many of the conversations among sales professionals and pundits is about challenging our customers, about getting them to think differently, about creating superior and differentiated value.  I talk and write about it a lot, as do many others. 

Sometimes, when I sit back and re-read what I write, or some of what others write, I get the impression that what we challenge ourselves and all sales professionals to do is the functional equivalent of “solving world peace.”  Sometimes we make the process of challenging, changing the conversation or creating value just too complex (I guess that’s what keeps many consultants and trainers employed).

In reality, our differentiated value only has to be “Just Good Enough.”  It has to be better than the competitors or the alternatives, but it doesn’t need to be earthshaking.  It’s probably valuable for us to start thinking of simplifying the process–it makes it more achievable for each of us and better for our customers as well.

Let’s look at some examples.

Often, I’ve stated, that we have to create “Value” in every interchange with the customer.  This doesn’t mean we have to solve complex problems, or have the customer have a giant “Aha moment” in each call.  The test for creating value in every interchange is if the customer can say, “That was a good investment of my time!”  We may not have shared any great insight, we may not have shown the customer how they could save millions, it is just as simple as the customer saying, “You used my time well.”  They might say “I learned something new,”  or “I had never thought of things that way,” or “You were able to confirm that I am on the right track,” or “Thank you for listening and hearing me.” 

In a time when customers avoid seeing sales people because sales people waste their time, the greatest thing that sets us apart is the customer that can say “That was a good investment” in my time.  Over a customer buying cycle, if all else is roughly equal, the sales person that makes the best use of the customer’s time through their whole process will be the sales person that wins!

Sometimes the value that sets us apart is making things simpler for the customer.  We are overwhelmed with complexity and difficult choices.  Sometimes the greatest value we can create is to make things simpler for the customer.  It could be being the easiest to do business with, it could be taking a problem off the customer’s hands and helping them, it could be being dependable–doing what we said we would do. 

We can create tremendous opportunities and value for our customers.  We can provide profound improvements in their business, help them identify and seize new opportunities, find ways to dramatically increase revenue or profitability.  Our competitors are also trying to do the same thing.

Often the greatest value is just simplifying things.  Often, it’s just using their time well.  Value can be created and aggregated by dozens of small acts, when taken together are just good enough.  Just the differentiation we need to be better than the alternatives.

It’s all the little things that count.  Pay attention to them, use your customers’s time well, make their lives siimpler.  If everything else is roughly equal, these become the margin of victory.

My colleague Anthony Iannarino wrote an outstanding post:   “Mismatched Skills And Value Creation.”  Usually, Anthony and I are so aligned in our thinking that we tend to complete each other’s sentences.  But I had to disagree with part of his post, it was the perspective he presented on Commodity Buyers.

Virtually every product and service, at some time in it’s life cycle moves to commoditization.  As differences between offerings become smaller; as buyer familiarity with the products, solutions becomes greater; as perceived risks to the purchase decision become much smaller; then there is the potential that our offerings become commoditized.  Given no other differentiation, the only way to win is based on price  — or is it?

Don’t get me wrong, there are people that will always buy on price–regardless of whether our product has significant differentiation or it is a commodity.  Price is important to every decision.

But as sales people, I think it is incumbent on us—both for our success and the customer’s to always focus on value creation and to aggressively seek to create value in every situation. 

Value can be created with commodity buyers–it’s just different than what we may have seen before.  While commodity buyers may be driven by price, they are also seeking other things–they may want to have an easy, painless, hassle free, procurement process.  They may want to look at reducing the overall cost of the transaction–not just the price. 

As an example, a number of years ago, I worked with the Chief Procurement Officer of a very large procurement organization.  They were responsible for procuring everything from basic chemicals, office supplies, “nuts and bolts” (literally), to complex computer systems, communications systems, development tools, machine tools and thousands of other items.  They managed billions of dollars in “spend” every year.  When we started to analyze their procurement processes, we started seeing very surprising data in the “costs of procurement,” or the costs of doing a transaction.  In some cases, the costs of procurement started to approach the purchase value of the items being procured.  Clearly, they had a problem that reducing the price of the commodities they were buying would not solve.

Some of their really smart suppliers recognized this as a problem.  They started working with the customer in seeing how they could reduce the cost of procurement.  Clever vendors realized there was value they could create in helping the customer reduce these costs–while still maintaining superior (but competitive) pricing.

Procurement organizations are very sophisticated–they are shifting to be strategic sourcing organizations.  They realize there is more to “save”  than just on price negotiations.  Supply chain management, vendor managed inventories, contract simplification and management all become critical elements of value that can be created for “commoditized products.”  In their book, Challenger Sale, Dixon and Adamson cite the example of W.W. Grainger challenging their customers on their process of procuring commoditized products. 

There are hundreds of other examples.  Indeed, some of the best thinking of creating value that I have encountered is from organizations who sell commoditized, undifferentiated products.  The sales person who sells carbon black and commands a superior price has to think about value creation differently.  The sales person that sells commoditized electronic components needs to be innovative in how they create value.  Sometimes those of us who sell more “complex or differentiated solutions,” are a little lazy about value creation–we still can rely on the differentiation of our solutions.

As sales people we have to be leaders, for our customers and with our organizations.  We have to constantly focus on value creation–in every sales situation.  Value can be found and created everywhere.  It’s our responsibility–not the customer’s, to create, communicate, and deliver that value.  We cannot succumb to the commiditization of our offerings — even if they are commodities. 

If we allow ourselves to be commoditized, if we allow ourselves to stop searching for and creating value, then we deserve the outcomes we create.

Are you constantly looking to Create Value?

(For extra credit, as you think about this, study and learn about Strategic Sourcing.  Go talk to the top sourcing and procurement executives in your customers and understand what they are trying to achieve.  They are hungry for value, you just have to learn how you can create value for them!)

We all know the shifts in buying.  The web offers a tremendous resource to all of us.  There is an overhwelming amount of information available on virtually every topic.  There’s a lot of data that says customers don’t want to see sales people until later in their buying cycle–presumably the final phases, as they have developed a short list of alternatives.

Many think this is wonderful–certainly on the customer side they get to avoid all those terrible sales people.  From the sales side, we now get involved with really serious customers and our sales cycles can be much shorter.  So somehow people seem to think we create this terribly efficient buying and selling environment.  From the sales side, we shift our focus to high quality content, SEO, and all sorts of things that increase our visibility to customers who let their fingers wander their keyboards.

But you have to pause and wonder, is this really a good thing for customers and for sales?  Perhaps for simpler transactions, or where professional well informed buyers are invovled, this may be OK.  But in the world of complex B2B solutions, one really wonders.

What are the problems with self education?  Is it really the “right” thing for customers?  Perhaps this is an arrogant view, but as sales people are we fulfilling our responsibilities in creating great value for customers by succumbing to this self education/information?

Here are some of the challenges:

First, we all know that if something is on the web it must be 100% true, right?  This is the easiest concern, probably the majority of stuff on the web is wrong or out of date.  So how do our customers determine what’s good, what’s accurate, and what information they can rely on?  I suppose if you wander around enough, perhaps participate in discussion forums (but who knows who those people really are), we can sort through the piles of information– perhaps finding things that are more accurate than not.  Perhaps is we narrow our search to “trusted” suppliers, then we can feel more comfortable that we are getting accurate information — but how do we know who is to be trusted?  Just as with working with sales people, smart buyers need to be skeptical.

Second, “my problem is different.”  In complex business decisions, everyone has a different problem or need.  Yes, 80% of the requirements may be the same, but it’s the last 20% that really make the difference.  Companies are different, strategies, culture, priorities are different.  Their goals, objectives vary.  Their processes, history, legacy systems (in the broadest sense) are different.  That last 20% is probably the most critical to the success of any project the customer is undertaking.  Where are they going to get the answers specific to them, where are they going to get the answers specific to that critical 20%? 

Third, do they know what to look for?  Do they know what questions they should be  asking, what they should be researching?  This, to my mind is probably one of the most important concerns customers should have about self educating.  In the complex world of B2B solutions, knowing what questions to ask, what things they should be looking for, what things might be possible is critical.  How do customers know what they don’t know?  A CFO and her staff may be very knowledgeable about how they run the financial operations in their organization—but what do they know about buying a new financial system?  How many times have they bought financial systems in their careers?  What are the capabilities of these systems?  What should they be looking for and why?  How can they change their operations and processes to get much better results? 

We’r all prisoners of our experience.  We know what we know, we don’t know what we don’t know.  If we are self educating, we are constrained in our search to what we know and think we need to know.   Our ability to solve our problems is constrained by the quality of our questions.  Sure, we might stumble upon some interesting content on a web site, we might talk to people and learn new things we should be considering–but that takes a huge amount of time and can really be hit or miss.  Is this the most effective way to buy?  Is this the most effective way to drive tremendous improvements in our operations? 

Fourth, to the customers know how to buy?  Do they have the right people involved, do they know how to organize themselves, do they know how to align their objectives and put together a project plan to identify, select, and implement a solution?    After all, unless they are professional buyers or sourcing people, their jobs aren’t to buy (which, as a side note, is why we are seeing strategic sourcing being involved in more decisions where they haven’t had a presence in the past).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, do customers even recognize they have an opportunity to change, and opportunity to improve and grow?  Do they realize they are missing opportunities, or understand how they could seize them?  Simply put, from a sales point of view, we are being irresponsible in serving our customers.  Our job is to help customers identify new opportunities to improve, to grow.  We can’t let our customers cheat themselves of the opportunity to achieve their dreams.  We have to bring them new ideas and insight.

Self education and self directed learning works — after all, there has been great progress in distance based learning.  But the reason those programs work, is they have very clear objectives, very clear methods, and are well structured–not random.  Self education and self directed learning can be very effective in buying, but only in well structured and well defined environments, and in using trusted sources.  For certain types of purchases this is very effective.  But in complex B2B solutions and complex business problems, things are seldom so clearly defined.

One of the major roles of sales people has been to teach.  Too often, our teaching has been misdirected, we focus on teaching/pitching our products.  The greatest value we can create is to teach our customers about different ways of doing things, about new opportunities, about things they may not even realize.  We have to help our customers learn.  We have to help our customers understand the questions they should be asking.  We have to help our customers learn what they should research, what they should be looking for. 

It’s important that we have high quality content, that we continue to create great web/social presence.  But this is most impactful when we have an educated buyer, a buyer who knows the questions they should be asking, a buyer who knows what they should be looking for, a buyer that can critically evaluate the alternatives.

Are you prepared to teach your customers?  Not about your products, but about how they can improve their operations and businesses, how they can better serve their customers, how they can outperform their competition.

What are you doing to help your customers learn?  What are you doing to prepare yourself to teach?  What are you doing to prepare your customers to buy?

Recently I was in China in a series of meetings with CEO’s of Chinese companies.  The meetings were great, but we each struggled to maximize their impact.  My Mandarin is very limited–basically to “Hello,”  “Thank you,” and a couple of other words.  Many of the executives spoke some English and were very polite in trying to communicate in a way that I could understand.

Mostly we relied on an interpreter.  The problem was, the interpreter interpreted the discussion–that is he describe things based on how he heard them, not necessarily what was intended.  So we had to be very careful in what we were saying and in verifying that we were aligned in our discussions and what we were trying to achieve.  Fortunately, our shared intention allowed us to be effective in our meetings.

Often, when I go on sales calls with sales people, I think that we are speaking different languages.  The customer is speaking their language, the sales person is speaking their—and there is no interpreter.

Each of organization and industry have their own terminology, jargon, buzzwords, and shorthand.  We have ways of expressing things, that others may not understand.  Too often, I see sales people reeling off terms and acronyms–often to make them sound important, but meaningless to the customer.  Or sales people don’t take the time to understand and communicate in terms that are meaningful to the customer.

A very simple example–many years ago, I managed an organization whose key customer segments were automotive and aerospace design engineers.  Even though the design processes were very similar, the terminology used in each industry were profoundly different.  Automotive engineers tended to talk about “flow lines,”  aerospace engineers tended to talk about “aerodynamics.”  Same concepts, but if we used the term “flow line” with the aerospace guys, we would both lose credibility but we would lose the customer–they wouldn’t understand what we were talking about.

As sales people, we want to maximize our impact on the customer.  We want to make sure our customers understand us and that we understand the customer.  It’s not the customer’s job to speak our language—we have to speak the customer’s language.

This goes beyond the words we and our customers use.  Each industry has key processes, metrics, practices, business drivers.  These are ingrained in everything the customer does.  For us to be impactful, we have to understand all of these, what they mean to the customer and how we can impact them.

Do you understand your customer’s language?

Do you speak the customer’s language?

Do you understand the key metrics, processes, practices, and business drivers for your customer?