Recently, I was coaching a seller on a critical call he was about to make. His strategy to engage the CRO was to lead with AI and the capabilities it enabled in the product he was selling.
“Why are you leading with this,” I asked.
“I’ve noticed in my research that he talks a lot about AI, I thought that would be a good way to engage him!” replied the seller.
“I get it, his company sells software products, and they are making a big deal about AI, but is that the reason he should want to talk to you? Is that the problem he needs to address, is it about AI and how he uses it?”
It turned out the problem the prospect CRO had was not focused on AI. It was in an entirely different area, which was impacting sales performance. The seller I was coaching and I agreed, it would be best to focus on this issue, later showing how the way his company had implemented AI would support addressing the issue.
I see virtually the same thing in all my feeds, in too many of the discussions, and in the majority of the prospecting outreaches inflicted on me.
It isn’t about AI!
Let me repeat that.
It isn’t about AI!
But “we” are making everything we do in selling about AI. It seems all outreaches are about or lead with AI. “AI enables you to do these things…..that’s why you should buy our product!”
I get it, it’s something new to talk to prospects about, but is AI the core issue? Particularly, when everyone our prospects are hearing from is focusing on the same thing–AI. Are we saying anything different? Are we focusing on the issues that are most critical to our customers and what they face?
These issues are not about AI. Customers, in fact all of us, face challenges around increasingly complex markets, growing disruption, new competition. Customers face challenges in achieving their goals, in bringing new offerings to market, in maximizing the performance of each part of the organization. They face challenges in engaging, supporting, and growing their relationship with the customer. Customers struggle with their strategies to respond, they struggle with putting in place change initiatives to address these issues, they struggle recognizing and addressing many of these problems….
This list can go on. But at the core, these issues are not about AI. Simply implementing an AI solution does not solve the problem.
Don’t misunderstand me, AI can contribute to our and our customers’ abilities to address these problems/challenges. In many cases, they may be the major contributor. And there is so much we don’t know as the technology evolves.
Let’s look at this a slightly different way. Our customers aren’t interested in our solutions! They are interested in their businesses, their challenges. They want to talk about and need help diagnosing and defining their problems. They need help managing their problem solving process, getting support within the organization, building their own confidence they are doing the right thing.
AI is a solution. And until the customer is at the point of assessing solutions to the problems they seek to solve, conversations about AI are irrelevant and distracting.
Afterword: I find it amusing when these AI characters talk about AI. Here is the AI generated discussion of this post! It’s actually very good. Enjoy!
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