There’s the old fable, “For the loss of a horseshoe, a Kingdom was lost.” The story goes that the King’s horse lost a horseshoe. As a result, the King was not able to lead his troops into battle, and because of that they lost the battle, then the war, then the Kingdom.
We sell horseshoes.
Regardless of what we sell, we basically sell horseshoes. What most of us sell is not the “difference maker” to our customer’s abilities to achieve their strategic goals.
Very few of us can say, “We can impact your stock price by this amount…..” or “We can impact your overall EBITDA by this amount…”
We sell horseshoes.
That doesn’t mean we are unimportant. That doesn’t mean we can’t have an impact on the attainment of the corporate goals.
We can sell horseshoes, simply to solve the problem of the blacksmith trying to keep all the horses shod. Or we can sell horseshoes to help the King defend the kingdom.
It’s the same product, but the value proposition is very different.
But util we connect the dots, until we can show that, “For the loss of a horseshoe…,” we aren’t maximizing the value we can create with our customers.
The reality, is that the overall success of our customers may not be dependent on our products and solutions. But until we can connect what we do, however indirectly, to our customer’s strategic goals and objectives.
Everything the customer buys, has to contribute to their organization’s ability to support their company’s attainment of their strategic goals. We maximize the value we create when we help the customer connect the dots between what they are doing and the ability of the company to achieve it’s goals.
However small or indirect, it’s critical for us to help the customer to connect these dots.
Because, after all, “For the loss of a horseshoe…..”
We sell horseshoes. But that doesn’t mean we are unimportant. What we sell, the problems we help our customers address are critical to their success in addressing their strategic priorities. We have to understand how to connect the dots an how to make sure our customers understand how to connect the dots.
We sell horseshoes.
But for the los of a horseshoe……
How many fables have their own wikipedia page?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail
A Healthy, Happy, and Prosperous New Year
to all of Dave’s Readers,
you a blessed by his wisdom.
Sorry for the slow reply Brian. I am humbled by your comments. In reality, I am so thankful that you take the time to be actively engaged in commenting on my posts. You make me re-think things and raise my game. So your participation is a great benefit to both me and my audience.