The job of every seller is simple. It’s all about change!
It can be as simple as, “My product/solution is better than the one you currently are using, buy mine!” Or what too many do, “My product is cheaper than the product you are currently using, buy mine!” When we are more sophisticated, “We can solve your problem, buy my product!” And when we are really working deeply and collaboratively with our customers, we focus on co-creation, imagining new possibilities and transformation. And these are all about having our customers make a change and helping them in that process.
With all this one would expect we would be experts at change and transformation. But it turns out we are terrible at it.
And we are learning it in the most painful way.
While we are supposed to be experts in helping our customers change, they aren’t finding us performing as that “expert.” The majority would prefer to make the changes themselves, without our help. Or those that engage us, wait until the very last moments in their buying cycle. They do this because we aren’t helpful when they really need the help.
And we see report after report where our customers are pleading for us to change. They want our help, they want to change, but we aren’t changing in the way they most need it.
Aahh, the irony!
We sell change, yet we don’t change what we are doing. And because we aren’t changing, the people we want to sell change to want to change, but don’t want our help. Such a fascinating vicious circle.
We keep doing the same things we have always done. They were things that used to work, but no longer work as well. Hmmmm, sounds like the things we talk to our customers about. “You know, the things they did that used to work, but aren’t working as well….”
Some sellers challenge me, saying, “Dave, we have changed! Just look at our tech stack, we are leveraging technology to change the way we sell.” But when I look, it’s automated the things that we are already doing. We’ve automated our outreach, we’ve automated our dials. We’ve automated everything, but we haven’t changed it. We are just doing more of it! We are doing the same things we have always done, differently.
Then there are the AI adopters. “Dave, we have changed profoundly! We are using AI! Now AI is doing our outreach, scheduling our meetings, sending the follow up emails, doing out demos, doing…… And it’s enabling us to do more of all of that stuff, cheaper, faster!”
But it’s doing the same stuff!!! Only cheaper, faster, so with our agentic approaches we can eliminate SDRs/BDRs, we can eliminate many AEs/AMs. We can even start to eliminate CROs!
But we haven’t changed! We are just automating and delegating the same stuff we have always done.
We aren’t changing, we are just changing how we do the same things we have always been doing. But we are still doing the same things we have always done.
Where are we thinking of completely transforming and reinventing what we do? Where are we thinking about transforming the way we engage our customers, how we can more effectively help them change, to help them achieve? Until we change ourselves, we can’t provide the help our customers need and want us to provide.
This is one of the wonderful things I’m learning about AI. And it’s made me rethink everything we do. The real promise of AI is not automating what we currently do. The real promise of AI is to transform what we do, why we do it, and how we do it. It enables us to morph into entirely new ways of seeing things and doing things. It’s forcing us to rethink everything we do, imagining whole new possibilities.
If we look at selling and GTM, we don’t have to be looking at AI (though we must). But the lessons outlined in the preceding paragraph are so vital–independent of AI. How do we transform what we do, why we do it, and how we do it? What if we can completely re-imagine our customer engagement processes in ways that provide customers the help they need and are asking for?
And if we do this, then we get back to doing our jobs in supporting our customers. We sell and implement change!
We will fail in our mission of helping our customers change, if we can’t change ourselves.
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