A good friend reminded me of something I have gotten wrong. I was complaining about the mind numbing volume and stupidity of the marketing messages I get. My inbox is filled with emails with people pitching their products and services. I get at least a dozen voicemails, every day, promoting some sort of product we absolutely must have.
Most are about products and services that are not applicable to our business—we don’t manufacture anything, so I’m really not interested in supply chain management solutions. We only have 15 people, so our HR needs are very easy.
Even those that are potentially relevant are never about me or what we are trying to do. They always focus on how great they are and what they do. They never talk about issues impacting others, that we may be experiencing. They never provoke me to think differently, to consider changing.
100% are focused on provoking me to buy.
100% are focused on their success, and if it helps me improve my success, well that’s incidental.
Then I realize, I’ve been mistaken all this time….. It’s my fault, maybe I’m becoming senile…
Afterall, these are Fortune 500 companies. Or, they are SaaS unicorns. Most often, they are SaaS marketing and sales technology suppliers. These are the experts! Why would the be doing things that don’t work? They wouldn’t be doing this at ever increasing volumes, if it wasn’t directly connected to their ability to scale and drive revenue.
Clearly, they have discovered the magic formula for success and scaling!
And I have misunderstood it.
It isn’t their job to understand me and my company.
It isn’t their job to understand the issues we face, or what we are trying to achieve.
It isn’t their job to help us think differently, to consider new ways of doing things that would improve our business.
Their job is to pitch their products, to demonstrate how wonderful they are.
It’s my job to figure out what it means, how we might leverage the solutions to achieve our goals.
But maybe even that is overthinking it. Perhaps, as they suggest, I should just do the trial, or use the freemium. Maybe through that, I will discover, “Oh, I didn’t realize we were missing something….”
Clearly, I’ve been wrong. I’ve been silly thinking selling is all about the customer. That thinking is so outdated.
Thanks, Charlie, for setting me straight!
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