“This Is What We Do…..”

So many of our prospecting and initial conversations start with a variant of “This is what we do….” It may be phrased as a question, “Do you need solutions that help you do these things….?” Or it may be more directly tied to our products, “Our product will help you achieve this….” However we phrase it, from the outset of the conversation, we are focusing the attention on us, our company, and our products.

And our prospects and customers don’t care!

It’s this focus on what we do and not what the customer cares about that impacts our ability to connect with them in impactful ways.

What do we do about this?

If we “Flip the script,” (with all credit to Becc Holland) we might change the conversation to be more engaging and impactful.

Ask yourself the question, “What might be happening to the customer that might cause them to be interested in what we do?” Or “What is the customer facing that might cause them to be interested in a product that has these capabilities?”

When we understand things in the way the customer thinks about them; when we engage them in talking about them in the way they talk about them, we change the conversation. All of a sudden, the conversation is about them and what they care about. And we are engaging them in terms relevant to them.

But just talking about the issues the customer cares about, isn’t sufficient, we have to start the conversation at the root cause level. Here’s an example, let’s say we offer lead gen services. In our self centered approach, we might initiative engagement like this, “We help you generate 100s of high quality leads…..” Shifting to a customer focused approach, we might want to guide the customer to saying, “We struggle with getting a high volume of high quality leads….”

Too often, when we attempt to have customer centered conversations, we structure them in a way that gets us the response we want (We need more high quality leads), rather than understanding the core issues and their impact.

We need to start thinking, “Why do they have trouble getting high quality leads?” (There’s that “Why” question again). Or “Why do they need to ramp up the volume of leads? Could there be an issue that’s different than just the volume of leads?” Or “What are they doing now, what problems are they experiencing? Is it the volume of leads or how they are managing the leads?”

Getting to the underlying issues gives both the customer and us a deeper understanding of their problem, it’s impact, and what it means to them. While they may, initially, be thinking, “We need more qualified leads,” which is the response we are looking for, until the customer and we get to the underlying issue, the core problems, the urgency and justification for making the change are not likely to be there. As a result, they may enthusiastically schedule demos and look for proposals, in justifying this to management, the management is likely to say, “Why do we need more leads? Is the quantity of leads the real issue? Can we make better use of the leads that we have? What other choices do we have, other than getting more leads?”

We are most helpful, we are more interesting, we create greater value when we help our customers better understand their problems. We help them create greater urgency, when they understand the problem and it’s impact. Until they understand and “own” it, “what we do….” is not as impactful as it may be.

“What we do” is unimportant to the customer until they know why it’s important and that it’s the most important thing for them to be doing.