Charlie Green and I had a fascinating conversation about a person he’s coaching. This individual is truly one of the world’s top performers in his area of expertise. He has years of experience, more data than ChatGPT would know how to deal with and more experience in solving these very difficult problems than 90% of the business world.
Yet he’s struggling to get the attention he deserves to get. As we talked, Charlie and I both recognized, he’s giving people the answers they need, but they haven’t yet asked the questions indicating they need the answers.
This pretty much summarizes what I see from most sellers. We have trained them in our products and solutions. They know everything about how our solutions improve productivity, reduce costs, drive growth, improve customer satisfaction. We have trained them to give the answers.
But the problem is the majority of people they seek to engage, aren’t asking the questions that evoke a need for the answers.
All of us are inundated with endless emails and social outreaches. These offer miracle cures and the answers to all our prayers. And some are actually legitimate, they can do these things. But the majority of these outreaches fall on deaf ears. They aren’t asking the questions that demand these answers. They may not be asking questions, looking for answers at all, they are perfectly content in the status quo!
Yet, despite this, the majority of sellers remain committed to demonstrating their irrelevance! They continue to pitch, to provide answers to questions their targets have never asked.
So how are we to become relevant and interesting to prospects and customers?
It’s all about getting the customers to ask the questions!
It’s about getting the customer to begin to think, are they operating as effectively/efficiently as possible? Are their markets shifting, requiring them to shift? Are there potential disruptors to them or their business? Is there a better way to do things? Should they consider doing things differently? Are they facing threats or challenges? Is there a compelling need to do something new?
None of these is about the answers, they are all about inciting the customer to find the questions important and something they should be considering.
And only when they start asking the questions do our answers create any meaning or value.
How do we incite customers to ask the questions?
Again the answer is obvious, but despite that, we don’t equip our sellers with this capability. The way we incite the customer to ask the questions is through deep understanding of their businesses. It’s our ability to engage them in discussions about what they are doing, how they are doing it, why they are doing it in a certain way, that helps us understand them and their business. And in engaging them in these discussions, we can begin asking, “What if….. What would happen…. Why does this occur…. What challenges does it present….?”
Figuratively, our customers are shouting at us! They don’t want to talk to us! They don’t want our outreaches! They are tired if being pitched solutions, when they aren’t asking the questions!
Some of you might say, “Well Dave, we are talking about their problems!” But they don’t care until they’ve recognized they have a problem and until they have decided they want to do something about it. All of us have problems and each of this are content to live with the majority of those problems.
We see it in our own performance, we are content to live with low win rates, horrible performance, constant turnover, failed programs. If we are content to live with those things that are critical to our success, then why should we expect our customers and prospects to be any different?
Until our prospects and customers start asking themselves these important questions, until they start challenging themselves to find new answers, any answer we have is irrelevant!
Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion about this post. Enjoy!
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