We are driven by our need to book orders and meet our goals. To do this, we often try to “entice” the customer into a deal. “If we get the order by the end of the quarter, we will give you a 10% discount….” In reality, the only time this ever works is when the customer has already decided to make a decision by the end of the quarter. All we’ve done is given away some revenue. We haven’t convinced them to buy earlier.
Our urgency is absolutely irrelevant to the customer! Yet we consistently sell based on our schedules, not the customer’s.
The most important issue is the customer’s perspective. When do they need to have a solution in place? What happens if they fail?
The customer’s timing is always shaped by their business priorities, not our quota attainment.
How do we understand this? How do we better align our and the customer expectations around their timing and need to change?
Let’s address this sequentially. While we may be tightly focused on our ICP, not every customer in the ICP is experiencing the problem we solve. Not every customer has a high sense of urgency to do something. How do we identify those customers within the ICP that might have a higher sense or urgency, or customers in which we might create a higher sense of urgency?
Typically, we look for “signals” or “trigger events” that might provide an indication they may need to take action. These signals could be competitive pressures, market disruptions, regulatory issues. They may be declining financial performance. Trigger events may be major changes in the company, shifts in their strategies and priorities, shifts in leadership, new initiatives or new opportunities.
We may see some of these signals in how they engage in social platforms, how they are engaging on our own websites or content. While these may provide clues, we have to verify these signals in our conversations with them. The mistake we make, too often, is that we immediately jump into selling mode, before we’ve done this verification process–again, we make everything about ourselves and not about them.
What we need to recognize about these signals is they are an invitation to a conversation–not a request for solutions.
Key questions include: What’s driving your interest in these things? What’s causing you to think about a change? What happens if you don’t change? What are hoping to achieve in the change and why is it important? What does success look like?? When would you like to have the solution in place?
Sometimes, customers may not recognize there may be a different way of doing things. We might engage with insights and ideas, inciting them to consider a change. And through these conversations helping them to commit to a change.
You’ll notice something common in all of these questions, it is never about us and our products. It is always focused on the customer and what they are trying to do and the timing of when they need to get this done. Only when we understand these things, does it make sense to talk about, “This is how we can help you achieve those goals in the time-frame you need to get it done….”
Things to do to shift your perspectives, aligning more closely with the customer:
- Stop selling on your timeline, focus on understanding the customer’s. Help them navigate the change/problem solving process to achieve their timeline.
- Use customer signals to start conversations, not as shortcuts to pitching and proposing.
- Help the customer make the problem and urgency for addressing the problem urgent. Help them understand what they may be missing (the cost of doing nothing). Help them navigate the process to achieve the deadlines and timelines they have established for themselves.
Afterword: My thanks to Anders Ångström for provoking this idea.
Afterword: This is the AI generated discussion of this post It’s quite good, Enjoy!
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