What Did You Sell That For?

As a preface, I have to confess to a little frustration and some venting.  Too often, when I speak to sales people and ask them about what they sell and their customers, I pose the question, “What did you sell that for?”  The responses, while logical, are frustrating.  Often, the sales person responds with “That was a $ 1 million deal,” or something indicating the order size or revenue.  Alternatively, they respond with the product they sold, “The customer was looking to buy some new software and chose our solution,” or “They wanted to buy this piece of equipment, and I sold them ours.”

Just yesterday, I spoke to a sales person.  He had made a very large sale of a software system  (somehow).  I asked him, “What did you selll that for?”  He looked at me, wondering why I’d ever ask that question, but was patient and responded, “This is what our system does,”  describing the features of the system.  To me, it was meaningless that it allowed people to enter transactions on a Smart Phone, what I wanted to know is what result it produced for the person using the system, how it helped them better serve their customers, improve their operations, and so forth.  When I challenged him with these questions, he shrugged his shoulders, saying, “I don’t know that.  The customer was looking for a system that enabled transactions on a smart phone, thats’ what I sold them.

This isn’t unusual, time after time, in responding to my query, sales people can only describe what they sold.  In the end I’m frustrated, I still don’t know “What they sold if for?”

“What did you sell that for” really focuses on what the customer is trying to achieve, the problem they are trying to solve, the result they are trying to produce.  Thinking back to the old story–customers don’t want to buy drills, they have a need to create a hole in a wall and the drill provides them a solution to creating holes in the wall.

Too often, I think we engage the customer and respond to them without really understanding what we are selling our solution for.   Part of the challenge is we’ve trained our customers too well.  To often, our first contacts with customer focus on what we sell.  A customer may contact us saying, “we need to buy a new financial system,”  or “we need to buy this or that.”  They are good enough to present what they want in terms of what we sell. 

And naturally, we respond.  We may ask a few questions about their needs and priorities, how they will make the decision, the alternatives they may be considering.  But the conversation is all about what we are selling, and seldom really explores what the customer needs to buy.

The web makes this even more difficult, customers do research, they determine what they want to buy, then they engage sellers to determine which one they will buy.  The subsequent discussions focus on what we sell.

I think we lose a lot of opportunity.  It’s critical that we know the answer to the question, “What are we selling this for?”  If we don’t know what the customer is trying to achieve.  If we don’t understand their goals, if we don’t provide them leadership in improving their business, we are just vendors. 

If we don’t know what we are selling something for, it’s impossible for us to defend our value–whether it’s differentiating our solution from the competition or maintaining our price. We aren’t maximizing our ability to create and claim value to the customer.   We’re just peddlers and we are creating value for our customers.

If we want to maximize our ability to win, we need to know what we are selling our solutions for.  We need to be able to position our solutions in the context of what we help our customers achieve. 

What are we selling this for?  Do you know?  If you don’t you aren’t ready to be in front of your customer!