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Let Them Taste It
I’m from the government, I’m here to help you.
The check is in the mail.
Really, I promise you’ll get the benefits after you buy from me.
Truth be told, this is how 95%+ of businesses position themselves in the sales and marketing process. I’ve written (ad nauseum) about the fundamental need to create value in all aspects of the sales and marketing process. The problem is that merely claiming to be the best choice or promising that you’ll do wonderful things for people after they buy is not enough to capture the hearts and minds of people. Claims are no longer enough to drive buyer behavior.
Instead of waiting for people to buy from you before they can get a taste of what make you different, special, unique and/or better; let them taste it from the very first time they encounter you or your company – and furthermore, let them continue to taste it all the way through the buying process.
This is why content marketing is so powerful. Instead of promising expertise or superiority, you’re delivering it. By doing so, you are reducing the perceived risk for the buyer (which in an environment like today is a BIG deal), and giving the buyer more control (thus increasing their confidence), all while you build marketing assets which increase in value, and give you leverage, over time.
Recently, I was working with a client who had seen a precipitous increase in sales cycle times and sales costs. As we reviewed the problem, we found a significant increase in the number of opportunities that stalled towards the end of the sales cycle. The losses had been excused away – it was the economy, the prospect was cutting back, no more discretionary budgets, etc. As we reviewed their sales process, I discovered that they did a pretty good job up-front in establishing needs, but then fell back to the we-do’s. The value proposition focused on superior workflow process design, and how that design decreases costs and increases an organization’s productivity. As I said, they did an effective job of identifying cost and productivity needs, however, they left it to the buyer to believe their organization could help them. I recommended that they stop promising better workflow design and instead start letting their prospects experience it – at every touchpoint. It’s still early, but we’re already seeing an increase in sales and a decrease is cycle times.
Please note that what I’m talking about here goes beyond “sampling” (letting buyers try you out in some small, low risk fashion). I’m not against sampling, per se, but I think a) it’s often done in a highly transactional, manipulative way, and b) it is not enough. Sampling is what Kentucky Fried Chicken did when they made October 26 the “free piece of grilled chicken day.” What I’m talking about is re-orienting everything you do – from your website to your advertising to all aspects of your sales approach – to be the embodiment of the experience you are promising, rather than merely a statement of promise. As I shared in the recent webinar Making It Rain Even In A Drought, the lag time between the origin of a problem and the awareness can be quite long. By sharing your wisdom you can provoke their awareness, accelerate the sales cycle and make your competition irrelevant (because you’ll be the only one there when the prospect/customer becomes aware). The key is to stop selling your wares, and instead be helpful by providing your prospects a taste of your experience.
So, how do you (or can you) give your prospects a taste? Leave a comment, I promise I’ll give you feedback.
Making It Rain, Even In A Drought
Last month, we held three very successful webinars focused on helping business grow – regardless of economic conditions. Making It Rain Even In A Drought focused on three key areas:
- What is “the drought” and why are we in it
- What causes rain
- Three steps to what we call “The Raindance,” that puts you in a position to create demand and make your competition irrelevant.
We got so much positive feedback, we decided to share it with the readers of this blog. Enjoy. Feel free to leave any questions or comments you have about the ideas in the comments section – I promise to respond to every question.
(RSS readers that are not showing embedded video, click here to watch)
Part I – Focuses on The Drought & What Causes Rain
Part 2 – Focuses on the first critical principle to making it rain, instead of being forced to wait for the rain
Part 3 – Focuses on why most sales efforts fail to create economic value and how to monetize your sales efforts.
Thanks for watching. Please feel free to ask a question or leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Yesterday’s Strategies Do Not Equal Tomorrow’s Success
I met with the CEO of a small company in the Southeast recently who is really doing some interesting things. She found a unique set of needs that weren’t being met and she is aggressively working to fill the niche. This is a niche with tremendous potential in the both the consumer and corporate markets. She’s doing an awfully lot right. Chief among the “right things” she’s doing is that (for her size) she is fully funding marketing initiatives. Doing almost $3 million dollars in revenue, she’s budgeted almost $400,000 for marketing (something few small businesses would do).
As I talked more with her about her growth strategy, I began to worry. Every tactic she is funding is an old school marketing tactic. She’s got her print advertising budget, she’s beginning to do television in certain markets. Of course, there’s the direct mail, and so on. Now, she’s got the obligatory Facebook page, a blog that gets posts infrequently and she’s “on Twitter.” But, she’s not funding those initiatives with either time, money, or strategic attention. I commented to her that I’m concerned she’s doing all of the right things from “yesterday” expecting them to succeed tomorrow. David Meerman Scott talks about these “old” tactics in an excellent keynote speech at the Business Marketing Association 2009 conference. He asks, “Why do we keep spending so much time on the 3% and 20% tactics (traditional advertising and direct mail), and not the 80% and 100% tactics (engaging online)?”
She’s not the only one who is doing this. Amazon (while doing a lot of things right in their core business) appears to be following yesterday’s path to success with the strategy they are imploring with Kindle (for an interesting read on this subject, check out Joe Wikert’s post about how Amazon is screwing up the Kindle strategy). As best I can tell, Amazon is trying Gillette’s strategy to market dominance (with the obvious exception that they are not giving away the “razor” – in this case the e-reader device). Gillette lived the strategy of “give the razor away for free and sell the razor blades.” Of course, the strategy required that Gillette’s razors only work with their blades. Amazon is trying to dictate and control all aspects of the Kindle platform. As a Kindle 1.0 buyer (officially making me an early adopter), I initially fell in love with it, but have since found my love beginning to dissipate.
Why? Primarily because it hasn’t changed since I bought it. What I mean by this is that I have not been able to really make the device mine. When it first came out, it was really cool that I could carry 200+ books and read them digitally. Sure, I’d have to give up on the quality (as all the publishers did was a quick conversion from print to digital), but it was worth it. Today, well, it’s the same thing. The only improvements Amazon has introduced is a sleeker version and a bigger version, but to benefit from those improvements I have to buy the device all over again.
Radio Shack is doing it with their silly attempt to “rebrand” their stores under the name “The Shack.” Apparently, the executives at Radio Shack realized that customers no longer found their store compelling so they launched a $100 million dollar advertising campaign (I guess that was all the money they had because they didn’t even change the signs at the stores) to make the stores “more modern,” rather than going through the hard work of making the business more compelling. So far, it’s not working as “The Shack” has disappointed again. Here again, Radio Shack thought they could “control” the message when they can’t.
Other companies, both large and small have learned that the key to success in the future is participation and engagement. They realize that their buyers want to control, and today they have the power to control their environment. They realize that sellers have to play by new rules. They must create value in their selling efforts and they must be willing to listen to the market. Apple does this in the unique way they control their platform (think the apps store), but I get to make my iPhone, well, mine. Fiskers does this with how they’ve engaged their community of Fiskateers. Zappos does this by allowing customers to rate everything, and small businesses everywhere are learning that the big bucks, top-down traditional advertising approach is no longer the most effective or desirable path to create high-value customer relationships.
Tomorrow’s success is about balancing the natural control providers want over their platform, with the control all buyers demand today. While the rules to the game are still being developed, here are a few that are becoming clear:
- Control is an illusion. The market controls. If you try to take control away from your buyers, they will punish you. This doesn’t mean that you can’t exert a tremendous amount of control over the experience your provide, it means that the experience must give your buyers the feeling of great control.
- The more people talk about your offerings, the better your odds are. Sure, this isn’t a new rule, but the ability to support it is. The small company I referred to here is spending a significant amount of money to make a splash, but is underfunding everything designed to support the conversation. Rather than spending $100,000 on advertising that no one will notice, think about how that money could support on-going and new conversations.
- No matter how good your offering is, if you’re not making it better every day (EVERY DAY), it gets old. So, figure out what you’re going to do that is great today, then make it even better tomorrow.
What rules would you add?
Is It Time To Say Goodbye
Growth is disruptive. It requires change – all the time. There is nowhere that this is more true, and more difficult to deal with, than in the area of your client/customer base. It’s unfortunate, but the customers that get your business to one level are often the barrier to getting you to the next level of growth and profitability.
The only way a fast growth company can sustain fast growth is to find ways to increase its leverage. Fast growth must be geometric, not arithmetic. As your business grows, so does it complexity and its cost structure. You must find customers who are capable of paying you a multiple of that increase. The failure to do that will cause the business to be overwhelmed by complexity, and it will stall and stop growing.
Additionally, the most important asset you have to support fast growth is focus. You must serve a core customer base better than anyone in the world. If you growth plan has you catering to larger customers, or customers dealing with bigger problems, continuing to focus on your legacy customers merely holds you back from fully serving your future ones. Its an unfortunate truth about growth.
Sustainable fast growth is all about allocating resources to your highest value activities. And sometimes, that means you have to say goodbye to people that were very important to you.
Don’t Lose Your Plot
In the height of NBC’s success in the 1980s, their Thursday night lineup was commonly referred to as “Must See TV.” While it kept that refrain for most of the 1990s, it slowly and surely lost its relevance, and now NBC is a virtual joke.
This morning, I was reading a review of one of my favorite television shows and the reviewer talked of how the show has been exaggerating too much, for too long; and if it wanted to keep its mantelpiece as one of the best shows on television, it needed to get back its focus. My first thought was that while the show had been slightly over the top recently, I watched the show more for entertainment than for “critical acclaim.” I felt that the critic was being, well, a critic. Finding fault simply to justify his column.
As I ruminated on the review, I realized that the reviewer was correct. I realized that while I hadn’t yet tired of the show, if it didn’t get it’s focus back, the show would lose it’s indispensability, then it would lose its relevance, and soon after that I would no longer notice it.
I couldn’t help but make the connection to business growth. So often, in the name of “opportunism,” businesses stop playing to their inherent strengths. In the pursuit for volume, businesses stop focusing on those to whom they are indispensable. No one notices it at first, and, as a matter of fact, the short-term decision is rewarded with increased sales and sometimes even margins. Forecasts are reviewed and increased; and managers sit back, take their bonuses and contemplate just how genius they are.
But soon, almost without notice, the business loses a little relevance. A key customer re-bids a project. Another client cuts back and decides to stop an initiative. All, easily explained by management as “things beyond our control.” Then, it becomes more and more noticeable. Margins begin to erode, win rates decline, and costs grow. It’s what happened to Starbucks, NBC, and it happens to every business that loses its “plot” – that special reason that a group of people decide to make you a part of their life. Businesses that grow continually find ways to reinforce their plot. They get stronger and they become more indispensable to their fans. It’s often said that the cost of keeping a customer is a lot less than the costs of gaining a new one, or losing an old one. Great businesses – “Must See Businesses” – live that ideal everyday. Great businesses, like great shows, stories and television networks, stay true to their plot.
What’s your plot, and how are you sticking to it?
What Screenwriters Can Teach Business Executives
Anyone who knows me, or reads this blog, knows that I’m a big, BIG fan of story. I’ve always believed that the best story wins. Because of that, I bought Robert McKee’s classic book Story. After a couple of years sitting on my bookshelf, I finally brought it home and began reading it. And boy! Am I glad I did. The book is written for aspiring screenwriters, and it was my hope that I’d gain some insights to improve Imagine’s story and my clients’ stories’. Less than 10 pages into it, I had so many powerful quotes and thoughts that I had to put the book down and look at my business to see how I’m applying the thoughts today.
I thought I’d share these lessons with you. Below are a few excerpts. You’ll see the main thought McKee puts forth, an excerpt from McKee written for screenwriters, and my take. Take a look and tell me what you think – how would applying the principles of great story improve your business?
RSS subscribers click here if you do not see the presentation below.
Disproportionate Rewards – The 10X Advantage
I’ve just created a new presentation that highlights what my company does. As I completed it, I realized that I desired feedback on whether it hit the right notes or not. As readers of this blog know, I hate traditional research to figure this stuff out. I’m a firm believer that you should practice in the market and learn in real life situations. So I thought, where better to get that real life feedback than from the readers of this blog. Below is our new presentation, hit play and please let me know what you think. Thank you.
Finding Demand Creators
Earlier this week, I wrote a post about The 5 Levels of Sales Excellence. It’s generated a lot of discussion, best summed up by this stream of comments:
- Rodney Johnson says:
Doug – you nailed this one. I can tell you that businesses are struggling with the peddlers and commoditizers in their organizations. If they could just find a few Professionals, they would be in heaven. If they could find a Demand Creator, they would have found Utopia.
So let me ask you. Where does one look? How do we evaluate? And are Demand Creators even available?
- Doug Davidoff says:
Rodney, that is a great question. I’ll begin writing the answer now. I’ll post it as soon as it’s done.
- Rodney Johnson says:
I thought about my question, and at least in my world working with CEOs through Vistage, I can say with certainty that the Demand Creators tend to be the CEO/Entrepreneur of the organization. They have the skill set. They have the business acumen. They have the connections. And they definitely have the drive. If this is the case, finding individuals out there with Demand Creation skills is likely a very elite and small group. Your thoughts?
Here are my thoughts:
First and foremost, Demand Creators and even most professionals are very rarely (to a statistically insignificant level) “found”; instead, they are made. The only meaningful exception to this, as Rodney points out, is found at the CEO and entrepreneur level. They create demand, most often, because they are the creators of the value for their company and can’t help but go deep and resonate with buyers. The challenge is that CEO/entrepreneurs create demand in a non-replicable way and that creates a “growth wall” that halts most companies’ growth.
While sales mythology is filled with stories of “natural” sales superstars, reality rarely lives up to the story. The only meaningful difference between these natural sales superstars, Demand Creators and unicorns, is that the sales superstar does actually exist; but they are EXTRAORDINARILY hard to find, they are very expensive and they are very difficult to keep happy. Peter Drucker said you can’t scale a business requiring genius, and the same is true here.
The Critical Element to Make Demand Creators
The prerequisite to make/create Demand Creators is a repeatable, sustainable sales and marketing process. This is where IBM destroyed its competitors in IBM’s heyday. IBM was a superior sales organization, not because they hired better sales people (actually, IBM had a huge advantage in their ability to hire younger, less experienced salespeople than their competitors), but because they had a superior process – in the full sense of the word.
This leads to another myth – salespeople hate process. Properly stated (and in the context of my post on Demand Creators) it is true: pests, peddlers and commoditizers hate process. Professionals and Demand Creators thrive on effective process.
Please don’t confuse a repeatable sales and marketing process with things like the stages of a sale. While I’m a big fan of a lot of sales training programs out there (and they’ve certainly inspired a lot of my thinking over the last 20 years), they do not represent process. At best, they represent stages. Whether you’re talking about Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, Miller Heiman, Neil Rackham, Sandler, Huthwaite, Bosworth, et al; they demonstrate stages, not repeatable process (please note, it is not my intention to slight any of these fine organizations, I think they all do a very good job).
Think about this for a moment. If you were interviewing an operations manager, front line worker, accountant, controller, CFO, or virtually any non-sales and marketing position and they said something like the following, would you hire them?
“Before you hire me, I want you to know that I have my own way of doing things. It’s worked for me for years so I’m going to do it my way, rather than yours.”
Of course not. Can you imagine an accountant saying they find GAAP just a little too constraining, so they’ll just ignore it (oops, I guess that’s what happened at Enron)? But companies let salespeople do this everyday. An effective process makes a decent salesperson good, a good one great, and a great one a superstar. (A superstar by the way is merely a great salesperson who follows a process – whether it’s a stated process or not.)
The reason a process works and is so critical is that an effective process introduces constraints. Constraints, properly applied, force increased focus – which leads to more depth. A salesperson can only create demand by going deeper than their competitors do. These constraints create predictability, which is critical to effectively allocating resources (which for a salesperson really comes down to time). As author, professor, and consultant Jim Collins has said, if you take the person out of the process, the person is no longer as good.
Further, a repeatable process is, by definition, trainable and coachable. This means that you can hire people who fit a particular profile (as done in any top notch hiring process, and a subject I’ll write about shortly) and teach them how to do this. This makes the position hirable and it enables a company to ensure it can continue to grow.
The problem that the vast majority of small and mid-market businesses (SMB) have is that they have neither the time nor the expertise to create such a system. So they either rely on the salesperson to “figure it out,” have absolutely no system or overly rely on the “systems” presented in sales training programs (which as I’ve already mentioned are not adequate substitutes for process).
I know this because for the last five years a core focus of my company has been helping SMBs create these systems, and we’ve been helping companies make their sales teams professionals and Demand Creators.
Are You A Pest, Peddler or Demand Creator
For the last 20+ years, I’ve spent my life working with businesses and salespeople. I’ve seen quite a bit change over that time – things that have both encouraged and discouraged me. On the encouraging front, I feel confident that today, the best, most capable and professional salespeople are there. Despite several calls for “The End of the Salesforce,” there are salespeople creating more economic value for both their employers and their buyers than ever before. Today, more than ever, the need for highly trained, capable salespeople is a must-have for businesses.
On the discouraging front, everyday, I see a majority of salespeople failing to create the very economic value that exist to create. While many salespeople have truly become professionals and executives, the overall “center of gravity,” if you will, of the sales profession has not moved markedly. This is damaging for two compelling reasons:
- First, in today’s ultra-competitive marketplace caused by the recent drought, salespeople cannot afford to be anything less than excellent to create economic value for the selling organization, and
- Second, the overall lack of professionalism and value creation on the part of sellers is causing an exponential increase in the number of buyers who actively finding ways to avoid dealing with salespeople altogether. They figure that since so many salespeople are commoditizing themselves, they might as well just treat them that way. This had led to the rapid increases in RFPs and the increase in power of procurement in buying processes.
Part of my company’s underlying mission is to end all of this bad selling and to support the understanding and growth of the strategic importance that sales and salespeople have. So, for the last 15 years, I’ve been keeping copious notes on the difference between bad salespeople, decent ones, good ones, and great ones. This has led to the creation of what I call The 5 Levels of Sales Excellence. Understanding these levels is important to ensuring that your sales efforts create value.
The 5 Levels of Sales Excellence
At the bottom are the pests. These are the salespeople who just go out and bother people. Their disciples of the “sales is purely a numbers game,” and gosh darn it if they don’t go out there pushing numbers. They’re the ones who show up at a networking event and greet all comers with the battle cry, “Nice to meet you, here’s my card.” They’re poor at asking questions, they don’t listen and they extract value from the process. The biggest problem they represent (even if you don’t have pests on your team) is that it is the profile of the pest that first comes to mind, and is most associated, with salespeople. When executives in your buyer’s organization here a salesperson from your company is coming, pest is the picture that comes to mind, even if they know that your salesperson isn’t one. So, you must always manage against this perception.
The peddler is focused on the “stuff they’re selling.” Often times, they’re great conversationalists (in that they can tell some terrific stories and have much charisma), and they play the part of resource, but you know you’re dealing with a peddler because they spend far more time talking than working to understand. Their “solution” is always the right one “if you’d just understand.” Peddlers don’t listen well, when they ask questions they’re not high value questions, and they don’t “go deep”. A peddler focuses on getting to the presentation/proposal/recommendation as quickly as possible and firmly believes that you have to ask someone to say “yes” five times to have a real chance at success. They thrive on objections, as they’re “buying signs.” Peddlers create little or no value in the sales process, and as a result they lengthen sales cycles and increase sales costs.
I used to call the commoditizer a “professional peddler.” The commoditizer is clearly focused on the solution. Typically, they have a significant level of expertise when it comes to the solution, and they believe firmly in it. Commoditizers ask a lot of questions (they’ve learned that’s important in selling), but the questions are very low value questions, and do not provoke and probe deeper issues. The problem the commoditzer has is that they are so clear about the solution that they suffer from the curse of knowledge. This means that to be fully understood and valued, the buyer must fully understand their problem (which they rarely do). Because they are so focused on the solution, buyer’s don’t view them as important until they have already decided that they need what the seller provides. At this point, decision criteria have been established and the buyer is typically in a shop mode, price becomes increasingly important in the selection process and differentiation is difficult (hence why we call this level the commoditizer). At this level, the sales person is doing an awful lot right, but because they are solutions focused they do not create value.
Important Point: This brings me to an important point. If the focus of your go-to-market efforts is on your solution and attempting to “explain why your solution is best” rather than on diagnosing you buyer’s issues, then you are peddling or commoditizing – at best!
The professional is focused on what the buyer needs. It is the professional that begins to earn a “seat at the table” and is viewed as an important player by the buyer. Buyers value professionals because they know that their best interests are being looked after. Professional’s ask high value questions, probe deeply and help to refine the decision criteria. Professionals create value in the sales process. Their primary drawback is that they limit their focus to the direct issues that their solution addresses and they rely heavily on “treating” the buyer’s awareness. While they do diagnose, they are not diagnosticians, so if the buyer is misunderstanding their problem or is merely aware of their symptoms, professionals will struggle in changing the perceived need, hence, they do not create demand.
Which brings me to the fifth, and highest, level of sales excellence: The Demand Creator. Demand Creators are superstars and when you think of them, you rarely think of them as “salespeople.” When Demand Creators sell (and believe me, they’re the most powerful sellers there are), it doesn’t feel like selling. Demand Creators are completely buyer focused, possess a tremendous degree of business acumen, and are viewed as critical resources by their buyers. Demand Creators have mastered results oriented conversations with buying organizations, have the ability to speak to a variety of levels of buyers and create value in everything they do. Demand Creators are tremendous advantages to their selling organizations, the selling organization doesn’t have to worry about “differentiating” because the Demand Creator is different. The Demand Creator is able to take the conversation with a buyer so deep that they eliminate competition. Demand Creators are comfortable that not everyone should buy from them, and that “now” may not be the best time to solve a problem. While Demand Creators work very hard, they make selling look and feel effortless. When you’re working with a Demand Creator, you know it.
So, where are you – and why? What stories can you share about salespeople you’ve encountered at each level?
It’s All About People
You can have the best strategy. I’ll even you give you the best tactics. But, if you want to succeed in business, I’ll take the right people – every time. (Of course, if I have the right people, it’s only a matter of time until I have the strategy and tactics that get me where I want to go.)
I’ve often said to friends that there’s a reason that most small businesses stay small. The primary reason is because of their unwillingness to deal with the people issue. Too often, companies do all the right things strategically. They determine the right place to go. They invest in the right tactics. Then they ask people who are not capable of succeeding to implement the strategy. The reasons are many, and include several of the following:
- This is what we could afford.
- They’ve been with us a long time.
- They’ve done well in the past.
- They work really hard.
- They’re very loyal.
In today’s drought, small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) have to be better than they have ever been before. One of the advantages that large businesses have is that they can absorb mediocrity far more than SMB’s can. The advantage SMBs have over their larger competitors is that they are closer to their customer, more capable of creating demand, and they’re quicker and faster. The key to taking advantage of these advantages lies in the people that are executing, adjusting, and executing again. Today, SMB’s can simply not tolerate having the wrong people in important seats.
While the definition of “right” differs from company to company, here are some key attributes that I’d look for in every important position:
- Business acumen
- Judgment
- The willingness to put their ego aside. (This means that being right is far less important to them making the right progress. They thrive on learning from mistakes.)
- Always maintain a learning posture
- For more attributes and ideas read Bob Corlett’s The Staffing Advisor Blog.
I’ve spent my life working with SMB’s and fully believe that SMB’s are Amenrica’s true innovators, job creators, and wealth creators. Your mission is too important not to deal with the people issue. Jim Collins said it best, in his book Good to Great that the key is to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off. I realize this concept is tremendously difficult in practice, but that difficulty is what gives those who follow it such a critical advantage in the future.
So, how are you practicing this in your company?
Overpromise And Deliver
You show me a salesperson that doesn’t overpromise a little and I’ll show you a salesperson that’s not driving economic value for their company.
I hate timidity in the market. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a degree of humility, but timidity gets you nowhere. One of the surest signs of timidity is wrapped up in the statement that salespeople should “under-promise and over-deliver.”
I’ve written before about why the “exceed expectations” theory of customer service is flawed, and about the drought facing all businesses today. There’s an old adage that says, “if you’re not growing, you’re shrinking.” I’ll add, “If you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse.”
Getting better is a state of mind, it’s a never-ending pursuit. It is easier, faster, and less risky when you are constantly getting a little better every day. Ten moderate improvements are far more effective than one big leap. Too often businesses attempt to get better in a chunky manner, where they make big improvements at various times.
Businesses launch new initiatives, new products, or new innovations. The marketing and sales teams are then directed to take these improvements to the market. Management sits back (a slight exaggeration) confident that more and bigger orders will flow in and margins will expand. Of course, this rarely happens.
When a go-to-market team (anyone involved in driving sales and retaining clients) isn’t constantly pushing the envelope, it becomes very static. It becomes increasingly product and/or solutions focused, and it thrusts itself into the middle of the commoditization trap. Customer and clients get a hardened viewpoint of the selling company, so that when a new, big improvement is introduced, it takes significant time and effort (typically time and effort that is not available) to get buyer and seller in sync. There is also far more risk involved in this approach because the innovation is driven by viewpoint of the selling company, not the demands of the buying company.
While overpromising sounds dangerous, when done properly, it’s not (please note overpromising is not the same thing as promising that you’ll do something that you either won’t do or can’t do – that’s lying). A salesperson overpromises when they identify a new need that they believe can be addressed by the company’s offerings, and they build the selling case on that need, even though it’s not been done before that way.
When a salesperson effectively overpromises, they drive three critical business results:
- They increase the perceived value of the sale (thus shortening the sales cycle time and increasing margins), because the sale is directed at a critical customer need, rather than a solutions-oriented benefit.
- They push their company to get better. They knock down the “that can’t be done” walls before they’re build. They force operations to find ways to get more done.
- Because they’re allowed to overpromise, they go deeper in understanding the customer, and the knowledge they gain from understanding their customer better than they understand themselves (the first, and most important, rule in creating demand) gives the company a significant competitive advantage.
What do you think?
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Resources
Doug's Washington Business Journal Columns- Intelligent Growth Articles
Third Wave Selling Blog
Products to Grow
