You Don’t Sell What You Think You Sell

March 30, 2010 · Filed Under Business Growth Strategy, Commoditization, Creating Demand, Sales Strategy · 2 Comments 

I realize I’m about to induce headaches, but it’s critical you stay with me.  I’m losing sleep, because every day I’m seeing really good businesses throw themselves into the middle of the commoditization trap.  Once there, your future is best described as quicksand – either do nothing and sink slowly and fight like mad and sink more quickly.

The fatal error can best be described as taking what you do and selling it. If you think what you do is what you sell, YOU ARE A COMMODITY, AND YOU WILL BE RIGHTFULLY COMMODITIZED.  If that’s the case, then you must play the commoditization game to have any chance of success.  (That game, by the way, is won by growing volume and cutting prices faster than anyone else.  It is a race to the bottom.)

I created the following SlideShare presentation to illustrate my point.  If you’re new to the blog, you can read these posts about pricing and value creation.

You Don’t Sell What You Think You Sell

View more presentations from ImagineBizDev.

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1st Quarter Check-In

March 30, 2010 · Filed Under Business Growth Strategy, Sales Strategy · 1 Comment 

At the beginning of the year, I asked you to take a 90-Day Snapshot of your first quarter.  I asked you to define success on April 1, 2010.

Well, April 1 is two days away – How did you do?

My top objective was to add 4 new franchisers to our prospect list.  We added three and one is already been filtered out.  So, I didn’t hit my objective this quarter, but we definitely made some progress and have learned a lot about what we really need to do to be successful.

Now it’s time to take your second quarter snapshot.  Here it is:

Stop what you’re doing and answer this question:

It’s July 1, 2010 and you’re reviewing the second quarter of the year. Precisely how will you measure success? What will it take to give yourself an ‘A’?

Are you done with the list?

Now, choose the single most important item – if you could only achieve one item on your list, what would it be?

Why is answering this question so important? Because we all have a tendency to try to do too much and to lose focus. The key to success, especially in challenging markets, is to focus. It is far, far better to over-allocate resources to fewer opportunities than it is to underallocate resources to many. Don’t ever lose sight of what is most important – and ensure that you over-allocate your resources – time, money and energy – to that.

Want to exponentialize the results? Have every single person in your company answer the same question and post the answers in a central location – or company wiki.

If you’d like the benefit of public accountability, share your most important success in the comments section.

Mine? To successfully launch our new salesperson leadership program tentatively titled The Sales Genius Network.


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