Doug DavidoffI don’t remember where I read this, but I found it very insightful – the only value that exists in a library lies in the books you haven’t read. The point is that books that you’ve already read are no longer valuable because you’ve already learned from them – the real value lies in what you don’t know.
The same is true for sales. If all you all you do is address the “needs” that your customer/prospect already knows, you are not creating any value, and your merely being a commodity player. If you want to separate yourself from your competition, the only way to do that is to address items that:
a) your customer/prospect doesn’t know about or understand, and
b) your competition doesn’t address.
The only way you can do that is to go deeper in your questions and conversations than you ever have. You must master The Five Rules For Creating Demand, and you must develop business acumen.
The failure to do this will leave you smack in the cross-hairs of commoditization.