The Single Most Important Driver of Profitable Sales

In my fourth post on this blog (back in September of 2005), I made the point that the ability to get customers/prospects to be willing to pay for a sales call was the biggest sales advantage you could create.  Over the last six months, I’ve come to the realization that it’s no longer merely an advantage – it’s absolutely critical to your ability to consistently make profitable sales.

To put it as simply as I can, if you are not creating real value in the sales process, you’re falling waist deep into The Commoditization Trap. At the risk of over-simplifying corporate structure, I’ve learned executives have one of two focuses.  At the senior level, they’re focused on the problems facing the company, while mid- and lower-levels are focused on managing solutions.

• Problems are strategic and solutions are tactical.
• A problem focus is all about finding the right/best questions to unlock opportunities, while a solution focus is all about finding the most efficient answers.
• Problems deal with changing the status quo, while solutions are about managing it.

The problem that sellers face is that the traditional sales approach is not geared to connecting to the problem-centers of the customer/prospect organization.  I see it time after time.  Selling organizations are so solutions focused that they forget that they’re really in the business of solving problems. With this focus they fall into the vicious cycle of solution selling, where they need to increase their volume at increasing rates to make up for tighter margins and lower win rates.  And simply re-styling your website, or creating a new tag line isn’t enough to break through and gain the attention of the right people.

If you want to be valued, you must first change how your customers/prospects think about the solution you provide.  You must provoke them, and break them out of their traditional, status quo thinking. And you can’t do that when your focus is on your product or service. To succeed, you must create value.  You must teach them something that matters.  You must be able to show them first why they’re failing to get their desired results as easily as they’d like, and further you must be able to show them how they can reach their objectives more effortlessly.  You must ask them questions where they learn about their company and see their challenges from a different perspective. Here are three tips to jump-start your efforts:

• Create a list of questions that will cause your customer/prospect to look at their situation from a new or different perspective.
• Share a 15 – 30 minute presentation providing a unique angle to solving a perplexing problem.  (Please note, this presentation cannot be about you – it must be customer focused and valuable to them.)
• Develop tools that allow customers to assess themselves.

When you do that, you’re doing something worth paying for.  And if you fail to do that, you’re going to be treated like the commodity provider they think you are.