Doug DavidoffBen McConnell & Jackie Huba over at The Church of The Customer recently blogged about CoffeeCup Software and how this company has taken transparency to extreme levels and turned their client base into their sales force. Here’s what they say:
If you’re really lucky, you might stumble across someone like CoffeeCup Software, whose website features 100 referenceable customers from 11 countries who will answer your questions about the company, its products and support.
That’s a company using marketing to help make selling superfluous.
Are they correct? Is this a good idea? Well, I went to CoffeeCup’s website and they make software for website programming – the epitome of a commodity. It’s an over-the-counter solution. It’s simple.
What if you offer a more complex solution – something that requires a specialized understanding of unique situations? In this case (which is true of virtually all value-added solutions), making selling “superfluous” is a bad idea. Your sales approach should create value by providing an accurate diagnosis of a prospect’s problem, and if it creates value, then it is not superfluous.
I do not make it easy for prospects to talk to my existing clients early in the sales cycle. Why? My prospects aren’t ready to talk to my clients until they understand the problem they have. When I first meet a prospect, or when a potential buyer first finds out about me from my website, they do not adequately understand their problems. They are aware only of their symptoms, and a ‘self-diagnosis’ often only contributes to the problems they are trying to solve. If they don’t talk to a ‘qualified diagnostician’, they will continue to look in the wrong places for a solution.
Conversations with your current clients are great for enabling a prospect to determine if what you do works, but these conversations are generally counterproductive when it comes to enabling a prospect to determine if they have a need for what you do. I’m all for transparency – just not when it promotes commoditization.