I’m David Nour of Relation Economics and this is Connecting the Dots.
This episode, excite or disturb people to create opportunities. In this chronic economic climate, in any economic climate for that matter, it’s tough to solve the business costumers. Budgets cuts, diminishing client relationships, more diligent often committee reviews or your proposals, an elevated decision making process and rules within the organization are all making prospecting, proposing, negotiating, and particular closing business that much tougher for everyone. The only saving grace, this economic cycle too will pass.
Deals are in fact getting done, how? By elevating a conversation and the value of your unique solution as a must have not simply a nice to have. In short, you must excite or disturb your current and prospective clients to create movement.
Disturbing them goes beyond traditional constitute of selling, solution selling, pain, vivo and all the other jargons we have all heard and implemented at some point in our careers. In many of these cases, the vendor sales team asked a series questions trying to engage the prospect in a dialog. I’m also talking about something dramatically different than a product sale where you’re pushing features functionality and generic benefits. Disturbing them is all about helping customers see a competitive situation with a new perspective. Often more painful to ignore now than to go ahead and address. It’s not for every campaign and certainly not right for every sellers DNA but if the way you’ve been prospecting just isn't working anymore, you might want to consider the following three critical steps.
Before we cover the steps, consider the following. Don’t loose sight of the objective, disturbing them is indeed intended to help the costumer find investment resources whether time, human, or capital even when an allocated or discretion or spending is dried up. The process must start with a different mindset. The intent isn't to be flipped or difficult, it’s to provide such a unique perspective the same problem that the only response from the customer is “Wow, I’ve never thought about it that way.” You must be able to connect the problem with the solution that you can actually offer. The one that immediately addresses the issue on the table, this isn't time for fluff or promises that you can't keep, value promised, value delivered, period.
So, here’s how to disturbed your costumers intentionally. Number one, think big. Focus on a serious threat to the bottom line to make it worthwhile for an executive to meet with you and much higher propensity for return on your investment of time and effort in sales campaign. Engage them in more strategic and impact how and why discussions versus simply detectible what needs to get done. Look for incongruence between what they’re thinking and doing versus the stated strategic objectives of the organization. What flow of assumptions are they making, what alternative course of action are they ignoring. What if they’ve tried a different approach? One that you’ve seen succeeds with other clients and other industries or similar challenging situations.
Number two, develop a disturbing view of the problem. Often, the customer’s current approach has some validity. The challenges is often too safe, too conservative based on a conventional wisdom, status quo or just the same way they’ve always done it.
I love Marshall Goldsmith’s book. The title is “What got you here won't get you there” in which he talks about the 20 annoying habits which keep you from reaching the top. The same recommendations to individuals also apply to organizations, your market is changing all around you without a unique independent perspective of the perceived value you deliver. The risk of having that value change disrupted increases a great deal. A mentor once told me that value creation is derived from value change disruption. If you don’t disrupt your value change, someone else is going to.
Number three, disturb economic buyers. The painful truth is that most deals that never get done were proposed to people who couldn’t get them done inside the organization. Buying decisions are getting escalated to executive levels you may not be calling on on a regular basis. That is where your portfolio of relationships is critical. Who walks you in that door is as critical as what you’re being walked in the door for. Gain the trust and respect of key influencers to walk you into the office of economic buyers empowered to reallocate funds.
In my experience, budgets are seldom a financial issue, their priority issue. When you disturb their thinking, it helps them see the need to recalibrate their priorities. Last but certainly not the least, what makes you a credible source of advice in this issue? Can your team defend not simply regurgitate your solution. In a market full of noise what are you doing to elevate yourself above that noise? That’s where intellectual horsepower, a well researched, well crafted disturb position and the ability to engage executives as peers becomes a strong asset to your efforts.
I title this session as disturb or excite. Unfortunately in our experience in down economies disturb triggers more of an action movement and opportunity. In rare cases, the upside potential can also create a sense of excitement toward that same action movement or opportunity. That’s when you van excite the customer into potential, possibilities, growth, upside and certainly an unfair competitive advantage based on implementing your solution. Let me ask you again in this economic times, are you disturbing your most valuable relationships with the unique prospective. Compelling enough for them to reallocate resources to engage and implement.
Visit us at relationshipeconomics.net to learn more. I’m David Nour with Relationship Economics and this has been another episode of Connecting the Dots.
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