Tag Archives: relevant

Make It Relevant

17 Feb

Make it relevant

I’m a big fan of Kevin Sasser’s The Sales Wars blog.  He  must be really busy in his day job because he’s not posted in almost 2 months.  Well, my wait is over and as usual, I learned something and laughed at the same time.

Definitely read the full blog post.  After the funny analogy, Kevin writes about a colleague who is putting together an agenda for marketing to update the sales team.  The standard agenda is suggested:

  • Our company overview
  • What we see happening in the industry
  • Our “vision”
  • Our unique approach

To which Kevin figuratively sticks his fingers in his mouth at the thought of listening to all that.  What struck me is that the sales team is probably doing the same thing to the prospect!  You are polite while marketing pitches you but you’re secretly daydreaming or reading your BlackBerry under the table.  Wanna bet your prospect is doing the same as  you pitch?  Kevin suggested the following agenda for marketing.  I suggest you follow the same agenda when selling to prospects:

  • Why you are in my office taking up my time
  • My problem that you can solve for me
  • How you will solve the problem in clear, concise, concrete terms
  • The benefit that you will deliver to me that your competitor can’t

As I get reminded at home, it’s not about me, it’s about what’s important to them!

Advertisement

Tags: , , ,

Get in the Door – Be Assumptive not Consultative

16 Oct

I attended the “Winning Big Company Clients” event in NYC earlier this week.  The event was hosted by Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0 with a panel discussion led by Jill Konrath, author of “Selling to Big Companies” and Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide Technologies.

Jill’s discussion was very interesting.  While she admitted that much of what she wanted to talk about was in her book, it was beneficial to get the synopsis.

Her main point is that the corporate decision makers use the delete key first.  When listening to your voice mail, their finger is on the *3 or whatever key combination they use to delete your voice mail and email.  Their preference is to delete, not listen.  So if you are not relevant, your message is deleted immediately.

That means that you don’t have 30 or even 10 seconds to get your point across.  You have 5 seconds to be relevant.  Her studies have shown that corporate decision makers also believe that it’s your responsibility as the sales rep to call them back.  Jill says that you’re their conscience.

Being relevant means you can’t be consultative.  No more, “Hi, this is Jill and I’d like to understand more about your business issues so that we can find a solution for you.”  Corporate decision makers don’t have the time or desire to educate you.  Jill says that you must be assumptive in your belief that they have a pressing problem and that you can solve it.

Jill says that the corporate decision makers will review 3 things in their head as their finger is poised over the delete key.

  • Are you relevant?
  • Is this an urgent problem?
  • Are you credible, ie are you the one to solve this problem?

I found what she said very timely and very interesting.  Thanks, Jill for your insight.  And thanks to Nigel for hosting!

Tags: , , , , , ,