I receive daily inspirational messages from Simon Sinek. This week, one of his emails reminded me of something I learned about sales long ago. It’s about the power of your focus and keeping your energy and efforts on your prospective client’s goals and how you can help them achieve them – not what your competitors have or do.
In my 40+ years of being involved with technology sales, I have experienced many lessons (some of which actually stuck!) I will say that any lesson that is not intentionally and repeatedly followed will eventually become lost in the world’s noise. Those with the best chance of making it into your routines align with your core values.
One of those is your story. The lesson is shifting the focus on how you convey it.
“When you’re good at something, you’ll tell everyone. When you’re great at something, they’ll tell you.” – Walter Payton
Early in my career with Texas Instruments, they focused our sales training around technical facts with little customer focus. I could dump product details with the best of them. Today, many of the technology folks I meet with still practice that approach. It’s all about their products and the company’s story, not the customer or their needs.
The other thing I find when meeting with partnering organizations is the continuous focus on competition and how we overcome them versus how our story fits the prospect’s goals. Being able to understand your prospect’s goals, how you best address them and conveying that message is your goal.
Over the course of my career, I’ve won over better solutions and companies and have lost my share of opportunities to inferior solutions. It all comes down to the story your prospect hears and their belief in its success against their goals. There is nothing more discouraging than learning about a loss that you contributed to with your messaging.
“Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.” – John Wooden
So the lesson is to know your solution, understand your prospect’s needs and align your strengths accordingly to best share that story.
While it is important to understand the competition, your focus needs to be on your story and backing it up with a successful deliverable for the client. That produces revenue and is a great reference for your next story.
If you have a need for a mobile inventory solution for your fixed assets or other unique item management needs, we would love to share our story. Test us and see if we follow the lesson discussed above or just throw a bunch of “why me” stuff at you!
And, if you’re a Workday, PeopleSoft, DPAS, ServiceNow, or another host user, let us show how we can be of value against your goals with our mobilePLUS solution. We love sharing our story once we understand yours.
