Engage

Are you engaging customers or educating them?  

When you qualify a customer, it’s important to be able to provide them with a compelling reason for using your product or service, a remedy to a pain or problem they experience or a desired outcome they are trying to achieve.  But don’t overdo it. Too often, a presentation can turn into an education and you will have a grateful student who thanks you for your time and then chooses your competitor.

Engagement is free, education costs money.

Your pal,

Sean

What's Your 30 Second Elevator Pitch?

You're on that elevator with a key decision maker/ stakeholder and you have a captive audience for about 30 seconds, what's your pitch?

This is a crucial element to your sales and business success. Take some time to carefully consider what you want to say.Write down what you do and how you do it. Do it more than once. You will  probably have more than one elevator pitch.
As discussed in previous posts, different organizational members will have different needs and wants. You should have a compelling statement for each of them. Business side, tech side, end users. Each needs to be clearly stated, concise and powerful.
Write it out several times. share it with your team for critique and feed back.
Rehearse it. Record it and know it. Once you have something that works for you, everyone in the organization should know it so they too can deliver the pitch when appropriate.
Try to be visual, demonstrate pay value and engage them.
If you are effective you will leave them wanting more.
Go get some!

Your pal,

Sean

Empathy

 

 Selling a service or solution requires more than just the ability to walk the steps of the cycle; it requires empathy with the client, an understanding of his needs, the vision he trying to achieve and the value both real and intrinsic that your solution/service delivers.

Several years ago, I watched Joel Oleson give an address on the significance of creating a well thought out and detailed governance plan for Microsoft SharePoint deployments. Joel is a great speaker, because he loves what he does and he understands the MOSS space better than anyone I have met. During this session Joel made the statement that while no two organizational governance plans were identical, the need for a well thought out plan was universal and making the customer understand this was the make or break component required for a successful launch, rollout and lifecycle.

What steps do you take to demonstrate empathy? Do you understand not only what you are selling but the industry you are selling into and the high level critical needs that your product or service can address?