At a client workshop yesterday in New York I wrote three words on the whiteboard that served as a great backdrop and challenge for the day:
Qualified?
Necessary?
Vital?
Think of this as a hierarchy or scale. As you reach out to or meet with customers, what exactly do you think you’re establishing with your claims and charts and numbers and diagrams? I’d posit that the vast majority of sellers spend an overwhelming share of their time and energy on qualification.
Our audience matches your target consumer.
Our reach is really big.
Our technology really works.
We measure things the way you do.
Past customers have had success with us. Just look at our case studies!
I call this “credentialing” and it only tells the customer we’re another qualified option for you to consider. But customers today aren't looking for more qualified options. This is probably why they don't return your emails and ghost you after that chummy lunch-and-learn.
Set aside for a moment the possibility of establishing why your company or technology is vital; This would imply you are truly a must-buy … that the customer will literally fail without you. It may be true situationally, but it’s rare. Let’s focus the rest of this post instead on a more answerable but often-overlooked question:
Are you necessary?
To establish necessity means that you fill a very specific need in completing or enhancing the customer’s current plan. That you address a very clear gap in their technology or strategy, a gap that is costing them time, money, competitive advantage or all three. That by paying $2 to add your services to the mix they will see a return of $20 – and that you’ll be able to show the math on how you plan to deliver on that promise.
To be necessary means stating all this very specifically and very early. In our training work we focus on a concept called the Diagnosis by asking the question, why does this customer truly need the help of your company right now? No bullshit, no spin, no posturing. Just real reflection and business empathy. You write out the problem that you are prepared to help solve, the gap you are prepared to help fill. You make it the second slide of your presentation. You make it the subject and opening lines of your email. It’s the unsolved problem from which you work backward.
Everything begins with the asking and answering of this question. Everything that matters.
To do less is to simply keep showing up as another qualified option. And there’s no future in that.
Original artwork by Eric Sands.
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