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.
Empathy is the oxygen of your ecosystem. It sustains people and relationships and also acts as fuel for the fires of creativity, production and perseverance. You are A leader in this ecosystem, not THE leader. You'll lead by constantly referencing a very short list of recurring questions.
Right now, there’s an awful lot of showing up. There have been some immediate moves on diversity hiring, and a whole lot of public statements being made — including my own. But showing up is one thing: staying in is entirely another.
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Stopping the Clock breaks the tyranny of the calendar. It allows us to start living again in the present… to focus on the next hour. We can now start visualizing what productivity and joy and excellence look like in our altered world. We have only now. Stopping the Clock let's us make the most of it.
Dwight Eisenhower famously said "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." Today I think rather the opposite is true. As we navigate the disconnection, isolation, disruption and anxiety of today’s pandemic and tomorrow’s shattered economy, I think The Plan is what matters. Let me explain.
The smart managers and evolved sellers are adapting by building new scoreboards. They’re not basing them on sales numbers: with no idea where the curve tops out or the market bottoms, that would be folly. They’re building scoreboards around excellence. They’re creating internal competition around learning, and service, and empathy. Understanding that this is not a time to reap, they are choosing to keep track of what’s being sown.
The five percent we remember from rough times are those who showed up and brought something. They didn’t wait for the struggling party to define the need and ask for help. They were the five percent who said I’m doing this for you and then did it. They anticipated what could be helpful and then acted – not because there would be any payback, but because it was the right thing to do. They could have chosen to be polite: instead, they chose to be useful.