I win,You win,We all win

When I ask participants in my training sessions about the goal of their presentation or sales call, I am often told "They just need to know this..." The presenter or sales rep has been told to deliver the message. This is never the right goal.

This is transactional, task-based activity. It is self-centered versus customer-centered. I suspect we all would admit it given some time. But sometimes not. In my experience, sales reps have been held to a daily call average. More calls is good. Fewer sales calls is bad. A sales manger explained this way: "You may have grown the business, but who knows how many more sales we might have had with even more sales calls?"

Well, marketing should know. This exposes an almost fanatical product orientation. Marketing is following the "better mouse trap" strategy. If you build it, they will come. They only need sales to get the word out and keep customer problems off their marketing and product manager desks.

Every customer interaction must have a benefit for the customer, with a call to action. What can the customer do with this information? If the answer is "nothing", then why are you telling them? Always have a call to action, tied to the payoff, for your customer and audience. Always. Otherwise you are wasting their time.

Is it ever OK not to have a SMART call to action? I used to say no. Further thought leads me to think there might be another reason for a meeting or sales call besides advocating a solution. That other reason is creating a relationship.

Opportunities to demonstrate your knowledge and to improve your understanding of the customers situation are good reasons to ask for your customers time and attention. But you still need to know what is in it for them. This is the hard part - proving your value to a customer while still establishing their trust in you.

Do this by creating expectations and stating your intent to use this information to provide better solutions. Give some examples of how you can help, based on what they tell you. Remember to follow up on these expectations with performance, when you are ready.

So next time I am told "they just need to know this", my response will be, pick one:

1. they will either use this information to do something better or different, or
2. you will use this opportunity to increase their interest in working with you...

Just delivering the message is not an option.