The 22 year-old, college graduate, was excited to take on the challenges of his first real job. He was weary from the interview antics and was thrilled to be at the point of choosing. The most intriguing offers were two marketing and two sales positions, all with Fortune 500 companies. The only job that allowed him and his then fiancé to stay close to family, was selling checks to financial institutions in Washington State.
The initial nine months was all about training and testing him. It reminded him of his sophomore year on his high school football team. It was part learning and part hazing. He learned the basics of the financial industry and got elementary sales training. He had customer support duties that allowed him to experience real, unhappy customers. All this and he learned that he was selling the “best value proposition in the industry.”
He had the privilege of selling side-bound checks unlike all others in the industry. The production managers assured him that this was a value to real customers. Top-bound checks were more prone to destruction when tearing them out of the checkbook and the product he sold was far superior. “The best value proposition in the industry.”
After the nine months of training and hazing, that fresh college graduate excitedly took on his own “new business” territory where his assignment was to cold-call financial institutions for face-to-face appointments. In the first two weeks, he got lunch appointments with two bank VPs and one credit union president, for which he was very proud.
The three lunches had common characteristics. They were cordial, expensive and unproductive. The prospective customers did not even respond to the value proposition. He heard, “Ya, that’s nice” and “Uh-huh” but no interest. The salesperson painfully continued this for another month until he had the fortune of having lunch with a credit union president who asked him, “Do you really believe this crap?”
With perspiration appearing on his brow, he started to answer but the president stopped him. She said, “Look, you gotta stop with the side-bound crap. There is no difference between your product and what we’re using except that the other company is a lot bigger.” She continued, “Now if your checks helped me get our members to do more business with us then we’d have reason for another lunch.”
The young sales person looked confused so she explained how credit unions needed members to get more than checking accounts. She needed them to get loans, safety deposit boxes, etc. She said that her new accounts team wasn’t good at selling additional services because it made them uncomfortable and they just didn’t know how.
That evening, the very dejected sales person was on the phone with his manager. Head in hand he asked if there was a way to use the company’s basic sales training to teach new accounts people how to get more business. The manager said, “We’ve got the material. See if they’ll let you teach it.”
The sales person was too naïve to know better, so he called that credit union president and asked, “If I can teach your new accounts people to sell more services, will you buy my checks?” The president laughed but said; “Now that would be a valuable proposition. I don’t think you can do it but if you can I’ll buy your checks.” It was a dare. He had the opportunity to prove he could do it.
After two months and two training sessions, the president saw results, which turned into that salesperson’s first sale. If you haven’t guessed already, I was that 22 year old, and I learned that customers always develop the best value propositions. What a great thing to learn so early in my career.
If you show a genuine interest in how your customers succeed and how you can help with their challenges, they will tell you what they need. Without any changes to your company’s products, clear customer needs create the best value propositions that you can offer and it will be more about the problems you solve than the products you sell.
Customers create the best value propositions. Sell with that principle and you’ll sell more.
©2014 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities, LLC
