How do you build a customer culture? Archives

Treat Everyone Like A Customer

May 8, 2025

“Treat everyone like a customer because you may need their help someday and everyone wins when they want to help you.” Lew Platt, former CEO, Hewlett-Packard

This was a key cultural component of The HP Way created by founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Platt often conveyed it, in his words. This culture was applied both internally and externally. Whether the person was a cafeteria worker, a customer engineer, or the CEO, we were taught to treat them like a customer. The same was true with external colleagues, whether they did business with us or not. This culture promoted relationships that would allow us to help and be helped when needed.

Do you treat everyone like a customer? Do you create relationships where people want to help you? Are you developing connections where people count on you and where you count on them? Here are four self-checks:

Are you unreasonably accountable?

When something goes wrong and the customer asks for help, the best salespeople try to help even if the problem wasn’t caused by them. They don’t blame or shame. Instead, incredibly successful salespeople are driven by the opportunity to help.

Are you predictable?

Many people prefer predictability over wild creativity. Certainly, they want the best ideas and solutions but predictability is what allows a customer to delegate actions with high confidence that they’ll get what they expected. The best salespeople deliver as expected or will predictably communicate why and how another option is better.

Are you anticipating challenges?

Experienced sellers anticipate hurdles and communicate them to the customer well in advance to avoid surprises. Even good surprises can be troublesome if not anticipated. I worked a project for a manufacturing company where the deployment of our hardware and software was completed a week early. We were on the critical path and the customer team that was dependent on us wasn’t ready. What we thought was a benefit ended up embarrassing that customer team which resulted in a disruptive trust issue.

Are you communicating good and bad news equally?

Good news is easy—bad news is hard. Customers see higher value when you proactively deliver bad news before they learn of it from others. During the same project referenced above, another critical path item was for us to train factory workers on the new applications. We underestimated how much the workers were attached to their old system resulting in unexpected time helping them understand why their management made the change. To avoid surprising management, we used a project team meeting to update everyone about the challenges, well in advance of the due date. We were rewarded by an accountable executive who personally helped us sell the solution to her employees.

Use these four simple self-checks to help you always treat everyone like a customer.

Want more credibility? Do these three things.

May 8, 2025

Businesses don’t make decisions people do, and people make business decisions for personal reasons. Personal and professional credibility is at the core of addressing the personal reasons that drive decision-makers to choose you over your competition. Do three things to earn personal and professional credibility and lifelong customers.

Demonstrate – Basic credibility is earned by showing your customer how your offering will work for them. Even better, let them show themselves. Nothing communicates product credibility more than letting the customer do it themselves. Equally important, if not more so, is how you demonstrate yourself. Answer questions honestly even if not in full agreement with your customer and you demonstrate integrity. Take notes when your customer is lamenting about their internal challenges and you demonstrate empathy. Ask clarifying questions in the face of heated objections and you demonstrate maturity. How you demonstrate your credibility is more memorable than a product demo.
Educate – Everyone benefits from working with people who bring new, relevant information to the table. Credibility is earned by sharing expert knowledge of your product/service, your industry and that of your customer’s. Advanced education comes when you can help customers, especially in enterprises, to understand the workings of their own company. Suppliers are often privy to information that doesn’t get through the complex communication barriers inside a company. When Boeing was making the transition from proprietary computing to open systems, many end-users didn’t know why applications were changed. Our salespeople educated business executives about the benefits of open systems. We were helping ourselves at the same time we were helping our Boeing IT partners who didn’t have enough hours in the day to educate end-users.
Advocate – Trusted advisor is an over-used phrase but it’s still meaningful. People buy from people they trust and with today’s speed of business the difference between your offering and that of your competitor’s, is typically small. The differences that interest decision-makers are indicators of whom with they’d rather work—you or them? Certainly, you want to advocate for your offering and you want other customers to advocate for you. However, the way you deepen your credibility is to advocate for others who can help the customer when you cannot. Some consider this a loss of control but, in truth, it’s a huge gain in credibility because the customer sees you as someone truly looking out for them.

I keep in touch with former executives at Boeing who I first met as prospective customers. After we had all moved on to different roles they told us over dinner one night that, “In the end, we chose you guys because we preferred working with you.” The project they referred to resulted in HP becoming the preferred server supplier to The Boeing Company. Not small business.

Companies don’t make decisions—people do, and people make business decisions for personal reasons.

Business Development vs Sales: Don’t Get Caught in the Trap

May 8, 2025

There are many jobs posted for business development managers but when you read the job description it’s clear that the employer intends to hire salespeople. We see titles like Life Advisor, Personal Banker, and Global Accounts Manager, but the job descriptions call out objectives for increased insurance policies, loan applications, and revenue. Why does this happen?

1. Management doesn’t distinguish between business development and sales

2. Many great business people don’t want to be labeled as sales professionals

The problem is that whether you’re leading an entrepreneurial venture or an established enterprise, business development and sales are different roles, and you need both done well. Let’s define them.

Business development – With any business you must have an environment in which you can do said business. When launching new products or services, you need business development to create an environment that allows you to sell. Tesla is a good example. While the automotive industry existed, selling luxury electric cars that are as much computer as car, did not. Elon Musk had to create an environment in which this new phenomenon could be sold.

One of the many business development goals was to create an infrastructure such that electric cars could be more than short-range, commuter vehicles. He developed business relationships with utilities to enable home charging. He built a channel of retailers, restaurants, etc., that saw the benefit in funding “destination chargers” for use by their patrons. Now, Tesla owners can easily find charging stations along most major highways in the United States. Musk created the business environment in which he could do business. The Motley Fool – Elon Musk: Tesla Charging Stations Will Be “Virtually Everywhere”

Sales – Once you have the environment in which to do business, you can then identify the right people to whom you must sell. In Tesla’s case, they aren’t called salespeople, but they connect with the people who make decisions to be the most visible, credible, viable, capable, and reliable provider of electric cars. After creating an attractive product, and the necessary infrastructure, they used modern marketing methods to increase visibility thus enabling their people to connect with qualified buyers.

Tesla showrooms and social teams are staffed with highly trained people to demonstrate and educate on Tesla features. They help people see the benefits of being a Tesla owner such that want becomes need, making Tesla a viable option. They are capable of appealing to people’s personal motivations for buying whether its safety, simplicity, rewards, recognition, or revolution. Lastly, their customer support culture emphasizes transparent communication with both existing and prospective customers. USA Today – Why Tesla Has the Most Loyal Customers

Don’t get caught by the business development vs sales trap. Hire great business development people and great salespeople who want to sell. Clearly distinguish your expectations for each and you’ll have focused employees getting great results.

©Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC

Customer Relationships: Being Dressed Down Can Dress You Up

May 8, 2025

No matter the strength of customer relationships, there will always be times when decision-makers are uncomfortable or unhappy about how things are going. Their unhappiness can be specific or just general discomfort. Sometimes, they just need to vent.

That venting can come in the form of complaints, or angry rants. Oftentimes the critique is unfiltered and can seem very personal. You might hear problems attributed to you—appropriate or not. No matter what you hear, the best you can do is to listen. The worst you can do is to be defensive and/or make excuses.

(Note: There will be time for calm discussion but not when the customer is too angry to hear you.)

Remember that decision-makers count on you to make them right. They choose you to help them succeed and when the unexpected happens, their peers hold them accountable. When challenged, even the strongest customer relationships can devolve into anger which uncovers more personal motivations. When you listen, you learn about those motivations and you communicate that you’re standing with them.

Experience

I had cold-called Montana State Credit Union four times, asking for their president. I got no, both polite and angry. On my fifth attempt with the president’s assistant I heard a man yelling, “Is that the @#$%*@ check guy again? Put that @#$%*@ through!”

The president railed about how I was wasting their time and how nobody in Montana wanted our checks. That I needed to find a real job, if that was possible. He said I had no value and no clue about his challenges. He said, “I need members to get more loans and credit cards. Unless you can do that, stop calling. Got it?” In seconds, my twenty-three-year-old naïve voice said, “If I can help your people get more loans and credit card accounts, would you buy our checks?”

He went silent and then angrily said, “I should let you try to prove how ridiculous you are.” I offered views on why people are uncomfortable with selling and how our training addressed that. Long story short—the president agreed to one training.

(Another note: We were trained to conduct day-long trainings in person. I wasn’t budgeted for travel so I had to do the training on a con-call and they gave me 90 minutes on a Saturday.)

Nobody in Montana was happy to be at work on Saturday but a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts agreed to deliver to the credit union if I bought six dozen donuts and coffee. That calmed emotions, slightly.

I conducted an abbreviated session and their supervisor agreed to a follow-up call in two weeks. Surprisingly, the next Friday the president called saying his people were already selling more services. He asked for another training. He also mentioned our training to his peers in the Montana credit union community.

In less than a year, Montana went from no business to our checks being available at almost half the credit unions in the state. I did Saturday morning trainings about twice a month. They weren’t buying checks; they were buying more new loans and credit card accounts, as vented by the credit union president. The checks were simply how they paid us.

I eventually met that president at a convention in Valdez, Alaska. I was managing our booth and he introduced himself saying, “I wanted to shake the hand of the pest who helped us sell more services.”

Customer Relationships: Being dressed down can dress you up.

Seven essentials of a No Surprises culture

May 8, 2025

Customers are business people – they know that change happens. They know that plans are modified. Changes don’t make customers question our RELIABILITY – surprises do – whether good or bad.

Wall Street is an example. When companies announce earnings that are worse than expected their stock can understandably see a sell-off. But the same is true when earnings are much better than expected. Why? Investors want corporate leaders to know their business well enough to accurately forecast results such that they create a no surprises culture. When performance far exceeds forecasts, investors question management’s knowledge of their business. These are surprises that increase investor’s risk, which can reduce perceived stock value.

Customers are investing in us and, like Wall Street, they hate surprises. What are the essentials for creating a no surprises culture?

Be unreasonably accountable – Customers expect us to be there when the unexpected happens. Whether we caused the situation or not, a powerful tool for earning lifelong customers is to take accountability for the best next actions that ensure the customer’s successful use of your products and services.

Be appropriately responsible – No matter how hard we try, we make mistakes that cause unexpected situations. Products don’t perform as expected, we don’t hit milestones, our work causes issues for other suppliers, etc. When that happens we need to overtly accept responsibility and show that we have a course of action to address the issue. This doesn’t mean we take responsibility for others’ mistakes.

Be predictable – Early in a relationship we often want to be overly responsive in ways we can’t maintain. By doing so, we set unrealistic expectations that make us unpredictable over time. Under-promise and over-deliver remains a necessary adage.

Always anticipate – Respond to the customer’s needs before they ask. When we’ve taken the time to understand our customer, their industry and how we can serve them, we often are better positioned to foresee potential problems. The issues can range from products to politics, and we often gain a different view from the outside versus what our customers perceive from the inside.

Humbly communicate good news – We absolutely want credit for things we do well, but we get more credit when we allow the customer to find it themselves. My dad used to say, “If you have to ask for recognition, you don’t deserve it.” I’ve also found that things we consider to be good performance are often things the customer just expects. Asking for recognition is like asking the customer to thank you for allowing them to buy your product.

Overtly communicate bad news – We always want to be the first to communicate bad news about our performance. It shows that we’re going to be proactive about finding the solution, and it eliminates the opportunity for the competition to mischaracterize our issues. If the competition raises something to the customer that we haven’t already communicated, then it’s a bad surprise. If we communicate it first, it’s old news.

Being dressed down will dress you up – Customers are people too, and when we make mistakes they may want to blow off steam. The benefit is that customers are often most honest when they’re angry. This is when we get the opportunity to deeply understand what is most important to them so that we can better anticipate in the future. When we can be dressed down without falling apart or becoming defensive, the customer feels listened to and after they cool off we’ve gained additional respect that dresses us up. We gain respect because we simply listened and learned, in a heated situation.

When a no surprises culture becomes habit, we’re well on the path to winning lifelong customers – the lifeblood of enterprise selling.

“Complex problems usually have a simple explanation.” – Lew Platt

May 8, 2025

In spring of 1992, Lew Platt was named to succeed John Young as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Prior to becoming CEO, Lew was the executive sponsor for our Boeing relationship. Those of us on that team were lucky to work with Silicon Valley’s low key, genuine and self-effacing leader – highly respected across industry.

Before taking the reins from Young, Platt was in Seattle for his quarterly visit to Boeing. He could have cancelled but he valued customer visits and keeping commitments to his sales teams. I was responsible for one meeting that day, with a Boeing SVP who was leading a new secret project. We knew Boeing was going to invest a lot, make a significant culture shift, but we knew little else. I thought it would be a great meeting for Lew.

We arrived at a small building in Renton, WA, across from the Green River, where Boeing was renting space for the small launch team. The building wasn’t a typical Boeing executive office. We entered a room filled with mismatched furniture, five IBM PCs, and stacks of three-ring binders labeled “Boeing confidential” on cafeteria style tables. They had six dilapidated chairs in a circle with no table in the center.

Over the next 70 minutes we listened to Boeing’s SVP who covered everything from reduced airplane costs, airline challenges, Airbus, and that polo-shirts would be the new normal. In the few questions we were able to get in we tried to clarify his points but all we got was, “This is a very complex problem.” After 70 minutes we had no project details and the agenda I developed with the Boeing team was garbage.

I had just taken the new CEO of one of the most successful companies in the world, on a sales meeting that accomplished absolutely nothing. Worse, I was awarded the President’s Club award that year so my mind was racing with what Lew could be thinking.

We left the building to walk to our car which was across the street next to the Green River. We got to the car and instead of opening the door Lew said, “Rick, let’s see if the salmon are running.” We walked to the edge of the road, Lew glanced at the river and calmly said, “Did that go the way you expected?” I said, “No. I’m really sorry.” He said, “Whatever they’re doing must be really complex because I don’t know what they just said.” He chuckled and said, “However, complex problems usually have a simple explanation.” He went on, “If you can understand the simple core of what they’re trying to do I’m sure you’ll find the simple way to sell them something.” I agreed to give him updates.

Lew was an avid fly-fisherman and he knew I fly-fished so he spent a few minutes on small talk about fly-fishing. This was Lew’s way of loosening me up. Even so, I remained tense and he knew it. We walked to the car, opened the doors and Lew said, “Rick, Don’t sweat it. These things happen.” We got in the car, shut the doors, and he said, “But we don’t need it to happen again.” He laughed and continued the fly-fishing talk.

I learned two important lessons that day. I learned that even one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, broke complex issues into their simplest components in order to both solve problems and to sell better. I also learned that respect and compassion from a leader teaches an employee as much as any lecture or rant.

It was around then that I started developing The Five Abilities® and its first inception was complex. It was helping nobody but me and, at HP, that meant it wasn’t meaningful. That comment by Lew, along with coaching from my management, led to the simplicity that is The Five Abilities today.

(Note: We learned the simple explanation behind Boeing’s complex problems leading to HP being selected as the server provider for the program called DCAC/MRM. I was appointed to the IT board and had a cubicle in their program office.)

“Complex problems usually have a simple explanation.” – Lew Platt. The more we practice finding the simple explanation the more we’ll be able to solve complex problems for our customers, clients and partners. The Five Abilities helps us grow sales revenue by focusing on the simple explanations for complex problems faced by salespeople and their customers.

Want to be successfully visible? Great salespeople do three things.

May 8, 2025

VISABILITY – Being seen in the right way, by the right people, at the right time.

I was fortunate to work with many very visible and successful salespeople. None were better at earning VISABILITY than Jennifer and Ann with whom I worked during my Microsoft years. Their customer was a large device manufacturer that had a large phone salesforce. Their job was two-fold: (1) Convince customer executives to design products that featured Microsoft products and (2) to motivate the customer’s salespeople to focus their selling on products that featured Microsoft software.

Right Way – Jennifer and Ann made regular visits to the phone sales center to train and motivate salespeople on Microsoft’s products. They took time, on each visit, to talk with key decision-makers thus learning the personal motivations that drove each of them. This helped to shape their presentations ensuring they were not only correctly educating salespeople but also emphasizing things important to their managers. They were seen in the right way by those sales managers.
Right People – Beyond the managers there were always top salespeople who earned informal leadership roles by being the best performers. They became key influencers who Jennifer and Ann quickly identified allowing them to get advice on how to excite the whole team. They started by doing lunchtime training, in the cafeteria, but found that the key influencers never attended. A check-in with a few key influencers taught them that people only attended to get the free lunch and that the top performers didn’t take the full break because it took away from their selling time.Jennifer and Ann adapted their actions to expand their relationships with both managers and key influencers. They focused more on the phone salespeople by opening a help station, serving snacks, and distributed prizes for achieving sales milestones. With their adapted actions, the right people were now excited about selling Microsoft products and, not surprisingly, they sold more.
Right Time – The right time to be seen was not in the cafeteria. The right time to be seen was while the salespeople were selling. Jennifer and Ann adjusted to the customer’s time rather than taking them out of their element for training. Salespeople generally learn best by doing and the new actions accommodated that. Being seen at the right time garnered better results for the customer and Microsoft.

VISABILITY – Being seen in the right way, by the right people, at the right time

©Rick Wong, The Five Abilities® LLC

Salesforce Automation – Three things you get from it

May 8, 2025

Salesforce Automation (SFA) has been around for many years in various forms. For most of its existence it’s been a tool for large corporations with significant IT budgets and IT staffs. Recently, it was reported by GetApp®, a site that connects businesses with sales management software vendors, that “48% of SMBs are migrating from manual methods to SFA software for the first time.”

What’s changed? The cloud, the cost, and software/service compatibility are key factors.

Today’s cloud offerings have turned previously complex software deployments into simple turn-key services that eliminate the need for complex infrastructure and support. GetApp® recently ranked the Top 25 Small Business Sales Apps and all are simple and secure cloud-based services with excellent support offerings. (See the rankings below.)

The cost of SFA is no longer calculated in the thousands of dollars but instead in the hundreds, for even the most comprehensive offerings. In many cases the cost is even lower for very simple cloud-based services.

The compatibility of these services has advanced greatly from antiquated offerings that only compile native reports. Today’s SFA tools integrate with productivity software, digital marketing tools and social media solutions. It’s becoming commonplace for small businesses to use automated marketing tools that are either part of the SFA service or easily integrated with it.

The advancements in SFA are substantial and with the help from services such as GetApp® it’s easy to find the right applications for your company. But there’s a caveat – even though SFA tools are simple to find and implement, the biggest barrier to success continues to be usage. Can you get your salespeople to use the tools effectively and will the data result in more sales or just more work for salespeople?

This is a conversation inside every company that implements SFA and the focus is usually about how you force salespeople to use the tool. Unfortunately, that’s the wrong conversation because the success of SFA starts with management, both sales and non-sales. The foundation for a successful SFA deployment is when management expressly needs and uses the information produced by these tools.

Three things that management can do to motivate salespeople to keep SFA tools updated:

Coaching: Managers and executives can use the information in the SFA tool to structure one-on-one coaching sessions. The SFA tool, when updated honestly by salespeople, will outline successes and difficulties. When sales managers and other leaders, base coaching on helping with those difficulties it motivates salespeople to keep them updated.

I worked with a marketing executive who met with salespeople weekly in order to stay current on customer issues. She would have 45 minute meetings with agendas built from the sales challenges she saw articulated in the SFA tool. Meetings with her were highly valued and she would only meet with salespeople who had current and relevant information in their tool. No surprise – salespeople were motivated to stay current with their tool.

Executive updates: It’s common for salespeople to build executive summaries when executives make customer visits. When required briefing documents are different than what is in the SFA tool, salespeople will forgo tool updates and just focus on creating pristine briefing documents. If, instead, company leaders review information in the tool and don’t require extra work by field personnel, it’s amazing how motivated salespeople are to keep their tool updated.

Smooth change management: The only certainty in any business is that things will change. Salespeople and sales managers earn promotions and/or move on – executives do the same.

When I took over the Asia Region for one of Microsoft’s divisions, I learned from one of my mentors that all I needed to know should be in the SFA tool. He suggested that I not ask for transition reports from my predecessor or any of my directors but instead just review the tool. By acting on his suggestion it helped me learn the unfiltered realities, it helped me to see who wasn’t performing, and it helped me see where my support was needed. It was much more effective than having everyone build customized reports which resulted in more work and occasionally fabricated information.

You’ll see better utilization of SFA tools when sales and corporate leaders consistently use the information to enhance coaching, simplify executive updates, and smooth the constant change management that is required in all organizations.

Top three motivators for great salespeople

May 8, 2025

Spoiler alert – Money is not a top motivator for salespeople that are consistently great.

How to motivate sales people is a common debate among sales managers and compensation specialists. It’s commonly assumed that salespeople are money hungry individuals and that the more you pay them the better they’ll perform. Wrong.

In my 30+ years of selling, managing salespeople and managing sales managers, not one that I would consider incredible, counted income as their key motivator. The joy of winning, helping and relating are the consistent traits I see in the great salespeople I’ve had the fortune of working with and learning from, throughout my career.

Joy of winning – Great salespeople are addicted to competing and winning. That addiction drives them to always be looking for that extra action to increase their probability of winning. That joy draws them back to the battle no matter what the odds. The reason these people work so hard, is due to a healthy paranoia about losing, not because they starve for the big payday. When I talk to these people I can see the joy and energy that surfaces when they talk about competing.

Great salespeople also know how to learn when they don’t win. They clearly distinguish between losing and getting beat which is healthy and they learn from both. Losing is the hardest to take because it means they didn’t do all they could and realized it too late. Getting beat is when they know they’ve done everything in their control and still got beat. (It’d be like me going one on one with Lebron James and getting off one shot he doesn’t block. That would be a miracle.)

Joy of helping – Great salespeople like to help people. Whether it’s delivering needed product information or details on great places to vacation, salespeople need to be helpful. It’s important here to distinguish between real help and manufactured help. The latter is when salespeople create crisis or situations that require their assistance. I see this too often and it’s not a trait of great salespeople. Real help is when an action or sharing of information makes it easier for the customer to get their desired result – a standard for incredible successful salespeople.

Joy of relating – Great salespeople relate well to a diverse set of people. This doesn’t mean they’re all extroverts or charmers, but more that they’re genuinely interested in the knowledge they gain from relating with others. It’s more common than most think, for sales people to be introverted but still be very curious about what others know. The joy of relating comes from the sales person’s desire to obtain knowledge from other people rather than from a book, film or blog.

Great salespeople aren’t necessarily the stereotypical smooth-talking, cut throat, aggressive, big personalities. They aren’t the people that close the hardest during the interview and, in fact, many great salespeople will tell you they don’t recall the last time they did a hard close.

Look for those who are addicted to winning, enjoy helping people and who naturally relate to a diverse set of people. These are the people who will sell the most for you and, consequently, they’ll be the ones who have the highest incomes – but not because money is their top motivator.

(Note: This is an article first posted in 2013 but the topic has come up in multiple workshops so I decided to post it again.)

The 80/20 rule for winning lifelong customers

May 8, 2025

The Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule, is well-known throughout many professions. It states that about 80 percent of the results come from 20 percent of the effort. This principle applies to sales in the area of opportunity management – 80 percent of our sales comes from 20 percent of our opportunities. However, it also applies to the sales activity we undertake to win each opportunity.

Our actions that most focus on unique customer needs, are more creative and improvisational, and this is what sets us apart from our competition. 80 percent of what we deliver is what everyone does. The improvisational 20 percent is our unique value that wins us 80 percent of our business along with lifelong customers.

I spent seven years trying to make it in the music industry where the 80/20 rule also applies. 80 percent is what everyone plays – the melodies, chords and rhythm are what all musicians must do and many get by just doing that. Unique creativity and improvisation is the 20 percent that makes musicians special. However, to enable that 20 percent, musicians need to know and practice the melodies, chords and rhythm enough for them to become habit. When the 80 percent becomes habit we free up our minds to apply more of our musical abilities to improvisation.

Sales is very much like playing music in that 80 percent of what we do to win customers is the same as what our competitors do – our melodies, chords and rhythm. We do standard things to be visible, credible, viable, capable and reliable. The need for improvisation comes when our general approach doesn’t exactly fit the needs of the customer, which is most of the time. We need to appeal to the unique requirements of each customer without changing our basic proposal. It’s all about presenting the solution we can provide but in the customer’s language. Just like great improvisational musicians don’t change the song, we don’t change our products. We need to improvise on top of the standard tools we use to present our value and abilities in a way that each customer can apply our products and services to their unique problems.

The Five Abilities® helps us to turn 80 percent of our deliverables into habit meaning we spend far less than 80% of our time on those activities. Instead we focus more of our time and energy on creativity and improvisation – the 20 percent that addresses the unique needs of our various customers.

For example, Sony Pictures incurred a serious hack attack in November 2014. If we were selling IT products and services to Sony Pictures, we might focus our value propositions on our security capabilities and that of our partners. We couldn’t change what we’re selling but we could improvise our presentations to earn VISABILITY by emphasizing our strength in cyber security.

If instead, we were selling to Amazon which is aggressively focused on global growth, we might want to depict our technology as easy to scale with people who have expertise in the global arena. Again, we wouldn’t be changing the product but instead we’d improvise our presentations to earn VISABILITY by emphasizing our strengths in scalability and global services.

The Five Abilities® teaches us to make habit of 80 percent of our sales approach and guides us to use more of our creative and improvisational energy on the 20 percent of our actions that differentiate us from competitors. The result is more wins and more lifelong customers.

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