Some sales people lead with value propositions that focus on reducing things. Cost reductions, risk avoidance, and other things that emphasize what we do not want to happen. The best sales people focus on helping customers grow things. Enhancing revenue, increasing productivity, and growing profitability are a few areas from which growth propositions are built.
When we focus our value propositions on growth rather than reductions that is when we get the best appointments, the best engagements and the best customers. Certainly, managing costs and eliminating waste are important things to all business leaders however these things are not typically the primary focus of key decision-makers within growing organizations.
Best Appointments – We all know that there are many who can say ‘no’ but few who can say ‘yes’. This is the nature of business. It does not take much influence and authority to say ‘no’ but it takes a lot of influence and authority to say ‘yes’ especially when it pertains to new ways to advance business. People with final decision-making authority are the kinds of leaders who like to create new ways to grow revenue, enhance customer satisfaction, increase productivity, etc. Things that lead to growth make decision-making movers-and-shakers excited to talk to us.
Best Engagement – The discussions with these decision-making leaders tends to focus on how we can make things work. They want to know how we can jointly deliver the results that we propose. The engagement typically results in us getting deep knowledge of the customer’s operations and challenges. This allows us to make proposals more precise and profitable. When we are not talking to key decision-makers we often find discussions that focus more on risk reduction rather than the rewards. These are people who either cannot or do not want to take accountability for any chance of failure. They see risk as the door to potential disaster while the leaders striving for growth see risk as the door to greater opportunity.
Best Customers – When we build our growth proposals with decision-making leaders we end up winning customers who become teammates. They look forward to the personal and business wins they get when we are successful, together. They win when we win. They stand with us when the unexpected occurs and, of course, they stand with us when we achieve the growth goals that we proposed and sharpened with their help. We have a loyal customer who will help us find more business both in their own organization and in other organizations.
When I was at HP, over 20 years ago, we won a large manufacturing project with the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group (BCAG). This is compelling because it was something we were not supposed to win. BCAG was replacing a system that was deployed almost a decade earlier by our key competitor. It was assumed that the incumbent would win the business. Their key value proposition was that they were the least risky choice. The mantra that spread among the risk-averse evaluators was that nobody would get fired for choosing the incumbent.
The decision-making leaders spanned many business disciplines which included manufacturing, IT and procurement. All of them had to say yes in order for us to get the business and we were fortunate enough that the leaders in all organizations were movers and shakers focused on the growth and innovation this modernization would bring. They were specifically not excited about the less risky path.
We were working with people who could say yes, and they did. We worked as teammates through development and implementation, which led to our shared success. That win led to even bigger opportunities at Boeing. It also led to long-term relationships that carry on to this day. All of this shared success started with the best appointments, the best engagements and it resulted in the best customers.
©2014 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC
