An oft-repeated tenet of technical selling or even software selling in general, is ‘sell on value’. It’s a sentiment I agree with one hundred percent. It gets me out of ‘software shill’ category in the minds of my prospective customers and towards ‘trusted advisor’ territory. But to do that, I first need the chance to actively listen to their problem Then I can demonstrate that I understand their pain, I can quantify it, and that I care about the customer’s outcome. Once I'm knowledgeable about my customer’s challenges, if all has gone according to plan, I even come equipped with a solution.
The first mistake I see folks make in the buying process is that a customer - or occasionally a seller - wants to skip the step I call technical discovery. To understand the pain of a customer, I, like any technical seller, first need to listen. Any good technical seller is one part therapist, one part technical geek, one part business consultant. I listen, I apply technologies and processes, and only then can I consultatively suggest solutions, at least some of which I’m hopefully selling.
If there was one concept I would want my prospects to understand, it’s that a demo doesn’t offer them the full value of what technical sellers bring to the table. For my part, as a seasoned technologist, I’ve seen some stuff in my day. I’ve seen at least a few Fortune 500 companies running on Excel spreadsheets passed back and forth through email. I’ve written hundred lines long logic trees to clean up messy customer master data. I’ve seen customer master tables sitting idle in a database because nothing maps to it. I’m here to help and I have a plan.
Of course, I want to show customers my product in a demo! I get tingles of excitement every time I do a demo. But more importantly, I want to see and understand their specific challenges. I want to hone in on the problems I can solve with you and ultimately to help build a business case and pitch that case to stakeholders for solving those problems. As technical sellers, we’re here to help our customers be successful - we know the optimum outcome is when we all win together. The best of us are incredibly invested in the success of our customers and we can only maximize our true value to our customers when we’ve started by understanding a customer’s pain.