Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Agile Selling

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...Salespeople: Do you know what you are to your customers? Do you know what you represent? I’ll explain this to you, but prepare yourselves--it’s not going to be pretty. To buyers, we are nothing more than “product-pushing peddlers who bring no value to the decision process. Customers claim all we do is ask stupid questions, offer minimal insight, and give boring presentations. The last thing they want to do is waste their precious time caught in a meeting with another self-serving salesperson. They’re simply too busy. You may think you’re different. Buyers don’t."

I am quoting from a great new book called Agile Selling: Get up to Speed in Today’s Ever-changing Sales World by Jill Konrath. I’m going to be talking a lot about this book because I think it is one of the most important books on the subject of sales I’ve read in a very long time. Konrath not only tells it the way it is--and it’s not very nice--but she goes on to tell us what to do about it…and that’s the good part.

She spends a lot of time showing the smart salesperson how to create value and create enough interest in the sales conversation that the customer will be interested in what you have to say, and  what you have to sell.

The book explains that your customers want you to know their business. They don’t really care about your business. All they care about is what you can do for them. This means you have to study their business. You must know what they do. You must know their place in the market. You must know how their product works, what it takes for them to be successful, and how you and your product can help them be successful.

“Buyers expect you to understand their business, direction, challenges, processes, and relationship history. They expect you to provide value," Konrath explains. "Every single interaction is evaluated to determine if it is worth the time or effort. Buyers want ideas, insights, leadership, and guidance to assess whether changing (to your product or service) makes sense and how to do it best…Meeting them where they’re at. You’re expected to provide what the buyers need, when they want it and how they want it, quickly."

Does this sound like a big challenge? Maybe at first, but progress only begins once we leave our comfort zone.

The long and short of it is that you must engage your customers. You have to learn about your prospects and the best way to learn from them is to interview them.

Here, again, the book offers a list of questions that you should always ask your prospects:

• What piques your curiosity and gets you to even consider a change?
• Who are the people who need to be involved in decision like this?
• How do you determine if a product or service makes good business sense for your company?
• How do you decide which resource is best for you?
• What are the most challenging parts of this decision process? Why?
• What does it take to get a contract for something like this approved?

In short, know your prospect’s journey so you can align with it.

Let’s switch gears and talk about your sales collateral for a minute. Do you have the right tools to successfully sell your products to the right customers? Konrath suggests reverse-engineering your sales material--making sure that this material truly reflects your value proposition.  To do this correctly, you need to understand exactly what it is you should provide to your customers. Go to their web sites, look at their materials, look at what they are selling, look at their white papers and other information offered to their customers and learn what is important to them.

This will give you the right insight into what you have to provide. From there you can make sure your materials give them what they need. This way you can develop the true value to your prospects of what you are selling. Medical electronics companies, for example, want reliability; they want zero defects and you must show them how your products are reliable and what programs you have in place to guarantee zero defects. Defense and aerospace companies want ruggedness, traceability, and often special materials for CTE purposes. I you want to sell to them your value proposition has to demonstrate you provide those things. By reverse engineering all of your materials and sales messages stating from your customers’ point of view you’re developing a message that exactly fits your customers’ needs.

These are just a few of the examples of what you can learn by reading this book. This is not "Sales 101" as it used to be: This is a whole new way to sell, approach the customer, and succeed. If you’re truly serious about growing your business and expanding your customer base, you’ll buy and read Jill Konrath’s book. It’s only common sense.