It all starts with understanding
Audio Blog Version:
Innovation starts by understanding the business challenges
In sales we love business challenges. A good business challenge is like a goldmine; the harder you work it, the more profitable opportunities you uncover. But it’s only when you truly understand what’s keeping your customers awake at night that can you start to deliver innovative new solutions for your customers’ business challenges. In order to make this clear, you really need to have a trustworthy relation with your customer, just ask yourself with whom you are sharing your biggest concerns. Trust is something you need to earn by establishing creditability (know what you are talking about), reliability (come true on actions you have promised to take) and intimacy (customer empathy and emotional security in dealing with you) and all this paired with low self-orientation is key to success. By solving your customer’s business challenges in this way, you are able to distinguish yourself from your competitors. An opportunity to deliver new value, will improve your brand in the marketplace and lead to repeat business with the same customer.
Understanding comes well before products and solutions
Now speaking to customers about their problems without having any defined product or solution roadmap in mind may seem awkward and even scary to many corporate employees (especially engineers and product developers). But the truth is that this form of customer interaction is critical to uncover the business needs as well as identifying and developing the most promising breakthrough innovations. The days that you go in with a solution looking for a problem are over. You first need to have a trusted relation with the target customer first, then understand the issue in the line-of-business, only than you can develop a solution to take the problem off the table and deliver the value the customer is looking for. This work is called “solution sales” , it is not easy and will take time to develop, but in the end it is highly rewarding and will set you aside from the competition as your relation with the customer will be not be easy to replicate or substitute by another.
Abel Smit
Sales Director
Data Solutions & IoT | Europe