Hide and Seek

"Customers won't talk to us and the harder we try to contact them the more they seem to hide"

Orange Hat series - Sales Director Dilemmas #4

With my orange hat on I'd say that this can be addressed by thinking about the customer a little more

Let's go into a bit of detail and consider the ABCs of customers today

Change is happening faster than before and as a result our customers are likely to be more:

⚠️ Advanced
With more information now available customers are able to progress further along the buying cycle on their own

⚠️ Biased
Given the resources they can tap into the are more likely to have a stronger leaning towards where they think their increased expectations will be met.

⚠️ Confused
They also face a VUCA world with increased volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity so they are struggling to think about what should be doing

It creates something of a paradox that they know more and less and the same time

This is likely to make them feel uneasy and why they go to a safe place

They may also feel that they are wasting time with salespeople that bring nothing new to the table

We have a huge opportunity here if know how to work with customers.

First and foremost we need to help them make sense of their situation

NOT understand our solution

However there are things that get in the way

- Mechanical Messaging: using high volume methods with little room for personalisation means that the customer doesn’t feel that what you offer is for them
🔸Make the customer feel special by making it clearly about them

- Product Training Overload: if the salesperson is highly prepped to speak about a product that is what they will do
🔸Equip the seller with insights to share rather than features to force (plus the skill to introduce these elegantly)

- Sales Process Fixation: forcing the customer to do what the seller wants because that is what the CRM says does not go down well
🔸Understand how they want to buy and flex with, follow when necessary and guide when required

- Tech Stack Snobbery: using all the latest gear with no real impact on the customer
🔸 Apply the kit to augment the human (or bin it if it is getting in the way and having the opposite effect)

- Tech Ludditery: spurning the use of any new tools and techniques that make it a better experience for customers
🔸Ditch personal preferences and understand what really works

- Consultative Mindset: continually digging for pain is not enough anymore and might do more harm than good
🔸Add more finesse with more modern mindset and associated techniques

- Dark Social Denial: people share stuff where you can't follow. Are they sharing yours?
🔸Create content that people want to 'ping' to their friends and colleagues

It’s easy to see why customers are becoming elusive when they have issues that aren’t going away and salespeople aren’t really helping them to address them

How will you sell more collaboratively today?