They don't care about your stone-baked Pizza

If you've not heard of Paul Harris (Principle Architect at Loftware) you've probably been living under a rock, stuck off-shore on a fishing boat or otherwise occupied doing things on your own.

Paul posted recently about how many meetings start the same way; with rounds of introductions. For some, this is their time to make a first impression and that pressure really mounts up. For others, they breeze through with the confidence of giants.

So dear reader, whichever you feel, Paul's comments and video made me pick up my pen (keyboard) to discuss this matter with you in more detail. Because I believe there's more to how you introduce yourself than at first meets the eye and a cool trick to make it a WHOLE load easier for you, and MASSIVELY more useful for your buyers.

But let's take a step back and look at a related example. Your early CVs likely read something like this:

...and quite frankly, that left the hiring manager to figure out if you were actually any good at any of it. (which I'm sure you were, but hey - who'd know?)

To make it actually useful, a re-work of the same CV would look like this:

So how do we use this when we only have 20 seconds to introduce ourselves? Well just like a hiring manager is trying to understand if the candidate is actually useful to what they need, we can break down the meeting into it's purpose based on different perspectives.

Aled and Benji from SaaS Corp have been invited to a meeting with a new potential customer.

• Let's see how an introduction based on facts plays out:

"Hi, I'm Benji and I've worked here for 5 years."

So we know what each person does, but the only other thing is tenure in the company. Whilst this can be useful to understand, this information should have been gathered by Aled and Benji beforehand, and it isn't as relevant as some other things better suited to their needs today.

• How about an introduction based on the seller's perspective?

"Hi, I'm Benji and I'm here to maximise the value we bring."

We can see now the roles each party plays in the project. Whilst somewhat simplified it does represent the fundamentals of the roles each participant plays from the perspective of SaaS Corp, hoping to win the customer's business. Sadly this is very unhelpful for everyone. It's normally understood how each job role plays it's part in a software purchase, and so there's unlikely to be much value gained from introducing ourselves with such brutal perspective.

• Now we're getting somewhere - this is the introductions based on our role in the project:

"Hi I'm Benji, I'm here to help align your specific project requirements to the capabilities we offer."

Were we to introduce ourselves like this, all the meeting participants would know the role each person will play in the success of the project. This is where we start to uncover the main requirements of each person, and we can align the way we talk, present and discuss change in a more aligned way. But there's one more, even more effective way...

• Buyer Stakeholder-based introductions:

Hi I'm Benji and I know you need to make impactful change, that reduces pains, adds benefits to your team and fits within your project boundaries. Over the past 5 years I've helped many other companies such as yours succeed in these areas because I listen, I care and I know how our tools can create positive change.

Remember the CV example from above? Here's were we introduce ourselves based on the impact we're able to bring to the stakeholders involved.

It's a bit of a longer introduction, but because you know the main outcomes required by each of the buyer stakeholders you can align what you bring to the meeting. Sure, you're probably a like ace and your stone-baked pizza making skills are epic, but that's not the best thing to lead with - how you can help your buyers create positive impactful change, is.

Don't forget to follow #buyerenablement for more articles on seeing things from the buyer's perspective. There's a whole series I've just written, so have a click and take a look!