Moving from the pain point to the passion point

"What keeps you up at night?" It's a standard question for solutions-based selling, as well as interview topics. It really gets to the heart of where a solution might help address a business, team, or executive challenge. Solution-based approaches have been around for a long time and if you haven't been implementing solution selling with your team already and are just pushing product, uh, we need to talk. Today's message is about ways we can do more.

This approach was a big shift in how we addressed the creation of your marketing messages. And by all means, do it! With your organization's areas of expertise, please, solve every possible customer pain point you can, and then suggest other experts outside your zone who can do the rest. Get them running like a well-oiled machine and enjoy listening to the beautiful hum of production.

And then, let's take it a step further.

Once you've helped your install base solve challenges to better serve their own customers, it's easy to sit back and admire a job well done. And of course, I realize that nothing is ever perfect and we always have changes we want to see happen. I'm sure your (and your management's) question is what comes next for you to continue fostering this incredible, fortuitous relationship.

I'd like to see the sales and marketing world get to the point where we have satisfied our customer's biggest challenges of what keeps them up at night and then be able to ask, "Now...what gets you out of bed every morning?"

I can't tell you how much you will enjoy watching their eyes light up like a kid on Christmas morning.

This is where you find someone's passion point. This is where you find ways to help them fulfill a deeper calling. Every leader has something bigger they want to do in their industry, in the world, to leave their mark. If you've provided the expertise and built a strong relationship based on trust, consistently delivering above expectation, they will jump at the chance to tell you where their real goals lie. Their inspirational vision for the future will also need help to launch. Is it possible you can also help them achieve this change, even as a partner in promoting it or a sounding board to bounce ideas off of?

Because this, the inherent drive to do more for the world, is how real innovation happens. Imagine the world we could create together if we moved past connecting our products to a problem and instead, reimagined a solution that propelled new ideas and reshaped the technical environment for a greater purpose.

Creating these kinds of meaningful conversations are what get me out of bed every morning. Go give it a try!

-----

Melissa Reali-Elliott has spent over 15 years marketing digital technologies. Her marketing efforts have supported organizations specializing in gaming software, IoT, RFID, supply chain, and power distribution to utility markets, including smart grid and microgrid applications, as well as industry verticals such as data centers, oil & gas, metal refineries, and food & bev. She is accomplished at developing and implementing innovative marketing, branding, and messaging programs that improve market position and drive demand generation, as well as inspire customer and industry engagement with a brand.

If you are just landing on this series, the background for its creation is in the first post here. The gist is that the data center industry where Melissa specializes does not have many formally-trained marketers dedicated to it and many of those that actually are are newer to industry. She wants to use her years of experience to help bridge the gap between industry influencers and technical marketers.

A general closing note from Melissa: In my efforts to share experiences and data that help others in the data center space to improve their marketing efforts, I often use both positive and negative examples, some of which will be from companies I have personally worked for or done business with. No anecdote will reveal proprietary information that can be tied to a company. Neither will I cite an organization I have worked for by name. While none are perfect, these companies have been fundamental to my success and have provided my life’s work. I respect them too much to attribute public criticism to their brands, though it is inevitable that those who have worked alongside me will pick up on certain references.