The single most important question to succeed in sales

Elon Musk once said “I think people can choose to be not ordinary. You know, they can choose to not necessarily conform to the conventions that were taught to them by their parents.”. Almost all sales professionals are a incrementally improved version of the sales leaders they have worked for who taught, guided and mentored who they are today.

Consider that most "sales training" basically still teaches the same thing for over 40 years, a product-push style "methodology" of identify a problem, target the decision makers and offer a solution. This is what your sales leader learnt from their leader, and their leader before that. Brutally it's a 140+ year "hand me down" approach that started with the NCR primer (read about it here https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/john-h-patterson-and-the-sales-strategy-of-the-national-cash-register-company-1884-to-1922) developed in 1887.

The challenge is in any given industry or market almost all sales professionals essentially operate exactly the same. Sure there might be a nuanced approach such as some being better at relationship management, some ask better questions, some are more technically savvy etc. But in the main, the overall experience for clients, customers and prospects is essentially the same.

More over in most industries sales professionals simple cycle through the primary major players in that industry. It's as if the leadership team says "you know what would be a great strategy, hire our competitors sales professionals so that our sales capability is identical to our competitors".

So what's the single most important question?

The three most important influencers in my executive and consulting career are Roger Martin, Peter Drucker and Clayton Christensen. All three talk about important but massively overlooked fundamentals for success. Those fundamentals almost exclusively are asking ourselves tough questions, non-obvious (at first) questions that allow us to make different and better choices and decisions.

In sales that question simple is:

Whatever you are planning to do, in the eyes of the potential buyers is that meaningfully different than the other choices they have?

The key to this question is your ability to be brutally honest with yourself. It's easy to delusional think "yeah what I am doing is different". You may think so...but would your prospect agree ?

Whatever you are planning to do. This could be research, ideation, the stories you plan to tell, who you are engaging, how you are engaging, how you serve your client, who you partner with, how you partner, literally anything, whatever it is, even your internal discussions. Whatever you are planing to do, is it meaningfully different (in the eyes of the buyers)?

If not, how will you win? Better products and services? Lower prices? Easier to do business with than others?

Funny thing is most of my clients tell me their offerings (products and services) are pretty market leading, but can always cite areas where competitors have richer capability. They rarely if ever say they are, nor want to be, the cheapest. And easy to do business with, usually gets a laugh...remember they see their own dirty laundry more than the outside world does.

There are five critical factors to win:

1. Your offering has to be good enough
2. Your commercials (price and terms) need to be in the ballpark
3. In the eyes of the buyers you have to deliver the highest value (by whatever their metrics of that are - typically impact on desired business outcomes)
4. In the eyes of the buyers you need to be the lowest risk
5. and in the eyes of the buyers you need to be the easiest to do business with

Relative to the other choices they have.

To be meaningfully different requires at least 4, of these above to be true. Offering and Commercials get you to down select / short list. You win or lose on value, risk and ease.

Thus to truly be different, meaningfully different, ask yourself.....what I am planning to do, in the eyes of the buyer is it meaningfully different?

If not you will look and sound like everyone else. You will play to compete, not play to win (as Roger Martin so eloquently espouses).

Unless or until you are willing to break the conformity of 140+ years of incremental, but still essentially, identical selling mindsets and behaviours you will not achieve the breakaway success you wish.

Over the next few articles I will outline our philosophy on how you can indeed be different.

Note in 2008 we believe we were one of the first firms to champion a need for a shift from product and solution selling to outcome-based selling. At the time we also declared that in 10-15 years when everyone was doing it that it no longer be fit for purpose as the purpose of any approach is to drive a level of differentiation so prospects choose you. We believe we have now hit that point. Let's explore in coming articles what we believe is the ONLY path to differentiated sales success now.