In the start-up stage, entrepreneurs are usually jacks of all trades by necessity. However, once a business has grown to the point where it hires qualified employees from among competing candidates, it’s time for Jack (or Jill) to recognize that she may no longer be the most qualified person for every job. worked. This can be an expensive lesson to learn when trying to sell an expensive product or contract to a prestigious prospect. In this case study, a founder learned the hard way that the prospects his company was selling now used a rigid, formal selection process, not the informal process he had used to win over his first customers.
This is one of a series of case studies highlighting “Key Questions and Course Correction Quotes” taken from 20 years of B2B customer insight projects. All the names are fictitious, but the situations are real. Case studies paint a picture of how important it is to know what your B2B customers think, but they don’t tell you. These are real-world examples of how soliciting and acting on customer feedback has helped companies retain customers longer, grow relationships, and win new business faster.
Case Study: Don’t Bring a Nerf™ Bat to a Knife Fight!
Key question: “You made it to the final presentation, but you weren’t selected. What did the sale cost you?”
Course Correction Quote:
Executive: “I don’t know who that clown was that did the final presentation, but he kept going off on a wild tangent. We couldn’t follow his presentation. our needs. This man focused on what he wanted to tell us, not what we asked to hear.”
My client when:
This loss caught the seller by surprise. What had gone wrong? When he loses a sale, it’s smart to know why. You don’t want to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. The “clown” the customer mentioned was the seller’s founder. This would have been a prestigious account, so the founder made the final presentation himself. He was convinced that only someone who really knew the product should make the final release. A tech savvy but unsophisticated salesperson, the founder went into detail about one feature after another. He knew the product’s features well, but the prospect’s selection committee only wanted to hear about the specific benefits. The prospect chose a vendor that adhered to the format, was clear and persuasive about the benefits the committee inquired about, had good references, and was priced in line with the other quotes.
Conclusion:
As they say, “Don’t bring a Nerf™ bat to a knife fight.” If your sales depend on winning a competitive selection process, hire salespeople who know how to follow an agenda in a formal sales presentation or hire a presentation coach to work with your team.
I classify projects as assessments, investigations, treasure hunts, or rescue missions. This project was an investigation. The customer’s question was, “How did we lose the sale when we had the best product?”
If you have a superior product, invest in superior sellers. Don’t assume your prospects know enough about your product or service to recognize quality. Good salespeople are effective even when they sell mediocre products, and your competitors may have very good salespeople. Invest in people who know how to feed prospects what they want. want know, and who can tell prospects what need know how to separate the marketing hype from the substance.
