Your Solution is Not the Insight

BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

Are you struggling with finding the right insight to get the customer’s attention?

When lacking insights, do you default back to “pitching” your solution?

I believe your customer will not see your solution as insightful. Instead, talking too soon about your solution will put customers off.

In Selling with the Buyer’s Perspective terms, when you are already in Change to Who?, while your customer is still in Why Change? or Change to What?, the conversation is misaligned, and this is why customers “politely” end the meeting.

How to do this differently? Let me explain via a story.

The Second Hand Car Business

Jake, a salesman of an Express Logistics provider, was meeting with a company providing paperwork and car registration services to new owners after the second-hand cars were sold. They did this all over Europe. EuroReg Solutions was a successful company. But lately, revenue has stalled, and competition has gained market share.

After a small chit-chat and asking a few questions, Jake thought he knew exactly why revenues were down. The paperwork and registration plates didn’t arrive fast enough for the new owners. The Operations Director of EuroReg Solutions shared that this process typically took 5 days. The company used a Premium Service from several Postal companies, mainly to keep the cost down. And for orders in the larger cities, the door-to-door service was less than 3 days. “So, that’s pretty good”, he said.

When Jake showed the Operations Director the faster transit times he could deliver, he didn’t get the response he anticipated. “Thanks for showing me, but you are way too expensive. That’s not something we are looking into right now,” was the response of the Operations Director.

A Different Perspective

After the meeting, I sat down with Jake, helping him to see a different perspective. I asked the following questions:

• What are customers most interested in?
• How are they achieving these objectives?
• How can you help?

At first, Jake thought in relation to EuroReg, that the answers were:

• A faster service for their customers
• By paying more for this service
• Give them a small discount if they sign immediately

I flipped the sales script around and shared my view with Jake.

The Buyer’s Perspective

Companies are interested in growing their business. That’s the core objective. How they achieve this is a different story for every company. There is no one holy grail strategy, and the truth is, most boardroom meetings spend most of their time discussing options and deciding whether to stick with the current strategy (their status quo) or move into a new direction.

So, how can you help?

By bringing a different perspective to their growth challenges.

I asked Jake to go online and look at EuroReg star ratings. “What do you see?” I asked. Jake said it was 3 out of 5 stars and that many new second car owners complained about the slow service, despite a promise of a fast delivery. “You see”, said Jake, “I was right!”!.

Unfortunately, Jake was still in a different world – his world.

“Open ChatGPT and ask for five research articles, with links, from credible research companies about the effect of Customer Experience on business growth and why this is a priority in choosing a growth strategy“, I said to Jake.

He found two from McKinsey, one from PwC, one from ZenDesk and a 2024 Forrester CX index. We decided to use the PwC article “Customer Experience is everything. Get it right” for our next meeting with EuroReg Solutions.

The Next Meeting

This time, we were meeting with the Commercial Director of Euro Reg Solutions. Again, at first a similar chit-chat, but then at the right moment, Jake said:

“I found an interesting article from Price Waterhouse Coopers, and they claim that bad experiences are driving customers away – faster than you think”. Aha! Now, Jake was getting a reaction from the Commercial Director. “What do you mean?” she asked. Jake shared that 32% of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience. Your current CX score is three stars out of five. “And you probably know how many other people a customer shares their bad experiences with”? asked Jake. The Commercial Director replied that she had read this somewhere before and guessed it was 9 to 10 people. It was Jake’s turn: “50% of customers will share a bad experience publicly online (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Trustpilot, etc.), which can be seen by hundreds or thousands of potential buyers. And, I guess that this is the reason why your CX star ratings are a three out of five.”

“I have helped similar customers like your business improve their CX rating significantly without breaking the bank. Would you be interested in exploring this with me?” asked Jake. “Ok…but how?” was the response. Jake: “You do not have to change all your service offerings to Express delivery. But by providing this option at a small surcharge, will motivate many new second car owners to choose this option. Simply asking these customers proactively about their experience will increase your start ratings.

We walked out of EuroReg Solutions office with a confirmed date and time for our next appointment with the Commercial Director and their Purchasing Department.

And we didn’t even have to negotiate or discount.

Conclusion

Your solutions are not the insight buyers are waiting for. They want you to help them see a different perspective on their challenges. And for most of them, this is growth. How to achieve that, backed up with third-party research and your own stories will get more traction and close more deals.

Thanks Jake!

PS: Access my ChatGPT prompts to help you gather instant customer situational knowledge and insights that will get your buyers’ attention. It’s FREE.

Have you enjoyed this post? Let me know in the comments & follow Ton Verleg for more.

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