What is Your Perspective on Perspective?

People that know me personally, know that I am a strong advocate for Autism because of my son. Being the parent of an autistic child is a struggle that cannot be quantified for people that don't have one. We have made some good friends with other autistic parents  as a result. Today, I saw that one of those families not only has an autistic son, but also lost a son to cancer several years ago, he would have been 11 years old today..... Wow! You hear something like that and suddenly you think that maybe your life isn't quite as bad as you were just griping about. Perspective has an unusual way of sobering a person. I bring up this topic because perspective in the sales process is so crucial yet, so few sales reps really go for attaining it with the potential client.
Just about every sales authority has touted "the customer doesn't care how much you know until they know you care."
You can attain this by coming to grips with the customers perspective. You as a sales person have the arduous task of finding new customers and getting existing customers to buy more. If you have a soul, hopefully you do so with fulfilling their needs as your intention. So you meet the client, you listen to their needs, you answer questions, you paraphrase what they just said and ask for agreement, you summarize, you analyze and you tell them you will be back with a proposal in "x" number of days. You stand up, shake their hand and walk out feeling good about the opportunity, because you know that you have a product that fills their need/fixes their problem and it is within their budget. On the return appointment day, you return with your fancy proposal, maybe you have a PowerPoint to show them, maybe you bring a sales engineer or sales manager to reinforce and corroborate what you are saying. At the end on the meeting they even tell you they like your proposal and they will be in touch in a week. A week goes by, maybe two weeks. you don't hear from them. You try to call, your try to email, you even try stopping by and they are just not available. Finally it has been two months since your last meeting. After numerous attempts to contact the customer, they finally answer the phone and in a very irritated voice say "look we went with another company." If they haven't hung up on you at this point you ask "Who did you go with and what was the deciding factor?" they respond "that's not important," or "that's none of your business," and then, they hang up. Hey! What the hell just happened there?
You conducted yourself professionally? check
Your solution was a legitimate fit? check
You followed up when they told you? check

So what went wrong? There is a very real possibility that you didn't have the whole picture. Now, that may seem like an obvious statement, but consider these factors:
The person you met with, are they the only decision maker or were others involved in the decision?
If others were involved, did you meet them to understand their role in the  project?
Did you ask up front what other vendors they are considering and is one of them the incumbent?
If the incumbent is involved, why are they considering change and what would it take to leave the incumbent?
What is the role of the person you met with? Have they met resistance to their decisions before?
Do they currently like their job, or are they just hanging in there until the next one comes along?
Have they made decisions before that have backfired on the company?
Have they been with the company 10 weeks or 10 years?
Do they have a friend in the industry that does what you do?

As you can see, there are a lot of tough questions that are often not asked. These question help you determine the customers perception. I can tell you sight unseen, if you meet with a company and the CEO's nephew is a sales rep for your competition, he is probably getting the business, unless you do an ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL job AND the nephew is a complete idiot. Even then you can still lose. Don't waste valuable sales time on opportunities you have no chance winning.

That's my perspective, I welcome yours

Thanks for reading today,

Mike S.

BTW, please read my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com