To sell, you gotta innovate - to innovate, you gotta be humble and sincere
The longer I'm in sales, the more I become convinced that "innovation" is its closest sibling (at least in bigger, complex sales). I'm guessing you probably have the same experience. I'd love to hear what you think about it!
Today I got involved in a discussion on LinkedIn that asked about - what was it again..? Let me find the link... here it is. The question was about how even the best products or services fail, i.e. a limited number of buyers will generate poor revenue. My input was basically that it's the business model that determines whether or not we succeed (referring to David Chesbrough's book "Open Innovation"). The business model powerfully affects company culture and EVERYTHING that has to do with Innovation. If you put a lid on innovation - in any shape or form - goodbye to sales success!
I've experienced this so many times. What connects us most as humans, is when we create something together. It doesn't have to be something tangible per se. The keyword is "create", which is something I call "the stuff between heads". So, the next time you're in a sales call with a client, a partner or even with someone you just need to convince about something... If you don't want to make things too complicated, maybe the best way to go about it is to simply abdicate the know-it-all-role and recognize; "maybe I don't have all the answers - in fact, maybe I hardly know anything?" The result... the other person(s) will rise to the occasion and start giving creative input, which otherwise would never have been the case, had you dictated the conversation and direction of the dialog. (Everybody knows this, I guess! BUT, to actually DO it is something quite different.)
Looking back on my childhood, my parents did a great job at this. Sometimes they would turn to us, and just ask a question - maybe to this effect: "How on earth are we going to do this..?" or "I've been thinking about this for such a long time. What do you think..?" And here's the thought I wanted to share: My mom and dad would be 100% sincere about it. They didn't feel they had an answer and thus truly believed that we could come up with something far better. And you know what? We did! They stretched us far beyond the capabilities and limits we thought we had. And then comes the real miracle and energy in this thing: As children we respect them so much more exactly because of this than we would had they simply told us what to do (...being "experts", which hardly generates the same kind of respect).
The ownership, commitment and enthusiasm that grows out of this is what selling is all about, I believe... It strengthens the SBP atmosphere. There's probably only one way; it needs to be sincere. What do you think? Would you agree? Maybe there's much more to it? In any case; in many ways my parents were the ones to teach me that the best answers are "between heads". They taught me innovation. They didn't say it - they lived it.
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04. november 2008 21:20:30
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