Sell how you buy

Any time you make assumptions about a buyer, ask yourself if that assumption is true about you and the way you buy. If you were your buyer, how would you want a salesperson to approach you? Would you want a spam email in your LinkedIn inbox? Would you find that less offensive than a phone call?

If you were challenged to create better business results at your own company, would you want the person who could help you to wait for you to find them? If you were buying a serious, large, complex set of outcomes, would you do a ton of research before you ever engaged with a salesperson?

If you were working hard to move your business forward, would you want a salesperson to spend her first meeting with you trying to establish some common ground on which to build a relationship? Or would the value of your relationship depend entirely on her ability to create value for you?

Would you want a salesperson to assume that you are just like the rest of their client portfolio, that your challenges could be resolved in exactly the same way that you have resolved others’ challenges? Or would you want them to learn about your business, how you do what you do and the ways in which a solution might need to be modified to work for you?

If you knew what you needed, would you want a salesperson to believe that you had a sophisticated buying process, that you had the depth of experience to know all the trade-offs and that you preferred he follow your lead? Or would you rather your salesperson take the initiative and present ways to improve your business?