I want to talk about an issue today that I don't know if it's an issue maybe just a little bit of advice, knowing everything is the power that you need to get where you wanna go and on a certain level I will not disagree with that, but if you're in business development, a lot of times what you do know can get in the way of your success.
We have been programmed by the people that manufacture the products we sell, the people that train us to go out and teach people about the features and benefits of whatever it is you're representing, whatever product or service that you're you're taking into the marketplace but I've seen too many circumstances where people can acts absolutely teach themselves out of a sale. So what you've got to figure out is are you getting paid to teach people about your product or getting them to buy your product?
I find very few people that get paid to teach, particularly if you're in the manufacturers rep business, as a lot of my clients get no commission paid for education time… you only get paid when the product moves from the factory to the end user and there's a commission paid on that revenue stream. So if you think you've got to teach people, make sure you know if I teach you the right thing what happens next after we're done the lesson to create an opportunity typically is not a very effective or efficient strategy to move people from interest to an intention to buy, so be very careful.
I've seen people who know more about a product than anyone else that I've encountered and they absolutely suck at sales. They are so inclined to teach teach, teach, teach and when the prospect doesn't buy the teaching, it's not anything more in their mind than that prospect is just too dumb to understand the opportunity. Be careful about buying into “if I teach them they'll see the opportunity and jump on it”... it's not true.
It will reinforce it if you've done your sales process correctly and that teaching has a specific application but if you are a teach 1st sell 2nd practitioner, I wish you all the luck in the world… I'm not telling you you're not going to succeed, I'm just telling you you're going to have to work harder than you need to work, you should reverse that… sell 1st educate 2nd, and see if you can't be more efficient more effective more lethal in your application of your business development process and in the long run you're gonna be more successful, more consistently than you ever thought possible.
Have that knowledge as a safety net, but please don't make it your lead approach and then wonder why why won't these people buy “I've taught them everything about how great this product is”.... it just doesn't work that way. Sell first, educate second, if you need help with that, reach out to us here at Growth Dynamics.
