In St. John, New Brunswick, Canada this morning where I was a keynote speaker yesterday along with David Meerman Scott for the two day Engage Conference sponsored by the economic development and export trade offices of the Province and St. John.
- Great business environment
- Very engaged business community
- Superb location, perfect weather
Always inspiring to listen to and talk with David, and it was fun to try out some of my new thinking about Sales Enablement on an actively engaged business community which included Andrew Lively, the head of Marketing from TrueNorthSalmon, and Paul Rowan, co-founder of Umbra, those exquisitely designed simple accessories that have led the company to become the world leader in home design.
During the speeches on Monday, and then during the workshop today we're giving on Value Propositions, I kept staring at that simple word, "engage", and thinking about how it should apply to the world of Sales. After all, when you think about the definition...
en·gage
[en-geyj] - en·gaged, en·gag·ing. verb (used with object)
All of the actions (therefore the verbs) that we, as professional salespeople, should be doing all of the time in every step through our marketing and through sales processes.
Questions for the day... (be honest here)
-In your marketing, are you trying to tell or to engage?
-In your lead qualification, are you forcing a meeting or engaging?
-In your discovery process, are you trying to discover facts or engage?
-In your value proposition, are you trying to convince or engage?
-Are you selling features or engaging in discussions about real value?
Engage!
Simple word, but not so easy to execute since we're sales and marketing people, and at the end of the day, we're measured by quota and increased revenue. As a result, ticking off in our heads at this time of year is the sound of the Big Quota Clock counting down each day of the month and quarter as we get closer and closer to the end of whatever that time period is that we are measuring ourselves against. tick tock, tick tock, tick tock...tick tock
But in the reality of the people on the other side of the table, they could care less about quota, our time clocks, or, quite frankly, anything that we're selling unless, of course, it leads to increased financial value for their business and a direct impact on their own personal business objectives. As a result, wouldn't it be much better to slow down the initial sales process, fully ENGAGE with your prospects in order to discover exactly what their most important business and personal objectives are and simply sell the value of your wonderful products and services to fit those objectives?
- Answer the questions above
- Let us know what your best enagement tactic is
- Share, and I'll share some of mine in the next blog
Good Selling...and good engaging !
Head Coach
