Have a Damn Opinion
Your buyers don’t want product pitches, they want big ideas
Back in the mid-90’s, Steve Jobs did an interview that only surfaced many years later. The full interview is classic Jobs at his best, the witty and brilliant entrepreneur that could take an idea and distill it down to the essential truth. But why does he garner so much more attention than many other successful tech entrepreneurs? Because he has opinions.
“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.”
- Steve Jobs
Microsoft has no taste. Whether you agree or not, it automatically got you thinking. You started forming your own opinions. You may agree, you may chuckle, or you may be offended. The point is that he made you take a side and think about his statement. He influenced you.
Black lives matter. That is another opinion. It happens to be my opinion. Some people don’t like that and sent me nasty replies to my last newsletter. Good because being a racist goes against the values upon which the Enterprise Sales Forum is built upon, which is an open and inclusive community. Having an opinion cleared the community of bad apples.
The reason you read this newsletter is not because I share milquetoast advice and watered down suggestions. There is plenty of bland content out there for sales. But you don’t remember that content because it is forgettable. We seek and thirst for real guidance and something that makes us think, even if we disagree with the opinion.
What type of insights are you sharing with prospects and customers?
There is a saying that goes “opinions are like assholes, everyone has got one”. Problem is I never hear opinions from sales reps. They come at prospects with data and facts. When I read email copy from sales reps, it is all me-centric pitching. The message lacks insight and there is nothing new or even mildly controversial. This is why your emails get deleted.
One of the core lessons of the Challenger Sales is the idea of teach, tailor, take control. This means reps should bring new and insightful ideas to prospects, adjust those insights in ways that connect with stakeholders, and then build internal support and coalitions to help the buyer adopt your solution.
Many sales teams screw this up though. They share product features rather than novel business ideas. The other mistake is making bombastic statements thinking that is what the term “Challenger” means. Challenger is not a license to be an asshole. It’s a way to influence buyers by getting them to think differently about their business challenges.
The best way to understand this difference is through an example. Here is a product pitch:
Our solution is the only one on the market that can do end-to-end tracing of all knowledge assets to ensure sensitive information does not become exposed outside the company. Does this sound like something we can help you with at this time?
And here is an example of an insight:
The rise of work from home has created significant exposure of information leakage. A recent Cartner study confirms that 81% of CISO’s are struggling to reign in exposure. How are you working to secure your information assets when employees are using their own devices during work from home?
The first is me-centric and product focused. Just reading it makes me feel dumb. The second starts with what the prospect cares about, then provides validity to support the statement, and then leads to a question that promotes deep thinking about their situation. You have influenced their thinking.
These same principles apply across all forms of communication. We tend to gravitate towards people that have interesting stories and experiences. We crave insights, which organizations like TED have leveraged to build a global platform. Just think about who you follow on Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, or Instagram.
What all these people that we follow have in common is they have opinions. Whether their fashion or talent or words or thoughts, they are giving you a lens into how they think and what matters in their universe, and conversely what does not matter to them.
People want to hear well formed opinions that solve problems, not product pitches
Executives are no different. They want to spend their limited time with people that will help them solve problems and become smarter. I was meeting with the CTO of a major media company once, and we started to talk about different sales teams. When the Google team would meet, they would spend the entire time talking about how awesome their technology was. When Amazon visited, they spent the meeting sharing industry insights and genuinely engaging in big ideas.
The best sales professionals have consistently better sales conversations because they have a thirst for knowledge. They seek ideas and experiences that can help them build trust, credibility and rapport with prospects and customers. They read a lot across a wide array of topics, they research their industry thoroughly, they keep up to date on trends, they network with experts, and they become a go to resource for others in their field.
The other thing I have learned about top sales performers is that they are gifted in bringing complex ideas together. This is especially critical when the sale becomes more complex and the number of stakeholders increase. The sales professional weaves through that complexity by sharing stories that are relatable, crafting analogies to simplify concepts, and stitching together competing ideas to create even better solutions. All of those things are impossible however if you are not constantly learning and acquiring knowledge both inside and across your domain.
How do you acquire this superpower? I would suggest doing more industry reading and networking at relevant industry events. Now is a great time to upgrade your knowledge because everything is virtual and you can explore many more events than you ever could in the past. But how do you turn learning into practical sales skills? Subscribe to the Enterprise Sales Forum SubStack and learn more!
Make your opinions known and may you have better sales results!