What Should Keep You Up At Night

How many of us have started off a customer conversation with the following question, “so, Mr. or Mrs. Customer, what’s currently keeping you up at night?”?

Let’s all hold hands and officially mark today’s date as the death of this question.  In our survey of thousands of customers that dug into what drives their loyalty, they have explicitly told us they don’t value this approach. What’s more, they’re tired of answering this question for every single supplier that walks through the door.

Customer expectations for the sales experience have shifted in recent years.  They expect salespeople to have a perspective on what should be keeping them up at night, not just fire question after question at them.  

Now, to provide an experience like this in a manner the customer values, you have to surface opportunities to “reframe” the customer’s views.  This is the core commercial teaching moment, where a sales rep introduces the customer to a new way of thinking about his or her business and how to be successful.

To uncover these “reframe” moments, you need to know your unique value proposition – the areas where you (your company, or your solution) outperform the competition.  Then work to connect those unique differentiators back to the things the customer is trying to achieve – their outcomes, the metrics they use to determine success or failure.

Here are two questions to consider that will help you work towards a reframe moment for your customers:

1)      Who are the most common customer stakeholders (or group of stakeholders) you’re most likely to come up against for a particular solution you are selling (or a segment of customers you are targeting – e.g. CFO’s, Purchasing, Marketing, etc.)?

2)      For each stakeholder set identified above, what outcomes* are they trying to achieve as it relates to your solution?

For the most critical outcomes identified for these stakeholders, work to build a reframe story around those that you are uniquely positioned to solve. This is where you must make the connection back to the things that uniquely differentiate you.

*Suggestion:  When documenting the customer outcome statements, begin each with either 1) increase or 2) minimize (e.g. “increase the likelihood of X”, “minimize the risk of Y”) – this will help to keep you on track.

SEC Members, for more on reframe moments, visit our Commercial Teaching topic center. Also be sure to register for our upcoming one-day workshop on Challenger Messaging in Chicago on July 17th.