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Why We Should All Strive to Become More Problem-Centric

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March 11, 2021 at 10:00:00 AM PST March 11, 2021 at 10:00:00 AM PSTth, March 11, 2021 at 10:00:00 AM PST

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - it does not matter what your job title is within your company, as at the end of the day we are ALL in some level of #customerservice...the only difference being is WHO your customer is. So many people are "product-centric"....blathering on and on about their company's widgets or about themselves and don't take the time to LISTEN properly. They are too consumed with what they are going to reply with, rather than turning their focus onto the other person.


There is a lot of talk about #salesprofessionals being more #customercentric but I believe in taking it one step further and being more #problemcentric - talking more about my customer's business problems instead of what my product does, focusing on the buyers needs instead of commission or quota, and being motivated on the success of customer projects. Jim Keenan at A Sales Guy talks about this regularly, and you can read more in his article called "9 Things Terribly Wrong With Sales Today" The Sales People" (link in the first comment).


In my near 20-year career in #sales, the number one thing I have learned is to be of service to others. To me what this means is #activelylistening - to my customers, my prospects, my colleagues...and even my family and friends - and to pay attention to what it is that they need and figure out what my role will be in helping them. I talk less about myself and listen more, as it’s the only way I’m going to uncover the truth.


There is always going to be some underlying thing that we as #sales professionals have to dig deep for when speaking with prospects. Proper #discovery can sometimes take three, or four or five calls - sometimes even more - to really learn deep down what is and isn’t working for your client and what success looks like to them in their minds-eye, so that I can deliver them to their desired state.


A great example is a client we started working with earlier this year. They have a centralized #Procurement, but the rest of their business functions are segmented and history had shown that getting their Procurement, #IT and their #Facilities teams to work together was going to be difficult as they’d created a bunch of red tape internally which just hindered their progress. We started out by having separate discovery conversations with each of these departments as we needed to know what their common thread was...what they individually wanted to achieve with this project and learn if any of it overlapped with each other.


Working with Facilities was easy as they talked fluidly about what was currently happening with their locations and we discussed what was and wasn’t working and what improvements our company could make for them that would reduce product waste and save their employees time. It was IT and Procurement that were more of a “hard sell” as IT didn’t want another project on their plate and Procurement didn’t believe anything was wrong. Both depts basically were ignoring what Facilities had been telling them for a couple of years - they just weren’t being “heard” - which resulted in a huge amount of product waste that was costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars so far.


Finally we were able to get Procurement to see the value in change:


>>> More #spendvisibility

>>> Cleaner data as their last supplier was sending them #garbagedata that would take an MIT team of 10 to decipher

>>> A near 45% #spendreduction within the first year

>>> An automated process for toner ordering for their locations, which cut about 10-15min of Internet time per employee, per order (they have over 50,000) and completely eliminated product waste with unused product they’d paid for just sitting on the shelves collecting dust and eventually being thrown away (that was company money down the drain!)


Once we had Facilities and Procurement on board and was also able to show that the “project” IT was dreading wasn’t much of a project at all as most of the work would actually be handled by our company at no additional cost to them - we were able to close that deal. Did it take almost a year? Sure. But it wouldn’t have happened at all had we not paid attention to the underlying issues that were being brushed off initially as “non issues” but which were actually costing this company hundreds of thousands in wasted dollars and time.


You see, it's no different for those in other roles like Sales, or Procurement, or #HR, or IT, or Customer Service, or #DiversityInclusion, or our family and friends....we all have our own customers...our own audience - internal or external - that we are trying to make happy. At the end of the day it means us talking less about ourselves, our capabilities and track records and means more about actively listening to those around us...not just hearing words coming out of their mouths.