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April 26, 2007
You Don't Want To Buy A Drill, You Want To Buy A Hole....
Rabert Faletra is the Channel Group President at CMP, publishers of the tech industry's most august publications. (CRN, VARBusiness and others). Their ChannelWeb.com website is a very nice online resource for tech industry VARs (and obviously an ad destination for the industry's myriad suppliers...).
In his April 16 editorial in CRN (formerly Computer Reseller News if you are not familiar with the publication), he exhorted readers how important it is to take discussions away from technology...or "best of breed"... and to get them onto subjects that matter to customers. He had a great line: "Selling technology is a raffle." How true.
Unfortunately, it is amazing how badly many companies are at delivering on that simple-sounding strategy. It turns out, as salespeople, we are conditioned to want to sell "products" and not "solutions". It reminds me of the classic story about Ted Levitt's Harvard Business School exhortation to his students, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole." Since we can't buy "holes", we buy "drills"...but that doesn't change what is important to the customer...it's the result, not the tool. So why is it that copier dealers want to sell "MFPs" or car dealers want to sell "SUVs"?
For one, it's easier. If you are trying to sell a prospect on the quality of your "upscale, aspirational transportation" it can be confusing versus talking about the Escalade's elegant interior or tricked-out ride. It's hard to talk about "optimized document production process" versus your "low-cost, 25 PPM multifunction printer with ADP, finishing and high-volume paper tray". And besides, most manufacturers love to talk about their "stuff". Just like a bunch of men talking about "who's bigger" they forget that "size doesn't matter." (Female readers...apologies for the reference...but I couldn't resist the analogy.... ;-)
However, the times they are a' changing. Customers are getting smarter and information transparency makes it easy to learn product specs and subsequently bargain on price like a buyer in a Marrakech souk. Failure to get a customer to talk about the issue they are trying to solve makes it hard to compete on other than easily commoditized features/benefits.
As Bob Faletra said, "Solve problems, but never sell technology." Good advice for people in lots of industries...tech and beyond.
Posted by jcioban at April 26, 2007 8:06 AM
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