Roadblock:

You finally scheduled a meeting with a key executive at your biggest customer. You have not met with her previously and you want to make the most of the opportunity.

Your goal is to discuss your products and services but you have a gnawing feeling that as soon as you bring up the subject, the executive will disengage and send you off to meet with someone at a lower level in the company.

You are frustrated and not sure how to handle the situation.

Remedy:

Develop a theory about how you can help the customer more effectively address one of their critical business issues.

A theory is a prediction, an educated guess.

Let me explain: David is a sales professional who attended one of my sales training workshops.

He works for a company that produces custom-made plastic products. One of his customers is a manufacturer of high-performance private airplanes.

David saw a trend developing in his customer’s business. With rising fuel prices, the customer was beginning to put smaller engines in the airplanes they manufacture with the goal of achieving better fuel efficiency.

Based on his research, David developed a theory that if the customer increased their use of plastics for interior walls, ceilings and other components, it would reduce the weight of the aircraft they make.

This would allow the company to build more powerful airplanes that could achieve higher speeds and still consume less fuel…issues of obvious importance to people who buy high-performance aircraft.

Sounds like a good idea, but would it…fly?

David’s theory was only an educated guess. Why speculate? What’s the point?

Reward:

Developing a theory about how you can help a customer more effectively address one of their critical business issues forces you to understand your customer’s business better.

Theories are not difficult to develop when you base them on solid research.

Something bothers me about the term “pre-call research.” It implies that research is a one-time event that you perform just prior to meeting a customer for the first time.

To maximize its value, your customer research must be ongoing. In other words, you need to be researching your customer’s business even if you don’t have a call scheduled with them.

Why? Because you need to be able to spot trends and changes in your customer’s business. Regular, systematic research helps you do that.

Ongoing research helps you identify creative ways that your products and services could be used to advance the customer’s business. That’s the kind of partnership customers are interested in.

Your goal is not to develop just any theory to help your customer. Your theory needs to be one that is research-based and USES YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES to help the customer accelerate their business results.

Since your theory is based on solid research, it is likely to work. If it does, it can help your customer keep their business healthy and growing. That means more business for you.

David’s theory helped him sell $12 Million worth of custom plastic components to his aircraft customer over a two-year period. And their business partnership is still going strong.

Your theory gives you something of strategic importance to discuss with your customer.

Sure, you may not know the specifics, but if you can spot trends and changes, discuss them with customer executives and show them how a partnership with you can help them take advantage of these trends, they’ll likely engage in a productive dialog with you to pursue your theory.

Then, in collaboration with your customer, you can collect the information you need to develop the specifics. In this way you and your customer develop a business case together that shows the value of using your products and services.

Use your research to construct theories about how you can help your customer address the critical issues facing their company. There is simply no better way to build lasting partnerships with executive-level decision-makers and make more sales.

(This article may not be reprinted or copied without written permission from Howard Wallin.)