No one cares about your product

No one cares about your product: although from everything I see, it seems that the sales team really care about the product. Which is slightly odd, surely they should care about the client, the deal and the revenue (in that order)?

The point I am making, albeit perhaps slightly obscurely, is that sales teams, along with marketing support, love talking about their product. Its unique features and capabilities. And in the modern age, they are hopefully talking about benefits and outcomes too. Founders are similar, they love talking about what they have built.

But none of this matters. All that your potential clients care about is whether you can solve a problem for them. And, in many cases, they may not even be aware of that problem – especially if you’re a start-up that’s created a new product to fix a problem that people may not have been conscious of.

What are the symptoms of this?

Demo calls with prospects who nod and smile and say “that’s very interesting”, and sometimes even ask engaged questions. Followed by … nothing.

If you leave a demo and the customer is not begging you to take the next steps, then you have failed to address a problem they care about. You’ve probably been jumping about in lots of interesting screens showing a bunch of cool stuff without actually addressing something that matters to them.

Instead, you must do the following:

1️⃣ Clearly identify in your own mind what the problem is you are solving.

2️⃣ Work out how to highlight that to the customer through excellent Discovery.

3️⃣ Demonstrate how you solve that problem, without swamping your prospect with every feature you have, and ensure they are thinking about how this solution will change their day.

At this point, you have a chance that they will want to pay you to help them solve their problem.