The rest of the meeting (all five minutes of it) was about me schooling this supplier on how easy it was to find out the necessary information about my company, just by visiting our Web site. As I walked the supplier out to the main lobby I thought: What has happened to this industry to give suppliers the notion that they could use the customer's time to help them sell a product or service?
After pondering this question as I walked back to my office, it came to me that what is now often missing from the "sales cycle" is the process of learning and understanding the customer. How much more effort would it have taken the supplier rep to read up on my company? Or to go to Google and type in my firm's name and learn our business? The tools are there -- why are they not being used?
Up until 2001, I tolerated this kind of sales behavior, but as we all know, times have changed. It is now a buyers' market, and the sellers have to work at knowing each customer they get face time with. Sellers have to build trust, understanding, and most of all knowledge of the customer back into the sales cycle. Show that you truly want to help my company grow and prosper -- do not sell to me like a cold call.
If you want to close the deal, come prepared, do your homework, offer added value, and most of all offer solutions, not hype. To do that you will need to understand what we do and how we do it, and where your products or services can assist. Then, maybe our meetings will last more than five minutes.
(Steve Nitenson has been helping run large-scale IT operations since the early 17th century, including stints at the British Royal Navy, Acme Buggy Whips, Kaiser Permanente, National Semiconductor, Quantum, Visa International and NANOmetrics. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in Technology Management.)
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