A friend of mine works for a global sales training organization that you’ve probably heard of. He complimented me recently: “Chris, I don’t know how you do it as an independent. Even with our name recognition and marketing budgets, I still have challenges closing business.” I thanked him, pointed at his Lexus and poked a little fun at him about his “challenges”. What I was thinking was different, though. My thoughts were: “How do you do it? You sell your sales consulting and training services to everyone. How do you know about their needs?”
I’ve never lost a project to a global company, and doubt I ever will. It’s not because I’m smarter than they are or a better sales person than their troops of sales professionals. It’s definitely not because their content is poor – it’s actually very good. It’s because I stay focused on one industry and two types of customers within that industry – independent security integrators and manufacturers that partner with them. That’s it. I’ve become an expert in their worlds. I’ve learned everything about the struggles of an independent integration company and because of that, and have developed programs to accelerate their sales. Because of my success with the integrators, I’ve been able to help manufacturers improve their efforts of growing sales with their channel partners.
Google knows everything. I think that’s a fair statement. Minimally inaccurate, but fair. However, Google doesn’t know your customer. You know your customer. You know their compliance issues, competitive challenges, and cost structure. You know the individual companies – their politics, personalities, processes, bottlenecks, etc. You’re able to find and solve problems before they know they have a problem. Google can’t do this. You can.
… Or can you? Do you know all these things, or are you working 60 hours a week in reactive mode? Something to ponder this weekend.
