If you’ve read or listened to any of our material at Vector Firm, you know our core message: in today’s world of business to business buying and selling, the expert is the one that wins. Not the entertainer; not the people-pleasing fast responder; and not the madman cold-caller. It’s the subject matter expert that wins today. If we use the traditional techniques, we might maintain mediocrity, but not greatness. There is a better way – and that’s what we teach.
However, I’ve recently observed a scenario in which the old school sales strategy is still effective…
In 2002, I met a friend / mentor at a Panera Bread to catch up about life and our careers. (I’m withholding his name because he asked me not to use it.) We did this type of thing every few months. At this meeting, he said to me: “Within a few years, there won’t be sales people. Look at WebMD. That website is eliminating the need for doctors. The only sales person that’s going to have a job in a few years is the expert. Companies will order everything else online.” Well, there is still a need for sales people – my friend has always been a bit extreme – but his prediction of the direction of selling was spot-on.
My friend’s dooms-day scenario resonated with me because I was already seeing the impact. Voicemail and secured lobbies, which weren’t common at businesses a few years earlier, had already impacted the way we performed cold calls. I had also seen a decrease in entertainment expenses across multiple industries. My friend put structure around concepts I already knew were happening but couldn’t define. This meeting over coffee at a Panera Bread scared me, but it was also the seed that blossomed into Vector Firm eight years later.
I ran into my friend just after the holidays this year. Around 2005, he launched a very successful public speaking and training business in which he focuses on helping companies provide personal customer service while using technology. He’s very successful, and expensive. Every time I bump into him, I joke about owing him a fee for his time. I saw him in a Starbucks working on his laptop. He explained that he was wrapping up details on a ski trip in which his business rented a house in Big Sky, MT. This wasn’t any normal house – it sleeps up to 25 people. He rents the house for a week and invites his top clients to join him. He takes care of all living / food / drink expenses, but they must get themselves there.
As he was describing this scenario, and the caterers that he hires, I started laughing and mocking him a bit: “Look at the old-school sales guy. It’s all about entertaining – who cares what you know.” That’s when he hit me between the eyes again, sixteen years after that first time at Panera.
“Chris, I’m already the expert. Everyone in my space knows me as the expert. If my business is going to grow, I need to build friendships.” He then went on to explain how he still spends twenty hours a week doing research and maintaining his expertise, but I didn’t really hear him. All I heard was: “… I’m already the expert … I need to build friendships.”
So, that’s it - the one person that can use some of the old-school techniques and succeed is the accepted and known subject matter expert. Once people see you as more competent than your competition and more helpful than online resources, then your job is to make more and deeper friendships – like we used to do in the good ol’ days.
One last note: My friend really is the expert on his subject, and it took him years to earn that reputation. As a security or IT sales professional, don’t assume that you’re known as the expert because you spoke at the local ASIS meeting last Tuesday. Are people calling you every day with requests? Are you winning business at healthy margins? Are you being requested to speak at events in your discipline? Finally, are you really an expert? If so, go buy a sales book that was written before 1995 and get to work!
