The Most Defining Moment in Sales: Answering "Who Are You and What Do You Do?" (Sales Series, Part 3)
It’s the most critical moment in sales, and you face it frequently.
You either dread this moment or worse, you’re overconfident in this moment.
Either way, you blow it.
The moment? It’s that crucial first encounter with a potential client. Or maybe, a new buyer within a longtime client-company. Or, much worse: you’re on a zoom call with a committee, most of whom you do not know, and suddenly you are faced with the most defining moment in sales:
You are asked to “introduce yourself and tell everyone a little about what you do.”
You wrack your brain, trying to find a way to express yourself that doesn’t sound like everyone else. You stumble over lost adjectives, stammer, and struggle, using too many words to chase down the right words, until eventually, you end up sounding … just like everybody else. You cringe as you hear yourself spout the most over-used words in the business:
“Creative”
“Sourcing”
“Service”
“Experiences”
You die inside because you know: You just blew the most defining moment in sales.
You know that this moment wasn’t like any other moment. This moment sets the tone for your future relationship, defining -potentially forever- that first impression and how people think of you (and more importantly), how they talk about you after you leave the room.
So, how do you take such a simple moment and supercharge it with meaning? How do you make it impactful? Unforgettable?
Mostly: How do you make it unique to you?
Real quick, before we move on, you must understand that there are two reasons why you fail at this:
First, because you’re a salesperson and you’re accustomed to talking your way through (or out of) any predicament, you think you can nail this moment thanks to your super-suave, verbal communication skills. You also hinder yourself by thinking, “I do this job every day, all day long, I can nail this question.” But in the heat of the moment, you don’t. You rely too much on improvisation and memory, both of which are unreliable -and potentially disastrous- skills to rely on under pressure. And many of the best in the business struggle with it.
Second, in our industry, we often confuse the product we sell with the expertise we offer. Our product is only one part of our identity (and sometimes the smallest part); our expertise is what we excel at that no one else can.
There are more than 30,000 distributors and over 3,500 suppliers that sell branded products, and yet YOU -each of you- are different. Just as there are 7.5 billion people on the planet and no one -not a single soul- just like you.
But in order to understand your uniqueness, you need to do a little work and really dig into what makes you unique.
You, as an individual, have unique passions, gifts, talents, and abilities that are distinct to only you. And your business serves unique clients and particular industries, plus, you have skills that set you apart from your competition. We’ve come up with an exercise that will unlock your uniqueness. If you do the pre-work and answer these questions, I promise you, by the time you’re done, you’ll never struggle with a creative answer to the dreaded question: Who are you and what do you do?
Here are the 5 critical exercises that you and your team must do so that you can master the most powerful moment in your sales experience.
List the three coolest projects you’ve worked on in your career. Projects you get excited about projects that your clients love you for, and projects you made bank on. Answer these questions:
Why did I love this project so much?
Why did my client love it?
What impact did it have on the brand? On the recipient?
What is it about these projects that no one else could do as well as we did?
List your top three clients and answer these questions:
Why do they love you? And buzzwords be damned! You CAN’T answer “service, creativity, sustainable solutions, difficult sourcing projects, responsiveness.” Those are table stakes today, and they do not differentiate you from everyone else who says, “people love us for our creativity and service.”
List three projects (stories) that you have done for each of these clients that exemplify what it is that makes you unique.
What do these clients rave about you behind your back? (Make this up if you don’t know, but it’s a fun exercise).
One more: What interjection (not adjective!) would they use to describe the experiences you create for them? It’s in the emotional responses of our buyers that we sometimes learn our secret power.
Sometimes, we think being different is about aesthetics: our website, our image. But being different is more than how you look, it goes to the core of who you really are. What three services do you offer that make you more unique than most of your competitors:
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Now, what three industries do you serve that makes you an expert? These are industries that -because of your intimate knowledge working with these clients- you know more about than any of your competitors could possibly even begin to know.
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What is it about your team or your processes that make you different?
Is there something unique about your infrastructure that makes you more efficient? More creative? More reliable?
Is there something about the mad skills of your incredible team that helps you kick ass every day? (Think superheroes: Who is your Black Panther, Wade Wilson, Storm, Iron Man?)
Why does your team show up every day to commit their heart, soul, and energy to you and your brand? (Notice: I didn’t use the word “culture”).
If this exercise sounds hard, remember that it’s just a little proactive work that you should do before you face your next “defining moment.” When therapists work with patients, they call this “inner work,” or “doing the work” to discover your passions, your drive, your uniqueness, your calling. And for brands, it only takes a little proactive discovery work. The harder you work at this, the more you will discover your special energy that no one else on the planet can bring.
So, get your team together and spend some time doing the work, and you’ll be amazed at what you learn about yourself!
Ps. Want to really master and super-boost this defining sales moment?
On Thursday, October 8th, we’ll be hosting sessions, the industry’s only conference dedicated solely to thriving in sales. And in our keynote address, Mike Michaelowitcz will share how many businesses strive to differentiate themselves by being better than the competition but being better does not build kickass, memorable biz. Being better is boring. It leads to sameness in the client’s mind, which leads to commoditization … which leads to lower margins, lower profit, and to be real … unfulfilling work. Being different is like a magnetic pull for the right kinds of employees and the right kinds of clients.
And right after Mike speaks, you and your team will have an opportunity to practice sharing what makes you different. In the old days, this was called the elevator pitch. Today, the elevator pitch has gone virtual. And since you’ll be working with a lot of prospects and clients virtually, you’ll have less time than ever to share how and why you’re different, this practice session will help you master the art of the pitch in front of the toughest audience you’ll ever face: your peers.