42

If you have read The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – you probably know about the computer that computes the answer after eons of computing: 42.

And then we find that the beings who instructed the computer to find the answer didn’t know what the question was and and they built another computer to compute the question!

Many of us IT service providers / consultants / advisors are like that. We go to our customers with a ‘solution’ – an answer to a question that we don’t know ! We make our sales people run to our customer with this great new service / solution for their needs, only to find that their need was different. Then we go on to blame that customer for not knowing what they want. And then we put another team together to find the question.

We have not thought about it this way: maybe the customers know what they want, but do we know what they want? What effort have we put into determining what the customer wants before computing the answer. Maybe the answer was supposed to be 24 – we just didn’t know the question.

A customer once told me about all the sales people who came by telling him they knew his industry.
The customer said – said “we do voluntary personal insurance”.
The vendor said – yeah like BCBS, we know. We work with them.
The customer said – “no that’s different”
The vendor said – yeah its like Guardian, we know. We work with them.
The customer said – “no that’s different”
The vendor said – yeah its like AIG, we know. We work with them.
The customer gave up.
The vendor didn’t even want to listen to the customer! In an effort to sound like they knew it all, they lost the opportunity to hear it all from the horse’s mouth as it were!

Simple story – and, many of us would nod our heads and go cluck cluck cluck, the sales guys should have known better. How many of us actually do know better? How many of us actually prepare better? How many of us are wiling to listen instead of launching into the well oiled sales pitch that we brought in a can? We could sell better if only we could spend more time listening to our customers.

We have to stop thinking that sales is about the sales pitch. Or about the nice looking presentation. Or the glossies. Sales is not about selling ice to an Eskimo. It’s good if you could sell ice to an Eskimo – but if you are just conning them, they will ultimately see through you. Try selling the ice then.