We make decisions based on our emotional brain, not our rational brain. Changing behavior (e.g. sales) isn’t about dumping the largest amount of features on the prospect – its about finding alignment between what you believe and what they believe – the “why” of what you might do together.
Going to Chicago for Graph Expo next month? If you’re a Xerox customer or Premier Partner join me on Tuesday for 3 full sessions about web to print.
Remember a decade ago when we were talking about how to capture all the revenue from customers changes? I think that’s what printers are thinking – we’re investing our time and labor into something (a private web to print storefront) therefore it should be charagble. We’re thinking about it from our perspective instead of the customers – value has migrated from manufacturing to the ease of order entry – you have to invest where the customer value focus is!
Easy sells, easy differentiates, making things easy is actually very hard. Making complex things easy is really hard. Customers want easy and they don’t care how much complexity is behind the easy.
Sales is not about mindlessly listing features and benefits. No benefit matters unless its RELEVANT to the customer or prospect you’re talking to. How do you know if specific benefits meet the needs of the customer? You have to talk less and listen more.
Its time to embrace the inevitable. Commerce is moving online whether you’re comfortable with it or not. Get comfortable. Get moving. Waiting for your customers to ask is playing defense and putting you at risk of being replaced by a more forward thinking competitor.
Our collective challenge as an industry is to take our focus off manufacturing. Yes, look upstream to your customers and downstream to the message you’re presenting to the market about who you are.
The manner in which products and services are brought to market greatly impacts their reach. Costs and complexity limit market penetration. Democratization erodes cost and complexity – opening up access to greater and greater numbers. Technology is on the backside of its democratization curve, the democratization of content has just begun!
Technology can be better at delivering value than humans FOR CERTAIN products and services. I’m frustrated by bookstores now because Amazon has trained me to expect an unlimited inventory. A segment of print products is better suited for technology based order entry than full service human based ordering.
Allegra Network Convention – Las Vegas, NV August 7-10. Jennifer Matt will lead a session on “The Dollars (and Sense) in Selling a Web-to-Print Solution”