A Seat at the Table

To Customers, Value Counts

Many executives have low opinions of salespeople. They may see them as hustlers pushing products and services whether or not they provide value or help attain strategic goals. What salespeople care about – selling – is not what executives care about – value. To break this mold, become intrinsic to your customers’ strategic success so they see you not as a salesperson but as a businessperson who is “worthy of a seat at their table” and who adds value to their firm.

To make customers welcome you, enable them to realign their work with their bottom-line strategies, and develop solutions focused on their strategic goals. That means getting out of the products and services business (where you represent an expense) and into the investments business (where you offer “productivity and differentiation”). Companies achieve productivity, the uppermost need in every executive’s thinking, through differentiation. Learn your customers’ strategies, and match your products and services to them. To use this “big-picture” approach, demonstrate real knowledge about a client’s business and avoid nattering on about the traits of your products and services. This...