Selling With Noble Purpose, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 11The Customer Intelligence You Didn't Know You Needed

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

—Benjamin Disraeli, British politician

If you ask salespeople what their biggest obstacles are, they'll often tell you they're price and competition. Sales leaders tend to have a different perspective. We frequently get inquiries from sales leaders, asking if we can help their team improve their closing skills.

These are real challenges, but in most cases, they're actually symptoms of a larger problem. Issues with price, competition, and closing show up at the end of the sales process, but the real problem occurs much earlier. The root cause is often lack of customer intelligence.

Telling a salesperson to become a “better closer” is putting the cart before the horse because his or her closing skills aren't usually the root issue. The real problem is the salesperson doesn't know enough about the customer to establish differentiation, value, or urgency.

Selling with Noble Purpose requires you to develop a deeper understanding of your customers. You have to truly know your customers to understand how you can make a difference to them. When your sales team fails to establish a concrete link between your solution and the customer's most compelling goals and challenges, you'll quickly become commoditized.

Lack of customer intelligence is a substantial and largely hidden obstacle. Most salespeople don't even realize what this ...