We all know that the way people buy has fundamentally changed. The buyer now controls the sales process. They decide what they want, when they want it and rely on publicly available content and peer reviews to make buying decisions. Buyers don’t want to be sold to or talked at about what your company does or how great your products are.

Unfortunately, many technology companies haven’t responded to this fundamental change and are suffering from Product-First Selling.

What is Product-First Selling?
Product-First Selling is a “see how great my technology is,” or “look how impressive my service people are,” approach. The quest to provide the technical buyer or early adopter with information regarding features and functions carries too much weight. You end up in a feature/function war with your competitors.

What gets ignored in Product-First Selling?  Positioning your technology to resonate with the target buyer’s priority pains.

Symptoms of Product-First Selling
Some symptoms of Product-First Selling include:

• ­You don’t have enough potential deals
• The deals you have are stalled in the pipeline
• ­Web-site traffic isn’t growing
• ­Traffic is good but transactions are stuck in neutral
• ­Online sales are flat or declining

If your company suffers from any of these symptoms, your prospective customers have “more important” things on their mind. Ask yourself – Are we talking at our customers about products features and architecture or are we having a conversation with our target buyer…providing them with valuable content.

Customer Voice Selling^TM
Customer Voice Selling allows companies to quickly improve sales by incorporating your customers’ voice into your company’s voice. It includes a simple-to-use and effective process – ask your customers the right questions, incorporate what you’ve learned about their priorities into all market-facing activities and materials, and measure the results.

Five tips to avoid Product-First Selling
Here are five tips to follow to ensure your organization doesn’t suffer from Product-First Selling.

#1 –      Create/refresh a new routine that imposes customer listening.
We are all caught up in day-to-day tasks of running our business but now’s a good time to do a gut-check. Take the time to use the “Ask-Incorporate-Measure” guidelines to add rigor and discipline to your customer-focused initiative.

#2 – Create/refresh valuable content that directly maps to your target buyers’ priorities.
No matter what, don’t lead with product brochures, even though there will be continued internal pressure to do so.

#3 – Become the customer voice selling Commander for your organization.
A tech company’s natural comfort zone is product-first. People easily slip back into the product-first comfort zone. Maintain simple customer voice check-lists prior to authorizing lead gen campaigns, product initiatives, or social media initiatives. Are we maintaining a customer voice, outside-in approach to this campaign? Do our product and service offerings align with what the customer wants vs what the product team wants to build?  Is all of our company promotional material customer voice centered?

#4 – Take a minimum of one week per year on customer sabbatical.
We all know how important it is to meet with customers. Schedule a specific time, get away from the voice of the company, hit the road, and ask the right questions.

#5 -  Set up a culture for continuous customer voice selling.
“Ask-Incorporate-Measure” needs to apply across the entire organization, not just sales and marketing. Be the advocate for Customer Voice Selling and set up cross-organizational goals and metrics. Customer Voice Selling shouldn’t be another silo’d initiative.

Thoughts…

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