It is possible to sell a product to customers when you don’t understand their culture or their way of life. But it sure can be a lot more difficult. Curiously, the incident which made me acutely aware of this involved SEC football.

I was on the floor of the convention center in Las Vegas in our booth, when one of the sales reps came over with four gentlemen in tow. The sales rep was from Spain, but lived in England at that moment. He was working the show primarily to make contact with international banks, but he had managed to make a connection with a U.S. regional bank that was strong in the Southeast. He had brought four of the bankers over for me to demo our product suite.

All four gentlemen were from Atlanta, and all of them had graduated from different SEC schools. Since I am a Florida grad, and originally from Georgia, we immediately fell into an earnest discussion of what mattered most in our lives at that moment – SEC football. After all, it was football season and this was a few years ago when SEC East teams were actually competitive.

The Spanish sales rep stood there impatiently listening for a few minutes as we jovially talked, and then practically shouted, “Yes, yes, this is all very interesting! But, we have limited time and we need to move on to things that matter!”

All five of us gasped. At the same time. Really loudly.

Imagine an old church lady getting the vapors. Only worse. Much, much worse.

After the initial shock wore off, I did my best to rescue the meeting. It was an uphill struggle though, and even years later, we have still not gotten very far with this bank. After the meeting, the sales rep practically took my head off for not respecting the clients’ time. Instead of wasting time talking, I should have jumped straight into the demo.

When we think of selling a product to customers, especially in the international space, we often focus on having a common language. If you speak fluent English, then you should be able to sell successfully in the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. This sales rep spoke excellent English. The problem was, he didn’t understand that language is only one element of culture and not, as we say in the South, the whole shootin’ match.

The sales rep did not understand that Southerners, typically speaking, like to talk and get to know each other before moving on to business. We aren’t just buying a product, we are building a relationship, and we like to think that business partners like us, understand us, and respect our values. Not everyone from the South likes football, or follows the SEC if they do. There are other conferences, after all. But for most graduates of  major SEC Universities, especially during the Fall months, SEC football is practically an obsession. Disrespecting it just means that you really don’t have a clue about us at all.

That incident radically changed how I started approaching presentations, particularly in the International space. For me, here were the primary takeaways.

1. Know what you are selling in a given meeting to the prospect you have in front of you.The sales rep thought we were selling a software application. Not true. No one buys a multi-million-dollar piece of enterprise software while standing on a crowded convention hall floor. We weren’t selling the software at all. We were selling entry into a process with us that might have, eventually, turned into a sale. For some prospects, getting them into that process might involve a lot of demo time with detailed discussions on the benefits of the application. But other prospects are more interested in the relational aspects of the engagement. Do they want to potentially do business with us? Do they think they can trust us? Do we understand them, their market, and their business? The sales rep failed to read the prospect in front of him and failed to understand how to engage them in a successful process. What he took to be a waste of time was actually an intricate part of moving forward. Even worse, not only was he clueless, but he actively stopped someone who understood best how to proceed, while simultaneously offending the prospects.

2. Culture really, really matters. From that meeting forward, I have always tried to have a local partner I could trust in any sales engagement. Even if the prospective client is in an English-speaking country, I still do my best to have a local rep with me. I usually meet at least a couple of times with the rep prior to the prospect meeting. I try to do as much of the meeting as possible in the local language and conducted by the local rep. Even when I have to actually key the demo of the software during the meeting, I still try to have as much of the narration done in the local language as possible. I also do my homework before I go to any market, in the hopes of avoiding any obvious faux pas. And when in any doubt, I shut up. Knowing when to not talk is often as important as knowing what to say when you do.

3. All meetings are for the benefit of the clients, and they will decide if a meeting was a success or a failure. That can be bummer. You put together a beautiful agenda, you plan to show all the latest features of your amazing system, and then the client moves in a direction that ruins everything. The thing is, the success or failure of a meeting is not based on an objective standard. Success is determined by the clients. They are meeting with you because they think it will benefit them. They will only spend their money if they are happy with the product and the process. You can suggest. You can recommend. You can point out what you think are the best uses of meeting time. But think twice, or maybe even three times, before you demand that prospective clients snap to attention and follow your agenda in a meeting. I have walked out of meetings that I thought were a total disaster, only to end up with a signed deal down the road. Their opinion mattered way more than mine.

In case you are wondering, the sales rep in this article departed some time ago for, hopefully, greener pastures. If he’d had more respect for SEC football, he might have gotten to stick around longer.

The post How SEC Football Improved My Sales Game appeared first on Glen Chancy.

Customers don’t buy features. They never have, and they never will. Customers buy benefits.

And that means three things for stressed out presales resources trying to survive a prospect demo:

1. You better know how your current customers are using your software. At any point in a demo, a potential customer may ask how a feature is being used in production at a real customer. You may have the best script and be polished like diamond. But a customer can put you totally off your game by challenging you to give real-world examples of how customers have turned your features into benefits. If you don’t really know, prospects will pick up on that immediately. That is why I try to always call on existing customers and spend as much time as possible working with my user community. I want to be prepared with working scenarios about how all my features are deployed in creative ways. Prospects seem to almost always spot inauthenticity.

2. You better know your industry. Customers buy software to solve problems and create competitive advantage. At various points in a presentation, customers will frequently talk about trends in the market place and demand to know how your current release will address them. Not keeping up with ongoing regulatory, commercial, and investment trends in your business space? Then expect the potential for embarrassment. Want to establish your cred as a trusted adviser and future business partner? Then be prepared to address how your software can address trends that are only starting to emerge.

3. You better know your prospect. Before I ever start a demo, I try to spend time as much time as I can getting to know my prospect. I ask about their current business processes, current goals, and perceived challenges. Before the meeting, I read their annual reports and Google them extensively. I comb through the RFP, if there is one.  I examine any questions we got in advance. I pour over emails that contain business cases. Before I ever launch my first demo page, I want to know as much as I humanly can about the prospect’s pains, failures, successes, and goals. More than anything, I am looking for the many ways my software can elevate their daily lives, their competitive positions, and their bottom lines. I want to tell them a story that has meaning for them.

Your audience is full of unique people with their own hopes, needs, and dreams. Your demo is the time to connect buying your software to making good things happen. Standing in front of a prospect and doing the same step-through of features you did for every other prospect is unlikely to land you nearly as many deals. If you do your job right, your customers will buy the benefits, even if they never quite grasp the features.

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