No, it’s not a radio station, but stay tuned.
Don’t you hate sales people who think their job is to “sell?” You know you’ve got one within minutes of their mouths starting to move. The biggest hint is that there are no question marks. There’s just techno-babble. I admit that most of my visits with sales people last under five minutes. I just don’t have the patience.
I think the root of it is that they want to impress me with their product knowledge. Maybe it’s just an ego thing.
It takes a special, egoless sales rep to get me excited. They have that strange combination of industry knowledge and the ability to act as if this is the first time they’ve heard my problems. They spend 10% of our time together asking questions, and I spend the rest of the time answering. They skillfully extract the problems I’m having, even those hidden from myself.
My theory is that they can do this because they employ WIIFM. (The “What’s in it for me” tool.) What differentiates them from the losers is that the “me” in their quest isn’t THEM! It’s ME. How else could they ask the questions they ask? How else could they find the pithy truth that will drive me to spend money to solve a problem? They can do these things because, before they even walk through my door, they have put themselves in my shoes and thought about the investment of my time I’m about to make in them. And they wonder to themselves, “If I was him, what would be in this for me?” And, presto, they are able to drive a powerful problem-solving session rather than a feature recital.
I admire people who show their respect for me by asking WIIFM. I model my behavior after these WIIFM practitioners. At VeBridge, we apply WIIFM at our sales meetings, when we are planning kickoffs, and any time we are contemplating a meeting with a prospect or client. It makes our job easier. The people with whom we meet sense our respect for them and their time. What’s even better is that they tell us their problems. We then make intelligent recommendations to them about the best product for their organization to solve their document management problems.
The bottom line – it’s so much easier for us to solve their problems if we know what they are and if we understand their WIIFM.
Long live WIIFM!
Tags: #document_scan, #document_scanning, #enterprise_content_management, #going_green, #imagesilo, #image_silo, #onbase, #on_base, #paperless, Disaster Recovery, Document Imaging, Document Management, ECM