Strategy

In using a selling system such as MeasureMax, your strategy is simple: Seek measurable details about customers' purchasing decisions. Help motivate them to perform tests of reasonableness on whether they first, you second can achieve their goals. You do this before you mention any specific products. Then, working with measurable expectations, you see how well your products and services can produce the value they seek.

Note

If you chose your market segment per MeasureMax requirements, the connections to customers between their goals and your products will be evident. Now they will be as motivated as you are to pursue those connections.

Example

Let us turn back the clock to our previous sales call. This time Bob, upon hearing Eileen's interest in increasing data protection, alters his sales call from a tactical one to a strategic one by asking her to:

1. Explain what she means by increasing data protection—for example, decreasing the number of lost data incidents by 50 percent to only thirty per year.

2. Elaborate on what measurable value increasing data protection would generate—for example, thirty lost data incidents cost $2,000 each, which results in $60,000 savings annually.

3. Explain how Eileen will know if she achieves her goal of data protection.

With this information, Bob determines which products and services best achieve Eileen's goals. However, without a goal-oriented strategy of defining what customers want to—and are able to—achieve, the results are up for grabs as is their choice of business partners. You will also see how you can gain competitive advantages when your customers (and competitors) do not know how to answer questions like the ones presented to Eileen, but you do. You become valuable to customers when they acknowledge you as their industry expert.