Part of our job as sales professionals revolves around our ability to understand how customers think. The more we can understand the way our customers perceive value, the better we can position our solutions to help them derive the value that they seek. It is important for us to remember that . . .
Customers don’t choose one vendor over another accidentally; they choose for specific reasons that they value.
Like an investigative reporter, or a detective trying to solve a complex mystery, we endeavor to understand what causes our customer to see the world the way they do. The better we can understand the way our customers think, the more influence we can have on what they think about.
Our customers see the world through a lens that colors their perception and the way they interpret value. This lens creates a perception of the world and everything in it that our customer accepts as reality. Their perception seems to be the truth to them, and in fact, it is the truth to them. But what we think is truth and what they think is truth could be two different things.
When we come to the marketplace with our company, our people, and our solutions, each of these three has unique characteristics that distinguish us from our competitors. But every individual or decision maker who might be asked to evaluate our company, our people, and our solutions will see a completely different picture, filtered by his or her own lens of perception.
The Three Major Sources of Value model, contains a list of the vendor attributes customers consider that are incredibly consistent from customer to customer. But how your customer prioritizes them, in terms of which are most important, and why they think those particular attributes are important is as unique as their fingerprint.
Depicts this lens of perception, and how the various characteristics of our company, our people, and our solutions could be interpreted by an individual customer. Your customer might believe, for example, that since your company has been around a long time, that means you are a safe and easy choice, which adds an element of Simplicity Value to the reasons to buy from you. The same customer might believe that since you and your field service team are very responsive, it means that they can derive Time Value in the way of more uptime and less downtime by partnering with you, as opposed to the other vendor who is not as responsive.
The arrows show how the things that your customer believes about your company, your people, and your solutions refract through their lens of perception to become perceived in the various denominations of value that they care about. What we have to keep in mind is that every single decision maker and influencer you interact with sees you through his or her own lens of perception.
Looking at this model emphasizes the folly of the broadcast approach to selling. No matter what information you choose to broadcast about your company, your people, and your solutions, it will be ‘hit and miss’ at best. It usually only takes a few misses before your customer ‘tunes you out’ and nothing else you say gets through. We have to learn how to draw out information about our customer’s perception of value through our conversations and questioning. Then we can position ourselves accordingly.