Q. How do you know if your product will benefit them?
You have to be sales-driven, not engineering-driven. When you have that mindset, you develop a product around what the customer wants, not what the engineers want to do. We have to listen to the customer. You’ve got to get in their shoes, and you’ve got to feel their pain.
You have to find customers who like to be early adopters of something new. There are people that say, ‘Look, I don’t want to be the first one to buy your new gizmo.’ They are more risk-adverse. And there are some customers that like to be the first. They say, ‘I want to be a trendsetter. I want to try new things.’
Sometimes you just ask and then other times you look at their history. For instance, we look for people that have implemented new technology. You can do some research and you say, ‘Oh, they were the first to implement this.’
Good salespeople are people that first listen. You want to go in, and you want to listen. You want to ask questions.
In fact, on your first sales call, we train people to never even talk about the product. Your first sales call should be just to go in and ask questions and see if they’re a good fit for the product. There’s a lot of questions we have to ask, like do they have the money, first of all. Do they like technology? Have they used technology in the past? And then you go back and start talking about our solution and our product.
Q. How can you develop that relationship to build their trust?
You develop trust early on when you listen to them. When people are willing to just listen to you, you’re willing to share more and open up. You’ve probably met people who talk more than they listen; it kind of turns you off. You don’t want to do that.
One way to [be a better listener] is just to prepare well. When you first meet with people, do your homework and have good questions. You have to go in with some knowledge. They are more open when you show them that you’ve done some research.
If you go to [someone] and you start asking dumb questions, they will turn you off and then you’re done. So first, try to do a lot of research. Understand the environment you’re going into a little bit. Have some good questions and then listen to what they say.
HOW TO REACH: Aethon, (412) 322-2975 or www.aethon.com
