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.
Tag: enterprise software
Customers Don’t Buy Features
When I first started doing demonstrations for bank software sales, I made the most common mistake there is. I spent my time in front of potential customers telling them all about the wonderful features my software could provide them. I had helped design many of the features, and I was quite proud of my software application. So proud, in fact, that I made it hard on myself to sell it. Customers don’t buy features. They never have, and they never will. Customers buy benefits.