Why Should I Care?
March 20th, 2009 by Lori Reed
Why should I care? I used to think this was a rude statement (my mother forbade us from saying “I couldn’t care less”)…but I recently discovered it is the most important question to answer in the selling process.
Our CEO recently recommended that I meet with someone who had been calling on him. Because the CEO recommended it, I, of course, agreed.
I didn’t have much background about the product but the sales person had even less ability to sell. I learned an important, if not obvious, step in selling. The very first step in selling is making sure the prospect understands why they should care.
No matter how great your product is, no matter how current the technology is, no matter how many other people love it, no matter how many features it has, no matter how slick the demo is, and, the very worst, no matter how good you or your company is … it doesn’t matter if the prospect doesn’t know how or why the product could help them.
In this particular sales call, the woman used all her internal jargon to explain the product, but that meant nothing to me. I needed to hear why I should care in plain English. If you can’t explain what your product does without using industry-specific terms, you won’t reach many in your audience and I’m not sure you understand your product very well.
In this situation, I really wanted to hear how this product could help me, since the CEO recommended it to me, but in the end, I let the saleswoman go on with her spiel and ended the call as quickly as I could. I have the nagging thought it was a missed opportunity for both of us.
