Since I’m the Queen Contrarian, I’d like to say that the ‘need’ we think that buyers have is not a real need.

First of all, we often meet them at the wrong end of their buying decision – when they are just starting their search for a possible solution. Not only have they not committed to making a purchase, they are too early in their decision process to fully understand all that their ‘need’ entails.

Next, if they REALLY had a need, they would have fixed it already. Any ‘system’ uses work-arounds when something in the system isn’t functioning optimally, so our buyer’s ‘need’ is already being taken care of in some fashion. That means their need isn’t urgent.

And, finally, the buyer doesn’t know at the beginning of their discovery, who needs to buy-in to a new vendor or a new solution. So we are walking down the path of understanding need (which they can’t really know in the beginning) and sharing data, and the prospect has no idea what the final parameters of the need will look like once all of the right people get onto the Buying Decision Team.

Because this is such a big topic, I’ll devote more time to this later on. For now, have a look at my video, and start a discussion around this. I’ll be sending in blog posts from Scotland, so I may not be as involved as I will be when I”m back, but I think it’s a good conversation to share.

Enjoy.

sd