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And what to replace it with instead
When I started in entrepreneurship, I was green — greener than green.
However, I did have some sales experience from brief periods working in B2B service industries.
From those years, I grasped one essential truism: buyers in B2B are looking for a combination of being or looking more successful and achieving that with less work and effort.
When I was choosing what product to go into, I chose furniture based on a little past experience. I wasn’t that interested or excited by it. What attracted me was the opportunity to sell a product B2B as you would a service. I was sure that this could be the marketing differential.
Trade furnishing buyers would be drowned in catalogs with glossier produce than mine. But if I could do their sourcing, provide whatever they were stuck on finding, and ensure it was delivered whenever, wherever — then that would be a recipe for success.
I would enable them to work less and be more successful.
And I was right. Despite all sorts of other struggles in the business, that simple combination of a product and service that solves problems at minimum time and effort for the customer meant orders poured in from early on.
I was lucky.
I was completely focused on getting the business off the ground to put a roof over my kids’ heads as a single Mum. And my lack of furnishing knowledge was a real plus because it meant I had zero ego about the product.
Nailing what the customer wanted was all that mattered. And that is just as true in B2C as it is in B2B.
Some years later, I started doing sales seminars for small business owners. I loved doing those workshop days, relished the challenges, and took immense pleasure from the glow of the lightbulb moments turned on. But every teacher knows that sometimes, you get someone in your class who won’t be taught.
And so I did on this particular day. This person was intelligent and voluble on how keen they were to learn to sell more…
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