Every Interaction Matters

Every interaction with your clients (and dream clients) counts. It all matters.

That first cold call matters. It matters that you sound like someone who creates value for their clients. Having ideas matters … a lot! It matters how you treat the gatekeepers. It matters how you persist after your request for time is rejected. Are you treating your prospecting interactions like they matters.

Your first sales call matters. That interaction is a what your will determine whether or not you are someone worth spending more time with or whether you should be precluded from an opportunity. Are you preparing for sales calls and planning for them like the interaction matters?

The way you develop your solutions matters (now more than ever). The way you develop solutions needs to be more collaborative. It needs to include more stakeholders from more diverse areas of the business. Less is probably just pitching. It’s probably features and benefits divorced from any real desired future state. Is the way that you work the middle of the sales process proof positive that you know it matters–and how much it matters when the votes are tallied?

The way you negotiate value matters, too. You owe it to your client, your company, and yourself to not allow your client to underinvest in the result they need. Discounting means allowing your client to underinvest. It means depriving your company of the profit necessary to produce the results your client needs. It also discounts the value that you create. This interaction matters a whole bunch, and not treating all the previous sales interactions like they matter often results in poor creating and capturing of value.

Every sales interaction matters. They all count. If you believe they count, then you have to prepare for each interaction in a way that ensures that you create value for your clients and that you obtain the sales interaction’s outcomes (usually an advance).

Treat every interaction as if the whole deal rests on that single interaction. It just may.