Customers are a demanding bunch. They have to be because of the intensity of the competition they face and the fact that their customers are just as demanding. It puts a sales pro who genuinely cares about the customer in an odd situation because…

They don’t care about you. They don’t care about your products. They don’t care about your company.

They only care about your ability to repeatedly generate pull on streams of value that facilitate achievement of their objectives. There are a lot of moving parts in that last sentence, so a closer look at the key words and phrases is in order.

• Repeatedly – A one-shot deal is just that. It may not have been a simple matter of luck or good timing, but it looks that way to the customer. No matter how valuable that one shot was, the customer is far too busy for relationship-building with you unless you can quickly do it again. (and again, and again…) You’ve got to constantly rapidly and continuously discover, learn, create, develop, solve, advance and deliver.

• Generate Pull - Pushing your products and services is an obsolete strategy. Oh sure, it still works. The vast majority of sales reps still use it, but make no mistake, it is obsolete. Technology has enabled customers to quickly locate and “pull” whatever they want, whenever they want it into their organizations, at a great price. You need to be able to deliver whatever “it” is and right now. That means you must get really good at anticipating requirements; which means you must know what they want before they do and where they’ll look first to find it and be there when they do finally look; which means you must know their business and where it is and/or should be heading; which means you need to know the same about their customers… Sound difficult? Complicated? Different? It most certainly is. It’s also the “new normal.”