I mentioned in my last post on Prospecting that the technical seller has the deepest understanding of how their company’s solutions work and how they can be optimally implemented to help customers run their business. The Provoking focus area is where the technical seller’s knowledge and enthusiasm for their business can really shine. First, let’s dispel any negative connotations or implications that can be drawn from the word “provoke”. By now the March 2009 Harvard Business Review article, “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers” by Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin, and Geoffrey Moore has become somewhat ubiquitous; and titles such as Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson’s “The Challenger Sale” have cemented the cultural shift towards consultative selling that arose at the turn of the century. Enterprise customers’ need to constantly evolve the means by which they make money, save money, and mitigate risk means that they need their suppliers to constantly provide them with new ideas. Rather than the goading or inflaming that is typically associated with the word “provoke”, this is best done via proactive, thoughtful, professional quality proposals that can change the customers’ business – even just a little – for the better.

The high performing technical seller can use this opportunity to advise the customer of:

• Methods to address trends in their industry
• New methods to use their existing investment in the supplier’s solutions to run their business
• New acquisitions and solution offerings from the supplier
• New product features and the business benefits of such

Providing and supporting quality products and solutions is expected in the enterprise technology industry. Provoking customers with new ideas is one of the best ways that the technical seller can add additional value to the business relationship and truly differentiate their organization from its competitors. This requires the sales engineer to have a broad understanding of the customer’s current and future business and how their own organization’s solutions can be applied. Most importantly, it requires the assertiveness to develop a point of view, put it in front of the customer, stimulate their imagination of the possibilities, and incite them into action.