Our work at Employee Navigator from a sales perspective has been significantly harder over the past few years because our product represents a discontinuous innovation. We are asking our customers to use the platform in completely new ways than they have been accustomed to and on an entirely new scale than has every been accomplished up tot this point in the insurance industry.
That means that we really have to have a clear vision of what the future of the insurance industry will look like from our client perspective and we have to make sure that everyone we speak with understand that vision and is on board with our goals. I’ve learned that not every sale is a good sale, in that if you have thousands of users who all expect entirely different things form your software it become increasingly difficult to stay focused from a development standpoint and to keep your customers happy on the support side
As a result the sales process has become much more educational in nature. Everybody understands what our software does in theory, but explaining why its important in the long run to pragmatic and conservative buyers is no easy conversation. Furthermore, because our product is discontinuous we also have to be upfront with our customers that there will be a steeper learning curve with us, all the while convincing them that our path is the ultimate path to long term success.
Some of my takeaways form the past two years include:
- Have a clear & compelling vision for your company’s future that can be easily communicated to your customers.
- Hire sales staff with domain expertise.
- Make sure your entire organization understands the problems your attempting to solve for the customers.
- The sales staff should be a huge drive of product roadmaps. Listen to your clients and the problems they’re facing. This might mean finding solutions that they weren’t expecting, but as Henry ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
- Iterate, iterate, iterate