Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away From Your Competition
There’ s never been a shortage of books that come across the Agency Sales editorial desk. In a given month there will be any number of books, periodicals and articles devoted to entrepreneurship, salesmanship or the daily travails of the independent sales rep. That’ s why it was so unusual when some of the contents of one book recently caught our eye.
Ostensibly, Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away From Your Competition, by Anthony Iannarino, published late last fall by Portfolio / Penguin Random House( 221 pp., $ 27), emphasizes the need for sales professionals to create and offer more value to their customers. There’ s more to that message, however, and in order for the sales rep to provide more value, the point was driven home that it’ s incumbent for them to harness the challenges that a rapidly changing technology presents.
According to the author,“… the inability to create a higher level of value” has proven to be the“ root cause of the disintermediation of salespeople.” He goes on to maintain that“ If you believe that your product should sell itself, then you are an order-taker, and the future doesn’ t need ordertakers; technological solutions are already eliminating roles where no value is created in interaction with a salesperson. Right now, you are likely to have an app on your phone that serves as the salesperson for many things you buy. Even you, a salesperson, buy without a salesperson( and you may come home to a stack of packages on your front porch, none of which required more than just a click …).
“ If you believe that being able to produce a tangible result will allow you to succeed in sales, you are likely focused on responding to identified opportunities, and not the real work of being a salesperson and trusted adviser, which is creating opportunities.