Write Your Own Script

This approach is part of the company's whole "People Ready" mantra, for which it actually has hired anthropologists to help develop different approaches. It's also the foundation for the new Demo Showcase portal it has been using in pilot form with several partners. The showcase is populated, if you will, with selling scripts that help link up the features of specific products with the tasks and functions that particular individuals in a larger company face on a regular basis.

Thinking about customers as human beings rather than mere consumers of IT is certainly a great thing. Frankly, this is the sort of knowledge that your team has been amassing for years in their own role as trusted advisers for your clients. So, while the 120 or so different personae that Microsoft has created as a construct for dealing with midmarket and enterprise companies is certainly a great starting point, it's just that, a starting point.

In fact, one of the most important things that successful solution providers have learned to do since the slowdown earlier this century (that still sounds weird) is get really close to their customers in order to provide a competitive advantage. Being able to address how you can make a person more efficient and productive within a certain role is a wonderful thing. What's even more wonderful, however, is when you can show that person how to be more innovative within the confines of that role, to be different from anyone else who just happens to share the same title.

So, while you definitely should familiarize yourself with the sorts of precanned scripts that a vendor partner like Microsoft can spend millions to develop, what will really propel you into the spotlight and help you take center stage will be your ability to help a businessperson improvise and act in ways that take them off the script. Your direction will be particularly valuable in small businesses, where you know way more about work habits and processes than any huge high-tech vendor.

What selling scripts are working for you? HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, welcomes your feedback at [email protected].