Communicating clearly and directly is key to assuring your customer knows benefits and value you offer, something that important to success of your business must be overt.

Great Example of Bad Communication - I came across what I believe to be a great example of poor customer communication. Following is exact text taken from an anonymous company's marketing materials, describing who they are and what they do. Note how it is unclear what they do for their customers (benefit) as well as unclear why a prospective customer would seek their services. Avoid making this mistake:

"Company X is a results oriented training and consulting firm promoting sustainable economic growth globally by developing entrepreneurship programs focusing on capacity-building techniques, skills and knowledge. Company X provides needs assessment to determine capacity-building strategies, training design and implementation in small and medium enterprise development, services focused on empowering women through entrepreneurship, and technical assistance and business advisory services."

For Company X, their prospective customers have to interpret and translate statement above into something meaningful for them (benefits). Remember, all customers in a buying process take what you offer them in communications and reason what's in it for them. Your customers want to know what benefit they will realize as a result of using your product or service. You can't take chance of leaving it up to your customer to figure it out on their own. You need to be overt in telling your customers who you are, what you do, and what's in it for them. Remember to sell from their process of buying. Lead with your benefits and offer your features and functionality are proof of your ability to deliver.

Lasting Thought - The lasting principal here is extremely simple...if you mean something; say it as plainly as you possibly can. Never let a prospective customer guess about benefits they should expect to enjoy as a result of doing business with your company. Review all of your marketing materials and assure there are no implied benefits. Read all of your materials as a prospective customer will, from their perspective of being engaged in a buying process. Make sure your communications clearly answer most critical components of good sales communications - what's in it for me, why should I believe you.

Your perspective customers need to clearly understand what's in it for them. When you approach your customer communications from perspective of your features and functionality, you need to assure you are doing so only as a means to prove your ability to deliver benefits to your customer, not as reason to purchase.

Lastly, remember...if something is worth saying, it should be said.

(2) Start Early: George Burns said, "I had to work hard for 20 years in vaudeville before I became an overnight success in radio." That's a lesson in stepping up. Stepping up sales results with my leadership tool doesn't just happen overnight. You must prepare to get those step-ups starting in early stages of sales process: when prospecting for new clients, identifying decision makers, and making initial calls.

In this early stage, ask yourself: "What is close in this sale? And how can that close lead to customer not simply buying my product but also becoming product's cause leader, both inside and outside his/her organization?" For instance, sales people of materials company I mentioned aimed to replace their competitors' materials with their materials in computer housing applications. With that focus, they would have gotten closes — but not step-ups. The differences between their competitors materials and their materials were negligible in cost and performance.

The sales people continued to develop traditional channels to their customers' purchasing departments. But they also began building step-ups early by including design engineers in their first-stage sales activities. They focused on being their customers' "design partners" — not simply showing them where they could save costs and achieve performance advantages but also showing them how they could get market share through innovative uses of those materials.

Getting in early as their customers' design partners, they not only got closes but step-ups from those closes by integrating their materials into new generations of housings.

(3) Link to "Must-Have" Results: Step-ups happen only when you answer vital needs of your customers — not nice-to-have needs. Discover those needs by asking and answering: "What are your customers absolute must-have results?"

Those "must-haves" are your great step-up opportunities, because when you are delivering on must-haves, your customers are more likely to become your cause leaders.

In above example, sales people were able to get step-ups because they focused on their customer's "must-haves", productivity and cycle-time.

Here's another example dealing with another busines sector: I consulted with an insurance company whose growth had flattened out. We found out a key reason why. Their products were not meeting must-have results of their customers. The must-have results of their customers were that they absolutely had to grow their businesses. Yet company's products did not materially address growth needs of their customers.

Only when sales people convinced their own company to develop and sell products that met growth needs of their customers were they able to turn those customers into cause leaders. Once those new products were offered to customers, they far outsold old products.

Don't sell yourself short by focusing exclusively on close. Liberate step-up opportunities that are embedded in most closes by using this powerful leadership tool of challenging people to lead not simply do. By getting customer cause leaders, starting early, and linking to must-have results, you can multiply sales far beyond what closes achieve.

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