I have lost count of how many times I have watched or shown others in the Australian B2B sales organisation space this clip: “The Golden Circle” .
I continue to be intrigued by the responses of the various viewers. Imagine, if you will, the classic sales spectrum many of us would have seen before when reviewing our sales systems. At one end is the simple, transactional, low cost, high volume sales scenario. Up the other end is the complex, multi-relationship, high cost, low volume sales scenario. Fair to say that those of us who live in the world depicted towards the complex end of the spectrum will typically relate more to Sinek’s message. Conversely, those of us who live in the world depicted by the simple end will typically struggle to relate to Sinek’s message.
The dichotomy is that that those of us operating in the simple transactional world need to “get” Sinek’s message, and to reinvent our customer value proposition accordingly. In a world where the race to the bottom is becoming more pronounced, customers perceiving previously differentiated classes of products and services as progressively more homogeneous and commoditised, leading to suppliers to progressively fighting on price discounting. The previously complex and bespoke is progressively becoming disrupted and in turn simplified and technologically driven; more and more of us are finding ourselves towards the simple, transactional end of the sales spectrum, which sucks us into the vortex of competing on price and discounting. As Sales Professionals, we find ourselves under increasing pressure to justify our existence.
My suggestion to all concerned: take the message from Sinek’s Golden Circle, then take the message from The Challenger Sale and reinvent your value proposition and sales system now to survive then thrive.
Keep an eye out for next week’s post on the rise of the internal sales function.