“Don’t sell the steak. Sell the sizzle.” is a sales canon that dates back to The New Yorker Magazine in 1938. Elmer Wheeler is the man credited with coining it. It seems Mr. Wheeler was one of the first pioneers in persuasive selling. He was one of the first to recognize the value in presenting a customer the choice in buying one thing or another thing (something and something) instead of the choice of buying or not buying (something and nothing). He was successful. Sales teams have been trying to emulate him, and his success since.
His approach works well when dealing with an end-user customer. The person buying the steak, or getting their oil checked, or buying a malted milk (these were actual examples in the 1938 article) can readily be replaced by those purchasing Mobile Phone packages, automobiles or Television / Internet packages for their homes. It is still about buying one thing or another, not about buying or not buying. These are consumers making discretionary purchase decisions.
For the most part these are all examples of Business-to-Consumer selling opportunities. The person buying is the person using the capability being sold. It is when you start looking at the idea of Business-to-Business selling that the concept of “sizzle” can become a little more esoteric. In business, there are very few discretionary purchase decisions that get made. It is usually decided that you can use it to make money or save money, or you don’t buy it.
Businesses for the most part are financially or profit driven. I say for the most part as there are several that purport to serve the greater good, and by their designation as a “Non-Profit” organization enjoy a different tax treatment. There are also those that are regulated as to how much they are actually allowed to charge and or make as a profit. Even so, these regulated firms are also somewhat profit driven.
What they are not is “sizzle” driven.
Yes, it is true that organizations are made up of people that can be influenced by something other than profitability, but the organization as a whole, through is management structure, its purchasing process and more importantly in many instances, its stock price will not be “sizzle” driven. Being fashionable or exciting or being a market or technology leader is interesting. It may have some ephemeral effect on the organization, or how the market perceives it, but in the end, it will be the financial performance of the company that dictates how it ultimately is perceived.
If you want to stay in business, profitability will be key. It is about making money, and about how those things that the organization purchases can be used to make more of it, this quarter, this month, today.
Steve Jobs is famous for many quotes. Part of one of his more famous quotes contains the following line:
“Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do”
This is spoken like a true technology genius, especially when he is referring to a set of consumers and end-user customers that are not technology geniuses. Jobs was brilliant at anticipating consumer “wants” (as opposed to needs – no one “needs” an iPhone, or an iPod, etc.) and then putting together a product package that would then create a new market.
He identified what you would want and then created the package that you wanted it in. Like I said, he was a genius.
However, when you are working with businesses, it is somewhat different. The businesses normally require something called a “business case” (see what I did there? Business – business case? It’s important.) before they are going to spend money on anything, whether it is a new hire, an internal development, or an externally supplied product or service. It has to make business sense, or more simply put, it needs to generate more value for the business than it costs the business to do.
There is a myriad of ways to describe the generation value for a business, but I have found that they can usually be simplified down into one of two categories: Value can be created by enabling the customer to generate more revenue, or value can be generated by enabling the customer to reduce their costs. Both of which usually result in greater earnings and profits, which ultimately increases the value of the company (usually in the eyes of the shareholders or owners).
Many times, companies like to tout their future capabilities when selling to other companies. It is important to have a direction and strategy for the future when talking to customers. They too want to know where their suppliers are going and what they expect the market to need or want in the future. But there is a significant gap between the value of a business case for today, and the value of a business case for the future.
The business case of today involves products and services designed to meet defined requirements, solve existing issues and deliver present value in the form of increased sales or reduced costs. The needs exist. The products exist. And the relationship between them can be well defined. The amount spent, and the value received, either immediately or over the defined period of the business case can be calculated. It is truly the decision between buying one vendor’s solution and buying another vendor’s solution (again, the decision between buying something and buying something else).
It is when new products or capabilities are introduced ahead of or in anticipation of the business customer’s need, that the business case relationship can become somewhat esoteric.
When trying to anticipate the business customer’s future needs, the impetus is on convincing them that your specific view of the future is to correct one. They must then balance that out against their customers needs, wants and desires to see if that anticipation makes sense in the form of a business case.
Many times, there can be a general consensus among the supplier organizations about what the future state of an industry may look like, but unless that vision can be quickly converted into increased customer revenues, or reduced operating expenses, the future solution will have to wait. Most organizations can no longer afford to spend money in anticipation of what they think their customers will need or want. They would rather wait and make sure it is what they need or want.
Remember present value is always better than future value.
Part of the issue with “future” products is that they don’t necessarily translate to definable value. They are usually described as “platforms” for the future, or that they will enable “future applications”. In short, they don’t clearly define and quantify how the business customer is going to generate new revenues and how much those revenues might be, or how they are going to reduce their costs and how much those cost reductions might be. They have only half of a defined business case. The purchase or the cost half.
They do not have the benefit half of the business case defined.
Without the definition of those future applications or services or values or cost reductions it is difficult to make a case where an organization will feel comfortable spending today’s money on an undefined future value. In short, very few businesses will gamble today’s money on an undefined future value. It makes much more sense for them to actually wait on the future than to bet on the future.
As I said earlier, companies are in business primarily to bring value to their shareholders and their owners. The do this by generating earnings and profits. They do that generating greater value on products and projects that the money they spend executing them. They make more money than they spend on these ventures.
When a business is trying to sell a good or service that cannot clearly define the value that it will generate for the customer, either in the present or the future, it always makes more sense for the customer to wait on that particular buying decisions. This is the definition of deciding between buying something and not buying (buying nothing).
Regardless of the sizzle that a company may claim that accompanies their product or service, in the case of buying today based on predicted future needs and capabilities, the steak, and its relatively definable value will usually be of much more interest to the business customer. Especially when it comes time to review the value generated for the customer. And even more so when that sizzle is still just a future sizzle.