Simplifying for my clients?

Simplifying for my clients?

B.G. (Before Google): Sales person provides all product information, reviews, and technical know-how.

A.G. (After Google): Client can find out everything he needs to know about product information, reviews, and technical information himself.

While I do not think the Internet has killed the Sales occupation, the role of the sales person is more challenging than before. It is no longer enough to be the "catalogue". In this age where information is readily available on the Internet, what do you think is the most important value a Sales person bring to the table?

Amongst the various possible answer, I believe the ability to simplify is one of the top value.

In today's world, before a prospect enters office on Monday morning, his Inbox is already filled with more than 50 unread emails. He has to rush off for his internal meeting by 915am, and his boss calls for an urgent evaluation of a project. He needs to delegate 3 jobs, and has to fire-fight when a server goes down. He is chasing his current vendor for SLA while his internal users are calling his phone non-stop to report about the server down status. He requests for a solution, and 5 vendors spin 5 different stories about why they are the best answer to his problem. He posts his problems on his online peer group, but is too busy to read all the replies. And before lunch time, 7 different sales person cold-called him to pitch their products and services.

Welcome to the world of information over-load. While the Internet has "connected" everybody and makes information more readily available, it has also created an overwhelming barrage of "noise". So much so that if you visit any decent forums these days, many posters append their posts with a TLDR paragraph at the bottom. What's TLDR? Too-Long-Didn't-Read. It's a one sentence summary of the entire post.

How many times have you seen a Sales proposal which appends 5 pages of "Company Background", 10 pages of a comprehensive coverage of all products and services provided by the company (i.e. the company brochure), and another 10 pages of impressive looking tables and charts, but all not-related to what the prospect needs? And very commonly, these are mandated by the company! I.e. All proposals going out to clients *must* include these information.

I've been guilty of sending 40 pages documents for very simple services. And a lot of times, the clients get back to me asking...

"So what exactly are you providing?".

Well, it's all in the proposal, if you refer to section 16, item 2.

"And terms?"

Section 18, item 1.

"Any exclusion clauses?"

Section 21, item 3.

"I still don't get it. It seems so complicated and I'm afraid to sign off to this in case there's some hidden clauses that I missed..."

Why so much noise? Most of the proposals I've seen can be summarised in two sentences.

1. In return for paying me $X, I will provide Y to you, within Z days/months.
2. How we're going to do this is by....
   

So I propose, the best way a Sales person can bring value to the client, is to simplify the buying decision for the client. Make the proposal as simple as it can be.