War Stories Archive
Early in her career, an institutional salesperson recalls this classic situation: She and her team had made a finals presentation for a sizable account. They described their “disciplined investment process,” their extensive resources, the quality of their people, their years of experience. When calling to request feedback (“How’d we do relative to our competitors?”), the new business prospect, polite but perplexed, responded, “Well, it’s hard to say, you know, because you all sound exactly alike.”
This investment firm mistook the reasons they were invited to play—expected credentials such as experience and resources—for the reasons why they should win. They did not give the new business prospect one distinctive reason why their firm should win the business. “At that time,” laments the salesperson, “we didn’t even have a solid understanding of how we were different from our competitors.”
Moral: You can’t play to your strengths if you don’t know what they are.