Rooms of the house
Judson Althoff, Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft, once shared a powerful metaphor for thinking about how to create value for company buyers. He likened the company to a house, and he suggested the most effective sellers are those who spend time in multiple rooms of this house.
The highest calling for customer-facing roles is to solve big problems. The bigger the problem, the more people it touches. The most driven and attentive sellers hear snippets of conversation in adjacent rooms, so they wander over to investigate. More timid and conventional sellers close the door and stick to the room in which they feel most comfortable.
Unfortunately, the comfort of familiarity is an illusion. There is no such thing as a customer with just one priority. Or just one decision-maker. Or just one stakeholder. Customers are trying to get a lot of things done, far too many things, and they inevitably depend on several people to advance their agenda.
This means there are numerous ways to serve. There are limitless permutations for a meaningful solution. But such solutions can only be engineered through hard-fought consensus. They are forged from a wide range of perspectives and commitments.
An average seller responsible for IT infrastructure might ask something like: What are the audio-visual components of your conference system today?
A top performer would take a very different approach: How is your company thinking about the future of work? What is your hybrid strategy? How are you balancing company efficiency and employee satisfaction?
Which of these two sellers is more likely to be referred to other rooms of the house?
If you cling to the comfort of the living room, you will likely miss out on pleas for help in the kitchen. Or quiet head-shakes of dissent in the guest room. Or disparaging remarks from competitors in the basement.
In many cases today, the house is getting bigger. The floors are getting longer. The rooms are becoming more spacious. For high performing sellers, this signifies an opportunity to create more value. For average sellers, it's an ominous precursor of their shrinking relevance.
As the house evolves, so sellers must evolve. Questions are more important than pitches. Situational fluency and deep curiosity are the most vital and differentiating traits of high performers in our foreseeable future.