Of all the things that are happening in your business’s market this year one thing is very clear: Simply doing what you’ve always done is more than a bad strategy. In these times of lasting change and tough competition, it’s suicidal.

So, if it’s time for a different sales call strategy, this Albert Einstein story will illustrate the real issue behind its creation.

His day job was a physics professor at Princeton and, just before the annual exams, his assistant ran up to him very agitated and said, “Professor, there’s a problem with the exam paper! The questions are the same as last year!” “Ah,” said Einstein, “while the questions are the same I know that the answers will be different.”

In truth, the questions sales managers are being asked by their companies haven’t changed much since 2012. They remain: “How are you and your sales team contributing to our company business goals?” But like in the Einstein tale, the answers certainly have.

Shifts in the market mean that we need to change how we go about achieving sales and business goals, how we involve our customers in the sales call, and the value we offer them.

So, working on that other great Einstein principle that “solving problems needs a different kind of thinking than the kind in use when they were created,” here is a different approach from Clayton Christensen that will help you develop a different strategy.

Clay’s approach, called “Disruptive Innovation,” goes something like this: While the traditional sales approach has had a product/ service focus (including how it’s different from competitors), disruptive innovation adds the assumption that there’s an unmet need to fill in the customer’s business.

That is, we’ve assumed that they are "underserved" consumers; that they are ready and willing for new products/ services because they have a gap that needs to be filled. Marketing's traditional market research assumes that, and so reflects that. “Sales” follow suit. (This holds for both a “new” product launch and for the “switch business” campaign)

Given the congested and competitive nature of many markets this may not be quite the case. Maybe, just maybe, they are NOT underserved BUT overserved. Clay says that traditional market research techniques were designed for underserved, NOT overserved consumers.

This disconnect between the company’s perceived/assumed reality (customers are underserved), and the customer’s perceived reality or view of the world (we are overserved) causes them to lie in market research and during sales calls. Okay, maybe “lie” is too harsh a descriptor?

This disconnect between the company’s perceived/assumed reality (customers are underserved), and the customer’s perceived reality or view of the world (we are overserved) causes them to lie in market research and during sales calls.

Whatever word you choose, I suspect that this disconnect is so great that they either don’t want to appear “stupid” or to offend. So, they give the market researcher/sales representative the answers they want to hear—the convenient answers. I mean, have you heard a customer say things about your products/services that doesn’t quite end up being true? Things like, “I’ll think this over and be sure to put in an order,” or “I’ll take this proposal and support it at the next committee meeting.”

Here’s how this principle plays out: When a customer says that the product is too expensive, the sales representative responds (in some way, shape, or form) by questioning the judgement of the customer. What customers have figured out is that by being truthful, they are disrespected. It’s easier to avoid this conflict altogether.

What we have to abide by is that every customer, based on what they know and what they believe, is making exactly the right decision to buy or not buy our products. If your representatives keep questioning their customer’s judgement, they’ll keep saying what they think the sales representative wants to hear.

So what we need is a strategy that’s based on different thinking. If we assume customers are overserved, not underserved, then Clay’s Disruptive Innovation approach comes into its own. Simply put, Clay says that underserved consumers tend to buy and overserved consumers tend to hire. This approach is, in turn, validated by our own experience that we perceive buying and hiring differently. 

It’s fair to say that when we buy something we look closely at the product/service first and the task second. When we hire something, we keep the job-to-be-done uppermost in our mind, with the actual product second.

Remember: underserved consumers tend to buy; overserved tend to hire. Traditional selling has always had a close that asks the customer to commit to using more of our product. In other words, we’ve assumed they were underserved and asked the customer “to buy” something.

In the old days, when competition was minimal and product differentiation obvious, this underserved status made sense. Now that markets are congested and competitive and, in the customers’ minds, products have very little real differentiation (commoditization), that approach is not working as well. We need to change tactics.

Representatives should start by talking about the “job-to-be-done,” assuming that customer only “hires” our products/ services. They ask the customer, “when it comes to … (the business issue/problem that’s being discussed) … what’s really the job at hand for you?” First, talk about the job-to-be-done. Talking about the product comes later.

By shifting the conversation away from questioning the customer’s judgement to the job-at-hand, the sales call and the representative’s demeanour taps into what the customer really cares about. And that’s a real strategy with a difference.