The Most Valuable Thing I Learned in Chile

It’s not often that a single presentation has a significant impact in how you do business, but the discussion on sales in Latin America by Nicolas Elizarraga, did just that.

He said that when he started selling information technology to corporations he started out by calling dozens of successful sales people and asked their advice. Each person, he asked if they had 15 minutes for a Skype call or a cup of coffee.

Here is the TL; DR version — you need to know how people make decisions to purchase and use technology and it occurred to me that I had very little idea about our schools in Chile decide to use technology, so I addressed that. He said that we assume because a product or service solves a problem that people will buy it, but that’s not necessarily true.

Based on his conversations, he recommends that you

ASK YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS

– What they have tried before in (educational technology) and problems they have had.

– “Which criteria might be met by a vendor for you to feel comfortable?” “Have you found any like that?”

– Describe the steps this company needs to take to make a decision like this? DON’T ask someone “is this your decision?” Not only are you less likely to offend someone , but it allows you to track the process. If they tell you that first it goes to a committee and then the committee recommendations are reviewed by the district office, you can find…