Sales people learn best from their clients. That makes sense. And it happened once more to me today. While explaining to a large key account during a product presentation why it is easier to define certain user roles and then adjust the software flow and access rights accordingly, I got a lesson in how to not do sales.

The prospect said that he does not like the role-dependent approach because I as a sales person was not only following one role. Depending on whether I am talking to an IT person like himself or to the CEO or a technical buyer I will play a different role and adjust my presentation accordingly. The same is true in their business, and a software that predefines roles will not give them more control but less flexibility.

Of course I was still able to find a way out of this by telling him that we only use the role description to make things easier to understand, and that we have enough flexibility built in.

Nevertheless I thought this served very well as an example of why predefined strategy and tactical approaches limit a salesperson's chances rather than increasing them. The key is to be able to use a set of tools and rules and adapt them, use them or not use them as the situation demands. Interestingly CUSTOMIZED Selling® from Nice Ventures is basically exactly what the prospect described, so even though he was using his statement against me in that situation, I liked it and did not feel at all challenged.