Every product and service sold has a litany of features and benefits associated with it.  As sales professionals, we use those terms in our pitches to describe these offerings.  So when our customers use one of these adjectives to describe what they are looking for {i.e., convenient, flexible, customer-friendly, innovative, cost-effective, open, affordable, reliable, etc.} we jump to the instant conclusion that we have what they need.

• Do you realize that everyone in your industry uses the same words to describe their product offering?
• Do you recognize these are very generic terms, subject to interpretation?

Next time your customer describes what they are looking for in a solution and they use one of these very generic descriptors ask them one very direct question:

You mentioned {fill in the blank} to describe one of your needs, what does that mean to you?

The answer provides you the place to engage in a powerful learning exercise that will help you define what your customers really need and how they define it.  This is where you can truly understand how their vision and needs actually match up to your product offering.