Sometimes sellers are just too darn smart or enthusiastic for their own good. I know it's difficult to imagine that your hard-earned expertise could possibly work against you, but let me assure you that it can easily happen.

A few weeks ago I got a call from a man who read an article I wrote on value propositions. He felt that his salespeople really needed to learn more about this topic, so he was checking out my fees and availability for an upcoming sales meeting.

From my perspective, this info is secondary. The key question to answer first is if I'm a good fit for the sales challenges his people were facing.

"Help me understand your sales process," I asked.

"Strong demonstrations skills are critical to our sales success," my prospect said. "We give our salespeople in-depth training on our system. They have to know it inside-and-out and be able to demo it to our multiple vertical markets."

"So what problems are your sellers running into?"

"We're having trouble closing," my prospect said. "If they'd focus more on the value propositions during their demonstrations, we'd get more business."

I posed another question. "Are your sales reps focused on making sure their prospects see ALL the capabilities of their product?"

"Exactly," my prospect said. "That's where our salespeople really stumble. Their demos go on and on, but they don't talk value propositions. Can you help us?"

"Of course," I replied. "But based on my experience, what you're talking about is really a symptom of a much deeper problem. I bet your salespeople are probably running into problems with ..."

And off I went, expanding the problem to new heights far beyond the scope of our initial discussion.

At first my prospect agreed with what I was talking about. "Yes, yes," he said. "We lose more to the status quo than to any specific competitor."

I talked about delayed time-to-revenue on new product launches, inconsistent messages and the challenge of bringing new reps up-to-speed quickly.

"Yes. Yes," my prospect agreed. "It's really tough when there's so much that a salesperson has to remember."

I shared relevant industry statistics. I offered ideas on how to lay the groundwork for strong value propositions and shorten the learning curve.

But after a while, I felt his enthusiasm begin to wane. Obstacles started to emerge.

"That might be biting off more than we can chew right now," he said. "We just redid our training program, but let me talk to our VP of Sales about your suggestions. How about if I give you a call next Monday?"

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

That noise you're hearing - that was me, Miss Sales Expert, hitting myself over the head. I blew it and I knew it.

My own subject matter expertise and passion for increasing sales effectiveness took over my body. I was 100 miles ahead of my prospect in terms of knowing what it took to resolve the sales problems that they were inadvertently creating themselves.

A person's brain can only handle so much new information at a time, yet there I was trying to stuff more in. And as was to be expected, my prospect was saying, "Enough."

Had I gone on much longer, I would have talked myself right out of an opportunity to do business with this firm. As it was, I had to wait a week to find out my status.

During that time, I reflected on a cardinal rule I share with all sellers. Your first goal should always be to get your foot in the door. You don't have to bring out your whole bag of goodies to do this.

Instead, focus on helping your prospect solve their immediate problem or achieve their desired objective. Prove your capability. Deliver results.

Once you've accomplished that, then expand. The credibility you've earned will pay huge dividends. Each sale you make gets progressively easier because you'll have demonstrated that working with you is good for their business.

So you're probably wondering how I fared with my prospect?

He didn't call back the next Monday, as he indicated. Nor did he call on Tuesday or Wednesday.
So I picked up the phone and gave him a ring. But this time, I wasn't going to talk with him about the whole elephant - only the part he needed right now.

When I reached him, he hemmed and hawed about not being ready for everything I proposed.
"Don't worry," I said. "That was too much, too quick. Let's address your issue with value propositions today. We can tackle the rest later, if it makes sense."

On the other end of the line, I heard an audible sigh of relief.

"Good idea," he said. "Let's get started."