I have always smiled at the notion of “selling ice to Eskimos.” It conjures up images of the fast- talking super-salesman who can sell anything to anyone regardless of whether they need or want what is being sold. That’s quite a skill. But unfortunately a pointless one unless it leads to repeat business.

Good, long term business occurs because customers ACTUALLY want to buy irrespective of the skills of the sales person. A good sales person will merely expedite the process.

The sweet spot of selling occurs when you are doing something that:

Mutual indispensability is another way of describing it – that is, both parties businesses would be worse off if they didn’t do business together.

That’s a hard standard to meet and many of us fall short of it. Maybe it is because the product or a service is too homogenous and easily replaceable. Maybe it’s just inferior or doesn’t meet a genuine market need. Maybe it’s just plain boring (or, God forbid, we  are)! Even worse, maybe we don’t believe in it enough and we lack the necessary passion to deliver it effectively.

Whatever the reason the end result is a hard grind for everyone involved. Essentially where there is no love between you and your customers there is usually no business done. If you are constantly haggling on price, or always discounting your offerings, then you fit fairly and squarely in this category.

Most of the time it is our fault – not our customers. We dream up a “great’ business idea and in our haste to get it out there we forget to research whether enough people will want to buy it from us and at what price. We also never confront the hard issue of whether they will love it as much as we do. It’s a fatal mistake but an avoidable one.

By establishing some love with our customers and providing something that is truly important to them they will love us back by rewarding us with their business. It takes time, patience, smarts and a genuine desire to walk in the customer’s shoes to figure out what is MOST important to them. But nowadays we have no choice.

In the end if the sweet spot of selling anything centres around two-way “love” between us and our customers then maybe  it’s time to build some “love” into our business strategy? It certainly can’t hurt…