What Is the Secret to Success?

Matt Duray, President and CEO, The Connect Group

I have done a lot of reading and attended seminars and training and what I have garnered throughout all of this ongoing education is that there is a pretty consistent theme. I don’t know if I can really call it the secret to success, but I do believe that it is one of the key ingredients.

We need to understand that no matter how many bells and whistles our product or service has it still needs to make financial sense to our customers. The only way we can hope to achieve a successful sale – where both parties in the transaction win – is to understand what the customer is trying to achieve and show how your product or service is going to help them achieve their goals, targets, etc., quicker, faster and easier than your competition’s.

The real key is to listen to what the client is telling you, understand what that means, and use your expertise in your field to demonstrate how you can help them achieve their goals.

In the technology business, for example, it is easy to get caught up in the product features and go out and scream from the mountaintops about the features we have and expect our clients to understand that feature set and translate that feature set into profitability for their company. The problem is that we assume that our client has had the same exposure to our products as we have, which just isn’t true.

Put the shoe on the other foot. I may have had my taxes prepared last year, but that certainly doesn't qualify me to prepare them this year, right? So why do we think that our industry is special? It isn’t.

As we listen to our customers’ challenges, it is safe to assume that we may have helped another business solve a very similar challenge earlier using a certain product or service. Let’s now use that knowledge to help this customer solve their challenge. After all, customers really don’t care what solves their challenges, they just want the roadblocks removed, allowing them to do what they do best. In almost every instance, your customers can make more profit for their business doing what they are experts at than doing the services you provide.

Matt Duray is president and CEO of The Connect Group, which specializes in helping businesses increase their profitability and competitive advantage through the proper deployment of technology. Duray is a seasoned entrepreneur with more than 20 years in the telecommunications industry. He currently serves on the dealer advisory board for Great America, TAG National and Samsung Telecommunications America. He graduated from DeVry Institute of Technology in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications. He also is a member of the 2009-10 PHONE+/Channel Partners Conference & Expo Advisory Board.