How many times have you talked to a salesperson and immediately regretted picking up the phone? The salesperson you spoke with probably didn’t let you talk very much and just powered through with a presentation of whatever they were trying to sell. This situation seems especially common in tech sales.

Without knowing anything about your business, the salesperson promises a solution. And in the event you actually wind up buying from them, you may discover six months down the road that what you’ve been sold isn’t actually what you needed.

That’s how a lot of tech sales work, but it’s not how we work.

We can’t promise we have a solution for you

When you talk with someone from LSG about a new project, you may notice them asking a lot of questions – more than you might be used to. While we may come into a meeting with a rough idea of some options that may work for your project, we never like to assume anything.

So when we meet our main goal isn’t to sell you a pre-prescribed technology solution. We’re there to gather information and understand the problem you’re trying to solve.

Until we do that, there’s no way we can fairly tell you that we have a fix or that we’re even the company you should be talking to.

Sometimes it throws potential customers off to hear “I don’t know.” from a vendor. But when meeting with a customer for the first time it’s often the only honest response. Until we ask questions and learn about your problem, we can’t know an appropriate solution looks like for you.

It’s OK to say “no”

Those same salespeople that launch into a rapid-fire presentation about how awesome their software is or how many features their server line has – they’re probably the same folks who fill up your inbox and voicemail.

They chase you in the hope that you’ll buy from them just to make them go away and leave you alone. if you do tell them “no” they either ignore you and try to overcome your objections or act like hurt puppy dogs to the point that it makes you even more uncomfortable to turn them away.

We don’t like chasing people. If you’re not interested in talking with us or we find out we’re not a good fit for each other, it’s much easier and pleasant to deal with that early on than six months from now.

Customers who have worked with us know that they can tell us “no” and we’re not going to bug them trying to convince them they need what we have to offer. We’re here to help, not to hard sell.

We may tell you “no” too

Vendors can get themselves in a lot of trouble biting off projects that aren’t a good fit. It creates a bad situation for the client, because they’re not getting what they need and at the end of the day no one involved is happy.

Again, it’s best to avoid these situations early on. If after talking to you we come to the conclusion that we’re not the right company to help you, we’ll tell you that and do our best to direct you to someone who’s a better fit.

If your vendor says “yes” to a project just because there’s money involved the chances of that project succeeding are pretty slim.

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