Latest news with #competitive advantage
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Why The Best Salespeople Think Like Strategists, Not Search Engines
B.D. Dalton II, Lazy Overachiever, deal-maker, author and podcast host of Grow Sell and Retire, Director at Rockfine Group. In an era where ChatGPT can answer questions in seconds, I believe the real competitive advantage has shifted from having all the answers to asking the questions your competitors can't or won't. Remember when the "always be closing" mantra from Glengary Glen Ross ruled the sales world? Well, those days are dead, buried under an avalanche of AI-generated insights and instant Google searches. Instead, welcome to the era of ABQ: Asking better questions. But this isn't another soft-skill sermon. This is about weaponizing curiosity to create competitive advantages that AI can't replicate and competitors can't copy. The Instant Answer Paradox Your prospects know more about your product, competitors and options than ever before. They've already read the case studies, compared pricing and stalked your LinkedIn profile. By the time they're talking to you, they're not looking for information—they're looking for transformation. Yet I find that most salespeople are still playing the old game, armed with feature lists and benefit statements, wondering why their "consultative selling" feels like interrogation. The problem? We're asking the wrong questions. The Three Questions That Change Everything After analyzing what separates lazy overachievers from hard-working underperformers, I've identified three question frameworks that I see consistently unlock opportunities others may miss: "If we could solve [specific challenge] , what would you do with all that time, energy and focus you're currently spending on this problem?" Past understanding pain points, it's about understanding potential. I find that most salespeople focus on the cost of the problem. But smart salespeople focus on the opportunity cost of not solving it. When a CEO tells me they'd "finally focus on strategic planning instead of putting out fires," I'm hearing their vision for growth and the transformation they're really buying. You can only save so much. Your job is to help find profit elsewhere. "If we could model your [process/approach] after any company from a completely different industry, who would it be and why?" This reveals their aspirational identity while bypassing industry tunnel vision. I once asked a struggling restaurant owner this question. His answer? "Amazon's fulfillment centers. They make complex logistics look effortless." That conversation led to implementing systems that transformed his operation. He wasn't buying software; he was buying his Amazon moment. "What's the one question your biggest competitor would love to know about your business?" This simultaneously reveals a leader's competitive advantages, strategic thinking depth and intelligence they're protecting. The follow-up then opens wallets: "How would strengthening this advantage change your market position?" The Real Job Description Your job isn't to sell products or services. Your job is to make your clients look smarter, better, faster and even freer. When you ask the energy redistribution question, you're showing them how to be faster by eliminating inefficiencies. When you explore their industry envy, you're helping them become better by adopting best practices from unexpected places. When you uncover their competitive intelligence, you're making them smarter about their own strategic advantages. And when you help them envision the transformation? You're offering them freedom—freedom from current limitations, freedom to pursue bigger opportunities, freedom to become the leader they aspire to be. Why ABQ Leverages What AI Still Can't Do Recent research from Apple reveals AI's persistent struggles with empathy, logic and rationalization. These are the exact skills that separate great salespeople from order-takers. Artificial intelligence can process information, but it can't process intention. It can analyze data, but it can't rationalize dreams with reality. It can provide answers, but it can't empathetically guide someone through the logic of transformation. This isn't about competing with AI; it's about leveraging the uniquely human capabilities that AI can help amplify. When you ask better questions, you're using empathy to understand unspoken needs to help prospects justify the transformation they already want. In my experience, the questions above work because they're not seeking information—they're seeking transformation. They're about finding out who your prospects want to become. A Guide To Implementation Here's some ways to implement ABQ by leveraging AI for research while reserving the human touch for transformation. Before the meeting: • Use AI (and other sources) to research their industry's transformation stories and pain points. • Identify and research their competitors to understand the competitive landscape. • Identify two to three companies from other industries facing similar challenges. • Let AI help you map potential energy redistribution scenarios based on their business model. During the conversation: • Lead with curiosity informed by intelligence, not information dumps. • Build off AI-gathered insights to ask deeper, more relevant questions. • Position yourself as the architect of their transformation, not the researcher of their industry. • Let your preparation show through question quality (again, not data regurgitation). After the meeting: • Reference their aspirational comparisons in your proposal. • Use AI to help craft compelling narratives around their transformation journey. • Frame your solution as their bridge to that evolution, supported by industry intelligence. The New Sales Reality In a world where information is abundant but transformation is rare, I believe the salespeople who will thrive are those who can help prospects envision and achieve their next level of evolution. Your competitors are still asking about budget, authority, need and timeline. While they're collecting data points, you'll be collecting transformation stories. Overall, it's time we recognize that our prospects don't need another vendor with answers. They need a partner with questions—the right questions that unlock possibilities they hadn't considered. The future of sales is about asking the questions that make your competitors' answers irrelevant. In an age of instant answers, the right questions are your ultimate competitive advantage. "What question would make your prospects forget about your competitors?" Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Forbes
16-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How To Reinvent Your Business For AI: A Roadmap To Transformation
How To Reinvent Your Business For AI: A Roadmap To Transformation When we talk about AI today, we typically categorize it into three broad areas of intent: to extend and enrich the existing technology stack, to empower people and increase their productivity, and to reinvent the business itself. For this blog, I want to focus on reinvention, because this is where the true competitive advantage lies. Reinvention is not incremental change. It's foundational. It requires breaking from what's comfortable. And it's hard. But in today's climate, where disruption is a constant and technology accelerates faster than organizational cultures can typically manage, reinvention is mandatory. There is nothing more difficult, nothing more dangerous, than to introduce a new order of things. Reinvention is a new order of things. So, what does reinvention take? In a previous blog, we talked about how it must be top-down driven, not bottom-up driven. It's tempting for teams to default to enrichment – buying better tools, incrementally improving existing processes, or tacking AI onto current workflows. While such initiatives may yield value, they rarely deliver game-changing returns. Only reinvention offers that level of impact. The Four Levers of Business Reinvention As I've been talking to firms that are both attempting and doing this, I've come to recognize four critical levers in any successful reinvention. They're not sequential. You pull them together, and with varying degrees of intensity depending on your circumstances. Executive Conviction Reinvention can't happen without senior executive leaders having deep conviction that this is what they want to do, or must do, and working through this difficult change. If the conviction at the top is clear and consistent, the organization can absorb the friction and stay on course. Customer-Driven Value Reinvention must also begin with a fundamental question: What value do we deliver to our customers – and how can that value be reimagined? Your customer might be an external client, or if you're in an internal function like HR or IT, another part of the enterprise. Either way, reinventing the business starts with re-examining what the customer values and how you deliver it. At Everest Group, we've faced this ourselves. Our teams were relying on a long-established method to deliver client-facing insights – one that had been optimized over time but was starting to show its limits. In a conversation with our head of transformation, the question arose: 'Why are we still using this method at all?' That simple challenge sparked a deeper re-examination. Instead of asking how to improve the existing approach, we began to explore how to replace it entirely with something more impactful and aligned with how our clients want to consume insight today. This is the kind of thinking required in reinvention. What if we threw out the tool altogether rather than upgrading it? What if we redefined the deliverable rather than improved its presentation? This step is iterative and demands validation. You'll need to test your ideas with customers, refining and adapting until your value proposition resonates and scales. But it opens up the opportunity for a reinvention of the customer value that you're providing. And importantly, reinvention doesn't need to happen all at once across the entire business. You can start with a single business function or even a specific process. In fact, many organizations begin at the subprocess level. However, keep in mind that taking a subprocess-by-subprocess approach often leads to rework. As you stitch these subprocesses together over time, you'll naturally uncover opportunities – and even the need – to rethink the broader process they support. What starts as incremental can quickly become transformative. So, while it's perfectly reasonable to begin small, be prepared to ultimately reimagine the full capability as these changes accumulate. Excellence in Execution – Through People and AI Here is where reinvention becomes especially challenging: you will face internal resistance, and it will often come from the least flexible and least productive parts of your organization. It's very likely you're going to end up with a much more productive team. It's about reshaping your team so that the people leading the new processes are the ones leaning into change, not resisting it. The result is often a smaller team doing dramatically more. Building a System of Execution We've discussed how you change the customer relationship and what you can do differently and who you're doing it with. The final aspect is that work must increasingly be done in partnership with AI. This brings us to one of the most powerful, and least understood, elements of reinvention: the need to build a system of execution – not just apply AI tools, which I've discussed as well in a previous blog. It's worth reinforcing the distinction between using AI as a tool for your people and building a true system of execution. When AI is used as a tool, it enhances individual productivity – your people work faster, smarter, and more effectively. But a system of execution is something very different. It doesn't just assist people – it replaces a significant portion of the manual work with intelligent agents that carry out tasks autonomously. These systems operate alongside, or even on top of, your existing systems of record and systems of engagement, orchestrating workflows in ways that fundamentally reshape how the work gets done. The system of execution does not necessarily replace your core platforms, but it does shift much of the orchestration from people to intelligent agents. These agents can interface with both your customers and your systems, creating a radically more efficient and scalable operation. Many companies hesitate here. They want to wait until they've 'cleaned up' their data or fully transformed their core systems. That's a mistake. You already have enough tribal knowledge, semi-structured data, and institutional understanding to begin. If you wait to get your systems perfect, you'll lose momentum, miss the window of opportunity, and risk organizational fatigue. Start now with what you have. The Case for Speed Reinvention also cannot be a decade-long journey. In today's market, drawn-out transformation loses steam, runs out of funding, and is overtaken by faster-moving competitors. So, how fast should you go? To paraphrase Shakespeare: If done, best done quickly. You may break things. But the 'juice from the squeeze' is greater when you move quickly. You generate return before resistance hardens, and you give your teams the clarity and urgency needed to focus and execute. What This Means for Leaders This journey carries risks, but the rewards are more significant. Playing it safe may feel comfortable, but in today's environment, it's a fast path to irrelevance. Begin with your most forward-leaning teams. It starts with conviction at the top and a deep re-examination of how you deliver customer value. It's also crucial not to confuse enhancement with reinvention. While both have their place, only reinvention delivers the kind of transformational ROI that shifts the competitive landscape. And finally, embrace the full potential of AI, not just as a set of productivity tools, but as a foundation for building new systems that fundamentally reshape how your business operates. Done right, it redefines the cost, speed, and quality of your operations. And more importantly, it repositions your business for the future.
