Your very best targets, your dream clients, are almost always the most difficult to penetrate. They have deep relationships, they’re loyal, and your competitor didn’t win their business because they couldn’t create value. The status quo is firmly entrenched; you aren’t going to dig it out without a fight.

Like water, you find your way to lower ground, avoiding any resistance. You talk to any receptive contact in any company because they’ll give you their time. You think to yourself, “They’re so nice. If only we could teach them how buying what we sell would help them, selling would be easy.”

If.

You’re not in the business of convincing people that don’t buy what you sell how they might benefit from doing so. There’s a reason they don’t buy what you sell: they don’t need it.

The Business You Are In

You’re in the business of selling to people for whom you can create value. Breath-taking value. Jaw-dropping value. Earth-shattering value.

You are in the business of competitive displacement. You’re in the business of stealing your competitor’s clients. And don’t believe for a second they don’t believe they’re in the same line of work.

You are in the business of finding or creating dissatisfaction and making the status quo untenable. You’re in the “change management” game.

You are in the relationship game, building new relationships on the value that you create. You’re about consensus-building; consensus that you’re the right choice.

The more difficult road of competitive displacements is the surest and fastest road to success. Receptivity makes non-opportunities attractive, but that road leads you nowhere.