Mike Bosworth (from CustomerCentricSelling fame) and I had a great discussion on a recent Kadient webinar about just-in-time, sales ready messaging.  Some of the key points:

• Align your selling steps and milestones with the customer's buying process.  Most companies still align everything with the stages of their selling process.
• The conversations your sales people have with prospects are the last bastion of competitive differentiation, but only your stars (top 10-15%) can converse naturally in a way that helps buyers visualize how they will achieve a goal, solve a problem, or satisfy a need with your offering.
• B2B sales people are just-in-time, opportunity-specific learners.  You can't just fill their heads on day 1 with everything they'll ever need to know to sell effectively.  They need just-in-time, opportunity-specific knowledge.

Sales-ready messaging is CustomerCentricSelling's vernacular for just-in-time, opportunity-specific knowledge that's delivered in a way that facilitates a conversation between a seller and a buyer.  I encourage you to watch the replay of the webinar or download the slides, because Mike gave some great examples of sales-ready messaging to:

• begin the buy cycle with curiousity, using a 30-second elevator pitch that gets the listener to say "Tell me more."
• convert interest to credibility in 2 minutes or less with a customer success story that gets the buyer to state a goal or a problem.
• have a solution development conversation in 15 minutes that maps the capabilities of your offering to the buyer's goal or problem.

What do you think?  Are you enabling your sales reps to have conversations?  Do you have any good examples of sales-ready messaging?