Every business owner is a sales person. Every business owner that has managed to stay in business is a successful sales person.
All Microsoft hopes to achieve with these stores is to share, openly with people, what is possible.
If I may... <LK patended wall of text to follow - you have been warned>
How we sell is very simple. We simply share how we ourselves work, learn and play. I most often work in the open from the end of a very large table. At one end is a very large HD screen. From there I simply work as I demo things based upon an initial understanding of what people want and need. We also share what our customers do. Not soon after any demo begins, customers start to share ideas - these form the basis of an adhoc script and from a very deep bench of running examples, we simply share some more - relevant examples.
As we share how we and our customers live and work, "I just work" new customers see every email, IM and hear every call. I know that each is going to be a good call, and even a fun call. I tell the new customer ahead of time, that there may be pauses in the demos, but they too are part of what I want to share. All around us there is work, development, production and activity. It's all pretty quiet and always calm. Things are engineered really well, and we have yet to have "bad stuff" take place. It is possible to engineer things that well - so all maintenance is planned, etc...
The sales process works and every time. Customers most often ask to bring someone new by to see what we do. Many write real cards and letters thanking us for the time and the experience - that is especially humbling. From there we start small and one step and thing at a time, grow to support a customer's every IT/MIS and related business need.
I think Microsoft's goal is very simple and it can be an honest one - one where the technologies are never shown, but everything one may do with them is. That is what matters most - the people and what they do.
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