Dave Jung of B2Blog made a highly perceptive post about the information exchange between customer and supplier during the sales process. It means walking a thin line. Too much information, and you may be giving your customer just reasons not to buy. But not enough information can have the same result.
It works both ways - a buyer can also disclose too much information. This will rarely stop the buying process, but may weaken the buyer’s position during the negotiation.
Strategic customer-supplier relations need to be long-term, require regular contact and a gradual disclosure of information. As both buyer and seller invest in the relation, they become more committed. Issues which could be a dealbreaker in the beginning now become barriers to overcome together.
To avoid the TMI trap, suppliers should appoint account managers to handle all issues for a customer. Buyers should also insist on channeling all queries through a central contact point in purchasing. Technical discussions may be boring for commercial people, but sales people know very well that customer engineers are their best chance to receive information they shouldn’t have.
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