Selling the sizzle, not the Steak

(Jump to 3^rd paragraph if you don’t want to know me or why I wrote this)

People who know me very well will agree I’ve always been an antagonist of style over substance. When I buy something, I never pay a premium for brand – I need things to be functional, reliable and fit the contemporary need. This behaviour is exhibited in my profession too. As an IT consultant, I am often required to answer the ‘Why’, ‘What’, & ‘How’ behind a solution. Being the minimalist I am, you might have noted I have missed out ‘Who’, ‘Where’, ‘When’ simply because I don’t consider them too relevant for the client. Nevertheless, I tend to focus on answering the ‘How’. In brief, I am always concerned about the content rather then the packaging – I’d like to know end-to-end how a product works and whether it ticks the all of the boxes in the client’s minimalistic list of requirements.

When I joined one of the largest and most successful Global Technology Consultancies, it took me over a year to fit in to the culture. Every successful manager I spoke to seemed to very well spoken in strategy, vision, thought leadership but never bother speaking about the underlying technology, how it all works etc – it made very little sense to me. Some of the most frequently used phrases were ‘high level’, ‘overall landscape’ and ‘big picture’. It seemed as though a techno-phobic corporate culture that avoids getting their hands dirty cannot possibly sustain in a competitive market filled with IT slaves. I then stumbled upon one of our core approach-to-market values: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak”. It struck me as if the style over substance phenomenon that I always avoided was characteristic & reputational to my company. Only then did I learn this is in fact a very old sales technique that plays with human psychology.      

Selling the sizzle not the steak is an old sales technique that focuses on the overall experience by promoting the factors that excites your senses, emotion etc over the entire need. The following is something I found really interesting from Marketing Comet:

“When we go out to eat (for steak or whatever) it's not for the food itself. Sure, I may be hungry, but really I have a lot of choices to satisfy my hunger. I choose a restaurant because it gives me the kind of experience I want and solves my hunger problem. Taste, smell, ambiance, location, service are just a few of the reasons I might choose a particular restaurant. And these things speak to my emotions through my senses.” 

One of my personal examples is buying handhelds – for me, no matter how many times I have read reviews, watched un-boxing videos and memorized the bundle and technical specifications, I always choose the one which is ergonomically compatible. At the end of the day its overall experience which true salesmen recognize is a humanistic element.

So how does selling technology fit in to this picture? Let’s say the client requires the bog-standard data migration or systems integration program – this is the steak. And let’s face it; every service provider can deliver this, same way every restaurant can prepare a steak. So how do you sustain as the premium rate service provider – how do you sell the steak at the highest rate? Answer – you don’t focus on selling the steak, you sell the sizzle. You build relations of trust and reliability with the client so they know it’s not just a walk-in and walk-out assignment for you. You engage with strategy and vision so the client finds a technology partner in you – not just operational support. Instead of focusing on how you deploy the program i.e. which technology you will go for, invest time in focusing on the why the program is being delivered, or what your benefits will be. In short, recognize, appreciate and tap into the human element behind the client and not the technology they are asking for.

Ten points for realizing that only the last 3 or 4 lines actually describe how to practice this sales technique in technology consulting - the rest is selling the sizzle ;)