5. Use human-centered sales to break through complexity

Summary

Many factors combine to make CBS a complex buying decision. Potential customers must balance a variety of considerations ranging from the relatively obvious — space to accommodate a toilet, availability and desirability of substitutes, and ability and willingness to pay for sanitation, for example — to issues surrounding the finer points of product design and cultural factors such as reluctance to share a toilet across mother-in-law/son-in-law relationships.

Finding a way through that complexity requires a human-centered sales approach that teaches salespeople to focus on solving the customer’s problem, rather than on product features and price. Typically centered around issues of basic human dignity and the health and safety of family members, personalized conversation helps customers to articulate the biggest problems they face as a result of not having their own toilet, and to come to their own conclusion that CBS offers a better answer to those problems than other sanitation options.