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While salespeople like to tell stories of the times they were responsible for selling the hottest thing on the market – iPhones in 2007, for example, or Tesla Roadsters – the truth is that the vast majority of salespeople are trying to sell items that are largely unremarkable, not particularly ground-breaking and have a lot of competition. While some products do indeed “sell themselves,” most of them require a lot of ingenuity and effort to get them out the door.

For enterprise software, the marketplace is crowded and salespeople are always coping with a learning curve that never seems to reach the top, thanks to changes in the marketplace and new versions of the product. Competition is stiff, and it takes a lot of skill to move products and services through the pipeline.

In a recent article for Business2Community, ERP Software Leads writer Lawrence Anderson notes that with enterprise software – particularly enterprise resource planning solutions – the trick is to make something extraordinary out of the ordinary.

“Keeping people from taking it for granted,” he writes. “Maybe your current customers are forgetting what life was like before ERP technology. Your marketing and lead generation campaigns give you an excellent opportunity to teach them a little history. Seeing something you use today in light of a less technologically privileged time really puts the spotlight on it.”

This is excellent advice for companies crafting a lead generation program, and not just for those selling ERP solutions. It helps put the product in a different context that will surprise prospects and really get them thinking. Sales people should understand what the day-to-day life is like for any particular prospect. Put yourself in that prospect’s day … what would help transform ordinary tasks into powerhouse activities that yield significant business results?

“Crazy as it sounds, sometimes your product is unique because it does something simple but on a larger scale. It’s not that hard getting prospects to imagine that,” writes Anderson.