Salespeople, Please Stop Your Pitch Long Enough For My Questions, You Might Close A Deal!

You know this story, I'm sitting at my desk, the phone rings, I answer, and an enthusiastic voice: "Good morning Dave!, I'm Roger from XXX....." The pitch begins.

This guy was selling a Sales 2.0 tool, which I actually had some interest in. I barely had the words, "tell me what you do" out of my mouth when the script started.

"Excuse me, may I ask a question," I tried to inject, but the pitch went on.

"Would you please let me ask you a question," he paused, I continue "you know if you give people a chance to ask a question, you might actually sell something."

I ask my question, the pitch started again......

"Excuse me, may I ask a question......." the pitch continued.....

"Have you ever considered listening to your customer and responding to their questions, it tends to work, I have a question, may I please ask it?" I say, a little indignantly. He pauses.... I ask my question...

The "recording" resumes.....

Once again, I say, "Please, are you hearing anything that I am saying? Would you please listen and answer my questions, I may want to buy!" I ask my question.....

You know what happened. The only way I could make it stop was to hang up.

In reflecting on the call, I struggled to ask about 4 or 5 questions. Each time I had to interrupt him---and I had to be aggressive about the interruption.

He only asked 2 questions.... I guess, "How are you today?" counts as a question.

I provided him valuable coaching advice 3 times during the call---normally I charge people for this, but I was feeling generous, plus I really wanted to learn about the product. I am serious about buying one of these tools.

Now where's the number of his competitor?

Three Questions

Last week, I published a post: First, Let Your Customer Finish Their Sentence, Then Ask Three Questions. In it, I addressed an issue that very experienced sales professionals often have---that is, being so "prepared" to provide solutions that they never give their customers a chance to tell their story.

Not only is interrupting offensive to customers, but it presents the opportunity to miss a lot in really understanding what they want and need. I suggested sales people would be better off, letting customer complete their sentences and tell their stories. I also suggested that sales people follow up with three questions.

I taunted my readers with guessing what those questions might be, asking you to email me if you wanted my version of the three questions. Since then, I have been inundated with ideas and emails. There have been some exciting offline conversations. To some degree, I am sorry to have taken such an interesting conversation off line and intend to fix that in this post.

So what are the "three questions?" I'm not sure there is a right answer to this. Also, these three questions will be just the beginning of a conversation in which you will want to engage your customers---hopefully you will ask many more as you probe.

When a customer has described a situation, issue, or problem, generally, the 3 key questions I tent to think of are:

1. What is the impact of this issue on you and on the business? It is important to explore the impact both from a personal and business point of view. Try to quantify this impact because it becomes a key element of your value proposition. Drill down and make sure you really understand the impact of this issue.

2. If this issue were to be resolved, what would the impact be on you and the business? This may sound a little redundant to the first question, but here you are trying to explore new opportunities or things they can do if the problem is eliminated. Generally, people are so focused on problems, they become blinded to what the problems are keeping them from doing. This is an area of tremendous opportunity for the customer and asking this question gives you the chance to explore these opportunities. Again, try to quantify so that, because this is part of your value proposition.

3. In terms of all the things that you are working on, where is this in your priorities? If it isn’t in their top 3-5 priorities, it will never get done. As sales people, we tend to leap on issues that we can address. Customers tend to let us continue to discuss those issues, even if they are a low priority. For us to make a sale, generally, we have to be in the top priority of issues they are addressing.

For those of you that have had any type of "SPIN Training," you will recognize these questions as a variant of the SPIN approach.

Does this make sense? Would you take a different tact?

Creating Value---Business And Personal

I've been writing about creating differentiated value for your customers. Let me focus on a couple of elements of value---in this you will discover why "generic" value propositions miss the mark.

Value has many dimensions. As business and sales professionals, we tend to focus on the business elements of value--how much we can reduce costs, how much we can improve revenues, how much we can improve quality, and so forth. Business value, particularly when quantified is critical in sales.

There is another dimension of value that we often miss, but which can be the most important and differentiating element of your value proposition. It's personal value--what you bring to each customer you work with.

My friend, Charles Green, wrote a post on Two Questions. It's an outstanding post and part of it talks about personal value. He talks about asking the question: "How are you doing?"

Personal value is all about the individual, asking "How are you doing" helps you discover what your customer values and how you can help hat person. By exploring this aspect of value you learn about your customer's goals, dreams, and aspirations. You learn about their frustrations, problems and needs. You develop a relationship with the customer, showing that you are really interested and that you care about them---as individuals.

Elements of personal value can be very simple, but have a profound impact on your customer. It could be as simple as "get my boss off my back," "let me get home at a reasonable hour so I can spend more time with my family." It may be, "get me a promotion," or "get me a bonus." Until, you explore the personal side of value with each individual involved in the decision making process, you don't know how you can make a difference for each of them.

We talk about sales being about relationships, but without exploring the personal element of value, it is impossible to develop deep relationships with your customers.

Personal value is an important part of your value proposition. We have seen, many times, that the business aspects of our value proposition are roughly equal to those of the competition. From a business point of view, our value proposition is not differentiated. However, customers make the decision for us because of the personal element of the value proposition--they know we really care.

Before concluding, let me add a warning note. Developing and delivering personal value requires commitment on your part. It must be genuine, it must endure beyond the "deal." If you don't care, if you aren't committed to developing deep, genuine relationships with your customers, you are being manipulative. Customers will see through this quickly and you will never achieve your goals.

As you build your value proposition, think of your real differentiator--it is the deep relationships and trust you build with your customers. It is how you make a difference in their lives. This is the most sustainable and differentiated element of value anyone can create.

Lost Opportunity --- It Takes Courage To Say You've Made A Mistake

Yesterday, I wrote an article about my experience with a Sales 2.0 tool and the lost opportunity the company had in not trying to learn about why I was cancelling my subscription.

My friend, Jill Konrath, saw the post and knew the company I was speaking of. She went to the CMO to make him aware of what had happened. He immediately recognized the lost opportunity and contacted me--not to try to win my business back but to learn so they could improve the product and experience. He said they were a young company, growing and learning to be better. Next week we have some time set aside to talk about my concerns and what they might do in the future. I am appreciative they are taking the time to listen to me.

However, the point of this post is not to give you a status update, but to comment on the courage it takes to stand up an acknowledge you have made a mistake. Too many times, we ignore it, we try to push the blame somewhere else, or we make excuses.

It takes real courage and character to admit you have made a mistake. We all make mistakes, no one expects us to be perfect. In my experience, while people may be angry for a moment, they most want to fix the issue and move on. Admitting you have made a mistake, taking immediate corrective action and moving forward is a phenomenal way to improve relationships with customers and prospective customers. It demonstrates your authenticity and that you care.

It could have been easy to blow off my complaint. After all, I'm just an opinionated, loud mouth consultant (we all know we are held in close to the same esteem as lawyers). Plus "no one reads that blog."

Kudos to the CMO and to this company for having the courage to recognize the lost opportunity, admit the mistake and give me a chance to express my opinion. We need more leaders and organizations like this. (Also, thanks to Jill for her help!)

Lost Opportunity---Take The Time To Learn From Defecting Customers

I've been experimenting for the past 6 weeks with a Sales 2.0 tool. Today, I decided to cancel the service, I wasn't really getting value from it.

I sent an email into the company asking to cancel the service (I've paid for the full month, so I asked that it be cancelled effective the end of the month). The company's customer service organization sent me a nice note saying my account has been cancelled. Other than the minor irritant of having a couple of weeks that I have paid for down the tubes, the transaction was handled efficiently.

However, the company lost a major opportunity. They could have cancelled the service and asked me why I was cancelling. They could have asked me to take a survey, they could have had someone call me to learn why I was dissatisfied. I would have been delighted to have done any of those.

So what has the company learned about my experience and why I cancelled? Could I have been recovered, perhaps I was doing things wrong and could have been coached on how to get what I done. Perhaps there were some fundamental things about the service that would also impact their potential success or retention of other customers.

Sometimes it isn't comfortable speaking with defecting customers, but it can be one of the most valuable experiences in learning how to improve and grow your business.

SBWA -- Selling By Wandering Around

In their 1982 book, In Search Of Excellence, Peters and Waterman coined the acronym: MBWA - Management By Wandering Around. The thought was for managers to literally get close to customers and their people by "wandering around."

I thought it time to resurface a variant of that theme: SBWA, Selling By Wandering Around. I'm constantly amazed by how little sales professionals to this.

Too many sales people call on the same people, asking the same question, "Can I sell you anything today?" The more solutions oriented sales people will question needs and priorities, but make the same mistake of calling on the same people in the same accounts.

It's time for sales people to start wandering around in their accounts. I often tell people, if you normally turn right when you walk in the front door, next time turn left. You will discover entirely new things about your account and their needs.

Recently, I wrote about the "Big Idea." The example I cited there was an example of how a client discovered entirely new needs and applications for their products by talking to different people in the organization.

Another example, years ago, I was working with a company that made sophisticated instruments that engineers used to design and develop new high tech products. In the labs of every engineering organization you could find lots of their products. In looking at their growth strategy, we asked them, "What about manufacturing?" The initial response was, "No, our customers are engineers designing new products."

We decided to ignore this and went to talk to manufacturing people to learn what they did. Making a long story short, this client ultimately found their biggest market opportunity was not in engineering, but in manufacturing, helping to test products in the production process and at the end of the line. Unless we, and a few brave sales people, hadn't turned left instead of normally turning right, we never would have discovered this opportunity.

I could give countless examples of others that have done this and the results they produce, but you get the point. Start practicing SBWA in your accounts. Systematically, talk to new people within the accounts. Get lost wandering your customers' halls and meet new people. Learn what they do. You'll never know what you might discover.

Focus On Your Customer's Need To Buy, Not Your Need To Sell!

All sales people, today, sell solutions. At least that’s what most sales people say they are doing. If sales people are really acting consultatively, selling solutions, why are so many customers sick of sales pitches? We hear customers saying:

• "They (the sales people) always come in here pitching their latest products and
  technologies without telling me how it solves our problems."
• "They say they have solutions before they even know my problems."
• "The sales person doesn’t understand my business."
• "They tell me about the products, I have to figure out whether it will solve my problems!"
• "They just want to push their products without understanding our needs!"
  

Most sales people focus on their need to sell, not their customer’s need to buy. Putting the customer first in the selling process is simple, yet enables sales people to achieve real success. It enhances the sales person’s relationships with their customer. It enables them to clearly demonstrate their value. Finally, it is key to competitive success!

What is the Sales Person’s Need To Sell?

Sales people have a need to sell. We focus on sales targets and commissions. We love our products and "gee-whiz" technologies. We want our customers to be as excited about the latest widget our company has introduced as we are. We want to please our managers and gain the approval of our peers. It could be the latest in semiconductor, computer, software or communications technology, or the hottest new fashions, or the best new consumer products, or the great new financial services products.

How many times have we gone to our customers to present them our hot new products, only to find them not as excited as we are? How can that be? Why won’t they buy? Don’t they really understand what these products can do? Don’t they understand we have quotas to meet and commission to earn!

What about the mid-year push for orders? Why don’t customers take advantage of our fantastic deals?

What about the retailer who won’t give us that end-cap for our latest merchandising scheme? Doesn’t she know that our hot new advertising programs will have the products flying off the shelves!

The answer to all these issues is simple. Customers don’t care about our need to sell; they are only worried about solving their business problems! Focusing on the customer need to buy is critical understanding how we can help solve our customers’ business problems.

What is the Customer Need To Buy?

All customers have goals and objectives. The customer need to buy is the result of business problems, opportunities or "pain" influencing their ability to achieve their goals or objectives. In any situation, these needs may be business oriented like:

• Achieve X% revenue growth in the next 12 months.
• Increase market share to establish leadership within their market segments.
• Decrease costs by Y% in the next 12 months.
• Increase profitability in the next quarter.
• Improve the R-acronyms: ROI, ROA, ROE, ROS, ROCA.
• Decrease "design" cycle time - or whatever cycle time they care about.
• Improve quality or customer service or satisfaction.
• Overcome a competitive threat.
• …and the list can go on!
  

The need to buy can be personally oriented like:

• Assure success of a project in which the individual has committed a lot of
  personal time and energy.
• Achieve success on this project to get that next promotion.
• Reduce workload, hassle or stress on the job.
• Accomplish certain objectives so that I can maximize my bonus or get a salary increase.
• Achieve goals to get a good performance review.
• …and, likewise, this list can go on!
  

Whatever the business or personal goals, these establish the customer need to buy. Concentrating on these needs will shorten your selling cycle and maximize your odds of success.

Determining The Customer Need To Buy
Let’s take the mystery out of using these to determine the customer need to buy. Following a few simple steps will help you improve your ability to be customer focused:

Do your homework. Become a student on your customer’s industry and markets. Learn what their customers are asking of them. Learn what their competitors are doing. Understand important trends and directions driving the industry. Understand their key measures of success. Try to anticipate the problems, challenges, and opportunities they face. Consider the following:

• Read the customer’s annual and quarterly reports, 10K’s, 10Q’s and proxy
  statements.
• Read their press releases. Read their product brochures and
  sales literature. Read the speeches the CEO and other executives are making.
• Surf the Internet to find their web site and those of their competitors. See
  how they present themselves to the world. Leverage LinkedIn, Blogs and others sources on the web to become knowledgeable about the customer.
• Read the trade magazines and press representing their industries.
• Read the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune and other general business publications to "scan the environment."
• Do the same with their competitors.
• Use this knowledge to prepare your meetings with the customer.
  

Determine the need to buy very early in the selling cycle. In qualifying an opportunity, one of the first things you need to understand is if the customer has a real problem. If the customer doesn’t have a real problem---one that you can solve---you’re wasting your time! No need to buy equals no sale!

How do we determine the need to buy: Ask the customer, shut up, listen, then probe. Consider some of the following areas:

• Determine the customer’s overall business goals, strategies and their customer
  and competitive environment. In addition to understanding the business, try to
  understand how these impact the customer personally.
• Understand the problems, opportunities and challenges your customer faces in achieving the business goals. Seek to quantify these to understand the magnitude of the impact on the customer.
• Learn how the business problems affect the customer’s job performance. Ask your customer how management will measure their performance. Attempt to understand the personal stake the customer has in solving the problem.
• Prioritize and quantify each of the needs the customer has identified. Understand those that are most important and separate those from those that represent annoyances.
  

Write down the customer need to buy, validate it with the customer. Develop a simple description of the problem or opportunity:

• Write their need to buy in clear sentences. Typically, they have multiple needs.
  If you have done the right job, you can define these needs in a few short
  sentences. Make sure that you have quantified the impact of each need.
• Beware of describing the problem in terms of your need to sell! Customer
  needs to buy are rarely described in terms of your product and services. If you
  are describing the need to buy in these terms, you are more likely describing
  your need to sell.
• Verify what you have written down with the customer to make sure you have understood and prioritized the needs to buy appropriately. Gain the customer’s agreement on the problem.
• Gain their agreement that if you can present the solution providing the greatest value in solving the problem, they will buy your solution.
• Before spending any more time on the opportunity, make sure you have a solution that addresses their need to buy.

Focus your sales strategy on demonstrating how your solution provides the greatest value in solving their problems. Clearly understanding the customer need to buy enables you to concentrate your efforts. You won’t be sidetracked, you won’t waste time. You can clearly and directly present your solution to their problems in terms that are meaningful to them.

Understanding your customer’s need to buy is the shortest path to satisfying your need to sell!

Stop Pitching, Start Listening To Your Customers

Last week, I wrote a post "Stop Assuming Your Know Your Customers, Start Listening To Them! The post stimulated a lot of comments on the different sites it was posted on. Thanks to each of you who took the time to offer your great ideas!

In that post, I ranted about the focus sales and marketing professionals seem to have on "Pitching," arguing we need to stop pitching and start engaging our customers in conversations.

I'm back on my soapbox, I read a post from someone I hold in high regard, but he set me off. The post was entitled, "How Persuasive Is Your Pitch." We all fall victim to it, we spend too much time focusing on the pitch and not having an effective conversation to engage our customers in solving their problems.

I did a quick, very unscientific experiment. I googled "sales pitch" and got 1,900,000 hits. I then tried various queries on listening to customers ("sales listening, effective listening for sales, etc.) I finally settled on the query "effective listening" only because it showed the highest numeric result. I didn't limit it to sales. I got 202,000 hits --- a little more than 10% of the hits on talking.

I think the results are an interesting reflection of the behavior I see too often in business, particularly with sales and marketing. We all spend too much time talking and too little time listening. Asking good questions and actively listening is the first critical step in engaging customers in meaningful conversations.

We cannot demonstrate or produce value for customers until we engage them in meaningful conversations about their business --- and meaningful conversations--not pitches---about the value of our solutions to their businesses.

To the sales/marketing consultants and guru's, I appreciate the need for helping people improve the effectiveness of their presentation skills or their pitches, but let's start building the skills and capabilities of professionals in listening and engaging customers in powerful --- even "fierce" conversations.

To sales and marketing executives, make sure your people are spending at least as much time in listening and having meaningful conversations with customers. Measure them on their questions/comments(talking) ratio. Get it to at least one, strive to get it to be greater than 1.

Sales and marketing professionals, raise the value you bring to your customers, improve the results you produce by pitching less, questioning and listening more.

How do you make certain you are engaging your customers in a conversation? Let's share experience and tips so we can all improve.

Stop Assuming You Know Your Customers, Start Listening To Them!

Thanks to one of Fred Wilson's recent posts, I discovered Whitney Hess, a user experience designer in New York. She was quoted: "In order to survive, companies have to stop assuming they know their customers and start listening to them." Simple and profound.

I spend a lot of my time with business, marketing, and sales executives. Many espouse being customer focused. Many are making good strides, but in my experience we have a long way to go.

Whitney's comment got me thinking. Why is it so difficult to listen to our customers? Why is it so difficult to engage our customers in a different conversation?

These are not new concepts, but why is it so difficult to execute?

I'm not sure I have a lot of insight into these issues, but I have some ideas --- by the way, I'd welcome yours.

1. We have met the enemy and it is us! Most of the organizations I work with are filled with brilliant, creative people. People who have accomplished a lot and produces results. Sometimes, however, this creates an arrogance that we know more and better than anyone else. We stop listening and start telling. The challenge comes when they --- the customer --- stop listening to what we are telling them, Usually they stop listening because we really don't understand them and are not producing value.

2. We've stopped seeing the forest because we are focusing on the tree! (Not the trees, but THE tree.) People develop a selective listening. We've succeeded in becoming focused and goal directed, but that may leave us blind to what is really being said. We focus on The tree, Our tree, and ignore the neighboring trees and forest. Except those may be more important to the customer or create new opportunities for us.

I'll linger on this point a little. One of my clients has very good product managers. They come from the industry---many are former customers. They engage customers in deep conversations about technologies and their needs. The problem is, they are engaging in talking to a specific group of customers---specialized technicians. These technicians important in providing infrastructure to support the business but they aren't driving the business. They only respond to the needs of the business users. My client would do well to expand their view to include the business users, understanding their needs and drivers, along with those of the technical users. They will discover new opportunities---new trees.

3. Our mother's taught us not to talk to strangers! Good advice when we were kids, but now it is too limiting. If we only talk to our friends, if we only do assessments of our own industry, if we only track and respond to competitors, we narrow, blind and inbred. We don't get to see and experience new things. Our strategies become incremental, not game changers. We continue to exchange places with our competitors for superiority, yet each evolve slowly and are probably not seeing and creating breakthrough opportunities for our customers and ourselves.

I spend much of my time working with top executives in high technology B2B organizations. At the same time, I also do work in certain niches of the fashion/lifestyle industries. I am always struck by the innovation, creativity, and some of the business models I see in the fashion/lifestyle sector --- mostly because some of them have so much potential when applied to high tech B2B! I don't have to be smart, insightful or innovative, I just have to learn how to adapt these creative ideas to a different set of circumstances and industry.

4. We've lost the art of having conversations. We focus on the pitch ---- What's your elevator pitch? Let's go pitch the customer! Even in this day of Zen Presentations, we focus on the pitch, on presenting, on talking, on winning a one sided argument.

Where do we talk about listening? How do we develop the ability to have a good "elevator listen?"

Actually, it goes beyond listening --- it's establishing a conversation or a dialog. It's about engaging the people we are with. It's about learning something new, realizing we might have to change our position. It's about challenging our own and other's ideas and positions. It's about having a healthy debate and maybe some conflict --- all oriented around creating better solution -- for our customers, for our businesses.

I could go on, but will stop here. I owe a big thanks to Whitney for her insightful comment: "In order to survive, companies have to stop assuming they know their customers and start listening to them."

I'd love to get your ideas --- perhaps we can start a conversation!

What's Your Question To Comments Ratio?

Great post at Art Petty's Management Excellence Blog. It speaks to the issue that too many leaders -- and I would expand that to business professionals, tend to talk too much and question---listen---probe too little. The Question To Comments ratio concept is fantastic!

Take the time to read and practice his advice!