Client Need Clarity
Do we have a clear understanding of what the client’s needs are? These can vary beyond the obvious of increased profitability. It might be more important to gain market share, than drive profits. Or, it may be that profits are not as much emphasised, as investing in further growth. How do we seek to understand their needs and at the same time differentiate ourselves from every other salesperson, equally raring to go with their interrogation of the client’s needs? What does intelligent client question design look like?
If we access the client’s website and they are a listed company, we can find out a lot of basic information about the firm’s business, strategy and direction, from the annual reports there. If they are an unlisted company, we can do a media search on their activities to get an understanding of how they are positioning themselves in the market. Failing that we can use our industry knowledge to make some insightful comments about where the market is at the moment and ask them how they see it. Turning up at the client’s office and simply asking “what does your company do?” is pretty pathetic, but very common on the part of unprofessional salespeople.
We would be better off asking things like, “I see that your global CEO is calling for 15% profit growth in the annual report. Is that also the number for Japan or have you been allocated a higher number?”. Hopefully the answer will be 15% or a higher number. This will mean they are challenged to meet the targets and maybe, we can be of assistance. If they answered 15%, then we would ask, “So how realistic is that target in the current economic conditions in the market here?”. We are trying to get a feel for their confidence to achieve these targets by themselves.
Of course, we want to know where they are now in their business and where do they want to be, so we can gauge the size of the gap and their appetite for change. The worst sales conversations are with client’s who don’t see any big gap, that they can’t close on their own. No matter how whiz bang our question design, if they feel they are close to where they want to be, they won’t be seeing us as adding any value beyond what they can do internally. What do we do in this case?
We have two levers to pull – opportunity and fear. There might be some opportunities they haven’t thought of. In sales, we see many companies and what they do. We have the ability to take a successful idea from industry “A” which could be applied to industry “Z”. The people working in those distant industries never mix, but we do. We can see applications for ideas across industries and we should be playing a positive role to make these suggestions to help grow their business.
A recent example was when I was calling on a foreign manufacturer, who amongst other things, makes industrial drill bits. I asked the President if he had ever seen Blendtec’s “Will It Blend” videos on You Tube. These are viral video sensations by an American company making food blenders aimed at consumers. They are very strong blenders and to prove it, the President, wearing a white lab coat and protective goggles, blends iPads, mobile phones, hockey pucks, you name it, captures it on video and posts it up on YouTube. I told the Japan President, “what about a “Will It Drill” local version in Japanese, hosted by you because you speak Japanese, to highlight the strength of your product?”. Blender companies and drill company’s representatives are unlikely to ever meet, but we salespeople can be great connectors. There will be many such opportunities where we can prove ourselves useful to the client and we should be constantly thinking of how to do that. Even if nothing comes of “Will It Drill” as an idea, I have been able to differentiate myself from every other salesperson coming through his door. This is what we all want.
Often, not taking action is thought to be a safe option by clients, but it also has a cost – an opportunity cost. Our job is to open up the client’s thinking to taking the opportunity to aid their business in the future, by taking action now. We might say, “You know we talk about saving up for a rainy day, don’t we. Well in business too, we know there are up and down cycles the economy passes through and the worst situation is to face a downturn and run out of cash. You have mentioned you feel confident about the current situation of the business, but have you factored in dealing with a downturn in the next few years? We know it will come, we just don’t know exactly when. What if we were able to take the opportunity now to position ourselves to deal with that eventuality, would that be helpful for your business?”.
We are trying to move the clients thinking from “I am okay and don’t need to do anything” to “maybe I am not okay and need to do something I haven’t planned for yet”.
The other option is fear. We know our own situation and we have knowledge of our business, but we are not alone. We have competitors who can take actions which impact our business. Because we are in sales, we deal with many different clients and so we pick up valuable commercial intelligence about what is happening. We can try to open up the client’s mind to taking action now on the basis that they have competitors who can change the game.
We can say, ”You mentioned to me a minute ago, that you felt the situation in your business was stable and progressing on course. Are there any actions which could be taken by one of your competitors which would force that situation to change?”. By asking this type of question we are asking the client to think beyond what they can control, to a future business situation they cannot control. There may need to be some actions taken, to counter activities by competitors and these actions need to be taken now. We need to shake up their complacency about their business situation, by getting them to contemplate scenarios they may have neglected to consider.
Questioning skills are important to not only uncover the client’s existing needs, they are also critical to reveal needs the client hasn’t yet focused on sufficiently. The salesperson who can ask these types of questions is soon considered a valuable partner to the business bringing in some external “Brains Trust” elements to assist their company. This is how we can get business with clients and it is extremely low cost, in terms of client acquisition. All it requires is some hard thinking and good communication skills about how we can help them.
“Never Forget A Customer; Never Let A Customer Forget You”
This is an old saying in sales and one we forget at our cost. We might have made the sale and then we keep moving forward. We get wrapped up in the intricacies of the getting other customers to commit and in the logistical details of delivering our previously sold service or product. Our schedule fills up quickly and we have filled it with the present and future, not the past. That customer we sold to gets forgotten in this busy life and they return the compliment and forget about us too. We know that creating new customers is more expensive on an acquisition cost basis and that selling again or selling more to our existing customers is easier than making a new sale. Why then don’t we do a better job of developing further business with our existing customers?
We usually do a good job in the immediate post sales service period, but the key word there is “immediate”. We don’t schedule in the “just checking in “ contact, because we are too busy chasing down the new contacts. Now that the customer has had the benefit of our product or service, we don’t call back and ask, “How has it been going? Are there any subsequent issues that have arisen that we can help with or fix?”. A good rule to apply is always make the time to connect with the buyer. They will either be happy and we can see if they know others, who would also benefit. If they are unhappy, we can fix the issue for them. Silent, unhappy customers are not what we want, because we are killing our brand and our reputation without even knowing it.
Clients may have cyclical needs when there is a certain cadence to their buying. Upgrades or replacements require follow up. When these are scheduled into our diaries, we can make sure to re-contact the client. It may be that there is no sequence logic and so we have to create a schedule, so that they don’t forget us. There are few things more disheartening then contacting an existing client to find they did have a need and they filled that need with our competitor’s solution. I really hate having that conversation.
We can add the client to our email mailing lists and they get updates. The problem is that they don’t read them or even notice them, so a “set and forget” idea is a bad idea. We have to be able to cut through all the clutter and noise of daily life to reach out to them, so that we stay top of mind. This is harder today, more so than it has ever been. There are so many emails, so much social media, so many meetings, no wonder our buyers get swamped. Trying to get anyone on the phone these days is mind numbingly hard and it is like a miracle if you succeed. No one calls you back anymore either.
Japan has a set pattern of seasonal gifts which are sent to clients for the express purpose of reminding them that they have not been forgotten. Depending on how many clients you have, this can become expensive and is probably easier for larger firms. A hand written thank you note on the anniversary of the business conducted with the client is not expensive and because hardly anyone gets postal mail anymore, it will stand out. Even though you can’t get people on the phone so easily, don’t just hang up. Don’t expect to get called back either but always leave a voice message, so they hear your voice and understand you have been thinking of them. Some of my business contacts here tell me that their millennial employees avoid the phone like the plague, much preferring to text. It doesn’t matter, young or old, leave them a voice mail anyway.
Sending relevant White Papers, books, reports, media clippings are always good ideas, but you can’t leave this to chance. It is a good discipline to be looking for these items, with specific customers in mind. When you see something that will resonate with them, this is when you have to be disciplined to send it. This doesn’t have to be every month of course, but probably twice a year is a good practice, on top of the email blasts and newsletters that existing clients receive anyway.
Making appointments with yourself, is one of the best ways to make sure we actually do the immediate and the sustained follow up. Good intentions are terrific, but planned, disciplined contacts are better. Choosing electronic or analogue systems is not the issue, the real key is having a system that delivers the updating, reminding process to the buyer. If we don’t have a system then we need to create one and the best time to start was yesterday.
Join The Conversation Going On In Your Prospect’s Mind
We have all had the experience of talking at cross purposes with someone. We are both having a conversation that makes sense to ourselves, which is logical and congruent, but which baffles our interlocutor. After a while we realise we were both talking about unrelated things. This is not the type of conversation we want to be having with buyers. We want to be on song, on topic, right on the button with what we are discussing. There is no point in solving a non-issue or a minor issue for the buyer, because we had misunderstood what the real issue actually was.
Great and all good. However, how can we be sure we are understanding the critical issue for the buyer. Part of this is structural, in the sense of how we construct the conversation with the buyer. Part of this is linguistic, our ability to parse the language being used. Part is our communication skillset, to fathom the nuances, perceive the unstated pieces of the puzzle, read the body language.
Structural here means how good a job did we do in building the foundations for the meeting. What research did we do prior to meeting? How much time did we allocate for thinking about how the conversation might flow. How much effort did we put into designing the questions we would ask, in order to understand where they are now and where they want to be?
The buyer has two conversations going on in his or her mind. We need to join both of those conversations. One is the conscious conversation. This is based on their present awareness of the issue, the scale and scope of the problem. The other is the subconscious conversation that has been crushed by the weight of the world’s current dilemmas requiring immediate, total attention. The issues are there, they are just mentally superseded by other dramas that are grabbing their more immediate attention at the minute.
They have something worrying them and we need to know what that is. We do this by asking questions about the business. If we have arrived at the meeting with a mental list of what questions we need to ask in order to find out what the key requirements of the buyer are, we will do much better. What normally happens though, is the salesperson just turns up and gives a pitch or if they do manage to ask a question, it is too spontaneous and isolated to be really effective.
It is much better to have mentally worked out the flow chart of questions like those you often see in project planning diagrams. If the answer is “yes”, then we go to this next question or action. If it is “no”, then we to to this next question or action. It is our flow chart of the sales conversation, constructed before we get into the meeting. Obviously, the client conversation never follows the exact path but our job as salespeople is to bring the discussion back on track, so that we can gain the answers to the questions we are asking.
The client has some self talk around the business. There are things that are concerning them. They are plagued with what has happened in the past, as they replay those events in their mind and are fearful of a repeat performance. There are issues in the future they fear will unfold to their detriment. They are hazy ideas at this point, but there are always dark clouds on the horizon in business. There are a tonne of conversations going on in the conscious and unconscious minds of our buyers, so we don’t lack for opportunities to find a connection. The point is we want to connect with those particular conversations around issues we can fix for them.
To increase the chance of that happening, we need to have planned out the conversation before we get there, looking for hooks and triggers to help us to connect. We need to be designing well structured questions, which will get the client talking. When they talk at length, we receive a lot of valuable information, and guideposts to help us to, in turn, help them. We are not doing this is in a cold, hard, bright lights in their eyes, interrogation fashion. We are doing it gently, with the highest of purposes in mind– to make their businesses thrive. We need to be very circumspect on asking the questions. It cannot be blunt or hard or harsh or too intrusive. This is our advanced communication skill on display now. We have to be able to phase a question in a way which is easy and comfortable for the client to answer.
This is how we join them in the conversation they are having in their own mind and when we do that we will be on their wave length and on point. This is how we can tailor our presentation to suit them. To introduce our solution in a way that is totally relevant and makes sense to the buyer. What we are offering is exactly what they are looking for and this is no accident. It is the sum total of our efforts in planning and plan execution to hit the bulls-eye – that is to solve their biggest problem.
The Successful Salesman and Saleswoman Has A Plan
“We don’t plan to fail, we fail to plan”, is an old saw that is still true today. Despite an avalanche of tools to help us plan well, we still manage to do a lousy job of it. Another oldie goldie is “a good workman doesn’t blame his tools” and so this applies perfectly to the tech panoply we have at our fingertips. Having tools available and using them at all, much less effectively, is the bugbear of most sales organisations. The firm buys the tool or the monthly subscription, spends a lot of money on it, only to see the salespeople barely engaging with it. The information stays in their head or on loose bits of paper, perhaps in a notebook or in an organiser. Anywhere but where it needs to be, to be of any assistance to the marketing effort, to properly segment and go after specific, defined markets.
Salespeople like people and they like talking to clients. This is relatively easy. Keeping records of those conversations is another matter. Getting those records into the Client Relationship Management (CRM) system is a different ask.
Setting up the meetings is a process which can be very poorly done in the hands of poor salespeople systems. The timing of meetings should be done with a mind to geography, so that you are not traipsing across town over long distances. You need to be grouping the visits together, so the time lost travelling is kept to a minimum.
There is a funny commercial you can see on the monitors in taxis in Tokyo about selling in Japan. A new guy is being welcomed to the sales team and one of the tanned veteran sales guys enthusiastically shakes his hand, but then notices the newbies calf muscles are puny. Mr. Suntan and the other veterans proudly show off their super muscular calves, built from going door to door to see clients and deride the new guy. The point of the commercial is that this is old style sales and you can use computer programmes much more effectively to reach clients today.
To make appointments needs a prospect list. A prospect list comes from leads coming in through SEO, your website, pay per click ads on Google etc., also existing clients, prior clients who have gone cold, networking, referrals, inbound phone contacts or highly selective cold calls. There are new clients to be targeted and this requires real research and effort. Today in Japan, you can’t easily buy client lists anymore. There are so many restrictions now around privacy of information and getting permission to connect. Getting simple information is much harder today than it was even five years ago, so we need to allocate sufficient time to do the research.
If you don’t know the name of the person you are calling, then the staff taking the call are all pros at getting rid of you. They make sure you never get through to the person you seek, who is always in a meeting by the way and who never returns your call. No one is thinking “let’s all make sure the wheels of industry are turning faster and faster and let’s grease the wheels to make sure that happens”. They are in full shield wall defensive posture of protection and denial to invaders from outside. So you at least need the name of who you want to contact to get on the first rung of arranging a meeting.
Keeping track of how many people you are contacting, how many you are actually reaching, how many appointments you are winning, how many deals you are concluding and the average size of those deals, is critical for the well organised salesperson. This provides us with success ratios and norms around how much activity is required to generate new business. Yet how many salespeople know their one ratios, know how many calls they have to make to achieve their monthly budget?
When we do meet the client, how good are the notes we are taking? Are we talking notes or leaving it all to our ironclad memories? Remember that the faintest ink is vastly superior to the best memory. Write it all down. If for some reason you can’t take notes during the meeting, get it all down immediately thereafter. The next step is to get the key bits into the system. This way your notes are kept safe, can be accessed from anywhere and can easily be shared. When you are looking for case studies of success these notes are goldmines. They usually describe the client’s problem in detail, the proposal you put together talks about the solution you provided and the P&L provides the results.
When we know how many contacts have to be made to meet budget, have the prospects identified to pour into our sales funnel, we can use our excellent time management skills to make sure we are doing our tasks in priority order and that we are doing the most productive thing at every given moment. None of this happens by itself. We have to plan our activities carefully and plan our days fully. Record keeping is boring but for those salespeople who get it, they know that is where the gold is buried. What are you doing about all of this?