Emotional Selling

“We buy based on emotion and justify with logic”.  We have probably all heard that before, but when we are selling what do we do about it in practice?  Actually, we spend the vast majority of our sales interview time with the client, focusing on the logic bit.  If we are hopeless as a salesperson, then we are pitching the product straight away, with absolutely no idea what the client actually needs.  Nevertheless, the pitch is constructed on a logical basis, going through the nitty gritty of what we do and what it entails.  If we have a clue, we ask questions to uncover client need. Again we are immersed in a world of logic.  We are asking intelligent questions to get to the facts.  So where is the emotion part in this sea of logic?

Building rapport and trust with the client is an emotional idea.  Of course, there is a logic component around talking about business relevant topics, rather than spending all of our time rehashing the football game played on the weekend.  We are business focused. The way we are business focused though, is to impart we can be trusted.  We are appealing to the emotional side of the buyer.  The way we speak and what we say are important, to build a connection with the client.  We are warm, considerate, charming. We ask questions to get them talking, as we know this usually relaxes our interlocutor.  We look for connections to build the trust, be it shared educational experiences around the school brand or similar faculties where we studied.  We look for common hometown or similar residential experiences, mutual friends, colleagues or acquaintances.

When I worked at the Shinsei Bank, I was to brief a newly hired  section head on what my section did.  He ignored all of that and started a process of divining who we knew in common.  We spent the whole time talking about other people we knew and he never did find out what my section did.  But this was his way of building trust and rapport, and he went for the emotional rather than rational approach.  Spending all of our time on this with the buyer would be too much, but establishing something in common is important and is constructed through emotional triggers.

Another prime place for emotion is when presenting the solution to align it with the clients needs.  It is fine to go through the benefits, the application of the benefits, provide evidence and head into a trail close, but it doesn’t have to be all logic.  When we talk about the application of the benefit, we can look for emotional anchor pieces which will resonate with the buyer.  This is where storytelling is powerful because it allows us to paint a word picture that outlines how people felt or will feel, as a result of buying our widget.  

Yes, the spec part will be dry, but we should be aiming for a more human touch in the “application of the benefit” part of the solution presentation.  For example, a new faster internet connection can talk about a lot of logical, technical stuff to do with IT. We can also talk about results. What that increase in speed does for our team and their clients.  

We could mention, “We know that 5G will increase connection speeds by 100 times.  The power of this will make video calls unbelievably powerful.  The client can see your every facial expression change and can hear the tone of your voice emphasing key words.  This will be in real time with fantastic screen clarity and connection stability.  

This will create a supreme personalisation of business being done remotely.  This is new, it hasn’t been possible until now.  With this level of engagement, you will feel so close, like you can almost reach out and touch them. The typical cold tyranny of distance will be replaced with warmth and familiarity.  Imagine the power of seeing each other smiling, laughing and engaging in real time.  For highly valued existing clients, this will open the door to more agreements signed, no travel time lost and no loss of the personal touch”.

In this example, we are trying to focus on the human interaction component of the increased connectivity speeds and not just on the tech of how this is made possible. We are moving the discussion to the outcomes the technology provides and not just focusing on the spec detail of how it does that.

We can also extend the emotional bridge to how happy the team will be with the new arrangements.  “Your team is going to feel a new lease of life.  They will start striding around the office with increased confidence and purpose, because now they can reach many, many more clients everyday, more than was ever thought possible.  They can now reach them with a very high level of human touch, even though they are connecting remotely.  As the deals roll in and their commissions get paid out, you will see that look of pride and satisfaction in their faces.  A new energy will become felt, optimism will replace doubt, negativity and fear.  Success builds further success and now the 5 G flood gates have been opened”.

We are focusing on how people will feel, what it will do for their emotions, and levels of engagement, motivation and success.  We are putting the human face to the tech and we are projecting beyond the technical installation, to the outcomes, the results.

In a world brimming with logic, we can forget the power of emotion to move people. The key is to tie that emotional aspect, emanating from the results of the decision to buy, to the impact it has on the people and on the results of the business.

Product Knowledge In Sales

It is an obvious thing that we need good knowledge of our product to instill confidence in the buyer, underlining that we are a reliable partner.  We need extensive product knowledge so that we can mentally sift the right solution for the buyer, from amongst the many possible alternatives which exist.  Actually, we make the product purchase decision for the buyer.  It may seem that the buyer is choosing, but in reality, the seller is choosing.  This is based on what the client has told us about their situation and their needs. Salespeople who just launch willy nilly straight into their pitch get themselves into trouble.  They can’t make a good decision about what the client needs, because they don’t know.  They don’t have any information yet.  They are using the “throw enough mud up against the wall and some of it will stick” process.  Basically they are idiots.

As salespeople, we will always have a much more in depth knowledge of our product lineup than the buyer.  This is obvious.  We need to make the decision for the buyer and then lead them to arrive at an acknowledgment that our selection is the best one for their business.  

To understand the buyer however, is not always so straightforward.  They may be reluctant to share all their dirty laundary with a relative stranger, an outsider.  They may not always have a clear idea themselves about what actually is the problem.  In our own case, we deal a lot with HR Directors, who are looking for training on behalf of other divisions within the firm.  This means we are often getting the information second hand, which can lead to gaps in understanding.  Hard to hit a target which is vague.

The skill of the salesperson is to have experience with similar problems. To be able to offer solutions which have a track record of success. The grey areas for us are where we don’t have that much experience with a particular solution and we don’t know the solution in that much depth.  Often salespeople have a very large catalogue of solutions and it is very difficult to know all of them thoroughly.  Again using our own example.  We have 155 modules from which to teach broken into two hour classes. It is basically impossible to hold 300 hours of that much detailed information in your brain.

Naturally there will be some solutions which are more called upon by clients than others, so we get to become more expert on these.  The danger is we become too reliant on knowing the core products and don’t invest the time to know other solutions in the line up.  This requires time to be allocated to study the full line up.  Clients understand that we cannot be fully expert with every solution in a big catalogue, but they expect us to be able to find the information quickly.  This means we need to have a system that allows us to plug in quickly to the product line-up in order to search for best solutions for the issue.

Fortunately in Japan, it is rare that we will ever get a deal done in one meeting.  What usually takes place is we have the first meeting and collect information. We then go away, use that information and create a proposal on the solution we recommend. At the second meeting, we go through the details and convince the buyer that this is the best course of action. This allows us to comprehensively research our line up for the best offering to the client.

By consistently making time to study the lineup of solutions, we are better able to draw on the full resources of our company to help the buyer.  In a busy world though, making that time is easier to imagine than to pull off.  Nevertheless, we need to keep updating our knowledge of existing solutions and add in the new ones as they emerge.  

One of the issues we should be careful of, is to also work on how to present the solution to the client.  The product itself should be integrated into the sales training system, so that the sales training delivery is always in context.  

Each solution in the product line up has its own benefits and we need to draw in the application of those benefits, the evidence of where this has worked before and then move smoothly into a trial close to see if we have fully dealt with any issues the client may still have. This means we need to devote time to studying the products in the context of how we will present the best solution to the buyer.

Taking A Hit On The Price

We all hate having to take a hit on pricing.  We establish a price based on the value we provide.  Clients however can take no great notice of that and just plunge right in, demanding a big discount.  The rationale behind the requirement for a discount is often related to what they think it should cost or is a negotiating ploy to drag you down into the mud and blood of haggling.  Of course the biggest pushback on pricing comes at the precise time you are the most desperate for some business, any business.  Like sharks, some buyers can smell blood in the water and want to take a big bite out of your sale’s price.

Our pricing is a benchmark related to our positioning in in the market.  We set our prices with the aim to reflect the quality of what we do. Well that is what we think.  Our buyers may have a different take on the value or may have alternatives, which are much cheaper, with little perceived difference in the value.  This is what happened to Starbucks in Australia.  This is the one country where they basically failed.  The alternative product and service from local coffee shops was perceived as having a cost to performance advantage over Starbucks. They had to close most of their outlets.

We have to make a choice. Do we suck up the discount to get the business or do we walk away.  If we want to defend our positioning, then we may have to walk away.  If you believe you provide a value of service, that is superior to the competition, then you need to defend the pricing by rejecting attempts to drag it down.  You need pipeline of other buyers who will happily pay that amount to get away with this. If you are desperate, you will probably have few options but but to take the business and the pain. 

Once you start down the slippery slope of discount pricing, the buyers start beating you up on price every time.  For some, they enjoy a nice game of sports negotiating, where they have the winning hand all the time.  They want see how much blood they can get out of you, by offering ridiculous numbers to determine how desperate you actually are.  I was coaching salespeople from a firm where they would have to ring around offering discounts to get orders to make the monthly quota.  They would get smashed by tough negotiators playing games with them.  This was killing the sales team’s motivation.

You need to jump out of these types of toxic discussions and call someone else.  This sports negotiating dead end destroys your confidence and hits your motivation hard.  You plunge into a vicious cycle of negativity and despair.  Don’t go there to titillate the nastier side of the buyer. The effort is not worth it.  Look for more professional, ethical business partners instead.

If there is further business in the offing, then we are often persuaded to take the hit to get the other piece of the pie.  The tricky part though is when the additional business is just that, “in the offing” and not nailed down and fixed yet.  We can try and bake these in together, to get an agreement that we are pricing the first one at a discount, because we are getting the second piece of business. Buyers tend to resist this though, because they don’t want to commit.  So it comes back to where is your walk away point and how capable are you financially, of actually walking?

In Japan, taking a hit on the price at the point of entry dooms you forever to be set at that price boiling point with the buyer.  No matter how much you may want to lift the price back up, the buyer now has you slotted in at that low price forever.  I have had this happen to me over and over again and I hate it.  So going in with a discount to get more business is a deadly game here of lock in to permanent low profit margins.

Walking is painful because you are giving up business, with no replacement there to make up for it. Your mind is plagued with thoughts like “well a little bit of business is better than no business”.  The impact on your positioning, your belief in the value of what you offer is very negative. Instead, put forward a credible number and if they don’t buy it, then you walk.  The crazy thing is one buyer’s “ridiculous” price from you, is considered “quite reasonable” by another buyer.  These two reactions have happened to me in the same day.  After one meeting you are down in the dumps, then the later meeting has you back up again, with a spring in your step, instead of dragging your feet around.  Don’t allow the buyer to drag you down, because sales is tough enough anyway, without having more negativity piled high on your head.  If it isn’t right, then walk and find yourself another buyer.

Helpful Selling

As salespeople, we can become very focused and tunnel vision like, when it cones to dealing with our clients.  This is especially the case when they are existing clients.  We get into very narrow territory, when we discuss possible solutions to help them achieve their goals.  This process continues for many years and then one day you hear they bought a service or product you have, from a competitor.  That hurts big time.  That happened to me recently.  The client bought leadership training from a guy I know who only specialises in sales training.  I was really shattered to hear that news.  I was thinking ,”why would you do that”.  I realised I had not followed up enough with the President on what he needs. Painful lesson right there.

We have an exercise we do in our sales training, where we get a blank spreadsheet ready.  Across the top, in the columns section , we write the names of our existing clients.  Down the left side, in the rows section, we write down the various solutions we have to offer clients.  Then in the cross section cells between the two, we mark with a letter Y for “yes” if they are already buying, or P for “possible”, if they are not yet buying. It is a shocking exercise, because you are always amazed at how many of your solutions your clients needs, but they are not buying from you.

Why is this?  Mainly we get into a rut with our buyers.  We only talk about the existing business. In effect, we become order takers. We never go back and investigate if the needs have changed, or if there are further needs.  Maybe we tried to have those broader conversations in the past, but they didn’t have any interest.  We therefore assume that subject is closed.  This is why finding out they bought from your competitor really kills you.  You have been calling on them regularly, but had no idea there was a possibility to sell them other things in addition.

We have to keep our eyes open too.  There may be a change in the market that will make our offering more attractive and now possible, when it didn’t generate any interest previously.  Or we might raise a new idea that hasn’t been discussed previously. I was calling on a client recently and had that experience.  We had been talking about sales training for his team of new recruits.  This was a follow up session to one completed a few months earlier and now the new recruits were on board, so we could get down to the details of when, where, who etc.

I happened to have seen him on video talking about a collaboration they had with a foreign chamber of commerce. I noted he was on camera making some remarks about the tie up.  Here is the interesting thing.  I didn’t jump in with a statement, “hey, I saw your recent video with X Chamber, you really need to do our High Impact Presentations Training, because it is a such a phenomenal course”.  Like all serious salespeople, I asked him if he was likely to do more such videos? I was probing to see if there was a new and regular need emerging.  We had never discussed High Impact Presentations before, because we were focused only on sales training.

He told me he was doing more and more of these types of things.  So I asked, was there a need to do this at a high level, as the face and representative of the brand?  He said “yes”.  I asked, if I had something that was perfect for taking these types of skills to the highest level, would that help him in what he doing with the brand promotion? He said, “Yes” and that is when I introduced the High Impact Presentations Training. 

Now if I hadn’t seen that video, I would have had no idea that there was a possibility of selling presentations training, as well as sales training.  The point is we all get trapped into narrow gauge conversations discussing the detail of what we have done in the past and can become blind to possibilities for the future.

What should we do about that?  We need to be disciplined to ask about new or different needs every time we contact the client.  We don’t have to come across as desperate, grasping or pushy.  We can just say, “I know we have been discussing X for some time now.  Business is in constant movement though and needs change and new needs emerge.  We haven’t had a discussion for a while on whether what we are currently doing is fully matching all of your needs.  Have there been any changes to your business which may have created some needs we may be able to help with?”.  This is a good closed question, which clarifies if there is or there isn’t a need.  We want to know one way or the other.  If it is a “no” we just park that information and make a note to ask on the next occasion, if there has been a change or not.  And keep asking, every time.

These things are not difficult, but sometimes our habits defeat us.  Having a mouthful of the bitter ashes of defeat, after finding out your competitor got there first, makes this type of exercise more compelling. There is no penalty for asking, provided you do it in the right way. So ask. Every time.

Breaking Into The Mind Of The Buyer

Life is busy, busy today. Communications has sped up business to an extent unthinkable even ten years ago.  Every company is a publisher now, due to social media’s pervasiveness. Content marketing is driving original content creation and release.  LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook are favouring live video, so we have to become television talents.  Voice is the next big thing, so podcasting requires us to be radio personalities. If you are in business, your personal information is out there, easily searchable and found.  We check out the buyers and they check out the sellers, before we meet.

When you turned up at a client meeting eighty years ago, you came with some good jokes, some market information, some competitor intelligence, etc.  You did this to break the ice with the buyer.  Even if they were an established client, you needed to break the ice for that day.  Buyers then and buyers now have a lot going on inside their heads when we turn up and almost none of it has anything to do with us and what we want.

In Japan, meeting room space is always at a premium, so getting time with buyers has some automatic limitations placed upon it with certain companies.  After thirty minutes you are given the bum’s rush, because that space has been booked for the next meeting and they are loitering with intent outside the glass wall waiting to get in for their meeting.

That doesn't give us much time to carve out some mind space with the buyer, get into questioning mode, talk about the solution, deal with any objections and seal the deal.  If the first part of the meeting isn’t well planned then there won’t be any result.  We cannot let the first few interactions be random events.  We need to plan in detail how we are going to establish some rapport with this buyer or reestablish some rapport if they are an existing buyer.

We will have checked some of the media aggregation sites to see if there has been anything released in to the public arena about the client company, which we can then refer to.  If it is a first meeting then checking the annual report is a must.  There will be a glossy coverage of the CEO’s vision and strategy for the enterprise, with photographs in a swish corporate setting.  We are looking for things we can ask about in this meeting.

Our objective is to get the client talking as soon as possible.  Most salespeople still cling to the idea that they have to dominate the airwaves, so they just keep talking, talking, talking.  We don’t want that.  We only have a limited amount of time, so we want the client talking as much as possible.  When we do that, the client will have stopped thinking about all of the other things going on in their work and private lives. We will be concentrated on the business at hand and that is exactly what we need.

We hopefully will be able to check whether some insight we have found is relevant to what they are doing. We deal with that industry vertical so we are picking up ideas across companies on what is working and not working. We share these ideas as a means of demonstrating we provide value to their enterprise.  They may not go for it, but they will go for our intention to assist them to make their business more successful.

A discussion with a drill manufacture company I called upon, prompted a suggestion by me that they copy Blendtec’s “will it blend” phenomenon, but for drills not blenders. Blendtec’s CEO Tom Dickson video’s the blending of iPads, golf balls, whatever and post it on YouTube and they get massive views.  My idea was to copy this for Japan and create some buzz around the product line up. They didn’t go for it in the end, but I have no doubt that I have a closer relationship with the President today, because of my effort to think out of the box for them.  I had his attention for our discussion.

Getting the full attention of the buyer is no longer a given.  They are permanently distracted today and we are competing with so much noise, more than ever before.  We need to have a strategy to get their attention.   We cannot leave it to chance or expect that, “of course they will be paying attention – we have an appointment”.  That concept is way too indulgent.

Ask well thought through questions to get them talking, bring insights and valuable market intelligence.  Today, we have to do this every time, even if they are an established buyer.  Just because we have a relationship with them, doesn’t mean we have automatically broken through all the completion for their attention.   Start fresh every time as if it were the very first meeting.  In this modern age this is the new normal.