Clients don’t need to do anything. We discover this unfortunate fact very quickly in sales. We also discover they are never on our timetable of what needs to happen. They can stay with the same supplier or they can make no changes to their current situation. Neither of those are helpful for a salesperson. There must be some driver for the buyer to take action and take action right now. There has to be a gap between where they are now and where they want to be. This gap can be quite clear to the buyer, but even that doesn’t mean they will take any action.
If they think they can get to where they need to be to bridge that gap, using their own resources, they will not pay for anyone to help them. Often, when we meet the buyer, they have super strong self belief they can do it all by themselves. It is the salesperson’s job to really test that self belief.
This comes down to our communication skills. Can we show some different view of the problem? Can we offer some insight that the buyer hasn’t considered as yet? Can we show that they are a lot further away from where they need to be and that they can’t get there by themselves? Of course we are going to use logic to get them to move but that may not be enough. Can we get them emotionally involved in a better solution to the problem using us, rather than launching their own DIY campaign internally?
This intervention requires a great deal of subtlety and diplomacy, because no buyer likes to be told they are wrong or made to look insufficient in their capability to run their business successfully. Leaders have a lot of self-belief in their own capacities, so we are treading on dangerous ground here, so we have to be careful with the words we use and how we use them.
Energetically pointing out some major gap in their analysis of the situation may make us feel good, but the buyer won’t necessarily appreciate it or want to believe it. It all depends on how we frame the conversation and how we point out what they are missing. The best form of persuasion is if they self-persuade. We ask some very intelligently constructed questions which lead them to the conclusion they cannot do this completely by themselves.
If we can make the argument for change now, then we have a chance of making the sale.
The client may agree that the gap is there. They may agree that they can’t bridge that gap themselves. None of this necessarily means they are going to take any action though and involve us in solving the problem. They may feel they will get to it, at some unspecified and vague point in the future. Or they feel they will get around to it when they are good and ready, because there is no hurry. We can never have complete knowledge of what is going on in their organisation, how the investment monies are being allocated and what help they can expect from headquarters or which big deals are coming down the pike. We cannot be fazed by these thoughts though and we have to push hard for action now.
The gap has to have pain attached to it by us. We know that we are all more motivated by reducing pain, than increasing gain. We have to paint a word picture of how much their non-action is really costing them. We have to show them that now is the time to act and further delays will be very detrimental. This is not that easy because we are talking in terms of supposition. When we talk about the opportunity cost of no action that can be a very theoretical idea and not necessarily something that is going to inspire the buyer to leap into action and hire us to solve their problem.
We need to bring hard evidence to the argument when we talk about the losses associated with the opportunity cost of taking no action. Unless we can paint a picture with concrete numbers, then the urgency isn’t going to be felt. We may not have all of the numbers, but we can at least start asking the right questions to get the numbers we need or have the client start to consider the numbers for themselves.
When we are doing the questioning phase of the sale’s call we need to be threading in the implications of not fixing their problems immediately. These implication questions are key and have to be delivered in the right format. This is not easy, but that is the skill of the salesperson. We must be up to the task or go and find another profession, because this skill set is central to whether we will be successful or not in this art of selling.
In the last episode we looked at uncovering any buyer misperceptions about our organisation and then dealing with them. How did that go? Today we will work on one of the most critical phases in the buying cycle – uncovering buyer needs. Depending on where the client sits in the buyer organisation, they can have different needs. In broad brush terms, we can assume that the CEOs are strategy focused, CFOs are bottom line focused, the user buyers are interested in ease of use and the technical buyers are checking up on the spec, to make sure it matches up with what they need.
It doesn’t always fall out so neatly, but experience tells us that directionally these framings are usually true. We do need however, to use our communication skills, in particular our questioning skills, to better understand the buyer and what is most important to them. Even inside the same firm, we recognise that depending on who we are talking to, these buyer needs could be quite different. I was talking to a President recently and he was pushing me for some sort of added value or a discount. When I asked him “why”, he said that his headquarters had a form he had to fill out indicating where they improved on the supplier’s offer. I was glad I asked, before I made a small accommodation to help him out. Otherwise I might have gotten ahead of myself and offered too much to drive the deal forward. The lesson is always ask ”why” when you get an objection or a hesitation.
We can analyse the buyer needs through four categories, to better help us uncover their most important needs. This step in the sales cycle precedes our direct questioning techniques, which we will handle in a forthcoming episode. To design good questions, we have to know what we are looking for and this is a vital step in our sales process.
The client is mainly interested in the outcome of the buying decision and not so much interested in the tool which delivers the outcome. It might be more revenues, enhanced effectiveness, improved efficiency, better safety, increased comfort, greater flexibility, higher quality or an increasing ROI. Spending all of our time talking about the tool rather than the outcome the tool will furnish, rather misses the point. We are going to face many needs, however we need to zero in on the most high priority need and focus right there.
There are the “must haves” which cover the basics of the solution. These will include budget, features, internal approvals, after sales support, location requirements, quantity, quality, etc. These are often related to the application of the solution and how it will play out in reality for the buyer and the internal company divisions it will impact.
In Japan, the safest decision by the buyer is to stick with the current supplier or the current system and buy nothing. This makes life tough for salespeople, so we need to be ready for this inertia preference on the part of the buyers. In this case, the decision we want them to consider is the opportunity cost of no action. Initially, taking no action looks like there is no cost attached to it. In fact, there is an opportunity cost of the lost opportunity. This lost opportunity may favour a competitor’s position vis-à-vis this buyer or it may lead to missing a turning point in the market.
The purchase is designed to improve the situation of the buyer. Their question however is to what extent does the return justify the cost of the investment? How much will the buyer get back for every dollar they spend? We have to be pouring on the value for the buyer in order to make that buying decision much easier. If we don’t come with concreate numbers, we will have a hard time to convince them.
We all have compelling emotional reasons for buying. It might have to do with strengthening our relationships within the company, gaining recognition for our good work, getting a big bonus, keeping our job or maybe being promoted. We may feel a sense of self-fulfillment that we made a contribution. We may be worried about internal rivals and need a quick win. It could be something which increases our power within the organization.
Human nature is such that we are all primarily focused on our own needs first and the company’s needs second. As salespeople, we know that about our buyers and we need to adjust our communication accordingly.
Just turning up and pitching to the client is essentially dumb. How do we know what they need? Well we don’t, which is why we need this analytical process to be completed before we show any materials to the buyer or talk about any products or services. You would think this process was the most obvious thing in the world, yet so many salespeople are skipping this step and then wondering why selling is so tough!
Business is brutal and sometimes clients have received incorrect information about our companies from competitors or the media. When I was selling on behalf of Australian exporters in Nagoya, I remember a client telling me that our competitors had said the Aussie company was verging on bankruptcy and was about to go under. You can easily imagine what effect that had on business for that exporter. There was a very famous case of national brand damage, through linguistic imperfection.
In 1985, the national broadcaster NHK’s announcer said in a nightly news programme that Australian winemakers were involved in a scandal, adding diethylene glycol to their wines, to make them sweeter and give them more body. In Japanese, the pronunciation of the names for Australia and Austria are very similar. Each Embassy regular receives phone calls for the other country by mistake. That wine scandal actually happened in Austria, not Australia. The Australian wine industry was immediately wiped out in Japan and it took twenty years for it to recover. So nasty stuff happens folks and we have to be ready for these types of dirty tricks and negative fake news.
There is no point explaining all the attributes of your wonderful offer, if the client doubts your company in the first place. The most worrying thing is that there may be misperceptions, but they are hidden. That Nagoya client happened to share what was being said behind our backs with me, because the trust was there. When the relationship hasn’t been solidified, perhaps they hear this type of damaging talk from rivals, but never mention it to us. We blithely traipse along, totally unaware of what is really going on.
We shouldn’t assume the client has a positive view of us, as we begin the business meeting. That would be way too optimistic and too ambitious. We should ask very sweetly, “so what are your perceptions about our organisation?”. After asking this question we shouldn’t say another word. We have to sit there in silence without adding, clarifying or explaining what we just said. If this question uncovers some incorrect information or a degree of bias, we need to deal with that.
Jumping in and arguing the point with the client however, isn’t the way to move the discussion forward. Our defensive counter actions can lead to the mouth outpacing the brain and we say the wrong thing. Instead, we need to insert a cushion. A neutral statement which doesn’t agree or disagree with whatever negative comment the client has made. The cushion is a device to give us some thinking time. It helps to break the habit of immediately wanting to argue with the client and tell them why they are wrong. Don’t do that. There are better alternatives available to us.
Depending on what they have said, we immediately may go one of three ways.
Agree: We may agree with them to a certain extent, but we clarify the new situation in a way which they may not be aware of. For example, “Yes, that has been said about our company in the past, but we have been able to eliminate that concern since we upgraded our systems”.
Dissociate: We make the point that many companies have been working with us and we have been able to gain great results for them. The inference is that whatever has been worrying this buyer, hasn’t worried other clients. They have been able to get the results they needed by working with us.
Correct: If the information is factually incorrect, then we need to supply hard evidence to get rid of that concern.
The next stage takes us into positive territory, using two techniques.
We should not be naïve about the rough and tumble of business in Japan and we should be ready to handle any negativity. Rather than the client thinking it, but not saying anything,we are better to draw it out, face it head on and then deal with it.
This week we will look at improving our questioning skills and setting up the meeting agenda. There are a variety of qualifying questions we need to design before we meet with the client, be that meeting online or in person. What we don’t want is to be trying to work it out on the spur of the moment. It is always better to have a basic structure and then adjust to suit the situation, than trying to come up with brilliance on the fly. Yes, we have to be flexible and adaptable、 but planning is also an integral component in sales success. I am not a great fan of pre-cooked scripts, but I do like structures. We can set up the parameters and then fill in the details as we require, based on where the conversation is going and the needs of the moment. Let’s take a look at some of the questions we need to design and I will use our business as the model.
The Permission Question: If we are meeting the client for the first time, then we need to remind them that we have helped others in a similar business to theirs and we may be able to help them too, but in order to know that or not we need to ask them a few questions. This is a simple structure and easy to ask. Remember, we are going to be asking them everything about their secret company business, especially about their weaknesses, and we are a stranger to the client. Would you tell a stranger all the things that are going wrong with your marriage or your kids? No, yet we expect the client to open up about their failings in their firm. We have to get their agreement to share with us, otherwise we cannot help them.
The Need Questions: Harsh as it is to contemplate, we may not be a match for this client. We need to know that as quickly as possible, so that we are not wasting anyone’s time. We can ask, “What are some key issues for your business at the moment?”. If they are not forthcoming because the question is too broad, then we can try to dig down and spark some feedback. For example, we could say, “Many of our clients would like to see improved performances from their salespeople in this virtual environment. Is that the case for you or are you fully satisfied with the progress your sales team are making?”. Whatever they tell us, we should also ask about what other issues are a priority for them. The first answer may not be the main issue of highest importance to them, so we have to uncover the other key problems, before we know where to zero in with our information.
The Quantity Question: To get some sense of the scale of the issue we need to gather some basic data. For example, in our case we would ask, “How may salespeople do you have who could benefit from training for virtual selling?”. This tells me how big a solution they need, so I can adjust my presentation accordingly.
The Budget Question: We can get down to it and ask directly, “How much have you allocated for training the sales team?”. Sometimes however, when you ask about their budget they don’t want to share that information, because they are wary of nosy, pushy salespeople. When we ask a tangential question, such as the size of the sales team, we can gauge the approximate size of the solution and then work out roughly how much that will cost them.
The Authority Question: Today many people are involved in the buying decision. We should try and find out who are the other players with the strongest vested interest in the decision. We ask, “In order for me to help you, may I ask, apart from you, who would have the most interest and input into the buying decision?
The Agenda Statement: The Agenda Statement helps us to control the flow of the meeting with the client. We begin by reminding them of the need for this meeting and the benefit of meeting together. We then outline the items to discuss:
Once we have the agenda agreed, then we move to item number one on the agenda and then start working our way through our pre-determined questions. Do things go in order? Usually no, but that doesn’t matter, as long as we cover the key questions during the meeting. We won’t get so many opportunities to ask these questions, so we have to make every post a winner.