“Put yourself in a position to give your clients opportunities to say ‘yes’ rather than reasons to say ‘no.”  – Chris Still

How many times have you been in that sales call where the sales professional started talking about all the wonderful aspects of the product they wanted to talk with you about?  And, in the course of this conversation, they are sharing all the really cool features and benefits of which — they are hoping — you will find one feature that is of interest to you.

Effective sales behaviors and great selling outcomes are not dependent upon your ability to sell, position, or extol the wonderful products you are offering.  In reality, your ability to make your product compelling is the effectiveness with which you concisely focus a particular benefit of the product on a very specific customer driven problem and solution.

Effective product positioning is a process of knowledge, learning, discovery, and application.  Unfortunately, too many selling professionals are overly enthusiastic about their product knowledge (as if that is the most important component of the sales process–it is not). As a result, they find themselves sharing information that is of little interest or value to anyone but you and leads your prospect to say “no” more than “yes” in the sales discourse.

When it comes to presenting product and creating a “yes” environment the following process results in a more productive outcome:

1. Knowledge: Product knowledge can be a good thing.  It is a necessary tool.  However, product knowledge is less dependent upon “what it is” and “what it does” than on what type of problems the product provides solutions to.
2. Learning: From the knowledge perspective, your product knowledge skills are dependent upon how well you know how to listen for and learn to solve problems with your product.  When you understand what problems your product solves and know how to listen for customer cues regarding specific problems or issues, you are on your way to creating a “yes” environment.
3. Discovery: This is the most important piece.  You have nothing to solve for unless you discover an opportunity, issue, or challenge.  Discovery requires your ears are open, that you ask great leading questions, and your customer is talking about their interests, habits, behaviors, and challenges.  Simply hearing for an opportunity to offer a solution is not enough, you must also understand the challenge in the priority of context – importance, motivation, concern.  Your product knowledge skill is demonstrated by your ability to effectively facilitate discovery through this open-ended dialogue.
4. Application: The final step in the process is applying a feature of your product as a very viable option.  The challenge is to avoid advocating your product as a solution; but, presenting it as an option and how it can potentially resolve or address the problem.

Products are what our client ultimately receives.  Products are what we provide them when they purchase from us. However, the key to an efficient sales outcome is not found in all the wonderful aspects of your products; but, it is completely dependent upon how effectively you create an environment that connects a customer defined need to a product driven solution.  Avoid creating an environment of disinterest by reciting all the wonderful features of your product and concentrate on facilitating a receptive, interested one through your ability to go engage in a discovery process that enables you to focus your conversation on what the client wants, not all you know about the product.

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For the first time ever, there are as many as four different generations engaged in our workplace — Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y (Millenials).  Besides the increased ethnic diversity of our global economy, our workforce is proliferated with an incredible mix of generational cultures, as well.  As effective communication is at the foundation of our relationship building behaviors, educating sales teams on the best approaches to connect with these various groups is not simply a one-style fits all solution.

When discussing the first phase of any relationship building activity, I encourage everyone to pay close attention to everything.  The old school methodology of mirroring or matching is antiquated, overused, over-applied, and known to all.  The worst thing you can do is begin to engage someone based on your mirroring and matching techniques.  First, it is rude.  Second, they have seen that show before.  Finally, it is not genuine or authentic.

Instead, pay close attention to everything!  The first phase of the selling cycle is RELATE — the task is to listen, observe, internalize, and understand.  Through this process you will position yourself at a place that enables you to converse with the person at a level, in a manner, and with a style that compliments them.  This is different from simple mirroring and matching in that you actually have to spend some time engaging them in a conversation where they are doing most of the talking and you are doing most of the listening and observing.  Mirroring and matching teaches you to pay attention and then talk, act, and behave like they do.  RELATE emphasizes paying attention to their behaviors so you understand how they like to communicate and you do your best to communicate with them in a manner that demonstrates your respect for their style, their values, their approach, their seniority, and their expectations.  RELATE is not a behavioral game, it is a personal commitment.

Here are the four steps:

1. Listen: Pay close attention to the words being used.  Some people are visual. Some people use negative words.  Some are auditory or use positive phrases.  Some people speak decisively and clearly.  Others struggle to organize a clear thought.  Some people speak very fast, while others are more deliberate.  How they talk, the words they use and how they use them tell you a great deal about how they think, how they view the world, and how they tackle challenges.  The more you listen, the more you pay attention — the more you will know about them.

2. Observe: Body language tells you everything about their behaviors. How they stand, how they sit, whether they look you in the eye, whether they are easily distracted, or impatient provides you all you need to know about how they are emotionally wired.  How they respond to you provides an early indication of trust, credibility, or respect.  Observe how they communicate with their body when talking and listening.  It provides a glimpse at their behavioral mindset.

3. Internalize: All this is worthless if you don’t learn from it.  When you walk out of a meeting and cannot tell me about the person — behaviors, attitudes, likes, dislikes, goals, ambitions, passions, personal style, etc.– you didn’t spend enough time learning.  A thirty minute conversation with anyone will give you a powerful glimpse about them.  The challenge is making certain you spent that thirty minutes focused in a determined-to-learn mindset.

4. Understand: Once you understand what someone is like, communicating at their level is quite fundamental.  Learn to recognize the words that are most important.  Understand where they are used and how they are used.  And, start to use those words in the same appropriate, passionate way.  This is not mimicking or matching — this is demonstrating respect and understanding.  People do not want to build relationships with people who are phony, fake, or game players.  However, they appreciate it when you demonstrate the ability to honor and respect their behaviors, their vocabulary, and their values.  You do not have to agree with any of them – you simply need to be able to demonstrate your awareness and respect the existence of them.

Communication is all about how well you pay attention — words, behaviors, body language, etc.  The better you are at paying attention in order to respect and understand what is important to your client, the more effective you will be in communicating with them. Remember, this not a generational thing as much as it is a personality thing!  Do the work!!

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In several presentations I have talked about impact of the shift in our economy on business relationships.  To that end, there are three aspects of the business relationship that are critical in the formation of them: personalization, authenticity, and community.  

Virtually no one has the time, the desire, or the patience to be pitched, sold, manipulated, or coerced into making purchasing decisions.  Most every organization, and the people in them, have serious issues and challenges that they are working on solving or fixing.  They only have enough time or energy to discover those reliable and committed professionals who can provide the resources to helping them with these issues.

While many organizations continue to push their sales teams to hit their numbers by meeting more people in an attempt to get them to buy and close more deals, let me be the first to say — STOP IT!

I have been reading a great deal about the commentary of many sales trainers and sales educators. There are a lot of creative terms and phrases and styles out there that emphasize relationships based and solutions oriented selling.  And, while many of the values in these programs start out in the direction of demonstrating these commitments; in the end, they really teach sales professionals how to act and play the roles of a relationship and solution based professional — they do not educate them on effective behaviors to actually be committed to that behavior.

Sincerely engaging in a relationship where you are interested in helping a client with their issues, challenges, goals, and problems mean that you cannot be thinking about how to “get them to buy from you.”  That is disingenuous behavior.  If that is your goal, you are merely an actor on stage pretending to care.

In a previous post, I talk about the behaviors associated with Selfless Listening™.  Selfless Listening™ is a commitment to your client or prospective client that you are listening for opportunities to be a resource to them in dealing with their issues without inserting your wants, needs, desires, or goals into the conversation.  You are selflessly discovering how to be a reliable, committed and professional resource to them without an agenda to sell your stuff.

In an age where people are looking to discover personal, authentic and connected (community) resource to readily and effectively fix what’s broken or enhance what needs improving, walking in acting like you care as long they can buy from you is insincere and “salesy.”

Think about this in a different light.  This is an age of word-of-mouth marketing and the power of referrals and relationship based leads.  How many times have people said,

“You need to meet…He did a really great job of selling me XYZ.”

Or, do you desire to have people say,

“You would really enjoy connecting with…He has been a valuable resource to me and my organization.  Every time we meet, he provides great insights and ideas and he has helped with many of my business issues.”

Think about this:  When your prospective clients are singing your praises and introducing you to their valued contacts as a professional and trusted resource, you are going to have a lot more meetings than if they introduced you as a great sales guy.

To get there, you have to make the commitment to be authentically and sincerely committed to the relationship without regard to what is in it for you (read selfless).  First step in the process — shoot the actor — you are not winning any awards playing that insincere role.

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As we all know, successful sales is a numbers game.  However, there is a significant difference between “smart metrics” and “busywork numbers.”   While there are many sales professionals who would aspire to defend the successes associated with “busywork numbers” the harsh reality is there is a difference between being hard work productive and intelligently successful.  Over the course of my career I have discovered that “busywork” calculations are driven by a series of laws of averages; and, relative to the law of averages, persistence will eventually deliver the result you desire.  Quite frankly, I have no time or energy for “eventually“.

My ability to be successful is dependent upon a process that works now.  And, the best way for me to be productive is to have great conversations that drive me to meet with more people and have more valuable conversations.  My prospecting time is precious.  I do not have the desire or the time to constantly hammer people to meet with me when I can spend my prospecting time in front of those same people through great conversations, and getting warm, personal introductions to more people just like them.  In my world, I don’waste my time prospecting — I invest my time talking, meeting, learning, and growing.  And, I measure this activity by two very simple and concise metrics — New Relationships and Impactful Conversations.

These two metrics are the only yardstick by which I need to measure the productivity of my business and relationship development activities.  And, I measure these metrics through “The Three’s“.  Here is an explanation of my metric and how “The Three’s” apply:

New Relationships: A new relationship is someone that I have had an extended conversation with and have exchanged business cards with.  In the course of conversation, I discover that this is someone who I believe will be instrumental in assisting me with my growth objectives and they are — a strategic partner, a connector, or a potential client.  I have made a commitment to myself that I am going to actively develop a co-operative relationship with this person and have either scheduled a follow-up meeting or attempted to.  If a person does not meet all these criteria, they are not a new relationship.  I am committed to discovering and developing THREE (3) new relationships per week.

Impactful Conversations: An impactful conversation is a phone call or meeting that I have had that helped push the relationship or the sales process with a contact, client or prospect forward.  In order for the conversation to meet the standard of “impactful”, the outcome of that meeting requires me to take a subsequent and measureable action, i.e., mail info, schedule a planning meeting, make another call, send out a follow-up e-mail.  If there is no measureable follow-up activity required, it was just a conversation — not an impactful one.  I am committed to conducting THREE (3) impactful conversations every day.

Imagine the simplicity of measuring your activities relating to meeting with people, having powerful learning conversations, and engaging in a productive sales and relationship development process.  It can be done through these fundamental metrics: New Relationships and Impactful Conversations to the Power of Three.  I track all my metrics on a simple one page spreadsheet which, at the end of the week, clearly illustrates my results relating to my commitments.

Next time, instead of interrupting people with cold calls, meetings to pitch your products, and sales reports filled with busy numbers — spend a month working “The Three’s” and tell me which is more productive.

Dave Cooke recently shared a report entitled “Don’t Waste Your Time Prospecting” which focuses on the strategy, process, and behaviors necessary for effective prospecting in this current economic environment.  To obtain your copy of this report, simply email Dave Cooke to request your complimentary copy.  

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Many sales professionals seem to spend a lot of time prepping for their cold calls activities under the guise of  “research.”  In reality, it feels like a stalling tactic.  After all, if you are going to interrupt a busy person with a cold call, what makes you think they actually give a crap about what you think you know — you are still an annoying distraction from what they were doing.  

I recognize the theory that says “if I am going to create interest, I need to know how to find something they are interested in.”  To me, the more time spent researching, prepping, dialing, and interrupting, the less time you actually spend in productive meetings talking and learning.  I would rather be in front of people who want to meet with me than bugging people who don’t.

I have to be honest, I am not, have not, and likely will not be a fan of cold calling.  My thought is that if I have to make a bucket load of phone calls just to entice someone to meet with me, I am not very good at building and leveraging my relationships to grow my business.  If you don’t have enough friends, then I guess you have to work harder at finding some.  

There is no magic in this research stuff either.  You can learn all you want about anybody. The Internet is full of all kinds of information about most anyone.  However, until you sit down and get to truly know them, all that you learn is presumptive knowledge.  What is really important is what you know.  Known information is based on what is shared directly to you by the person you are meeting with.

When it comes to cold calling and preparatory research — prospecting activities that may be helpful in growing your business — you don’t need to do as much prep work on your future prospects as you need to be doing research on your success model.  Until you know what your customers value about you and how you have been effective at becoming a trusted, professional resource, all the cold calls and research in the world is not going to help you develop, expand, and leverage your current, best relationships.

Before embarking on another cold calling and on-line research campaign, do some productive research.  Take the time to learn directly from your existing clients and your best business relationships the value you bring to the market.  To accomplish this, have a real live conversation with your best relationships and ask them three simple questions:

1. What was it that I did, say, of offer that made you decide to do business with me?
2. Now that we have been working together for a while, what keeps you coming back?
3. What is the unexpected benefit or “wow” that you have realized in this relationship?

These questions provide you with direct insight and understanding into your personal, professional value in this business relationship.  Knowing exactly how you help others obtain exactly what they want and need is how you learn to engage others in a conversation about your professional skills, abilities, and commitment.  It from this knowledge that you can begin to build more real, tangible, and productive relationships.  And, when you understand how to leverage these relationships through your value, you will be able to spend more time meeting with people and less time researching how to interrupt them.

Dave Cooke has written an e-book “Don’t Waste Your Time Prospecting” which focuses on the strategy, process, and behaviors necessary for effective prospecting in this current economic environment.  This post is an excerpt from that book.  To obtain your copy of this e-book, simply email Dave Cooke to request your complimentary copy.  

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Far too many businesses are unnecessarily struggling with the notion that they have to convince customers to buy from them.  Besides not having enough prospects, the number one complaint is that their customers are taking too long to make decisions.  And, when they do, these decisions are predicated on price.

While it is true that clients have become more deliberate in their decision making process, their criteria is not price – it is value!  Does your product, your offering, your benefit, and your package offer the value to justify their investment?

Every one of your prospective clients makes an investment – not just price or cost – when they decide to do business with you.  Before they make that investment, they need to assess the risk associated with that investment.  Here are the five components of risk they assessing when going through the decision making process:

1. Replacement Risk:  Chances are quite likely you are replacing an incumbent supplier.  While they may not be receiving all the benefits you have to offer compared to their current provider, the risk of replacing you – an unknown supplier – is greater than keeping their current one.
2. Professional Risk: Although they may have a high degree of confidence in you, your company, and your offering, their decision to make a switch will come under severe scrutiny if your team screws it up.  In today’s economy, people are fearful of making high-risk decisions that could adversely affect their jobs.
3. Credibility Risk: Despite all the best efforts to convince someone that you have what they need, how trustworthy and reliable you and your organization are, there is still a risk.  If you are like most salespeople you have done a marvelous job of telling them all the great things they need to know about your value, your company, your service and your experience.  Do you think you are the only person shoveling that garbage?  Unless you have really built a strong relationship and established an incredible level of trust, your credibility will be scrutinized.
4. Productivity Risk: Making a change is much more complicated than simply making a decision and placing an order.  Change involves budget assessment, administrative processes and approvals, receiving and delivery adjustments, and end user training and awareness.  Whenever a new supplier is brought in, there are a lot of changes – some significant – that will occur in your client’s organization.  It is not always that easy to simply plug your product in and replace the other guy.  These changes can have and often do have a effect on the productivity of the team.  Like it or not, any effect on productivity is a cost and a risk to the organization.
5. Financial Risk: The most important consideration is the financial risk.  Companies look for products and services that make them money, save them money, improve a process, or fulfill a need.  These are the only decision making criteria for purchasing from a supplier.  With every one of these criteria comes a financial expectation of value and performance.  Until this risk can be assessed, quantified, and measured you are not getting the order.

Next time you think it is taking your client forever to make a decision remember this – there is a lot more going on in the decision making process than simply cost or price.  If you aren’t aware of or addressing these issues through an extended relationship development process – you will be spending a lot of time waiting for people to respond to your proposals.

It is not your client’s fault it is taking so long to make a decision – it’s yours.  You spent too little time earning the right to do business with them!

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