A good message can be lost through a bad messenger
I later went to a store where the salesperson knew the manufacturer, called and had them check next year’s stock for my material, pull it out of inventory and make my suit. Now I always go there first.
The salesperson was ex-IBM and very organized, but he had poor alignment and interpersonal skills. We once went on a sales call to a “good ol’ boy” in Alabama. The salesperson began the call by pulling out a checklist of all the things he had done in the sales cycle and started ticking them off one item after another while sitting on the edge of his seat. After listening for a few minutes, the gray-haired IT director leaned back in his chair and said, “Son, you’ve got a really good memory. Think you can remember your way outta here?” It was over.
This is a case of very bad alignment. Everybody knows that in the South, you spend the first 30 minutes “cracker barreling,” talking about traffic, the weather, football, BBQ — anything but business. On the other hand, in Manhattan, you have about 30 nanoseconds to get to the point or you must be from somewhere “out West” — like New Jersey. It’s called alignment. And this salesperson didn’t have it.
Alignment can be based on gender, cultural background, or personality. In the movie My Cousin Vinny, Joe Pesci plays a New York lawyer who has to try a murder case in a rural Alabama courtroom. When he shows up for court in a leather jacket, the stern, conservative judge eyes him suspiciously and demands angrily, “Mr. Gambini, what are you wearing?” Joe Pesci looks down at his outfit, confused, and says, “Clothes. I don’t get the question.”
Some people who have become involved with sales don’t get the question. Customers have the right to discriminate. And you’ll never even know why you lost.
In business, different people align differently with different personalities. Some people like to be approached by task first and then relationship. Others like to establish a relationship before talking about business. Internationally, there are many cultural rites and practices that must be observed. If you get it wrong, your sales call will be ineffective at best — disastrous at worst.
One of our principals, Nick Holbrook, was shopping with his wife for a new car in England, where they live. As they entered the showroom, a salesman appeared and introduced himself to Nick, shaking hands with Nick first and then Sue.
It was the last interaction he had with Sue that afternoon.
Instead, the salesman spent the next 15 minutes asking Nick a series of questions about his budget and timeframe for buying a car. Then he showed the interior and external features of the car to Nick and offered him the keys for a test drive. He asked Nick what he was looking for in an engine, his color preference, and which accessories he would most like to have. Before they left the showroom, he loaded Nick down with brochures about the car, explaining the different makes and models.
But it was Sue who was car shopping that day — not Nick. She is also a very successful sales manager for a major software firm. That day, Sue was the decision maker with the sum of all votes plus one.
The salesman lost the sale because he made the false assumption that Nick was driving the decision-making process and held all the power.
As Nick and Sue walked out the front door of the showroom, the salesman made one last-minute effort to reach out to Sue. He called out, “And what about you, Love? I’m sure we could find a nice little run-around for you?”
No understanding, no rapport, no trust, no sale, no going back ever.
Alignment is usually different by industry. Bankers dress and act differently from academics, who dress and act differently from manufacturers. If you are selling to consulting firms — and we learned this early in our company history — you have to do a universal “search and replace” on your vocabulary. Most industries have a language and style of their own, and insiders can spot outsiders easily.
There are a number of training courses to help people with this fundamental skill going all the way back to Meyers-Briggs and DISC—all of which are strong fundamentals and help salespeople match their selling style to the personality of the buyer. The challenge, of course, is to avoid stereotyping by nationality, race, or gender and approach each individual as an individual. Different people want to be sold to in different ways.
One of the most enduring books on this topic is How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. It has stood the test of time for decades. In his book, Carnegie talks about such tips as learning and saying people’s names, the importance of a firm handshake, and finding things in common with other people. As old and fundamental as these concepts are, it is amazing how banks and grocery stores today have never learned the importance of remembering and repeating their customers’ names.
Consultative Selling — The Answer Is a Question
Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf.
Cherokee saying
By far the most important step in building rapport is probing and listening. In the early seventies, Neil Rackham, author of the best-seller SPIN Selling, was hired by large companies to observe what successful salespeople did right and what unsuccessful salespeople did wrong. Rackham discovered that the best salespeople actually held back the product for the longest time and were not necessarily the best talkers but the best listeners. This was the birth of consultative selling. Listen first, talk second — no matter if it’s a one-hour call or an entire-day demo.
And yet, 20 to 30 years later, one of the most common mistakes we find among salespeople is still “dashing to the demo”—running out and showing the product or solution before doing a needs assessment with the client. The reason is this: There is a whole new generation of CEOs, sales managers, and salespeople who have to learn to break this habit all over again.
When I was in the software business and I started doing needs assessments before demos, my partners and I cut our presentations from eight hours to two hours — and they were better. The irony was that not only were our presentations more focused, but we also were winning at the needs assessment — before the real demo. This is where the selling really took place.
Through better listening and understanding — elbow to elbow with the client, face to face — we not only began to “outcare” the competition, but we also were able to better understand the decision-making process, politics, our competitive position, and the needs of each buyer as an individual, as well and the needs of each buyer as an individual, as well as their culture.
By the time we got to the presentation, most of the deals had already been decided (as they are now). We had friends in the audience, we knew their terminology, we knew their strategic issues, and we had planted subtle traps to get the competition reacting to us rather than vice versa.
We began to get inside their competitive loop much earlier, and our presentations were more focused on their needs and motivators rather than on our features. In addition, we qualified out of bad deals earlier.
Listen first; talk second — no matter if it’s a one-hour call or an entire-day demo.
This is especially a problem when selling a complex product or solution. There may be over 100 reasons why someone might buy from you, but they are really only looking for five or so. Which five? Or if they’re only looking for five or six capabilities of your product and you come in talking about 105, not only will you bore them, but you will appear uncaring about their problem. You also will look too complex. This sets you up for commoditization because they see a lot of things in your product that they don’t need and don’t think they should pay for.
