Practical Eloquence Blog |

Book Recommendation: The Relationship Edge

By Jack Malcolm / 2.14.2013 / No Comment

I first bought The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success out of curiosity, not expecting to find too much in it that would help me improve my sales or my clients’. In the ongoing debate about consultative selling vs. relationship selling, I’ve been pretty firmly in the consultative camp. To those who’ve said that relationships are everything, I’ve replied: “If you want a friend, get a dog.”

Intellectually, I guess I’ve wanted it to be true. After all, it seems to me that consultative selling is a meritocracy while relationship selling is a popularity contest. You truly have to know your stuff to make it to the top of CS, but it seems that any natural-born schmoozer and back-slapper can succeed at RS. Those of us on the introverted end of the scale tend to take offense at that.

On the other hand, why not work on being good and popular? When I look objectively at my own sales success, more opportunities have come my way from established relationships and referrals than from cold-calling. It’s much easier to be consultative when people are ready and willing to engage in a conversation, and relationships open the necessary doors.

Acuff’s book actually provides a bridge or middle ground between the two camps. On the one hand, he says that relationships are everything in business. His main premise is that the quality and the richness of our relationships determines in many ways the quality and richness of our lives. But then he spans the divide by adding that creating valuable business relationships is not about making friends, although often lasting friendships will result. It’s not just about making connections either. We all have hundreds of connections that will never turn into valuable business relationships.

What is a valuable business relationship? He begins by describing six levels of relationship, which he calls the Relationship Pyramid. At level 1, they don’t know who you are, and at level 6, you have a valuable business relationship, which he defines as those with AIR: Access, Impact and Results.

Access: will they take your calls and respond promptly to your emails?

Impact: You have an opportunity to influence their actions

Results: They do things proactively to help you succeed.

How do valuable business relationships help you sell? As Acuff says, when trust and rapport are strong, selling pressure will always seem weak; when trust and rapport are weak, any selling pressure will seem too strong.

All of us have a number of Level 6 relationships which have developed naturally in our work and personal lives. Acuff shows us how to implement a mindset and process to substantially increase our natural “hit rate” and grow the number of Level 6 relationships.

Mindset: You have to think that relationships are important, and that you have something of value to add to others. The paradox of building relationships is that you have to be genuinely interested in others as people—not as contacts or connections—and later the benefits will come. The best advice in the book is to envision that everyone you talk to has the following words tattooed on their forehead: “Make me feel important.”

Process: Mindset is useless without a process to develop relationships and to turn those relationships into measurable results. The process is pretty simple. First you list your most important relationships, assess where each one is on the pyramid, and then create a plan to move each relationship to higher levels. You do this by increasing your touches, learning more about them as people, taking actions that will make their lives better in some ways, etc.

To learn more about people, the book suggests a list of 20 questions. I don’t agree with all of them, and I won’t remember them all anyway, so the best thing to remember is FORM: Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Motivation. Of course, the danger with lists like this is that some people will become determined to get the answers from all their contacts and will go about it in a formulaic and self-defeating way. Acuff shares ways to ask the questions properly and weave them naturally into the conversation.

My own take after reading Acuff’s process is a bit different. The first thing I’ve done is turn the pyramid upside down, because it’s really a funnel. Just like a sales funnel, suspects enter at the top and closed deals emerge from the bottom, once they have gone through a codified and systematic selling/buying process. This way, you can set goals for new contacts to put in the funnel, have measurable events that will indicate objectively what the quality of a relationship is, and have goals for numbers of level 6 relationships created. At the moment, I am working through what the gates or milestones are at each level, and what are the best tactics for moving a relationship through the funnel.

The one weakness in the book is that it is a bit thin on some of this practical advice. For example, Acuff says you need goals, but his chapter on goal setting is basically the ABCs of SMART goals, with very little practical advice on what some specific goals should be, and what tactics are best at each stage. I would have loved to see a chapter entitled: “50 ways to move people up the pyramid.”

That said, everyone is different, and maybe it’s best that the reader is left to figure out specifics on his own. The important thing is to have the right mindset, make a plan to work through the process, and stick to it. The Relationship Edge can help you with the big picture, and you can fill in the colors that work best for you.

Sales

High Risk Sales: Safety First

By Jack Malcolm / 2.13.2013 / No Comment

Think about the last time you watched a contestant on a game show. Think about how they behaved as their winnings piled up. Eventually, they got to a point where risking all that money became a pretty difficult decision, right? Sure they could win even more, but they had just as much to lose, and suddenly quitting while they were ahead sounded pretty good, right?

When it comes to high-stakes sales, many buyers think the same way. In ordinary sales, most buyers try to strike a reasonable balance between risks and opportunities. But as the stakes increase, buyers focus more and more on the risks — what they stand to lose – and less on the opportunities — what they stand to gain.

So what does this mean for sales reps looking to cash in on a high-stakes sale? It means playing it safe.

Sales expert Harry Beckwith has taken a close look at high-stakes purchases and found that in these situations, buyers aren’t looking for the best option. They’re looking for the safest option.

Beckwith calls it the “The Principle of Looking for Good Enough.” Here’s what he advises to salespeople facing high-stakes buyers:

“Forget looking like the superior choice. Make yourself an excellent choice, then eliminate anything that would make you a risky choice.”

Instead of putting time and energy into reaching perfection, focus on understanding what’s on the line for your buyer. What do success and failure look like for them? What are the consequences for the buyer in the event this project goes south? Knowing the answers to those questions is the first step to succeeding in a high risk sale.

Once you know the stakes for the buyer, it’s up to you to position your product or service as the safest option available. Other solutions may be more prestigious or look nicer than what you offer, but if you can demonstrate that you offer the best chance of success, you’ll go a long way toward alleviating a buyer’s concerns.

How can you position yourself as the safest option in the eyes of the buyer? Consider these talking points:

You understand the buyer’s risks
Your experience and industry knowledge will help ensure success
Your product/service has a long track record of success
You have contingency plans for problems that might come up
You will tell buyers the truth, not what they want to hear

By recognizing what’s on the line for your buyer and positioning your product as the safest option available, you’ll vastly improve your odds of walking away having won a huge sale.

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Michael Boyette. Michael is the Executive Editor of the Rapid Learning Institute Selling Essentials e-learning site and Editor of the Top Sales Dog Blog. Contact Michael via e-mail at topsalesdog@rapidlearninginstitute.com or connect via Twitter

Presentations

Modify the 3 Ts for a Strategic Sales Presentation

By Jack Malcolm / 2.6.2013 / No Comment

Probably the oldest piece of advice for presentation structure is the 3 Ts: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them.” It’s been around for a long time because it’s very effective. However, in this article, I’m going to tell you how and why you need to modify the 3 Ts for a presentation to senior executives.

The first T, tell them what you’re going to tell them, is even more important for strategic sales presentations. Executive decision makers are decisive and busy, so they want to know up front what you want them to do and why. They will then evaluate everything you say against those two bits of information as a marker, and will listen until they’ve heard enough to make up their minds. So, for a sales presentation, your introduction should say something like: “You have a problem with _____ that needs to be addressed immediately, and we have the best solution; at the end of this presentation, I’m going to ask for you approval to move forward with _______.”

Just make sure that the why is relevant to a high-level audience by referring to profit, process, or problem. It’s not about you or your product.

Say it clearly, directly and succinctly—just like a headline. In fact, your first T is the headline of your entire sales presentation. Just like a newspaper headline, if you’re too busy to read the article, you still get the gist of the story.

Why should you ease into it? They know you’re there to sell something, so cut to the chase. The only reason not to tell them what you’re going to tell them is when you have a hostile or skeptical audience, but that’s a topic for a future article.

The second T, tell them, is not one we have to cover much here. Just be sure to avoid a bait and switch. If you got their interest with the first T, your second T has to tie directly to what you said. Don’t tell them you’re going to show them how to solve a problem and then spend the body of your presentation with a schematic of how your product works.

The third T is totally different for a strategic sales presentation. Do not tell them what you just told them. They are quick studies, (or at least see themselves that way), so they will find it unnecessary at best and possibly even insulting. Don’t summarize; use the third T to test them. They are decisive and respect decisiveness in others, so ask them for a decision or action. This will be the true test of whether they have bought in to your premise that you promised in your first T.

So, what will you do differently for your next strategic sales presentation?

Persuasive communication

And then Be Understood: The Forgotten Half of Covey’s Fifth Habit

By Jack Malcolm / 2.5.2013 / 1 Comment

My favorite quote from Stephen Covey’s book is also probably his most famous: “Seek first to understand, and then be understood.” It was the fifth habit in his classic book, but it was in his own estimation the most important one of all in terms of interpersonal relationships.

Yet most people stress the first half of the quote and treat the second half as filler. Even Covey devoted only two pages in a 22 page chapter to that side of his principle.

My point is not to downgrade the importance of “seek first to understand”. It is crucial, and anyone who has read more than a handful of the posts in this blog knows how much I stress the idea of outside-in thinking.

But…if you make a living by persuading others (and who doesn’t?), you don’t get paid for understanding people; you get paid for being understood. Understanding is crucial, but it’s not enough. Unless you can use that understanding to increase the chances that they will understand you, you haven’t gone far enough.

Some fascinating research cited in Dan Pink’s To Sell Is Human indicates that radiologists are far more meticulous and accurate in reading CT scans when there is a picture of the patient attached to the scan. No one is saying that radiologists don’t care about their patients, but somehow the simple reminder that they are looking at unique individuals unconsciously influences the way they approach their task. In the same way, I would submit that just making the effort to understand the person you’re trying to influence can unconsciously make you a more effective communicator. But there are also conscious ways that you can use your understanding to improve your chances of being understood:

Be clear, concise and candid: When you have something to say, say it—don’t beat around the bush. Lower the cost of figuring out what you’re trying to say, by speaking simply, avoiding big puffed-up words, using appropriate analogies, stories, and visuals. Focus on the why and the so what, and omit technical detail where possible.

Being concise aids clarity by forcing you to strip out anything that is not essential, and has the added benefit of making sure your message fits into today’s shrinking attention spans.

Taking the time and making the effort to understand someone else’s point of view will usually get them to open up more to you. You now have the obligation and the right to open up to them.

Customize: If you take the time to really listen and understand where the other person is coming from, and then launch into the same canned presentation that you give to everyone, you’ve just blown up any goodwill that you’ve built. You’ll look like you were merely faking it. Customization means delivering a unique message that could only pertain to them. Present the benefits of your idea in terms of their goals, aspirations and needs; use their words and their analogies; connect to what they already know.

Curtail choice: I was at a bar in Newark airport once when a man with a foreign accent asked if he could have a different side with his hamburger. The bartender said, “Of course. This is America, we have choices.” We think having a lot of choices makes us freer, but it can actually be paralyzing when we’re trying to decide. Since you’re trying to influence a decision, you need to make it easy for them to decide, by limiting the choices you present. When you don’t understand those you’re trying to influence, you tend to use a shotgun approach in hopes that something will catch their fancy. Yet we know now that too much choice reduces the likelihood someone will act or buy. Use your understanding of your listeners to present only two or three options.

Collaborative agreements: Being understood is not always a matter of expressing your thoughts in the clearest way. The strongest agreements are those that the other person decides are their own idea, when you get them to tell you what you want them to hear. You can get this done through questioning, turning your quest for understanding into a mutual process where your questions help the other person understand their own situation and motivations more clearly.

Confirm: George Bernard Shaw said “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Delivering the message is not enough. You need to confirm that it has been received in the way you intended. Sounds simple enough, but sometimes you’re afraid of what you might hear in return. I call this the 51+ rule: take at least 51% of the responsibility for your side of the communication. Don’t assume that just because you said it they understood or agreed. Test them: look them in the eyes for understanding, maybe even ask them to repeat or to confirm what they understood or what they plan to do as a result.

To summarize, let’s use Covey’s second principle: “Begin with the end in mind.” Always remember that when it comes to persuasive communication, seeking to understand is the means to your end, which is to be understood.