I am conducting training in New Zealand this week, and at dinner last night one of the participants asked me where I had done sales training before and what observations I had about the differences.
It took me a while to answer the first. I had to take a mental trip around the world and through my past 23 years of training, and I came up with 28 different countries. In addition, because in many of those sessions contained participants who flew in from surrounding countries, I would conservatively estimate that I’ve worked with salespeople from at least 40.
The second answer was very easy to give. You would think that the different cultures, languages and business climates would have a big impact selling approaches. Yet, although there are some small differences, they are vastly outweighed by the similarities. Selling is selling, whether you are from China, the US, Guatemala, or Bahrain. Regardless of the culture, customers all have the same business needs and face the same challenges; procurement managers the world over try to squeeze every penny, and gatekeepers try to keep you out. Salespeople from every country tend to talk too much and listen too little, they don’t like to prepare for sales calls, they are too product-centric, and they all fear the price objection.
Everyone tells me their country and culture are different, and my “American” techniques won’t work there. But when they try them, and see that they work, they realize that selling—and buying—is universal.
I play a little game whenever I am in a sales call with a prospect. I always try to get them to say at least once, “That’s a good question!”
Every time the prospect utters those words, it’s because one or more of the following has happened:
- I’ve shown that I’ve done my research, and more than they expected of a salesperson
- I have put my finger on something that has been bothering them for some time
- I have touched on something they have not thought of, but instantly recognize is important
Because one of those events has occurred, every time the prospect utters those words, there is a palpable sense of progress. It’s as if you can feel a quantum jump in the trust level. The prospect’s guard begins to go down and they begin to open up more about their situation. They tend to get more engaged in the conversation, asking you more questions and becoming more intensely focused on your answers.
That’s why every time I get those four words, the chances go up significantly that I will hear the only four words that I like even better:
“Where do I sign?”
There’s a proliferation of terms to describe the various approaches to B2B sales: solution selling, consultative, challenger, etc. It can get confusing to try to keep them all straight, or even to differentiate between them. So, in order to help my own simple mind to sort out the different approaches, I’ve thought of an analogy…
Suppose your client wants to build a building. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a house, an office building, a hotel or a factory, there will be four main roles involved.
At the top is the architect. As the architect, you get to spend time directly with the owners, getting to know their likes and dislikes, learning – and shaping – their vision for the building, what they want to accomplish, etc. Because of your deep expertise and your creativity, the owners will be eager to hear your ideas. You’ll get invited to discuss these ideas over dinner at their private clubs. Your pay scale is very ambiguous, but it’s very lucrative.
If you’re the contractor, you get the plans handed to you and you figure out the best way to build the design. You have a tremendous scope of authority to fulfill someone else’s vision. You solve tough problems and you may have some input if there is a question about the feasibility of some of the more ambitious aspects of the final design, but not much more than that. You might get to talk to the owners early in the process, but any meals you attend are at the local restaurant with the people who report to them. Your pay scale is driven by what other contractors bid, but you do pretty well.
If you’re the tradesman, you come in the construction entrance and do what you’re told based on the plans. You take pride and care in your work, partly because that’s the kind of person you are but also because you know that you can be replaced fairly easily. You might see the owners when they occasionally drive by to check on progress. You eat your meals from the “roach coach”. You make a decent wage, but it’s based on what the lowest qualified worker in the area gets.
If you’re the laborer, you do exactly what you’re told to earn your minimum wage. You know that if you don’t show up, your employer can drive down to the labor pool and pick up a replacement. You eat your meals from a brown bag.
Take a hard look at your sales process. Which role do you play?
It’s not really that bad
In a class I ran last week, the participants seemed to be having a harder time than usual asking their customers (actually, their colleagues playing the part of customers in role plays) the hard questions. They would ask one or two questions about the customer’s situation, and then fail to probe when the customer’s answer hinted that things may not be as rosy as they claimed. Words like, “issues, struggles, lack of, etc.” zipped unnoticed over their heads like stealth planes.
Instead, the salespeople would listen intently, maybe jot down a note or two, and then when the customer finished their silent pleas for help, launch into their canned pitch about all their “solutions”.
When I tried to figure out what was going on, one of the students told me that they have been conditioned to accentuate the positive, so it seems like a downer to get the customer talking about the problems in their situations. I replied that if doctors acted that way, no one would ever be cured of anything.
Why do so many sales conversations avoid these areas? I don’t know for sure, but I can speculate. It may be a sense that the customer already knows what he needs, so you sound pushy in bringing it out. It could be a lack of knowledge of the customer’s industry, company, or operations. It might even be impatience to talk about the wonderful slick product you have. But mostly I think it’s the fear of upsetting the customer by bringing out unpleasant topics.
The problem with that, is that status quo is extremely powerful. Customers will never buy except to solve a problem, take advantage of an opportunity, adapt to change or mitigate a risk. And even if those are present in their situation, if they don’t talk about them they may be able to fool themselves that they can put off doing something about them. Meanwhile, the consequences and risks pile up because no one has asked the hard questions.
They can only put off action for so long before eventually the need catches up with them, but by then you probably won’t be there to help. The only person who wins when you steer clear of the hard questions is your competitor.
