Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship
The irony with reactance is that the harder you try to “sell” people, the less likely it is to happen. (View Highlight)
The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.
We are more successful when we concentrate on the success of others rather than on our own. (View Highlight)
EXERCISE
Hard issues can readily be converted to money. When an issue is “hard,” ask the “Five Golden Questions”:
❖ If you can’t quantify (and even if you can), qualify importance on a scale of 1-10. (View Highlight)
typical roles would be:
In initiating opportunities, the End in Mind is often, “Should we be talking?” In qualifying, it is often, “Should we keep talking?” In enabling decisions, it often takes the form “Should you do this with us?” (View Highlight)
.There is failure to gain client agreement on the End in Mind either before the meeting or at the beginning of the meeting. (View Highlight)
MEETING PLAN
People make decisions based on beliefs. We are more likely to enable the End in Mind if we can explicitly state and resolve the underlying beliefs that support that decision. (View Highlight)
FACTS AND DATA: Research on objections shows that many are simply a result of inaccurate or insufficient information. It could be as simple as clients thinking we do not provide a particular product feature even though we do. Perhaps they came to a conclusion based on inaccurate numbers or missing facts. As long as the yellow light shows up while we are still there, it can often be turned to green by simply providing what was missing or correcting inaccuracies. (View Highlight)
They often use their own personalized version of “feel, felt, found” (“I understand how you feel, other clients have felt that way, what they found was …”). While the use of third-party stories is not new, the fact that they are so effective has important implications. (View Highlight)
Take some of the most difficult and/or frequent objections you encounter and find a metaphor that applies. You can research and select metaphors others have created or develop one of your own. Develop multiple metaphors and see how reactions to them differ.
Many consultants are vulnerable to price challenges because they:
We have all heard it—sales is a numbers game. Just make more calls and you will sell more. If that approach is working for you, keep doing it. The authors’ experience is that often the opposite is true. When we focus on increasing low-probability activities such as cold calls, we just do more of something that doesn’t work. The more calls we try to cram into the available time, the less attention goes into each call. As quality decreases, rejections increase. As rejections increase, we make more calls. This is not a good system. (View Highlight)
The last preparation element of the Meeting Plan is the agenda. If this is a first call, an agenda isn’t necessary. However if during your first call you and the client decide that it makes sense to meet or talk again, framing out an agenda for that meeting is helpful.
- The degree of trust has hard economic consequences: as trust goes up, speed goes up and costs go down. As trust decreases, everything slows and costs rise. (Most of us understand this intuitively; Stephen backs it up with evidence.)
The more important it is to meet your numbers, the more important it is to stop concentrating on your numbers and start concentrating on the client’s numbers. (View Highlight)
Solutions Have No Inherent Value (View Highlight)
Issues: What problems or results is the client trying to address? In what priority?
Time: When are they hoping to see the results in place?
Clients often describe their situations with what linguists call “complex equivalents” or “high-level abstractions.” These are words or phrases that encode many experiences and beliefs into one small package. (View Highlight)
Thomas Davenport, in his book Information Ecology, states, “The more an organization knows about a term or concept relevant to the business, the less likely it is to agree on a common term or meaning for it.” (View Highlight)
When you are driving, particularly when you are anxious to arrive somewhere important, and you encounter a yellow light, what do you do? If you are like many people, you go faster. Yellow lights have almost become the universal symbol for “Speed up!” Unfortunately, we use that same response with our clients. We hear something that concerns us, see a reaction that spells potential trouble, feel we are running into difficulty, then speed up to avoid running into our own worst fears. (View Highlight)
One day I was calling on a large financial services firm. I had invited an important partner from a large consulting firm to accompany me—so I could show off my tremendous talents. (That was the first yellow light—I definitely did not check my ego at the door.) We were supposed to meet with the person championing our cause, as well as the chief executive officer and a vice president of marketing. When we arrived, we were informed that my champion, who was to fly in for the meeting, was not going to be there. (That was the second yellow light, but I moved right ahead.) As we were escorted up to the offices, we were informed that the CEO also could not make the meeting. (Major yellow light.) If I had not invited the consulting VIP to accompany me, I would have called off the meeting. It turns out that I should have called it off, and did not. (View Highlight)
Many consultants present to open rather than to close. They are so enthusiastic about their solution that they present it at the very first opportunity. Unfortunately, more often than not they are guessing about what will be convincing to the client and they are often presenting to people who are not authorized to say yes. Are we surprised their win rate is low? (And when win rates are low, management ironically often pushes to do more proposals rather than improve quality.) Quantity over quality starts to prevail, creating a losing situation for all parties.
Vocal cues: We can hear the tone, emphasis, inflection, and pace of language. (Can you remember a time when you sent an e-mail or a letter that you thought was very funny—it sounded funny when you said it to yourself—but was dead on arrival?)
Do not present in writing what you could present in person. (View Highlight)
“I’m busy. Call me later.”
am happy with our current partner.”
“I am not interested.”
For the second target, I had a friend who worked in the sales department of a large multinational enterprise (source 2). I contacted him and said, “We’re doing some work for We-Do-It and one of our prospects is XYZ. In doing a little research, we noticed that your company has an investment in XYZ. Do you know anyone there?” He replied, “No, I don’t, but a good friend of mine, Bill, heads our investment department and I’m sure he knows all the key players at XYZ. I’ll have him call you.” Later that day Bill called (source 3). He asked what We-Do-It did, and who we wanted to talk to. When we told him we wanted to talk with the CFO, he suggested that the CEO was more appropriate and that he would call him and set it up. (View Highlight)