Traditional sales calls occur during early middle game. In these calls, salespeople typically gather information on customers and their needs and wants, and they provide information to customers about their company and the features and benefits of their products and services. It’s a moment where you can win your customers’ hearts and minds through behavioral differentiation or leave customers with a bland or even negative impression if you do more telling than asking and more pitching than listening. Because so much has been made of the virtues of consultative selling in the last thirty years, one would think that salespeople today would “get it,” but clearly many still don’t, including some who sell sales training! We were reminded of this by Joanne Kincer, formerly director of leadership development for Encompass Services Corporation:
While in the process of evaluating potential sales training vendors, I met with representatives from a number of training organizations attempting to sell their wares. Of course, evaluating sales training vendors is interesting in that while meeting with salespeople representing sales training products, I presume that I will have an opportunity to see the skills and tools they teach in action (after all, they are selling to me, right?). Typically, my assumption is that if I am not comfortable as a customer during the sales process, I would not want to teach my salespeople that same process and use it with my company’s customers. Since much of sales is relationship building and a process of first uncovering and then fulfilling needs, I find it interesting that most sales training sales representatives go right into a pitch about their products and all the wonderful features they offer. Unfortunately, few of the so-called “sales professionals” who are attempting to sell sales training as a consultative process actually use the consultative selling process themselves. Most I met with took no interest in first uncovering my needs before attempting to sell something off the shelf and make it fit. There was one exception. One sales training organization that I met with actually spent one and a half hours of our first face-to-face meeting asking questions and verifying information that they had uncovered during prior discovery. They never went into a pitch; rather, they attempted to uncover what we were looking for, both in terms of training and training outcomes. This “no pitch” approach was not only comfortable to me as a customer but also made me feel as though the organization truly wanted to fully understand our situation and needs before asking us to sign on the dotted line. This was, in fact, the process we wanted to bring to life in our own sales organization and, consequently, this is the process we embraced. Not only was it the sales process we were looking for, but the representatives of the process were living testimonials of its effectiveness. This company was awarded our business.⁸
One commonsense lesson from this is that you have to practice what you preach. Your behavior must reflect your message, which is a form of symbolic behavioral differentiation. Another lesson is that you should not pitch your products early in the relationship-building process. Selling is not telling. Few customers today want to be sold. Most would rather discuss, explore, and be advised before coming to their own conclusions about what is best for them. Salespeople who approach customers this way are facilitating the buying process rather than selling. It’s an important distinction, and it can behaviorally differentiate you from the pack of salespeople who are hawking their wares. So how do you provide information to customers? You start by imagining that you’re in a “no-pitch” zone. You listen and ask questions first. Then you talk about your company and products only in response to customers’ questions. When they ask about you, tell them, and then return to your questions rather than staying on a long telling track. In your early meetings with customers, you should observe the 80/20 rule—spend 80 percent of your time asking and listening and only 20 percent of your time telling. The foundation you want to lay is that what customers have to say is far more important than what you have to say. Most salespeople know this, and most don’t do it. In addition, you can do the following to behaviorally differentiate yourself while providing customers information about yourself:
Have your CEO, president, or other senior executives present your company’s capabilities to the senior leadership in the customer’s organization. Additionally, they could be present during other presentations or send letters or e-mails expressing their commitment to the customer.
Gather the customer’s questions and then respond with customized executive summaries, brochures, interactive software, Web sites, or presentations. Don’t use anything off the shelf; it sends a commodity message.
Prepare a living executive summary for customers that links their needs, problems, or opportunities with your ways of helping, showing how you can add value and improve business or solve their problems. Avoid strong pitches, and don’t try to close the sale with this tool. Be patient. If you sent them your first iteration of a living executive summary during opening game, then this one would be your next iteration.
Use symbolic behavioral differentiation in packaging the information you send to customers. Send messages in a form and manner that reflects their products, values, or messages. Besides sending information to customers about yourself and your capabilities, you can inform them about industry issues or matters that could impact their business and help them make smarter decisions. In Chapter 5 we discussed the role of market communications in opening game. In middle game, too, there are numerous opportunities to communicate with customers in ways that behaviorally differentiate you and add value to them. Hall Kinion does this well. It surveys its customers on issues relevant to technology and human capital and publishes the results in a free publication called Talent Economy. According to Hall Kinion’s Jeffrey Neal, “This magazine creates a lot of value for our customers. They feel some ownership for the magazine, they learn what’s happening more broadly among technology managers, and we use it to communicate current issues and trends to our sales force. Our publication of Talent Economy shows that we are investing in our customers, our technology, and human capital.”⁹