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| This is a weekly column transcribed from my Radio Show. The "Top Story" is the major discussion each week in which I address in great depth and detail, aspects of selling that are pertinent to your job everyday. |
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Today's topic is the myth of selling as telling. The myth of selling as telling. If you've listened to this show before you've heard me talk about a lot of the things we need to unlearn when we get into sales.
One of the things you heard and I heard when we were growing up, "Oh that little Johnny, he's going to be a great salesman because he's such a good talker." It's not true. It is nice to be eloquent when it is time to talk about your products and services.
But basically there is an interesting paradox in sales. There are many paradoxes in sales. One of them is that we think that because the companies we work for have these great products - which they do, and wonderful services - which they do, and tremendous guarantees and warrantees - which they have, we think our job is to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell. Show and tell. We think our job is to be demonstrators. Talkers. Presenters. We think we're professional presenters in the sales profession.
The paradox is that the 80-20 rule applies in sales. What that means is that if you spend 80% of your time asking people questions about their current situation and what they like and what they don't like and what they'd want in a new product or service or vendor or supplier relationship, you only need to spend about 20% of the time telling or talking.
And that's the thing that is so amazing to me when I go out in the field and work with salespeople. They think that they're spending maybe 30 or 40 or 50% of their time having the other person talk, but I time it surreptitiously in these meetings. And it's amazing to me how that 80-20 rule gets reversed.
I was with one young man whose name is Kevin, in Naples, Florida. We rehearsed all these great things he was going to ask in the car before we went in to see this tremendously potentially important client. For the first 25 minutes Kevin talked the whole time. I was just going crazy. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if I should interrupt him; I didn't know if I should stand up and jump up and down. So finally what I did was literally to kick him under the table.
He looked at me and said, "Ouch."
I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Kevin. I didn't mean to kick you."
I immediately took that pause to start asking this person questions about himself, the potential buyer. Over the next 45 minutes he told us everything we needed to do to see if we could offer our product or service.
At the end of the meeting, I went back to the car with Kevin and said, "Hey, how do you think it went?"
He said, "Oh, it was great! Did you see how much information we got?"
I said, "Yes, I saw how much information we got. What do you think the first part of the interview was like?"
"Oh," he said, "it was great. Did you see all that rapport we built up with him?"
I was just amazed that even after I kicked him under the table, he still, back in the car, hadn't recognized that he was talking for the first 25 minutes about himself, and his company, and his products, and his service, and his clients, and his applications. It was just unbelievable. Unbelievable.
I'm working with a major Fortune 100 company right now. They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting together their sales model for their salespeople all over the country, six thousand salespeople worldwide. When I talked to the Senior VP of Sales and the head of their training area, their complaint about this proprietary system that they have paid lots of money to develop and roll out all over the world is that there's way too much focus on talking and presenting.
When they told me that, I had to smile because it is the myth. It is a myth that selling is telling. So what it selling? If selling's not telling, what is it? Well, when they asked me that question, I said, "We need to retrain our salespeople, or enhance the training of the salespeople around something that leads you to telling, and that is asking. We need to revisit this whole issue of asking questions and listening to the answers that we get."
You can find out so much information if you simply take the time to ask people what's on their minds. Yes, your company has catalogs and you have brochures and fliers and PowerPoint presentations and Internet-ready presentations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, "Yada, yada, yada." There's so much stuff out there all you'd be doing is talking, talking, talking, talking. What I'm suggesting is stop talking and start asking instead.
In fact, during the initial interview when you're meeting with a potential or current client, ask them a series of questions that follows a pattern that I call: now, best, least, and new. Now, best, least, new. This means that when you sit down with somebody for the first time, you ask him "now" questions. That gets the lay of the land. That tells you the current situation. For example, "Who are you buying from now? How often do you buy from them? How long have you been buying from them? What do you buy from them? When they call on you, what do you folks talk about? What's their delivery schedule like? What type of products do you find really work well in your business? How long have you been using that? What did you use before that? Who called on you for that company? Has it always been the same person? What's important to you in that relationship?" These are all examples of "now" questions.
Once you get the "now" questions, which is usually about 50% of the total interviewing time, you move on to the second series of questions which is all about "best". "What do you like best about?" What this does is it tells you exactly what the client or potential client likes now, and if they like it now, they'll probably like it again if they buy it from you or someone else. So now you have a whole series of second questions that you ask about "best". "What do you like best about that vendor? What do you like best about that product? What do you like best about their service? What do you like best about the relationship?" So now you're getting more information in a more pointed, more detailed way.
Then the third series of questions are "What do like least about..?" This is a very compelling line of questioning because now you find out what they dislike. Now you're getting to areas where there might be some potential conflict with their current vendor, or areas that you could really help them with. So the "least" questions become questions that really in a more refined and more pointed way get people to start telling us what it's going to take for them to make a change.
That brings us to the fourth series of questions. Remember that "now", "best", "least" were the first three. Now we're on to the fourth series of questions, and that's all about the word "new". Now we're getting somewhere. If we start asking "new" questions like, "What would you look for in a new vendor? What would you want in a new product? What would you want if you were looking for new services? If you were going to alter, change, or improve anything about your business, what would it be?"
Now we're talking about unmet needs, or areas of need, or areas of concern. This is what the old sales trainers used to call "hot buttons." Hot buttons. Can you see, listeners, how incredibly valuable this technique of asking questions and listening can be? Once we master asking these questions, we see that it is a myth that selling is all about telling.
This presents another opportunity. So many of us think that we have to be strong closers to be successful in sales. If you've heard this show before you know that I stand diametrically opposed to that. I hate those manipulative closes. I never use them myself. I had to study them and learn them and memorize them when I was a new salesperson because nobody taught me differently. I was the sponge that tried to get everything into my consciousness so I could become a better salesperson, and so many of these books said, "Memorize this close; memorize that close." And I did.
I won't bore you by reciting them on air even if Steve twists my arm. Even if he gave me a quiz and said, "What's the 'puppy dog close'?" I will not recite that. The "sharp angle close." The "reduce to the ridiculous close." The "Ben Franklin close." The "my dear old mother always told me close". They're all a bunch of nonsense.
But it points out another interesting point. Selling is not telling. What is selling? Selling is asking. When you get to this part of the sales process, asking for commitments or asking obligating questions, it becomes another opportunity to use that paradox that we talked about earlier. You ask the question. The other person talks. You ask another question. The other person talks. This is the best way to become a professional salesperson. The person that brings in more business than anybody else in the company is not the person who is the great presenter necessarily. It is the person who asks the most questions.
Have I convinced you that today's topic, the myth, is valid, that selling is not telling, even though we think it is? Selling is really all about asking questions and listening to the answers. What's the benefit to you if you do this? There are actually two benefits. Number one: your sales cycle as far as how long it takes to get from the prospecting phase to the commitment phase will go down dramatically because you're spending so much good time getting to the nub of the issues. You will find that your sales cycle gets reduced dramatically.
What's the second benefit? Your presentation time goes down dramatically. You don't have to spend forty-five minutes to an hour explaining your products and services. You can do it in a matter of minutes. Why? Because the pump has been primed. Through all your great questioning and listening, you will know exactly what the needs are. You can present to the needs and them move on to saying, "How does this work? How does this look? Are you ready to go? Does this make sense? Would you like to start today? Can I send you a shipment? Would you like to buy half a carton or a whole carton?" Again, more questions. Selling is not telling. Selling is asking.
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– Warren
Wechsler |
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