Selling is NOT Informing

No, the product does not sell itself.

This is true now more than ever. For the past 10 years, we have lived in a growth market that has allowed sellers to slide into a perilously comfortable position of informational selling, where “getting the meeting” opens a path to success. To get the meeting we enlist armies of Sales Development Resources (SDRs) to “put the message out” through a myriad of A-B tested programs to drip, ping, and connect our way to a meeting, a demo and a sale. 

Those were the days. Now, however, people have a lot on their minds. 

If you are fortunate enough to crack through the glass bubble and engage a prospective customer, your tried and true methods of selling fall flat. 

You cannot expect to transfer information about your product in order to elicit interest. Nor will you find customers ready with a laundry list of easy-to-categorize problems that are tailor-made for the consultative-selling solutions that have worked for you a thousand times before. Instead, you are more likely to find someone with their arms folded, a furrowed brow and spewing phrases like “no budget”, “no time”, “heads down” and possibly a reference or two to drowning (a state of being overwhelmed).

Oh, my goodness. And I’m supposed to hit my number how, exactly? 

You have been running infomercials. And as a salesperson worth hiring, you can no longer expect customers to readily accept your infomercials. What infomercials? These are your pre-scripted, pre-rehearsed, and pre-packaged list of features, benefits, and references.  

Customers have way too much on their minds to make time to listen to your infomercials. The mechanized world we inhabit has conditioned us to listen to everything as information processors, chunking “data” in our brains and then sorting it into pre-built buckets of likes and dislikes. We then tally up the score and decide to accept or dismiss what we’ve just heard. This knee-jerk style handicaps us as listeners, by summarily reaching conclusions without really listening to what’s being said we forfeit our ability to listen, learn, and explore through conversation.

But if the customers aren’t listening to my information, how can I sell to them? 

That’s a misleading question because the truth is that you cannot sell by informing.  You must instead listen to them, hard. If you listen hard enough, you will hear messages that are more insightful than your customers’ apparently negative moods might foretell. By listening hard, I mean listening intensely and care-fully; being full of care while listening. A successful salesperson is someone who listens hard and can hear offers within the customer’s messages and negative moods. Rather than inform, you listen and make an offer; your offer is an offer to dance. 

Wait, now I’m dancing?  That’s right, put the needle on the record and get ready to Pump Up The Volume. 

Just recently, I was engaged in a discussion with a prospect who was sharing with me the woes of his business in the affiliate advertising market. His arms were folded. His head was down. He was in no place to hear me if I were to break into a 10-minute rundown of features and benefits of my product. At that moment, I thought back to a recent news story that I had heard and I asked him if the COVID-19 Pandemic had taken its toll on his partners’ call center operations. “Oh my goodness, yes”, he responded as if something jolted him from his stupor. From there the dance began.  We proceeded to talk about the impact on the industry and implications for his business. He did most of the talking. I did most of the listening. Checking in every now and then with an encouragement (“hmm”, “I see”, “really?”), recognizing his pain, and making notes in my head of where I could help. By the time the conversation was over, he had said: “if you could solve these problems, I would be very interested in hearing how.” 

Future invented.

Thanks to Saqib Rasool for editorial assistance.

Your Launchpad

Your pitch deck can be a launchpad

or an offramp. 

In the hands of an ambassador of possibilities the pitch deck at your first meeting should be the portal through which your customer can step through to transport to a future that you invent together. 

How do you accomplish this? 

1. Establish your credibility; “We are a serious bunch in this space.”

2. Demonstrate your capacity; “This is the future we’ve created for others.”

3. Do your homework. Show them you get it; “This is your pain. I get it.” 

4. Open the door; “Here’s what our future together looks like.”

5. Make it real; “This is how we do it.”

6. Record the meeting if possible. Otherwise take complete notes and take ownership of action items. Be clear on next steps.

7. If (gasp) your offer is declined. End it like a pro, with courtesy and grace, to allow for a future engagement.

How do you keep them on the launchpad and away from the offramp?

1. Nail the meeting logistics. Get the right venue (physical or virtual). Coordinate the participants. Communicate with them in advance by being serious, concise and complete on what to expect.

2. Be a competent presenter. Practice, a lot. Join a group if necessary. 

3. Know how to adjust for success on camera, off camera or in person. Find ways to encourage engagement and conversation. 

4. Build a simple, solid deck for your presentation. Your audience should be listening to your words, which are enhanced by your slides.   If you must, build a second version of your deck for customers to read later. 

See your (joint) future. Make it happen. 

Manifesto

Hello, shall we create your future?

My goodness that sounds a wee bit presumptuous, doesn’t it? Rest assured that’s not my actual greeting for new sales prospects. Though, if I’ve done my job you can bet that the prospect will be thinking plenty about the future at the end of our first hour together, considerably more so than they might have considered prior to the meeting. Although my prospective customer may have cast me in the role of a “salesman” who has entered their office to convey information about my product for the purposes of conducting a transaction in which they receive my product in exchange for money, my role carries considerably more significance than that. As an Ambassador of Possibilities (AoP, see note 1) I take on the responsibility of making sincere offers that will invent new futures for both of us in a series of conversations in which we dance together to ultimately achieve our mutual satisfaction. And your success.

I may carry a sales title for a software company, but I don’t sell software. I sell change.  Selling change is a serious practice that goes far beyond features and benefits, beyond licenses, services and support. Selling change requires securing a commitment to transform, promising to make a future and committing to burn the ships, not look back and drive to satisfaction. 

Developing such a practice requires constant learning and experimentation. Learning happens all over the place. It happens on the job, on the commute and on the weekend. It happens with peers, superiors and subordinates. Learn from mentors. Learn by mentoring.  Learn from watching your competitors succeed, and fail. I learn from my mistakes, sure. I also learn from my successes(note 2).  

Learning happens in formal settings too. Read books. Read blogs. Listen to podcasts and attend webinars. Learn outside of sales and outside your industry. Learn about human beings and other cultures. Learn from the classics as well as the contemporaries. However, learn with discretion. Because nobody knows what you know nor does anyone else have the capacity to put your lessons learned into practice with your perspective and in your circumstances.  

Learn in the way that you learn best

Most importantly, remain curious. If you’re curious, then you ask questions. When you ask questions, you learn. Always B Learnin’, people! 

Of course all the learning in the world doesn’t do an AoP any good if they can’t put it to good use as a good listener. 

Wait, what? 

That’s right, the best way to put your learning to good use is to listen. If you want to spout knowledge, then go teach. An AoP needs to listen to concerns as well as aspirations and understand constraints as well as resources.  A learned AoP can listen on many levels, bookmarking thoughts and observations for further exploration while being patient enough not to interrupt impulsively. Nudging and guiding your customer along with a nod, a raised eyebrow or a subtle verbal cue (huh! really? woah.) Pick your spots for interjection wisely. If you feel the speaker getting off track, then ask a “how” or a “why” question, followed by another “what” question that’s better aligned with the desired discussion.

Creating a future requires a lot of moving parts! 

This blog will cover lots lessons that I’ve learned in years past and in days past. I’m happy to share my best practices and bad habits. We’ll talk about ways to experiment at scale, and at Happy Hour. I’ll share what I’m seeing in the field and comment on the challenges you share with me. And we will talk about wins. Winning is wonderful, but it’s also waning. We’re never more vulnerable than when we’re on top. 

When we walk into a sales meeting, full of learning, full of perspective and ready to invent a future, then we’re at our absolute best.

So how about it?

Let’s create that future or ours.

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1.  It was Chauncey Bell that first shared this absolutely delicious term with me. Chauncey though, will defer the credit to Fernando Flores. I credit and thank them both.

2. Did you ever get a chance to interview a customer who disqualified you from an RFP? Of course not. They won’t tell you anything! But if you happen to win an order (or an RFP, or a second meeting, or even a screening call) be sure to ask a question or two as to what got you to the next level. Learn what you did right and repeat it.