The BIG 2 questions… they are not what you think they are!
My lovely wife and I raised 5 kids while we were both working. That was a long time ago. And ALL of them were quite inquisitive. The top question of every road trip was of course… “are we there yet?” But the dominant question, regardless of situation or timing was “WHY?”
So the road trip question, “are we there yet”, applies quite literally to the journey that we take when we seek to serve our clients. In the case of serving a client, it ends up that we oftentimes don’t really know the destination as the client does not know it either. So our inquiry must be continual and open and sincere. Sadly, most “sales” people already have a predefined destination in mind… having the client buy their “stuff”. If you will take the time to open the mind map with the client and explore where they “might” go, with your help, you will find the journey to be substantially rewarding for everyone. Start the trip, take out a map, look at possible destinations and sights to see along the way that may actually open up the alternative destinations. We can NEVER close our eyes to different paths than what we started down. If we are open and receptive the client will guide us. We need only to ask the question “are we there yet”? And keep looking for the next waypoint.
Now, the second question is a classic one. When the kids were young it was “why Daddy”. It morphed in the teen years to a bit more belligerent “WHY!!!”, often stated as a demand for justice. In our B2B world, “why” is magical, but only if used not as a tool, but as a legitimate desire to understand and explore deeper. Here again, sadly, what I see often is highly experienced sales souls seeking to get their message across so they spend an amazing amount of time pitching the client on “why” their solutions are superior and on “why” they should choose them vs the competition. These are folks that are stuck in a choice between the status quo and the dreaded big “C” word…change. Not knowing how to facilitate change within their own world they are desperately in need of someone that can help them tackle the ”change” question. They don’t need product features and benefits knowledge. They need help, real help, in understanding WHY they should change. And beyond that…. how to make it happen.
So, serve your clients by helping them understand WHY they need to change, WHY now, and WHY to your solution. Solutions come last. We all need a primer on this one… I suggest a book titled “Leading Change” by John P. Kotter.
So, get your WHY on, and truly look to serve your clients, to their benefit!
CUSP
CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE
OK, LET’S ROLL!
Mitch
…in the words of one of the top organizational psychologists around today… Adam Grant.
Adam is a brilliant guy and a wonderful author. His book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, is a great piece about understanding. Give it a read.
In an opinion article that Adam just published in the NY Times titled “The Science of Reasoning With Unreasonable People,” he offers a great introduction to the thinking about helping others change. His final quote is “I no longer believe it’s my place to change anyone’s mind. All I can do is try to understand their thinking and ask if they’re open to some rethinking. The rest is up to them.”
And that is the cornerstone of what we have been exploring for the better part of the last 10 years. It has come to be known as I chat about it as the AND/ALSO pivot.
It starts with the clear understanding that YOU cannot change someone else’s mind. It is not possible. Only THEY can change their mind. That is the simple science of how it all works. While from time to time, with much verbal flogging, and verbose assaults you might get them to agree just to get you to shut up and go away, in fact, you cannot change what they think, even if they are wrong. Only the owner of the brain can control its workings.
So what does that mean to the salespeople in our space?
Quit trying to make your clients wrong about the decisions that they have made in the past and that control their actions today. STOP, it’s not working and you are only creating barriers that are really tough to break down.
INSTEAD… take time to understand how the client reached the decisions that they made. And under the circumstances, how much good sense that made. AND MEAN IT! No games here. You must really understand and empathize with reality.
Only when you clearly understand and say so honestly, do you open up doors for new additional thinking. It is at this time that you acknowledge their reality AND asks permission to ALSO put another thought on the table for them to consider. By openly acknowledging their reality as understandable you prevent the barrier to listening to another idea from being built. You have received a mini invitation to offer up a little bit of incremental wisdom that does not threaten their past thinking but openly ADDS to it.
Just like breaking a habit. You can’t kill a bad habit, you CAN add a new one that will be more powerful than the old one.
From there it is our place to serve the client in whatever choice they make and execute to excellence!
CUSP
CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly with,
PURPOSE
OK, LET’s ROLL!
Mitch
EVERY DAY!
It’s crystal clear…. Or is it?
It is crystal clear to me….so why can’t everyone else see it?
That was the thought that kept coming to mind the other day as I spoke with some really bright leaders in sales and business.
The thinking that got us here REALLY might not be the thinking that builds the future that we desire. That is a really tough realization. And as it will take some significant shifting to affect the right change, it makes it an easy thought to dismiss and simply revert to what we have always done.
The phrase the hit me hardest was from a really great company that had in fact been very successful globally in a really tough business, and was facing the need to possibly change. We were talking about sales organizations and their focus. The quote from this leader was “our objective is to extract the maximum amount of value that we can from the customer”. I’m listening… thinking… extract, like yanking teeth out of a patient’s jaw…. And “from”…oh yea… TAKING… not giving. Ripping value right out of their hands. Sounds more like a torture technique than any sort of “sales process”. But then again, most of the sales process offerings in the world can be a lot like torture, to everyone involved. Extracting, taking, getting, all to our benefit. Where was the customer in this? Oh yea, they were the subject of the extraction and the taking.
OK, I got it… this is the history of where we, as a “sales” person have come from. All about what WE want and what our company wants FROM us. The rest of the conversation was about the typical subject of compensation (meaning commission). The fundamental belief from most every sales leader(actually manager is a better term) is that their team IS coin-operated, and they CAN manipulate their team into doing what they want them to do by commission systems. The fundamental belief of this group, and most sales managers, is that the only thing that matters to a salesperson is greed and the possibility of a BIG upside to their commission.
And that is absolutely NOT TRUE. But they have been brought up under that belief system, so it MUST be true. Truly sad. Management (not leaders) that believe this are actually lying to themselves and those that they “manage” and those that they report to. That’s tough to face.
One of the other leaders that we were talking with was faced with a great challenge… having to hire a BUNCH of salespeople… NOW. And while training was of concern, the biggest challenge in mind at that time was how to structure the commission system so that everyone would sell more of all of the products that they had to offer. Not leading and coaching, but rather manipulation of the individual back pockets of the PEOPLE that they were working so hard to find and hire (hence the reason also for a retention problem).
Oh well. The journey to enlightenment can often be a long one…and it takes just one step to start it. So let me step down from the “commission is evil” soapbox for a moment and ask all of the salespeople out there to consider the concept that the most powerful way that you can achieve the success that you desire is to let go of the focus on hitting your “numbers” and focus on the process of serving. Commission or not, the way to create a brighter future for you and your world is by a simple focus on the PROCESS of SERVING. No complex equation needed here. Every day, look to make a difference of some kind for someone new. Every day, take time to dig in deeper to understand that client that you just “don’t get”. Every day, show the world you care more than ever.
Every day, come back to the basics of the “human process”….
CUSP
CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly with,
PURPOSE
OK, LET’s ROLL!
Mitch
Many years ago, in the formation years of our BootCamp (sales culture immersion at MCHP) creation, we found a wonderful couple of people that taught us amazing things about curiosity and conversation. Michael and Janet (www.inquizo.com) helped us clearly understand the power of creating curiosity as a cornerstone to having great conversations with clients. As we dug into that art we formed the rallying cry that was echoed hundreds of times during years of BootCamps and sharing journeys. The words that stuck in our brains forever are “2-Way Conversations”. A BIG difference from simple transmissions of words. It requires diligent caring about the people that you serve so that you can understand them well, to be able to truly have 2-Way Conversations that matter to them. That phrase…. 2-Way Conversation.. will be forever in my thinking, as doing it well represents a lot of commitment to selflessness and caring about others. Thanks, Michael and Janet!
As we have all morphed a lot in the past few months, this need for 2-Way Conversations has only gotten stronger than ever. This applies personally and professionally. For the moment let’s take the path down the serving clients direction.
With the aim to help our clients make a difference for others, we enter into the dialog of inquiry and understanding. We have conversations (2-Way Conversations, if we’re prepared).
This Covid trek that we are on has me evolving that thinking a bit. In today’s world with endless challenges faced by those we serve each day, I believe that it is time to ADD to that “2-Way Conversation” perspective and create the advancement of it into….” Empathetic 2-Way Conversations”. In the era that we are in, today, I believe that EMPATHY must come first before we can earn the right to continue on. In fact, EMPATHY must reign as we take the journey with our clients. EMPATHY first! We really do need to be able to put ourselves into someone else’s shoes and walk that next mile as them, to be able to understand, to be able to serve….well!
With our clients, there is a powerful conversation to engage in. It is a conversation about how your client helps THEIR client make a difference in the world. Take time to ask and understand what it is that your client does in service to THEIR client. If you will dig in and understand that you will find you have a new perspective on how you serve your client. Take time to…
CUSP
CARE greatly
UNDERSTAND deeply
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE
OK, LET’S ROLL!
Mitch
As we enter into this time of hope where the “vaccines” of the world will set us free from COVID, I am hearing the same old refrain kick in again. It sounds something like this… “just as soon as we can all get our vaccines we can get back to calling on customers face to face”. Sound familiar? Not so unusual. I understand the desire for “better”. And where we came from was great. Or was it?
Remember our past. Let’s not repeat it. Let’s improve on it. In the world known sadly as “selling”, the data we know tells us it was not working well. That data shows that there is a 35% turnover rate of salespeople per year in the “average” B2B selling organization. Within 2 years 50% of the sales team leaves, within 3 years 100% of the sales and leadership team leaves.
The BEST companies have a 19% voluntary turnover rate. One in ten companies has a turnover rate greater than 50%. How can this be acceptable? It’s NOT!
In quota/commission-based compensation systems 40+% of the salespeople do not meet quota. How, on earth, can a 40% failure rate be OK? It's not, the system is totally broken and wrong.
An age-old saying out of the Demming world is that “every system is perfectly designed to deliver the results that it does today”. If you want to change the outcomes, you need to change the system. And going backward into our old comfort zones is not going to work well.
And this does not matter whether you are face to face or over the phone or over a Zoom call. Self-centered communication with another person does nothing at all to help them shift their thinking. The people that we call on do NOT care how much we know, or what we know until they clearly believe that you care about THEM and what THEIR challenges are. Stop “prospecting”, start serving.
Our choice is to go forward, in a way that brings value to the people that we serve. The form of communication is immaterial. Each one requires first demonstrating that you care about the person that you are communicating with and that your first desire is to FULLY understand their challenges. That happens equally well over Zoom, a phone, and even an individualized well-crafted email.
The only thing that we want to go BACK to, is what worked before, during, and will work after COVID. Serving our clients, relentlessly. Messaging and actions that demonstrate you CARE, you UNDERSTAND, and that you are here to SERVE them endlessly. AND that you are clear about their PURPOSE in life and work. Learn to truly connect, not just transmit meaningless product features and benefits.
We are all going through a common battle with COVID. We share the same human nature and needs. A great bond is possible right now if you choose to embrace that empathetic proposition and focus on serving others without reserve.
CUSP
CARE greatly
UNDERSTAND deeply
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE
It really is that simple. No “sales process” is needed. It is, after all, a “human process”.
OK, LET’S ROLL!
Mitch
