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Gus Pineda

Gus Pineda

App Design/Develoment | Software Architecture | UX/UI Convergence | Digital Marketing | SEO Epicenter

Category: Sales & Marketing

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Posted on March 17, 2017

Sales Reps, Stop Asking Leading Questions

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Most executives recognize a need for their sales team to act as consultants and sell “solutions.”  But many CEOs would be shocked at how poorly their sales teams execute on the strategy of consultative selling.  I recently had a conversation about this with the director of purchasing at one of my client companies who told me: “I can always tell when a rep has been through sales training, because instead of launching in to a pitch, they launch into a list of questions.” Too often, sales teams trying to “do” consultative selling don’t move beyond the rudimentary application of solution-sales principles: “Get the team to ask questions, and then match our capabilities to what the client has said.” So the sales force sits down and makes a list of questions designed to extract information from their prospective clients, in a kind of interrogation. I’ve sat through many sales calls like this, and trust me it isn’t pretty.

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To maximize the power of consultative selling, we have to move beyond a simplistic view of solution selling. It’s not about grilling the buyer but rather engaging in a give-and-take as the seller and buyer explore the client’s priorities, examine what is in the business’s best interests, and evaluate the seller’s solutions. Asking questions is part of this engagement process, but there’s a right way to do it. Here are some important pitfalls to avoid:

Avoid checklist-style questioning. A few years ago I was working with a financial services firm that hadn’t seen much success in adopting a solution sales approach. When I watched a few meetings it was easy to see why. The sellers I traveled with did a decent job of asking questions and getting answers, but it felt more to me (and to the prospects, based on their responses and disposition) like they were going through a checklist. As a result, their sales calls felt mechanical and staid. While they gleaned some good information about clients’ needs, allowing them to dovetail the products they were selling into the conversation, there was little buy-in from the prospects they were talking to. There was no sense of shared understanding or that the client had confidence that the seller would be able to help them grow their business. I’ve observed this scenario with both beginner and experienced sellers, as well as senior partners in Big Four consulting firms: when they focus solely on asking questions, they rarely get the information they really need.

Avoid asking leading questions. Nothing falls flatter in a sales call than a question that is clearly self-interested, or makes the seller the master of the obvious. I joke about this in speeches using the example: “If I could show you something interesting, would you be interested?” The kind of questions sales professionals are taught to ask typically focus on drawing attention to client problems, pain points, and sources of dissatisfaction, so the client will then view the seller’s offerings as a solution. It can be useful to explore the buyer’s challenges, but when a seller asks a ridiculous question with an obvious answer such as, “What’s the implication of data center failure?” it can backfire. It’s counterproductive to ask patently manipulative questions because buyers immediately put up their defenses and will be skeptical of the seller’s intentions – and intelligence. Instead, ask questions that demonstrate genuine curiosity, empathy, and a desire to understand. Try to go deeper than uncovering a list of problems to be solved: ask what the buyer hopes to achieve with your product or service, and why this is a priority now.

Avoid negative conversational behaviors. When sellers are myopically focused on persuading a prospect or winning a piece of business, it creates a negative vibe in the relationship. In fact, when we look at what happens in the brain during this kind of one-sided selling interaction, we find that buyers may experience that negativity at a chemical level. In her article, “The Neurochemistry of Positive Conversations,” Judith Glaser highlights specific behaviors that contribute to negative chemical, or “cortisol-producing,” and positive chemical “oxytocin-producing” reactions in others. Among the behaviors that create significant negative impacts are being focused on convincing others and behaving like others don’t understand. Precisely the stereotypical behaviors that give sellers a bad name: being too aggressive, not listening, and going on and on about their offerings. Conversely, the behaviors that create a positive chemical impact include being concerned about others, stimulating discussions with genuine curiosity, and painting a picture of mutual success. Masters of the consultative sales approach apply these conversational techniques to their discussions with prospects and clients to create a collaborative dynamic with positive outcomes.

The consultative sales approach may seem simple, but it isn’t easy to execute well. Sales people cannot just go to training for a few days and gain mastery of this skill set, any more than an accountant going to a week-long course can emerge with the skills of a CFO.  Consultative selling is a fundamental business strategy centered on creating value through insight and perspective that paves the way toward long-term relationships and genuine solutions for your customers. When sellers do it right, that strategy comes to life.

Posted on March 7, 2017

B2B Salespeople Need to Act More Like Travel Agents

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Having more information doesn’t always make it easier to decide. Consider what’s happened with travel: With the explosion of internet travel sites in the 2000s, consumers took charge of their own travel, and travel agencies hemorrhaged business. Fast forward to today. According to the travel and leisure marketing firm MMGY, the use of travel agents increased 50% from 2014 to 2015. Why? Because consumers, overwhelmed by information and inundated with choices, are again turning to travel agents to, simply, take the work out of travel planning and make it easy.

A similar sequence has happened with B2B buying. Just as with travel, a wealth of easily available information made it possible for buyers to do much of the work themselves. By 2012, our research showed that nearly 60% of a typical B2B purchasing decision — researching solutions, ranking options, benchmarking pricing, and so on — happened before the buyer even had a conversation with a supplier. But just because customers can research their purchase doesn’t necessarily mean the process is going smoothly. As we describe in our recent HBR article “The New Sales Imperative,” the torrents of information, expanding array of options, and growing size and diversity of purchasing groups are leading to a kind of purchase paralysis: customers are taking longer than ever to make purchases, and abandoning them more. At the same time, second guessing and post-purchase regret are on the rise while loyalty is falling. As purchasing becomes ever more complex it’s becoming harder and harder – and buyers are now looking for sellers who can make the process easy once again.

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Surely B2B purchasing hasn’t become that bad. Or has it? Try this simple exercise: Think about the last major purchase where you sat on the buying committee. Perhaps it was a CRM solution, a consulting engagement, or new infrastructure. Now think about the stakeholder group on day one and how that group had changed by day 100. Think about the information you initially consulted and how that changed over time. Consider the revolving door of experts, colleagues, vendors and their specialists. Think about the seemingly infinite set of options you needed to consider. Now ask yourself, if given the choice, would you do it that way again? Likely not.

As our research highlights, by becoming their customer’s “travel agent,” leading suppliers are spinning the challenge customers face into tremendous commercial advantage. They’re easing customers’ burden by guiding them through difficult decisions and choices, and improving win rates for high-end solution sales by as much as 60%. Here are examples of how firms in three industries are simplifying the purchase process and the specific tactics they are using:

An employee wellness benefits provider uses content marketing. Programs to encourage employee wellness and keep healthcare costs in check are a fairly new type of service. As such, many HR departments have never made such a purchase. As employers try to learn about this market, a mob of brokers, sales people, employee evangelists, and others typically flood the decision-makers with information. As one benefits provider watched its customers become increasingly overwhelmed, it created marketing and sales content focused exclusively on best practices for purchasing wellness benefits. The content is highly prescriptive, guiding customers through the stages of decision-making, assessing their readiness to provide wellness benefits, and walking them through benchmarking exercises and even RFP builders. This guidance is vendor-neutral; it doesn’t promote the provider’s solution but instead guides prospects through the purchase process, offering practical tips and warnings about pitfalls they may encounter. Subtly, within the content, the provider orients customers toward its distinct strengths without overtly pitching its solution. The campaign resulted in dramatic increases in marketing leads and sales.

A marketing automation company creates bespoke presentations. When customer decision-makers don’t agree, it can make purchasing difficult and slow or scuttle deals. Consider the common situation where a marketing head approaches the CIO seeking sign-off for a marketing automation purchase. If, as often happens, the CIO believes the company’s CRM solution already does adequate marketing automation, he or she may block the purchase. To address this problem, one supplier built a series of ready-made decks for marketers to present to CIOs and other stakeholders in the purchasing decision. These decks contain benchmarking tools, customizable ROI calculators, and other content to showcase the potential impact of the firm’s solution, and, most powerfully, it designed each deck using the language and metrics of the stakeholder receiving it.

A health care software company uses networking events early in the sales process. Sellers often use references from previous customers help get a new one through the final stages of a difficult purchase. Most sellers approach this in a similar way: they get their happiest customer on the phone with the prospective customer late in the sales process and ask them to sing the company’s praises. Instead, this software company asks customers who have recently completed a significant purchase that is similar to the one the prospect is evaluating to spend a half-day early in the purchase process alone with the prospective customer. The engagement is billed as a networking and best-practice sharing event, so both companies benefit. But the software company asks the customer reference to candidly discuss their purchase process. This includes openly discussing missteps they made, pitfalls to avoid, information to consult, RFP advice, and how to best engage with the software company. Because this is a true peer-to-peer networking opportunity, few prospects turn this advice away. As a result of the reference-engagement approach, the software company has seen cycle times fall and deal win rates increase.

Like these companies, B2B suppliers need to focus on making it far easier for customers to buy. What opportunities do you have to be your customer’s travel agent?

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