Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer

Improve Sales Effectiveness by Helping Customers Buy

Jerry Acuff, Wally Wood

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780470068342
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118044834
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

Praise for stop acting like a seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer

"Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer is a book that teaches you emphatically that 'words matter.' If you want to set yourself apart from others, whether you're selling a product or a concept, this is a book to read. Not only will you learn how to prepare for sales success, you will learn how to be far more effective by thinking like a buyer."
—Theresa Martinez, Brand Director, Roche Laboratories

"This book shares a great commonsense approach to developing a new sales attitude and mindset that will work no matter what you're selling. Jerry has successfully articulated a powerful and unique formula for sales greatness."
—Duggar Baucom, head basketball coach, Virginia Military Institute

"This is a book for people who truly want to have incredible success in sales. Thinking like a buyer is the most powerful way to help customers and prospects think differently about you and your product. This book shows you exactly how to make that happen in a step-by-step way. If you want to learn how to guarantee your success in selling or influencing, this is a book you must read."
—Dan C. Weilbaker, PhD, McKesson Professor of Sales, Northern Illinois University

"A mind shift takes place when you read Acuff's book and realize 'it's all about them.' The book helps you understand human psychology and behavior and gives you the practical tips, encouragement, and examples to help you stand out and be valued by your customers regardless of what you're selling."
—Charlene Prounis, Managing Partner, Flashpoint Medica

SECTION II

USE A TESTED, EFFECTIVE SALES PROCESS

CHAPTER 4

DEVELOP INTEREST SO CUSTOMERS WILL HEAR YOU

While any number of good sales processes exist and work well, we have developed one based on the acronym DELTA that is particularly effective. We like it because it means change. And change is the ultimate objective of all sales conversations. It is relatively simple, can be adapted to virtually any industry or sales situation, and works most effectively with the other two keys to sales success, mind-set and relationship building. The five steps in the DELTA acronym are Develop, Engage, Learn, Tell, and Ask:

1. Develop prospective customers’ interest so they are willing to hear you out.

2. Engage customers in a meaningful dialogue.

3. Learn the prospect’s situation/problem/challenge.

4. Tell your story after you understand clearly that your product or service is a fit for their situation, problem, or challenge.

5. Ask for a commitment, when a commitment is appropriate.

Because these topics are so significant, each one has its own chapter. And I start where every sales conversation must start, by developing the prospect’s interest in what you have to say.

YOUR FIRST WORDS MATTER MOST

If it is true that people develop their impression of us in the first 30 to 60 seconds and that impression is lasting, then your first words—whether this is the first time you’ve ever interacted with the person or the fiftieth—still really matter. The traditional, “How’s it going?” or “How was your weekend?” are not overly compelling ways to begin the conversation. This bland, generic opening may be acceptable if you have a great relationship with the person and are 100 percent certain that your question will be immediately recognized as sincere. If so, the person knows you really want to know how their weekend turned out. But as a rule, “How’s it going?” or “How’s business?” does not develop anybody’s interest.

It is critical to understand the importance of your first words and plan what you are going to say. If you have learned something interesting and relevant to the customer’s situation, how are you going to introduce it? You want to use first words that you have researched, planned carefully, and that create interest because you want the person to react by saying, “Wow, I didn’t know that. That’s interesting.” You want this because your first words often determine whether the customer or prospect wants to extend the interaction or end it.

There are five key principles to developing a prospective customer’s interest:

1. Research to find interesting things to open the dialogue.

2. Use openings that create safe environments.

3. Bring value to the interaction before you start the sales conversation.

4. Make connections that can help the customer/prospect.

5. Be crystal clear about what you need to know and go about finding that out.

But how, exactly, do you put these principles into daily practice?

RESEARCH TO FIND INTERESTING THINGS TO OPEN THE DIALOGUE

It is self-evident that if people don’t want to listen to you, you aren’t going to sell them anything. If they don’t want to listen, they simply will not hear the most powerful, valuable, significant sales story in the world. You first have to make people want to listen.

Making people want to listen is a function of how much you know, how well you present what you know, how creative you are in shaping what you say, how much time you spend planning for a sales conversation, and how much genuine interest you convey in your dialogue with prospects and customers.

One way to begin is by saying something unique, interesting, and relevant that the prospect didn’t know. You can do some research on the Internet to learn things people ordinarily wouldn’t know but would find intriguing. If you were selling anything to do with sleep—mattresses, white noise machines, light-blocking window treatments, medications—prospects might be interested in knowing the two developments that profoundly changed human sleep patterns that had been relatively unchanged for thousands of years: the invention of the alarm clock by Levi Hutchins, a Concord, New Hampshire, clockmaker in 1787, and the invention of the first commercially successful incandescent lamp by Thomas Edison around 1879.

If you are selling a drug for depression and you say to a physician who treats depression, “I have been doing some research on the Internet and I was fascinated to learn who is considered the father of depression. Is that something they taught you in medical school, by chance?” The average doctor is going to say, “No, who is it?” and you have developed interest with that factoid. (It was John Burton who wrote a paper in 1650, “The Art of Melancholia,” and became the first person to coin the term depression.)

The crucial point here is that the unique factoid ought to be interesting to the customer, not something the person probably already knows, and it should be relevant. You should not go in and ask, “Do you know who won the Super Bowl in 1967?” That’s not a good idea because it is probably irrelevant to the prospect and your sales message. (If it’s clearly relevant, that’s different.) If I were selling copying machines, I would want to know the first person to come up with the idea to copy something mechanically. If I were selling fax machines, I would want to know that the first patent for a fax was granted in 1843.

If I were selling computers, I would want to understand the Bill Gates story thoroughly. Gates, arguably, the one person most responsible for personal computers, became rich, not only because he was smart, but because of his mother. I would want to be able to tell his story because it would likely create interest. Lots of people don’t know that three of the four wealthiest people in the country didn’t finish college. Bill Gates didn’t finish college; Larry Ellison of Oracle didn’t finish college, and Paul Allen of Charter Communications didn’t finish college.

When you say something prospects or customers probably don’t know but can relate to your product or service (or the condition it addresses), they will usually find that informative. If they do know that Levi Hutchins invented the first alarm clock, they may well be proud to demonstrate their knowledge. Do some research on your own. Use the Internet to find facts/statistics /trivia on the prospect’s industry or business. Share something that includes an interesting and relevant fact that you can relate to your product (preferably present it in a creative way). Another form of research is to ask for their opinion or feedback about a relevant issue that you can relate to your product in a safe environment. Asking their opinion almost always secures interest because most people like to give their opinion. The key is to ensure prospective customers do not feel you are asking because you intend to use their response to “sell” them.

When I tell people they have to say something interesting, they often think they have to entertain or say something novel and unique, but that is not necessarily the case. You can be interesting without being entertaining. If people believe you are genuinely interested in them, they are usually interested in you. Your interest will generate theirs, and the fact that you have done your research says a lot about how you approach business.

USE OPENINGS THAT CREATE SAFE ENVIRONMENTS

Far too many salespeople begin a meeting by signaling “This is a sales call.” They use traditional and easily recognized sales language: “Today I would like to talk to you about . . .” or “Have you ever thought about . . .” or, in a retail store, “Can I help you?” or, on the phone, “If I could save you money on your long distance calls, would you be interested?” All such phrases signal to prospects that this is about to be a stereotypical sales interaction: “I want to talk to you about my product or service and hope you’ll buy it.” That does not create a safe environment, nor is it likely to create interest. It puts the prospect on guard and hypersensitive to any sales pressure.

Whenever I call on prospects or clients, I start my part of the sales conversation by saying, “We do business with a lot of companies and we are proud of our work, but that doesn’t mean we are right for you. At the end of the day, the only way I will know whether our offering is a fit for what you are trying to do is to understand more about your situation. Before I launch into how great we are, can I ask you a few questions?” Everyone to whom I’ve ever said this has answered, “Yes, go right ahead.”

I usually start with the question, “Tell me how you landed in this position” because I want them to talk about how they got their current title. What assignments did they have before? In response, some people will tell you their life story. Others will just say something like, “Well, I used to be the district manager in Dallas, and now I am the regional manager in Birmingham.”

To keep the conversation going, I usually say, “Tell me a little bit about your responsibilities and what you do.” After they tell me what they do, I say, “Tell me what you are trying to accomplish in [the specific area in which we probably have a mutual interest].”

Whether you have one person or six people in the room, they will usually allow you to ask questions. You are there to help them, but to do so you have to understand their situation. What creates the interest is your obvious objectivity, because you signal with your opening words that you are not sure whether you are right for them. That you are doing business with companies they recognize is all they must know to accept that you have a credible offering. It does not mean that what you have is the right offering for them—and you acknowledge that—but the fact that it’s right for somebody gives you the ticket to get inside the tent.

Valerie Sokolosky at Valerie & Company says that the first thing she does when calling a potential client (and she always makes the initial contact by phone) is to build rapport by asking simple questions: “Why don’t you tell me about yourself ?” “How long have you been at the company?” “Oh, you must have seen a lot of changes.” She wants to convey her interest before she even attempts to learn the organization’s issues.

“If I can’t make the customer feel like I care about him or her first,” says Valerie, “I won’t get their heart. Does the client feel I have their best interests at heart? I am on the phone because I think I have a service that will help them but I always say, ‘Before I explore the needs of your organization, tell me a little bit about you and your involvement with the organization.’ I also let them know right up front, that I may or may not be the right resource, but that’s why I’m calling, to explore that with them.”

Valerie says she seldom loses a sale if the client recognizes the need. “A client just told me, ‘Thank you for being so responsive,’ because I called back when I said I would. She said she thought I would enjoy speaking at their conference because I would fit in. To me she was saying, not that I did a great job selling, but that she felt I was real; I wasn’t trying to sell her unless my services met her needs. By the time the rapport has been built—and that’s number one—and they believe and trust that my credibility and expertise is what they are looking for—and that’s number two—it automatically leads to a close. I don’t have to push for a close.”

What does Valerie do in the increasingly common situation of being handed off to, or having to go through, an executive’s administrative assistant? She says that if the assistant is really trying to help the boss and has an open mind, that’s great. “However, you can run into a person who is taken with her authority and comes back to you with something like, ‘Well, I’m just looking into a lot of different companies. We have to explore a lot of different people. We have to compare your prices to someone else’s.’ Which is an immediate clue that they are not looking for the expert, they are looking for price.”

If you get that, says Valerie, you have to realize that, unless you can get past her, the assistant is going to be a gatekeeper and certainly not an advocate. “If you don’t have the person’s heart, she won’t want to keep listening to you. If you are just another number, no matter who you are or what you say, there is nothing you can do. You can do everything right, and there is a wall. And if you can’t break it down, you can’t break it down.”

Another way to treat this situation is to treat the gatekeeper as the client. When she realizes you are different and that you will create the same safe environment with her supervisor, you are liable to go further faster.

In most sales situations, there is naturally some pressure; you want prospects to act or think in a way they may not have considered completely. The whole concept of creating a safe environment is intended to take as much pressure off customers as possible so they can listen to what you are saying and think clearly about what you are offering. We begin to do that (usually) when we signal that this is a sales conversation, not a sales call. In a sales conversation, two (or more) people are having a meaningful dialogue about real issues and concerns. They are trying to learn something important from each other that they can both use to improve their situations. Conversely, in a traditional sales call a salesperson is attempting to obtain an order.

Most people do not want to have a conversation with someone they perceive as being single-minded about trying to sell them something, whether it is a product, a service, or an ideology. Many people, however, will have a conversation with someone who may be selling something, but takes an approach that says in effect, “If it meets your needs [or solves your problem] you’ll buy it. But if it’s not in your best interest to buy it, then it’s okay to tell me no. And I’m not going to pressure you to make a decision one way or another.” The less pressure you put on customers, the more likely you are to open up their minds to new possibilities, possibilities that include your product or service.

One of the best ways to start removing pressure is with the way you craft your questions. Typically, salespeople are taught to ask questions that elicit a “Yes,” response. In fact, some authors argue that sales reps should make it easy for people to say “Yes.” These books teach reps to start by asking questions in such a way that prospects grow accustomed to saying “Yes,” so that by the end, they’ll say “Yes” to the order.

I disagree. I believe that great salespeople (those who understand how important it is to take pressure off the customer or prospect) do exactly the opposite. Great salespeople make it easy for prospects or customers to say “No.”

By asking questions that make it easy for customers to say, “No,” great salespeople create a safe environment around which to continue building the relationship. A simple example: Every time I telephone somebody for a business reason, I first ask, “Is now a good time to talk?” I make it easy for them to tell me, “No.”

If they say “Yes,” then they have given me permission to have the dialogue, and I know they are willing to hear me out. I do the same thing when I am following up with somebody who has told me they want me to contact them in a month. I send them an e-mail or leave a message saying, “You asked me to follow up; I don’t know what your situation is now, or whether your priorities have changed or not, or whether you are still interested in this or not, but if you are, give me a call.”

That message contains two or three excuses clients can play back to me (“Our priorities haven’t changed; we are still interested; call next month”). I am signaling to them some ways that they can nicely tell me “No.” In response, they sense that I am not applying pressure in any way, and when they say “Yes,” they mean it.

Look at this simple question, “Would you prefer to meet on Thursday or Friday?”

In typical sales situations, people have been trained to ask questions like these (a forced choice) to encourage prospects to choose a day that guarantees the appointment. It leaves no “out” for them. Most people immediately feel pressure when you put them in this situation. If they feel pressure before the appointment, how do you think your meeting will go if you get the appointment? Are they likely to be open to listening to you, or will they feel they have to be on guard against further pressure?

Here is a different way to ask that same question: “Let’s look at our calendars together. My calendar is fairly open. What days this week would be good for you?” Or, if you are traveling to their area, “I am going to be in town the week of the 15th. What day that week looks like it might work for you since I have some flexibility in my schedule?”

Asking either question gives clients an out or an opportunity to say “No day would be go...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• SECTION I - START WITH THE RIGHT MIND-SET
• SECTION II - USE A TESTED, EFFECTIVE SALES PROCESS
• SECTION III - IMPLEMENT THE PROCESS FOR PERSONAL PROSPERITY
• NOTES
• INDEX