By Joe DiDonato | Chief of Staff | Baker Communications
Are you looking to be loved? How much do you need your customers to like you?
Unfortunately, that need to be liked – or loved – is a counter-intuitive factor when it comes to successful selling. You’d think that if your customers like you, they’d buy more from you. Right? Well in many cases, that can be true, except when it keeps you from asking questions. Lots of questions. Tough questions.
If you’re hesitant about having those difficult conversations that no one else has had, then it’s not such a good trait anymore. Asking lots of questions – whether they be tough or easy – is the foundation for consultative selling.
Having empathy and curiosity when you talk to your clients are the two things most sales experts feel are crucial to success. If you have curiosity, it will lead you to ask all the important questions. If you then have empathy you will understand the impact of the answers. Both are critical to identifying what’s most important to your customer and then being able to help them solve their problems.
One of the biggest mistakes that sales reps make is that they don’t understand the customer’s problem statement. That’s because they don’t ask enough questions. And not asking enough questions is usually wrapped up in a seller’s need to be liked. “Will it really irritate the customer if I keep asking more questions?” “Will the customer think I’m not smart enough?”
Whatever those internal conversations are, they’re working against your success. We can see that when we get into account reviews. We can ask the reps 4 or 5 open-ended questions, and they can only answer 1 of them. And if they can only answer one of them, how can they put together a comprehensive solution that solves what the customer needs? Simply put, you just can’t have too much curiosity.
What you really need to be doing is thinking about what open-ended questions you need to keep asking as you get into these conversations. And then you need to ask all of them. That’s the only way you’ll get to the real needs of a customer.
As an example, a prospective partner’s rep has been calling on me who keeps talking about the benefits of being on his platform, how slick its features are, the VC backer, and the fact that all my competitors are already on the platform. That’s not what I’m worried about. What I really want to make sure of is that the offerings we put on the platform will help their clients be successful. Instead, it looks like he just wants us to come up with a portfolio of one-size-fits-all courses and then list these general vendor offerings on their platform. Very few customers find any value in that sort of commodity course anymore. The rep never asked me enough questions to find out what my concerns were, or how we like to interact with our clients. Instead, he tried to badger me into a partnership because some smart people backed their company and that all my competitors where on it. As a result, he never got my business – and the sad part might be is that we both really needed each other.
So, the best way to summarize this competency is to be constantly curious. Don’t worry about being liked. Get to the meat of the customer’s problems and needs. Use empathy to understand how the answers impact them.
There are a lot of articles that will tell you how many “why’s” you need to string together to finally get at the route of the customer’s problems. If that works for you, try it on a few non-critical prospects. You’ll learn a lot along the way, and you’ll know if it’s right to use on your best prospect. Don’t make the mistake of trying a new approach first on your best prospects. No one is instantly good at sports or selling. It takes a lot of practice to be good.
We think the best approach to use is to have empathy and then tie it to curiosity. Forget about the love! Now you’re in the right frame of mind and on your way to discovering the real needs of your customer. And your empathy will help you understand the impact of the answers you hear.
If you need love…buy a puppy! They need it too!
If you would like to learn more about using competency data to drive your hiring, training, and coaching efforts, we invite you to watch one of our recent webinars: How to Implement Data-Driven Sales Enablement. View the webinar for free here: https://www.bakercommunications.com/webinars/How-To-Implement-Data-Driven-Sales-Enablement.html
