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We all know that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and the caveman’s use of images for communication may have been the earliest example. But when it comes to sales conversations with executive decision makers, too many salespeople are still relying on text-heavy PowerPoint presentations, even when recent research from Aberdeen indicates that 88% of executive decision makers are looking for a sales conversation, rather than a sales presentation.
The perfect medium for these visual conversations is whiteboard stories. Find your inner caveman and tell your story with stick figures and whimsical icons. But don’t mistake doodling arrows for visual storytelling – you’ll need to develop clear messaging and provide your salespeople with the content and training to deliver whiteboard stories that close deals.
To read more about how you can use your inner caveman for successful whiteboard conversations, check out Tim Riesterer’s article on page 16 of Sales & Marketing Management, Channeling your inner caveman.
When the littlest piggy cries, “Wee, wee, wee” all the way home, that isn’t a good thing. And neither is saying “we, we, we” all over your website, campaigns, and marketing and sales messages.
If you could do only one thing this year that could make an instant difference in your messaging, you’d replace all your “we phrasing” with “you phrasing.” You phrasing is more effective because it makes sure your prospect or customer is at the center of your story and engaged in the conversation.
Why Use ‘You’ Instead of ‘We’?
Using the word “you” instead of “we” helps transfer ownership to your prospects and customers because it causes their minds to unconsciously “try out” your solutions as you describe what they can do with it. Your audience member is no longer just a passive listener; he will be more actively engaged in your ideas and your story. In fact, you probably noticed I’m already using the technique in this blog post to gain your attention and give you ownership over implementing this strategy!
Still skeptical?
You phrasing has been proven to have a measurable impact. Researchers in Tempe, Arizona tested attitudes toward cable television. They used two different scripts to sell the cable services—one using the third person and one using you phrasing. Researchers found that when you phrasing was implemented, it doubled the number of cable sales. Now, that’s impressive!
Start Changing Phrases Today
Once you start practicing with you phrasing, you’ll find yourself in your customers’ and prospects’ worlds more than you have ever been. That will help you connect your story to your customers’ stories in a powerful way—one that they’ll want to listen to because you’re addressing their needs and concerns, and not your company’s.
Here’s a list of common phrases that can become more effective by using you phrasing:
“Our company allows you to… ”
“Next, I’m going to… ”
“We need to be able to… ”
“What if I could show you… ”
Now, see if you notice a difference in these phrases…
“What you’ll be able to do is… ”
“Next, you’ll be able to… ”
“You need to be able to… ”
“What if you could… ”
“What you can do is… “
The difference is subtle but powerful. By using you phrasing, you are helping your prospects’ and customers’ unconscious minds feel like they’re participating. In fact, you phrasing isn’t just a technique; it should be your mindset. You phrasing forces you to live in your prospects’ and customers’ worlds, the places they need you to care about and understand if you want to close more deals with them.
Using “you” instead of “we” is a simple and quick change, but one that will have notable results if you apply it correctly. So, next time you’re creating a marketing campaign or other marketing communications content, use the word “you” to capture the attention of your audience. By doing so, you’ll make them want to consider making a change and to pick you.
It’s the start of a new year and across the world, large and small sales teams are gathering – or preparing to gather – to kick off a new season of selling with new products and new and improved ways of selling them. Though the expense of gathering people together can be astronomical – in some cases $10,000 or more per attendee – organizations believe the money spent will, in the long run, improve sales effectiveness.
And yet, the mere mention of a sales kickoff meeting or sales training frequently elicits groans from even the most enthusiastic of salespeople. Sales meetings all too often signify work and personal time wasted; wilted hotel food; metal pitchers sweating and clinking with ice water; dark, cold conference rooms laid out with overly starched tablecloths; and the clicking of one PowerPoint slide after another morning until night.
You know these meetings. The typical agenda looks like this:
1. Opening session
2. Product sessions (slide presentations)
3. Sales methodology training (with or without hands-on role play)
4. Motivational speaker
5. Dinner
6. Team building activity
7. Closing session
Everyone bunkered in for the day – or several days – bombarded with presenter after presenter talking through slide after slide of the latest and greatest product enhancements or pipeline strategies. And you, their fearless sales leader, hoping that they’re absorbing all of this information and will be able to translate it into unprecedented sales in the coming months.
Painful reality
Not only is the process painful for everyone involved, but also, it doesn’t work.
Studies show that people retain less than 20% of what is presented to them. The “first three slides and last three slides” retention rule – which is scientifically proven – is in full effect. And these presentations are typically limitless, in that there’s almost no limit to the number of slides or amount of information crammed onto each individual slide. Slide-based training is about knowledge transfer, not equipping the salesperson with the information in a way that can be used to facilitate customer conversations.
And, except for the possible Q&A session at the end of presentations, these sessions are not normally interactive, so attendees are easily distracted by their PDAs, coffee in the back of the room, or anything else that they find more interesting than what’s being presented. It’s no wonder salespeople hit the bar and wolf down the apps at the end of the day.
A better way
There is hope.
Just as you shouldn’t subject your prospects to droning PowerPoint-based sales presentations delivered in the dark, neither should you force your salespeople – whom you’re trying to teach and inspire! – to sit through one (or more), either.
Instead of telling them what they’re selling and how to sell it, use the session to practice and perfect the whiteboard approach to selling. Start with a “why whiteboard” keynote (PowerPoint doesn’t work, information isn’t retained, sales execs want a conversation, not a presentation, etc.) and then have a subject matter expert or sales leader present a “gold standard” whiteboard presentation. After the stage is set, assemble small teams to work together and leverage a role-play-based, repetitive, simulated sales call approach to present the whiteboard to one another other using a flip chart and markers. You could even end the day with a competition of top performers in front of the entire group.
But you’re not done there. Developing a whiteboard is a great first step, but stopping there really misses the whole point of the endeavor, which is equipping sales with a set of tools, skills, and ultimately, that critical element of knowledge ownership to “raise their game” when engaging with customers and prospects with confidence. You want to give sales mastery of the whiteboard content, structure, and flow; key questions to ask; and objection handling. You also want to equip them with basic whiteboarding skills and best practices so they can confidently present a visual story to a customer or prospect and interactively exchange information.
It works
There are several studies that show participants retain ~70-90% of material when learning in a hands-on, visual fashion. In other words, with pen in hand. It’s not just about memorizing new product information – a whiteboard-based training is designed to be an interactive learning mechanism to transfer solution knowledge quickly and effectively to field personnel who may not possess the “situational fluency” and deep domain expertise of tenured and proven salespeople.
When surveyed, participants in whiteboard-based sales training identified a few key factors that contributed to their overwhelming satisfaction with these sessions:
1. The sessions were interactive, with participants able to ask questions, add things to the whiteboard, and share their opinions while learning from others
2. The training was 100% hands-on, facilitating “active learning”
3. The activities encouraged team members to come out of their comfort zone to learn new skills and present in ways they did not think possible
So gather your team, turn on the lights, arm them with a pen and an easel and set them to work. They’re bound to not only stay awake, but be much more effective in the year to come.
We’ve all heard the term “death by PowerPoint,” or worse, experienced it. It refers to the lack of interactivity and boredom engendered by the typical slide presentation. The term invokes an arresting image that reminds us that, if you want to engage your audience while standing out from your competitors, slides aren’t the answer.
In this post, we’ll look at five ways salespeople can boost performance using “visual storytelling” instead of slides. Whether using a whiteboard, a flip chart, the back of an envelope or a tablet PC via desktop sharing software, you can integrate the visual storytelling model into your existing sales methodology and apply the approach as a powerful differentiator in competitive and complex selling environments.
Five Ways to Tell Your Story Visually
1. Develop a Powerful Whiteboard “Story” Instead of Bullet Points
Your presentation should be much more than just a list of bullets – it should be a compelling visual narrative designed to showcase your products and services and how they deliver unique value. For example, you could create a story about a tragic hero (an anonymous customer) who overcomes adversity (the current situation) to attain ultimate glory (the desired state, achieved uniquely by your solution/service).
The story also needs to be visually intriguing, with humorous iconography, and should have a script that goes along with each step. The whiteboard story should include planned “interaction points” where you’ll engage with the customer to ensure a two-way dialogue. Stay away from features and benefits. Instead, ask and help answer these specific questions: what’s the impact of sticking with the status quo, and what’s the value of making a change?
2. Stick Figures are More Powerful than Photography
One way people have attempted to fix the PowerPoint problem is by using large photographs and metaphorical imagery with just a few words on the slides. While this may help make a keynote speech more interesting, it doesn’t advance the cause in a sales cycle, make abstract ideas more concrete, or make complex concepts simpler.
Stick figures and symbols get it done – boxes, circles, arrows, dollar signs…stuff you can draw. Even more importantly, these hand-drawn visuals can be redrawn by your prospects after you leave the room. You want your story to “walk the halls” in your absence, right? You want your prospect to feel smarter and more empowered to promote your story? Well then, give them the gift of a simple story and visual that helps them understand and react, as well as own and distribute.
3. Visual Storytellers are More Consultative
With the visual storytelling approach, it’s essential that you immerse yourself in the content. Prospects perceive salespeople with a clicker in their hand as “PowerPoint jockeys.” You are telling a story that someone else created. A visual story that you draw, and explain along the way, gives you the credibility. It confers the knowledge and expertise to you, not the marketing department that created the pretty slides.
In a world where every salesperson wants to appear as a trusted advisor or practice consultative selling, visual storytellers are seen as adding more value, facilitating more engagement, and delivering insight and expertise. Storytellers get the room to think about their challenges and opportunities in a fresh and interactive way. Turning on the lights and taking a pen in your hand, as opposed to closing the shades and standing in the shadows of the LCD panel, create an entirely different perception of you and the role you are playing in the room.
4. Create a Sticky Virtual Experience
If you’re part of an inside sales team, or spend much of your sales cycle dealing with prospects over the Web and on the phone, visual storytelling can create a huge point of differentiation. Just because you aren’t face-to-face with the customer doesn’t mean you can’t use whiteboarding techniques.
Using simple Web conferencing software and an inexpensive pen tablet, you can easily simulate a full whiteboarding experience. This can be the difference between creating a remarkable and memorable sales experience, and sounding and looking like everyone else.
We’ve found that while 50 percent of WebEx viewers intermittently leave a remotely shared PowerPoint presentation to access other applications, the attrition rate is less than 10 percent using the visual storytelling approach.
5. A Whiteboarding Methodology
Great visual stories don’t happen spontaneously. They are pre-built based on the different moments of truth in the customer buying cycle. At the beginning, you need to answer the foremost question in the prospect’s mind: why should I change? You need a whiteboard that helps them see why their status quo isn’t safe and why they need to consider doing something different.
The next question you need to answer is: why you? For that you need a visual story that clearly delineates your differences and strengths in contrast to the status quo and the competitive alternatives. Finally, you need to address the question: why now? That calls for a visual story that presents the business case and a relevant example of how someone achieved their desired outcomes and realized the projected value.
Each of these is a different, complementary whiteboard that builds on the previous one and develops your story along the decision-making path.
The Reality
Having a good sales process is important, but having something truly provocative to say when you actually interact is essential. Visual storytelling is the fuel that powers your sales process engine.
Congratulations, marketer! You’ve generated qualified leads by the dozen that you’re handing over to sales for follow up. Your job is done, right? Not even close.
Great and necessary step, but your work doesn’t end there. Perhaps you’ve set up various triggers to remind sales that they’ve got a hot lead and time’s a wastin’, but beyond that, most marketers essentially abandon the revenue generation process – even though it’s the marketing messaging that grabbed the prospect’s attention in the first place.
Here are three steps for adding value after a lead is qualified and in the sales person’s hands:
Get your messages in a row.
If a prospect has been visiting your website and clicking on and downloading content relating to challenge A, you don’t want your sales rep following up with a message focused on challenge B. Make sure your sales rep can easily see, within the lead management system, which message the prospect responded to. Once that’s established…
Equip your reps with follow-up tools that align to that message.
Don’t stop creating compelling content. Every marketing message needs to be backed with a corresponding sales talk track. Equip reps with a call-guide document that provides quick-hitting, additional pieces of insight into the challenge each campaign highlights. Don’t spell out the entire call for them (no good rep reads from a script) – but give them provocative industry facts, grabbers and key points to bring to the conversation. Otherwise, the “follow-up” turns into one email saying, “Hi, I left you a voicemail. Are you interested? When are you available to talk?” (You think we’re joking, but we’ve seen those emails come through. You know who you are.)
Track conversion rates by rep.
In any given month, track how many leads went from sales accepted to sales qualified (the lead is now in the pipeline), broken down by rep. Reps that are showing lower-than-average conversion rates likely need additional messaging coaching to increase their follow-up effectiveness.
A couple of quotes from really smart people crossed my desk recently. They highlight a core challenge sales and marketing people need to solve with the messages they create and deliver. Here they are:
“While our access to raw information has grown exponentially, our time to process this information has declined rapidly, which has placed an unprecedented premium on the act of meaning-making.” (George Dyson, Futurist)
“People are information-rich and theory-poor. If you can give them a way of organizing their experience, then their minds are wide open.” (Malcolm Gladwell, Author)
So, the question for you is… Are you a meaning-maker? Do you turn information into theory?
Test yourself, are you a confuser or a clarifier:
Confusers pile information on their prospects and customers assuming that more is better.Clarifiers cut through the clutter and make sense of the data to present usable insights.
Confusers use lots of industry jargon because they assume their prospects and customers like the lingo and it adds credibility.Clarifiers know better and instead use simple, concrete terms along with metaphors and analogies to make sure their audience understands.
Confusers ask lots of questions, expecting their prospects and customers to blurt profound pains and answers they are looking for.Clarifiers know their audience is wondering if they need to change and are looking for relevant, unique ideas on why they should do something different.
Confusers use lots of words in their campaigns, communications tools and presentations.Clarifiers tell engaging stories and use lots of visual support including hand drawings and infographics.
This is especially important for your marketing lead generation efforts. Brain science research proves that people respond better to emotional, visual and spoken-word messaging, yet most B2B demand generation still relies heavily on volumes of written content like whitepapers. Talk about being a confuser. If you want to engage prospects and disrupt their current status quo you have to do better. Check out this video to learn about a new visual storytelling approach for your lead generation programs.
Do you have a confuser vs. clarifier example?
Share it with us and we’ll post it so others can test themselves and their messaging.
Each quarter, we survey more than 600 marketing and sales professionals who work in complex, business-to-business selling environments. This quarter, we focused on the unique challenges associated with virtual selling environments. Here’s what we found:
58 percent of respondents indicated that they receive insufficient, little or no training for selling over the phone and Web. In fact, the survey found that less than 10 percent of respondents actually feel that they have extensive and relevant training for these types of communications.
When asked how well their organizations have armed them with tools to deliver effective messages in a virtual environment, only 13 percent of respondents felt that they were adequately equipped. More than 50 percent of respondents, however, said that they have insufficient or no tools made available to them.
Respondents noted that more than 64 percent of the time their virtual sales calls involve more than one person, underscoring the need for effective, differentiated messaging and a greater focus on speaking tools for group audiences.
In Power Messaging we teach companies to differentiate by finding their “Value Wedge.” Here’s how it works:
Identify your uniqueness in the context of a specific prospect need. Then amplify that need so it becomes the dominating buying criteria, and then clearly contrast your uniqueness with the competitor’s weakness so your prospect sees the unmistakable value of your solution. Also, make sure it is defensible by proving the claim and demonstrating your clear advantage.
I recently saw this commercial and thought… now there’s a perfect example of a company that knows how to find and promote their Value Wedge. Watch as Amazon Kindle responds to the emerging threat to their e-book reader leadership posed by the iPad.
Amazon is saying… Hey, if you are in the market for a reader, because you love books, and you love reading them everywhere, especially relaxing outdoors, then there’s only one solution for you. They aren’t trying to be everything iPad is… they are identifying their prospect as voracious readers and elevating the need to be able to read everywhere and showing how only the Kindle meets this need.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is an amazing little gadget with so much to offer. But, if you are a reader, and that’s your emphasis, why not buy the product that will work when and where you want it to, at a much lower price point?
Love to see two strong Marketing powerhouses go at it, using Power Messaging techniques.
- Tim Riesterer CMO and SVP Strategic Consulting and Products
Corporate Visions Inc.
The traditional 20-question approach to prospecting is dead.
First, it’s undifferentiated. Everyone can ask the same questions.
Second, it’s frustrating for the prospect. Executives are too busy to play along. Why do they have to answer your questions before you’ve given them a good reason to give you that information?
You have a new messaging challenge in today’s skittish marketplace. It’s no longer about prospecting questionnaires. It’s about effective deal creation.
I didn’t know I had a music problem.
One of the smartest consultants in our company explains it this way:
A few years back, if a salesperson selling iPods asked me an open-ended prospecting question like: “Do you have a music problem?” I would’ve answered, “Not that I know of… I mean, I’ve got CDs and this awesome five-disk CD changer… I’ve also got this CD walkman that gives me that high quality CD sound when I work out… it’s all good.”
Then the iPod salesperson follows up with, “How satisfied are you with the way this works for you?” Again, I would have said, “As far as I know, it works as well as any other CD changer or walkman.” Maybe I’d be looking for a 10-disk changer or something like that, but frankly, at this point, I don’t know I have a music problem. I’m comfortable with the status quo. No need to do anything different…no need to buy anything from you.
Now, listen to how the discussion changes when you employ a deal creation dialogue method:
How often do you pay for CDs, but end up only liking one or two songs? What if you never had to pay for songs you don’t like ever again? What if, instead, you could listen to all the songs from an album ahead of time, and create a library of music by buying just those songs you wanted to have? Then, you could use the money you saved to buy more of the songs and artists you like.
How easy is it for you to take your favorite CDs with you wherever you go, in your house or apartment, at school, in the car, or while exercising? Ever feel like that walkman is too bulky for a rigorous workout? Imagine if you could carry a library of thousands of your favorite songs on a gadget smaller than a credit card… a gadget that fits easily inside your pocket, and that plays perfectly in every setting, including your most intense exercise routines?
Imagine if you could play just certain types of songs at certain times, like if you are entertaining people, or you are reading or studying, or working out, or simply relaxing? What if you could create specialized playlists from your library of songs that enable you to essentially create your own albums for these different occasions, activities and moments of your life? And what if they were available at the press of a button on this same credit card-sized gadget?
Do you hear the difference between these dialogues? Now, I know I have a music problem. My current solution is sub-optimal because these are real pains that I’ve ignored or assumed were just part of what I had to deal with.
Deal Creation is Insight-Dripping Questions
Deal Creation is about asking insight-dripping questions that make the prospect realize they are actually in more pain than they knew… and that they are no longer in an acceptable position. And then, showing them that there is a significantly better way to do things available to them. All the while making sure they envision themselves in a better scenario, as opposed to you putting your solution at the forefront.
Deal Creation dialogues lead them TO your solution, not WITH your solution. But, it is a much more directed and purposeful dialogue than the open-ended, who-knows-where-it-will-land discussion that is today’s 20-question prospecting checklist.
Check out this quick, 16-minute, instant webinar to find out more about Deal Creation-messaging as a replacement for traditional Prospecting approaches. And, start putting more opportunities into your pipeline.
http://win.corporatevisions.com/DealCreation.html
And if you’re interested in attending a live Deal Creation workshop, drop us an email at cvimarketing@corpv.com for workshop schedules.
- Tim Riesterer CMO and SVP Strategic Consulting and Products
Corporate Visions Inc.
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Want to learn more about messaging? Check out one of Corporate Visions’ live Open Sessions for sales professionals, and executive Insights sessions for marketing and sales leaders.
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I’m not a big fan of the Geico gecko commercials. Too cheeky and not much substance.
Except when it comes to their power position – “15 minutes can save you 15% or more on your car insurance.” It’s perfect. Simple, specific and provoking.
You’ve probably seen this recent commercial where the big boss has some big ideas (don’t they all) for new slogans to promote the company. As I watched this, I couldn’t help but think of the many tagline and elevator pitch exercises I’ve seen over the years.
A lot of time, expense and fancy-pants, agency hocus-pocus goes into creating brand promises, slogans and taglines. And, here’s the amazing irony. Most say absolutely nothing, but at the same time they manage to say the same thing as everyone else.
No Sacrifice. No Positioning.
Too many companies unwittingly find themselves at parity in their messaging. Often they want to tell you everything about themselves in their brand promises, elevator pitches and mission statements.
What companies should be doing is finding their “value wedge.” Your value wedge is that sweet spot where you do something unique or in an advantaged way that can be clearly tied back to a prospect pain point. It’s a wedge, it’s not the whole pie. And, that’s the power.
Let’s look at the Geico slogan. They completely nail the prospect’s pain points, while showcasing their uniqueness.
15 minutes – Hey, people don’t have time, and don’t want to make the effort to meet with insurance agents. I had an insurance agent friend who just retired, saying he was glad he was getting out of the business as the internet was taking over. He said, “People aren’t going to want to have a relationship with their insurance agent anymore.” I said, “I hate to break it to you, friend, but people never wanted to have a relationship with their insurance agent.”
Save 15 percent or more – Everyone knows insurance is a necessary evil. No one wants to pay more than they have to. The thought that your insurance carrier is overcharging you is always in the back of your mind. Car insurance is a blatant commodity. Why overpay a middle man for adding no value to the transaction? If you can make it easy to see if someone is ripping you off, and then painless to make a change, you have a value wedge against the competition.
What can the prospect do better or differently?
The other thing the Geico messaging does right is that it focuses on what the customer can do better, or differently, as a result of your solution. It doesn’t talk about the insurance, what it is, or even what it does. It talks about what you can do as a result.
I know what you are thinking. It’s easy to create a clear, powerful slogan when you are the low-price leader. Wal-Mart doesn’t require much imagination in their marketing, right?
The same principles apply when you are trying to maintain your prices and protect your margins. Even as your buyers are trying to force you into a commodity trap.
We worked with a commercial cleaning company that wanted to convince multi-tenant office building owners to choose their cleaning service over the myriad of other national franchise or local options. They created a breakthrough by tapping into the issue of staff health and absenteeism. They approached the rental companies and showed them how they could help market the space by promoting their choice in a cleaning company.
How? By focusing the decision on which cleaning service did the best job “cleaning for health,” not just surface cleaning the space. Their slogan: “Healthier clean at no extra cost.” The landlords used it as a way to differentiate themselves when competing against other office space, explaining to potential renters how their cleaning service uses unique, proven approaches to disinfecting and avoiding cross-contamination to improve building and staff health.
Of course, the cleaning company did a lot of different things, and offered a bunch of cleaning services. But, they were able to ride their “value wedge” to increasing deal size and close rates.
- Timothy Riesterer
CMO and SVP Strategic Consulting at Corporate Visions Inc.
Co-author of Customer Message Management
What does Dwight from NBC’s The Office have to teach us about messaging? In the thirteenth episode of the fifth season (“Stress Relief”), Dwight tries a unique tactic to teach fire safety (don’t try this at home… or the office).
Watch as much of this clip as you can handle:
You clearly don’t want or need to go to extremes, but creating urgency with context is the key to driving home your point. How many times have you simply tuned out an alarm because you figured it was just another drill?
As I’m writing this, it’s Saturday in my small suburban community and the siren is going off, signaling it is noon. But, no one gives it much attention in my house, or neighborhood. It’s just the “noon whistle.”
Since I live near Milwaukee, WI, tornadoes, hail, and the ominous storms with “damaging” or “straight-line” winds can occur suddenly. Interestingly, the siren that signals it is noon on a Saturday is the same one my community uses to signal a severe weather emergency.
The siren that is ignored on Saturdays at noon when the weather is nice can clear an entire park within minutes on a threatening summer Saturday. I’ve heard that the only time the “noon whistle” does not happen is when the weather is bad. Why? The Public Safety department doesn’t want people to mistake it for a real emergency.
In other words, the siren uses the exact same sound, but you don’t know what it means without putting it in context. The siren on a sunny Saturday at noon means nothing. The same siren with dark clouds or wind means “take shelter now!” Context gives the message its meaning.
Context Creates Urgency
It’s the same with your company’s marketing messages or value propositions. Context creates urgency. It’s what causes your prospect to take action versus listen passively to the same blah, blah, blah they’ve heard 100 times.
Many companies tell their story in a generic way, often comparing themselves to their competitors. Hoping the prospect will care. But, there’s no reason for a prospect to do anything different, if they don’t understand the potential impact on them. Just like the siren during the sunny day vs. the cloudy day. You need to clearly show your prospects the potential upside or downside of responding to or ignoring the challenges they face – not the features you offer.
This has never been more important for Marketing and Sales leaders to grasp. As the economy struggles to escape the grips of a recession, you will be working harder than ever to create demand and create urgency — versus trying to beat competitors — just to build a respectable pipeline.
Sales Can’t Wait for BANT-qualified Leads
I recently spoke with a VP of Sales at one of the biggest software companies. He said that his salespeople are spending significantly more time on “deal creation” than running traditional competitive sales cycles. “Otherwise, they’d have nothing to do,” he said.
“Unfortunately, it’s the part of the job where they have the least messaging and least training,” he added. “But, they know they have to do it if they have any chance of succeeding.”
Today more than ever, your marketing and sales efforts need to create opportunities before your prospects have determined a budget. Why? Because there aren’t enough deals happening fast enough on their own to help your company make its number.
If you wait for Marketing to create awareness and then demand, and focus your sales people exclusively on managing BANT- (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) qualified leads, you are going to hear a lot of crickets chirping on your pipeline calls.
One superstar salesperson recently told me, “If I had to feed my children based on waiting for Marketing leads, they’d starve.” That’s why he approaches demand generation as a significant part of the job.
The Challenger Model
So many companies get their underwear wadded up over the competitive matrix. You know the chart I’m talking about. The one with all the competitors’ names and the images of half moons, quarter moons and full moons to show where you are different from your competitors.
That’s all well and good when you are buried deep in the weeds of a “competitive bake-off.” And you have all you can handle keeping up with RFP’s (requests for proposal). But those days are a distant memory. And, they aren’t coming back anytime soon.
You know what else has disappeared? The days of the elongated, expensive dog-and-pony demo parades. Prospect decision-makers are telling researchers they want a different kind of engagement with sales people.
According to the Corporate Executive Board’s Sales Executive Council (SEC), the sales profile most likely to succeed today is something called “The Challenger.” Decision-makers tell SEC they prefer conversations with companies where they, the prospects, learn something new. They want their sales interactions to provide a new, fresh insight by challenging the status quo and showing them a better way to do something.
Most companies struggle to equip their sales people to have these types of interactions. Why? It goes back to the initial premise of this article. You have the context all wrong.
A company-focused context that emphasizes your product features and tries to take out your competitors on a competitive matrix has nothing to do with what your prospects are looking to accomplish. You are arguing in your context, but the prospect is living in their context.
The real winners create and deliver messaging in a customer-focused context that points out problems and pitfalls that are threatening your prospect’s ability to meet their objectives, and then aligns your solution to their context. You also show them how you can help avoid the landmines and pains others like them have experienced.
By getting into your prospect’s context, creating urgency to solve a problem, and showing them how you can uniquely help, you will significantly increase the chances they will care enough to start a buying cycle with you.
And, after all, that’s job #1 today.
- Timothy Riesterer
CMO and SVP Strategic Consulting at Corporate Visions Inc.
Co-author of Customer Message Management
Imagine for a moment that you’re a street musician. Your meal ticket is selling your performance. So, you’re playing your heart out, vying for the attention of prospects as they pass by. You catch someone’s ear, and they wander closer. They’re reaching into their pocket when suddenly, lo, instead of the sweet sound of a shiny coin landing in your tip jar, you hear an ominous tune picking up on other end of the square. Is that your competition, stealing your prospect’s attention away just as you were about to win their patronage? You play louder and harder to try to gain them back. But from your prospect’s perspective, the square has become overloaded with conflicting noise. Deafened and irritated, they walk away and on to their next errand.
Who won this battle of the one-man bands? Not surprisingly, the answer is “no one.”
The same thing happens in real-world sales cycles. You and your competition are blasting messages and new products into the marketplace, hoping something sticks. The moment you announce a new product, your competition is meeting (and beating) your innovation. You shout louder, they shout even louder. You get the picture. You’ve been there.
Companies create war rooms and fight plans and all kinds of competitive battlefields. In fact, the competitor can begin to consume your attention.
If you stop and think about it…who is missing in action from this battle? Only the person that matters most — your buyer.
What is your war with the competition doing to your prospects? Confusing them, that’s what. The amount of information your prospect must sift through to find the answer to their problem is increasing by 33% every year. They are already overloaded with information, and the incessant battle of the competitive bands is only contributing to their malaise. It’s no wonder you and your competitors all begin to sound the same. It literally becomes a din of noise.
You can’t cut through the clutter by adding to it.
It doesn’t take “more power” to win a deal. It takes a simpler, well-placed message that stands out from a crowded, noisy marketplace.
Where has your message gotten too complicated? Where can you cut back on the noise and focus on that simple story that sets you apart? How can you make it easier for customers to choose you?
Never become so infatuated with your own performance in your industry, or what your competition is up to, that you forget to make it easy for your prospects to buy from you.
The Top 5 Sales Readiness Initiatives with the Greatest Impact
Sales Readiness means many things. Lots of initiatives can fall under that banner.
Wouldn’t it be great to know which five (5) have the greatest impact on Sales performance?
The world’s largest online training community, TrainingIndustry.com, recently released the findings of its major Sales Readiness survey. In it they identified 14 “sales readiness” initiatives, and then asked the respondents to rate them based on perceived impact.
Here are the top 5:
Value Propositions –creating differentiated positioning that helps create competitive separation
Product/Service Information – providing accessible, usable solution information not just feature/function
Executive Communications – help communicating with executive buyers not just user influencers
Overcoming Common Sales Objections – reframe concerns to take them off the table or turn to advantage
What do all of these top sales readiness initiatives have in common? They all revolve around creating and delivering great sales or customer messaging. In other words…messages matter most when it comes to impacting sales performance. What are you doing to fine-tune your messaging? What is your organization doing to leverage their messaging as a strategic asset?
Here’s a quick, 5-minute executive summary review of those findings to help you focus on the Top 5 Sales Readiness.
Can’t click on the image above? Copy and paste this link into your browser:
There’s an ever growing challenge on the horizon that is threatening sales effectiveness in the area of sales messaging. It’s the prolific expansion of web meetings and presentations. Getting on-line to present to a faceless group of people as you stare at your computer and talk into the telephone is a daunting task for sales people who have come to rely on their abilities to present in front of a customer, face-to-face.
You need a different perspective.
Many of the charming, personal techniques you use in-person go out the window. You can’t just think about you — the author of the presentation. You need to re-think the perspective of the person on the other end of the presentation. How is this coming across to her and her colleagues?
In one of my favorite movies, “Dead Poets Society,” the instructor, played by Robin Williams, challenges his students to break out of the traditional approach and view their work from a different perspective.
It’s the same with your online presentations. You need to think about the impact on the audience on the other end. They are staring at their computer screen, waiting to be inspired and pulled away from doing their email.
Whether you’re a newbie or a veteran of online messaging consider these 10 tips and take advantage of the opportunity you have to inspire your audience.
1.Don’t rush in to your slides or demo. Do something different, first, to grab their attention. Then take some time to establish rapport. Ask some questions. Get your audience talking. One of the biggest mistakes people make when doing web-based presentations is rushing into presenter mode and not having a conversation with the people on the other side.
2.It’s NOT about your solution. Often, not knowing your prospect’s needs can lead to information dumping. Make sure that your solution, technology or capabilities are proof points to the message you’re going to convey, and are not the entire presentation. Your presentation should reinforce no more than three key, customer-focused messages; even if the presentation is a technical demo. Make sure what you’re showing is relevant to the prospect’s needs.
3.Visual cues set the pace. The pace of the presentation is not determined by how quickly you talk. It is determined entirely by how quickly you move from slide to slide. If you leave a slide up for over 60 seconds, without any visual changes, the customer perceives the presentation as slow and boring. Make it invigorating by changing visuals, often. (For an example see the video at the bottom of this article.)
4.Use more photos and videos. A picture’s worth a 1000 words and will help tell your story. Use large photos, not clip-art, to support and tell your message. A great picture or rich graphics will grab the attention of your customers on the other side of the computer and will keep them engaged with your message. A movie clip or commercial that supports and reinforces your message is a great way to grab attention. A well placed video will connect with your customers and go along way in supporting your message.
(Not all web presentation vendors support video and some just don’t do it very effectively – so verify, test and practice ahead of time. Also, there are copyright laws you need to abide by, so check with you legal department.)
Sites like www.freefoto.com are great resources to search.
(Make sure you always check the usage rights, so you’re not violating copyright law when downloading and using images.)
5.Use more slides. Really, MORE slides?! Notice it doesn’t say more content!
Rather than having a slide with 4-5 messages and “sitting on it” for 5-10 minutes while delivering, have only one key thought per slide supported by an image. You’ll increase the number of slides, but you’ll make it easier for your customers to connect to your message and remember it. (You can even try having one word per slide, check out the video at the bottom for an example.)
Don’t get caught into the mundane, traditional and predictable. Be different.
Food for Thought
Watch this presentation, pay attention to the delivery style, not the content, and think about how it differs from what you’re doing today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E
Very different than your typical presentation, isn’t it? Did you notice any techniques you maybe able to use in your next online presentation? I’m not suggesting you should start presenting exactly like this! But this quick and witty delivery style is very effective at keeping attention.
There’s an ever growing challenge on the horizon that is threatening sales effectiveness in the area of sales messaging. It’s the prolific expansion of web meetings and presentations. Getting on-line to present to a faceless group of people as you stare at your computer and talk into the telephone is a daunting task for sales people who have come to rely on their abilities to present in front of a customer, face-to-face.
You need a different perspective.
Many of the charming, personal techniques you use in-person go out the window. You can’t just think about you — the author of the presentation. You need to re-think the perspective of the person on the other end of the presentation. How is this coming across to her and her colleagues?
In one of my favorite movies, “Dead Poets Society,” the instructor, played by Robin Williams, challenges his students to break out of the traditional approach and view their work from a different perspective.
It’s the same with your online presentations. You need to think about the impact on the audience on the other end. They are staring at their computer screen, waiting to be inspired and pulled away from doing their email.
Whether you’re a newbie or a veteran of online messaging consider these 5 tips and take advantage of the opportunity you have to inspire your audience.
Don’t rush in to your slides or demo. Do something different, first, to grab their attention. Then take some time to establish rapport. Ask some questions. Get your audience talking. One of the biggest mistakes people make when doing web-based presentations is rushing into “presenter mode” and not having a conversation with the people on the other side.
It’s NOT about your solution. Often, not knowing your prospect’s needs can lead to information dumping. Make sure that your solution, technology or capabilities are proof points to the message you’re going to convey, and are not the entire presentation. Your presentation should reinforce no more than three key, customer-focused messages; even if the presentation is a technical demo. Make sure what you’re showing is relevant to the prospect’s needs.
Visual cues set the pace. The pace of the presentation is not determined by how quickly you talk. It is determined entirely by how quickly you move from slide to slide. If you leave a slide up for over 60 seconds, without any visual changes, the customer perceives the presentation as slow and boring. Make it invigorating by changing visuals, often. (For an example see the video at the bottom of this article.)
Use more photos and videos. A picture’s worth a 1,000 words and will help tell your story. Use large photos, not clip-art, to support and tell your message. A great picture or rich graphics will grab the attention of your customers on the other side of the computer and will keep them engaged with your message. Sites like www.freefoto.com are great resources to search.
A movie clip or commercial that reinforces your message is a great way to grab attention, too. A well placed video will connect with your customers and go along way in supporting your message.
(Not all web presentation vendors support video and some just don’t do it very effectively – so verify, test and practice ahead of time. Also, there are copyright laws you need to abide by, so check with you legal department. Make sure you always check the usage rights, so you’re not violating copyright law when using images and videos.)
Use more slides. Really, MORE slides?! Notice it doesn’t say more content! Rather than having a slide with 4-5 messages and “sitting on it” for 5-10 minutes while delivering, have only one key thought per slide supported by an image. You’ll increase the number of slides, but you’ll make it easier for your customers to connect to your message and remember it. (You can even try having one word per slide, check out the video at the bottom for an example.)
Don’t get caught into the mundane, traditional and predictable. Be different.
Food for Thought: An inspirational example
Watch this presentation, pay attention to the delivery style, not the content, and think about how it differs from what you’re doing today.
Very different than your typical presentation, isn’t it? Did you notice any techniques you may be able to use in your next online presentation? I’m not suggesting you should start presenting exactly like this! But this quick and witty delivery style is very effective at keeping attention and transferring information.
Whether you’ve traveled abroad or not, you can certainly appreciate the humor in this clip. Watch this funny TV spot:
It’s safe to assume that all of us have experienced the wish for conversation intervention. That’s when you were desperately hoping someone would intervene in a conversation because you didn’t understand what was being said.
Well, how about your customers? What language are you speaking to them? Are you making it easy for them to get your message? Are you making it easy for them to understand? Or, are you expecting them to do the translation?
One of the big challenges of selling (especially in the business-to-business space) is that you rarely sell to just one person. The more complex your product, the greater number of buyer types you have to interact with, and accordingly, so does the number of languages you have to speak.
Once, while traveling through Luxor, Egypt, I visited the local Souk, or marketplace. It wasn’t long before I had a bunch of kids swarming around me, trying to barter off their wares. It was fascinating how shrewd these young kids were.
First they spoke in French. When I didn’t bite, they tried Italian. Getting nothing there, they tried German. Still nothing. “Strike three, you’re out,” right? Finally, they spoke in English.
“English, English, English! We love English!” They yelled loudly and now every other little kid in the area knew that when they came up to peddle their goods, they had to speak English.
They were brilliant! Even at this very tender age they’d identified one of the basics of sales and communication. If you want to make a sale, you need to figure out the language the customer speaks.
I bet you know your product specs, features and capabilities inside-out, but how adept are you at changing up your message to match the buyer type you’re meeting with?
You get relegated to who you talk like.
How often have you found an executive who wants to spend time talking about product features and specs – the ISes of your solution? It’s incredibly rare. Even if they want to, they often have so much going on that they simply don’t have time.
Instead, they only need to know the high level message – the MEANs of your solution. What value are you going to bring to their business? How are you going to make them more efficient? More competitive? More profitable? How are you going to help them solve the critical issues they’re challenged with, and either put them back on the road to success, or help them achieve greater success?
Put your story in the customer's context. The conversation differs depending on who you're talking to.
On the other end of the spectrum, your key influencers are probably the technical buyers. Unlike the executives, these guys are interested in getting their hands dirty. They do want to spend time on the nuts and bolts of your technology and product. And boy, is that a completely different language and experience than the executive conversation.
But you’re still selling the same solution or product. How different can that conversation be? And on top of that, you’re not sure if they’ll buy, and changing the message every time is time consuming and hard work! Isn’t it better to talk to more prospects, instead? They know what they’re looking for. Why not simply share the exact same message with everyone, saving time and letting them do their own translation?
Because this is your big chance to be different and stand out from the crowd. Imagine if only one of those children I met on the streets of Egypt identified me as an English speaker and began explaining his wares in a way I could understand. Meanwhile, the rest of the children continued to babble on in foreign languages, only confusing me further. This would be an easy purchase decision. I’d choose the one that helps me understand. (I’d probably even pay extra for some additional guidance and advice on how to get around town.)
It’s the same in your customer conversations. Are you clearly aligning your story with the customer’s context and what they care about? Or are you carrying on in your native tongue?
— by Mike Miller,
Consultant, Corporate Visions Inc.
Check out our new The Power of Story webinar to learn more, and stay tuned next month for Part Two from Mike Miller!
“No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” This phrase is often called the most powerful marketing phrase ever created. In the 1980s, if you had to decide what computer hardware to buy for your company, these words rang through your head. It made your buying decision pretty easy. And, if you were a competitor to IBM, that same sentence made your job nearly impossible. Your product could be superior in every way – features, price, warranty, etc – and you still couldn’t beat IBM. What is it about the idea that ‘no one ever got fired for buying IBM’ that made it so powerful? Is there a lesson there that can be applied to anyone doing sales messaging? The science of neuromarketing provides answers to these questions.
What motivates people to buy?
Let’s look at the example of Kevin, a highly trained engineer in a company comprised of engineers. He has the reserved personality that you expect from someone who chooses engineering as a career. If you ask Kevin, or his peers, how they make buying decisions, they’ll tell you that they are rational and logical in their approach. In fact, they can sometimes seem so focused and unemotional that you might wonder if any of the decision is based on emotion. At the moment, Kevin is involved in a project that requires him to bring together subcomponents from a number of different vendors to make his product. He was meeting with a vendor recently who wanted to be the supplier for one of the subcomponents. Kevin listened patiently to the salesperson, but for most of the presentation, Kevin was focused on the fact that he already had a vendor who could provide this subcomponent. For Kevin to change to this new vendor would be a painful transition. He’d have to write new specifications, get the new vendor through his contracts department, etc. Then, at the end of the presentation everything changed for Kevin. The sales person got to his last slide and said, “Look, I don’t want to make you feel like I’m pushing you, but you should know that I’m already providing these components to several of your competitors.” On his last slide, he had a list of all of the companies Kevin needed to compete with. Suddenly, Kevin was focused on the fact that his competitors were using this supplier; if he didn’t, then his competitors would start with a lower product cost than him. Since he charged a premium for his product because of the built-in service, he would end up going to market with a price point so high that he would never win any business. Needless to say, Kevin ended up buying those subcomponents from this new vendor after all.
Now, notice what happened to Kevin. He started off the presentation focused on the pain he would experience if he switched from using his current vendor to using this new one. In fact, he went into the presentation with no intention of switching vendors. Through the beginning and middle of the presentation, Kevin’s mind never changed, even though the vendor was telling Kevin all of the great things he’d get by using this vendor’s solution. Then, on the very last slide, the vendor showed Kevin that, if he didn’t change his strategy, he would put himself in a bad market position because of what Kevin’s competition was already doing. Suddenly, Kevin wasn’t focused on the pain he would experience by making a change in vendors; instead, he was focused on the bigger pain he would experience by going to market with an overpriced solution. It was emotion that caused Kevin to change his mind about what this vendor was offering, not pure, rational thought. And it was a particular emotion – PAIN – that caused Kevin to change his mind. Through most of the meeting, the vendor tried to sell Kevin on the benefits of his solution, but that wasn’t working. It was ONLY when the vendor made Kevin aware of the pain he would experience by staying with his original plans that Kevin realized he had to move forward with this new vendor. Now this vendor has Kevin’s business. So, is Kevin typical in the way he makes decisions?
A recent study illustrates just how important it is to frame a customer’s current situation as a negative, just like Kevin’s vendor did in that last slide. People are much more motivated to move away from a painful situation than they are motivated to move towards a positive situation. As reported in Science Magazine, in an article titled ‘Frames, Biases and Rational Decision-Making in the Human Brain’, emotion is an important part of all decision-making and people are more likely to move away from something framed as a negative.
The study presented people with a choice, but the choice was framed in two different ways. The choice was to keep the $100* they were given or risk that $100 by gambling it. If they gambled, the participants would automatically lose some of the money. If they did not gamble, they would lose the exact same amount of money. The fascinating thing is that whether or not the participants chose to gamble depended on how the question was framed. When the participants were told that they would keep 40% of the money if they did not gamble, only 43% chose to gamble with their money. When the participants were told that they would lose 60% of their money if they didn’t choose to gamble, 62% of the participants decided to gamble with their money. What is fascinating about this study is that the math produces exactly the same result for the participant, regardless of which way the question is framed. Yet, framing the decision as LOSING 60% of their money motivated more people to gamble than framing the decision as KEEPING 40% of their money.
The participants’ brains were scanned as they were making these decisions. The scans revealed that the amygdala (the part of brain thought to control emotion and ‘fight or flight’ reaction) was active throughout all participants, regardless of whether they behaved rationally or irrationally. This finding suggested that everyone experiences an emotional reaction when faced with such choices.
What is even more intriguing is that the study asked the same people both questions! In other words, the same people switched their answers simply because of the phrasing. When the participants were asked about why they switched, they said that they recognized it was really the same question, only phrased differently, but they couldn’t stop themselves from changing their answer.
Now, you can see why the phrase ‘No one ever got fired buy IBM’ is so powerful. [By the way, this phrase wasn't said by IBM employees; it was said by their customers.] What does this mean to your sales messaging? If you want to get customers to make a decision to buy your product, you can’t just make a rational argument, and you can’t just talk about the benefits of your solution. Instead, you have to help your customer see the pain associated with doing nothing. The more vivid you can make that pain, the more motivated they will be to ‘gamble’ on your product so that they can move away from that pain. One of the best ways to make this emotional connection is through a ‘Customer Story with Contrast.’ Share a customer story with your prospect and emphasize all of the pains that customer faced (financial, business and personal pains). Don’t just give the customer data points; instead, talk about the financial, business and personal pains that customer was experiencing before moving to your solution. The story you are sharing should be closely related to the experience your prospect is living today. Then, tell your prospect how your solution solved your customer’s financial, business and personal pains. It is that focus on the pain that is so effective and powerful. When you do that, your customer will be motivated to fix their problems with your solution.
* The study was done using UK pounds, which is about $100 U.S.
Before we begin, let’s start with a definition of Neuromarketing as defined by Wikipedia: Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing which uses medical technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the brain’s responses to marketing stimuli. Researchers use the fMRI to measure changes in activity in parts of the brain and to learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it.
I have a great friend that I have known for the past twenty-three years. He loves anything with a motor in it. If there is a NASCAR race that he is unable to watch live, he will record it, and while he is away from his television, turn off all media (newspaper, radio, etc.) so that he does not hear the race results until he is able to watch the replay.
Over the years, I have seen my friend purchase Chevrolet trucks, Cadillacs, a Corvette and many other vehicles; however, always from the General Motors family of cars. My friend recently purchased a new Cadillac. Fred is careful about spending money. He always attempts to get the most for every dollar. With months of research and analysis, Fred found his Cadillac and got a great price. Recently, I asked Fred if he had considered any other brand of car. He had not. I then asked him if he ever owned any vehicle other than General Motors. After some thought Fred said, “I owned a Mercury once. It had the best ride of any car I have ever owned.” Now, I was puzzled. Knowing that Fred is highly analytical and always looking for the best value, I asked him, “When you purchased your last vehicle, did you look at anything other than GM cars?” When he indicated that he had not, I asked him why. Fred quickly responded, “I guess I am a GM man; always have been, always will. I guess it is in my blood”.
I found this discovery perplexing knowing that my friend is an individual that is always looking for the best value and is cautious about his purchases. Why wouldn’t Fred look at Ford, Chrysler or all of the other options available today? Is Fred typical of most buyers? Don’t we all buy the best product for our needs, at the best price? I decided it was time to do some research.
I found a study that was conducted by researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine assessing consumer preferences regarding soft drinks. Think about it – do you drink Coke* or Pepsi*? If you are like many of us, you probably have a strong preference of one over the other. Surely you could pick out your brand in a taste test! But, are you sure?
These two brands were specifically selected in the Baylor study because, “Coca-Cola* (Coke*) and Pepsi* are nearly identical in chemical composition, yet human beings often display strong subjective preferences for one or the other.”
When the subjects received an “anonymous delivery of Coke and Pepsi”, it was often a toss-up regarding which brand was preferred. Without knowing which brand they were drinking, results were nearly fifty-fifty. However, when the brand of the product was introduced in the experiment, researches found an interesting observation: those that had selected Pepsi without awareness of brand, when brand was introduced, now nearly 75% preferred Coke. The study concluded that “there might be parallel mechanisms in the brain cooperating to bias preference.” The Baylor study also concluded that “in the brand-cued experiment, brand knowledge for one of the drinks had a dramatic influence on the measured brain response.” Simply put, brand awareness significantly changed the results of the “preferred selection.”
In addition to brand preference, these researchers made another interesting discovery. This study was conducted implementing new FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) techniques to study how and where the brain is stimulated in decision making. The FMRI imaging technology was able to observe and capture brain activity throughout the test. In comparing the anonymous test, the researchers “noticed that the neural activity changed once the subject was aware of which sample was which brand.” When made aware of one product brand, “the medial prefrontal cortex – a part of the brain that controls higher functions – lit up like a Christmas tree. The brand itself was trumping the quality of the product.” Brand awareness accessed a different part of the brain resulting in a significant difference in choice.
How could these results be so different? Why would participant responses change once they became aware of the brand they were tasting? Did the brand or the past “experience” with the brand, affect their decision preference? Was something associated with the brand of the product that affected selection of the best product? Was there more to my friend being a “GM man” than just the engine, the brakes, and all of component of a General Motors vehicle?
I began to think back through my 27-years of sales experience. I have always thought I did a good job of representing my products. I knew them inside and out. I memorized features, benefits, my competition, and understood my customer’s environment. I began to wonder if past selling experiences were more complex than I had previously thought. Could I have lost sales during the dot.com era, when I represented a great technological tool with little or no brand recognition? Then, an even more subtle thought struck me. When I sold for a huge international computer company and never missed quota, might it have had more to do with the powerful brand I represented than the selling abilities I thought I had developed? Humbling thoughts! I concluded that in many of my efforts, the sale had literally begun before I made my first contact.
What if you were able to go into every sale and correctly assess the perception or impact of your brand? What if once you were able to establish rapport, you could use your discovery skills to determine your individual customer reaction to your brand (positive or negative)? How much more effective could you be if you found out this information early in the sales cycle? How would this information change your selling strategy? Just knowing that this information is critical to investigate early is a positive start. I immediately determined that with each new customer contact, I would attempt to seek as much information regarding these questions as possible.
All of this research is starting to wear on me. I certainly am thirsty. To keep my analysis and thought process simple, I think I will have an iced tea! Good luck and good selling!
By Steve Hub, Consultant, Corporate Visions Inc.
Resources:
1. Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks, Neuron, Vol 44, 379-387, October 14, 2004, copyright 2004 Cell Press.
2. Media Maze Neuromarketing: Part 1, Jim Meskauskas, Imedia Connection, Published July 13, 2005, link: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6317.asp
You know, in reality, selling a product is not all that bad. You can focus really hard on the sale, create a tight sales process/cycle, and follow it ruthlessly. Doing this well will yield results. Doing it great can lead to outstanding results.
So why bother working on solving your prospect’s problems, when selling can be so effective?
One, it can make deals come down faster and with less effort, believe it or not. If the customer feels you are firmly in their camp, helping them solve problems, and that you will not steer them in the wrong direction, then they will trust you and follow your advice. Not a bad place to be as a salesperson. But, you have to earn this right. If you are not the solution they need, you have to be willing to admit this to the prospect and walk away from the deal.
There is another advantage to this kind of selling. Your size of contract is usually bigger and your margins fatter. Why? Because you did not go into the deal with a fixed focus. You are willing to look at the customer’s problems, through their eyes, and see what they see. When doing this, you often see a synergistic relationship between several of your products and their myriad problems.
These are not just words, selling vs. solving. They are a way of life – a strategic play in a tactical world. It takes fortitude to do this kind of selling. You really need to take the time and visit with the prospect to find out what exactly they are trying to solve. What are their goals, or business initiatives? Explore this with them. Be a consultant to them. Treat them like you would a great friend in the same spot. Do not throw away their trust by trying to force a solution on them. Really explore their world. Then, when you understand the full magnitude of their problems, explore what your company can do for them. If there is a fit, and you believe it is a great fit, then share this with them. Show them exactly what you can do. Dramatize what is unique about you, and what value it creates for them. Be of service to them. Make your sales story come alive. Remember, Samurai means: “One Who Serves.” Now you are Samurai!
By Chuck Laughlin, Founder, Corporate Visions Inc.
What is it that you tell others about who you are and what you believe in? What is it that people remember and easily tell others about you? Is it your story? Does it change as other people become a part of your life? Are you writing tomorrow’s copy today?
Your brain is a highly associative organ. Stories create associations that resonate with the way your brain organizes information constantly. Your logical mind makes leaps of understanding because of its ability to associate. Stories are associations, mental metaphors perfectly suited for how our mind works. Following a story line, it’s easy to take lessons and apply them to everyday life. Remember the Ugly Duckling story? It didn’t need to be about people to make its point about the price and pain of being different and the potential of that difference to turn into something beautiful. The associations made by the story were very easy to interpret and apply.
The Story-Master Every person, club, country and company has a story: full of history, challenge, hope and potential. Your story tells who your company is, what your solution does for clients and what it will do for your prospect. The power of your solution story is how your solution relates to the prospect’s world, not yours. Boring prospects with 50 Power Point slides about your corporate history (all about you) does not win business. It must be about them and how your solution will uniquely solve their problem and improve their business, financial and (most important) personal lives. If you want a prospect to buy from you, they must see themselves benefiting from being a part of your story. Your story becomes a component of their story.
The question is who is authoring your current story: You, the market, or your competitor?
Great selling is the art of controlling the story, past, present and future from all perspectives: your prospects, and how your prospect views your competitors. When you paint your prospect into the value and benefit your story brings them, they become part of your story and carry it forward. That is how your story sells.
In sales, your task is to first uncover your prospect’s company story (as though it is a living person), then position your company and solution to align with its belief systems. It also helps if you know the personal story of every person in the decision group as to where they fit inside their company story.
Top performing sales people are Story Masters. They tell a story their prospect can live in, feel comfortable with, and get excited by. This accelerates the sales cycle with less effort, and discounting.
Do you know your company story? Can you easily share it? Is it full of technical jargon, or the passion your company has for making a contribution to the world? How does your story fit into the world around you? Where does generate return, hope, benefit and value? Why are you excited to be a part of this story? What has it meant to you? Do the executive, marketing, sales and engineers all tell the same story? (Story alignment will be covered in an upcoming article)
Can you integrate the dynamics of this story into your marketing and sales communications? Once you have the story and see where your prospect fits into it, your passion in sharing this will be the natural next infusion that brings it to life. How do you find this selling gold nugget? Look for an upcoming article on Creating Your Story.
————-
Chuck Laughlin is the founder of Corporate Visions and the author of the book Samurai Selling – the Ancient Art of Service in Sales.
Quotes relevant to your conversation are great Grabber ice-breakers. Think about using one of these at your next sales call.
“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
- Paul Ehrlich
“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish and you get rid of him all weekend.”
- Zenna Schaffer
“Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.”
- Steven Wright
“Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I take the one I’ve never tried.”
- Mae West
“The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.”
- Marty Feldman
“If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”
- W.C. Fields
“Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog.”
- Mark Twain
“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”
- Margaret Thatcher
“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”
- Dan Quayle
“Chaos Theory is a new theory invented by scientists panicked by the thought that the public were beginning to understand the old ones.”
- Mike Barfield
Every person leading people to decide between one alternative over another is a salesperson. That includes Jesus, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, every president, attorney, motivational speaker, as well as your kindergarten teacher, mother, and father. Anyone intent on influencing your life choices is actually trying to sell you on something.
Great leaders are “salespeople.” They have to be to inspire a following. Imagine a person who stood up and said to a crowd, “Follow me,” and walked off. Who would follow? Not many.
However, if that person gave a rousing speech that rallies the group to take action – people will follow. Leaders influence people to follow them toward a course of action. That is salesmanship.
Many of the great entrepreneurs that have created offerings and changed our lives started out selling door to door or had paper routes, etc. They were mini-entrepreneurs early in life who evolved and honed their power of influence and just kept on going.
Those who choose a sales career develop these skills with a professional focus. They learn the science and art of influence and use it in their profession.
At Corporate Visions, our focus is to ensure you benefit from these incredibly powerful skills with high integrity and honor. Our goal is that you can successfully lead people to make choices that will improve their lives, both personally and professionally. Visit www.corporatevisions.com to discover more.
- Chuck Laughlin
Founder of Corporate Visions Inc.
“Translating a strategic vision into something the field can execute on is a secret to winning. They cannot execute simply from the strategic vision. The staff needs something more concrete. Messaging is the link that guides operations on how to implement strategic vision into a revenue generating reality. It takes all three to be successful: a great strategic vision, operational excellence, and great messages.” Nick Earle CEO StreamServe
Products don’t sell themselves. Companies grow when someone sells something, creating revenue streams. Sales occur when the right story and message compels your buyer to purchase. These messages are as fundamental to your company as oxygen is to life. Products live and die based on the message, how it is delivered, and how it is perceived. Your product gets positioned in your buyers mind through your message and how you present it. This distinction is similar to the songwriter who writes the song and the singer who sings it. Your product message is the ‘song’ and your salespeople are the singers.
Messaging is the art of telling great product stories that move prospects to buy.
How your product will uniquely solve a buyer’s problem, improve their life, and help them achieve desired results — is what sells. Your product message and how it is delivered will determine the success of your sales. Every product, even the paper clip, has a message that tells a story. People do not buy paper clips for what they are (a folded piece of metal)… they buy them for what they do (hold paper together). Even at such a small level, for a small product, the message or story is what sells the product.
With complex products and solutions, the message becomes even more important. It determines which product they buy, and which they don’t. Great messages delivered well, stick with buyers, are easy to remember, and change buying decisions.
Each department has a piece of your great message
Product Development understands capabilities, Marketing understand buyer trends, Sales are intimate with individual buyers and competitors and Executives are aligned with the corporate vision. Utilizing the synergistic creative intelligence of all these groups is invaluable in developing a message that sings a song your entire company and the market will embrace. Every one of these functional groups should contribute to message development – not just marketing. This is critical.
With the same product, same sales team, same prospect base, but a new compelling “song”, your sales team will drive new revenues, sustain happy customers, support a vibrant brand, and enjoy an easier time selling. Nothing changed — yet everything changed. Customers now know you by the message of what the product will do for them…uniquely do for them.
Three Rules for Great Sales Messages:
Create clear separation between you and your competitors
Convert features into personal, business, and financial value
Alter the buyers decision criteria
Once you know where your clear advantages are, you can compete on your strengths, and literally change the buying criteria to favor your product or solution.
-Chuck Laughlin
Author of Samurai Selling
Founder of Corporate Visions, Inc.
We all know that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and the caveman’s use of images for communication may have been the earliest example. But when it comes to sales conversations with executive decision makers, too many salespeople are still relying on text-heavy PowerPoint presentations, even when recent research from Aberdeen indicates that 88% of executive decision makers are looking for a sales conversation, rather than a sales presentation.
