Let the Prospect Decide To What To Buy...Or Not

(This blog is the temporary landing spot for Advisory and Consulting Services.  If you want to reach us, please contact us at richgrunenwald@columbus.rr.com, or 614-561-3412)

As a sales person, you are in the following situation:

• You are in front of a prospect who, on the surface, seems like an ideal fit for the product or service you provide. 
• You believe you do everything right in this meeting.  You establish rapport, commenting on pictures of the prospect's family or hobby. You connect. You ask a few probing questions, and find out that the prospect has issues or pain around which your product or service can address.
• You begin to ask questions around these issues, and the prospect answers indicate that one of your offerings is the perfect solution for these issues.  You spend more time getting details and suggesting ideas on how to address these issues.
• Towards the end of the meeting, you go to set next steps of maybe a demo or proposal, and you sense a soft commitment, or maybe the prospect is "...busy and will have to follow up next month...". 

What happened? 

Early in my sales career I learned a very hard but valuable lesson, and anyone who has been in sales for any length of time has learned the same lesson, illustrated in the scenario above. 

Like a shark, we smell "blood in the water" and immediately assume that there is prey, ready for us to tear to shreds. So, we start swimming towards it.  We assume that we've found the prospect's challenges, and the prospect has been sitting there waiting for us to solve them.

What we don't realize is sometimes the "blood in the water" is simply that: "blood in the water". 

(Apologies for the rather gruesome analogy. It's all I could think of at the moment!)

Incidents like the one described above are why clients view most sales people as arrogant, money hungry, or worse. We spend time using every trick in the book to connive and persuade the client to move ahead, not realizing that our proposal will be nixed later on because the client does not really care about it.  We don't take the time to really understand what's important to a client.  As a result, we work to sell the client a "hammer" when the client really wants a "screwdriver".

Not only does the sales person loses out on the opportunity at hand, but they also establish a reputation with that client as yet another sales person that doesn't really listen, that is more interested in what they have to offer rather than what the client needs to buy.

What we missed is getting to the issue of most importance to the prospect.  While we may have uncovered something, it may not be at the top of the list for the prospect.  It may be fourth on the prospect's list of top three priorities.  We didn't take the time to ask:

• "How does this fit in to the bigger scheme of things for your group?" 
• "What other things are filling your day?"
• "Should we talk more about this, or are there other things that may be important to cover?"
• "We can talk about a lot today. I'm curious as to what you would really like to get out of our time together..."

Take your time. Ask another question.  See where the issues you've uncovered stack up in the client's eye.

Once you do, you are better equipped to propose the right solution at the right time.

Why We Miss The Simple Things

(This blog is the temporary landing spot for Advisory and Consulting Services.  If you want to reach us, please contact us at richgrunenwald@columbus.rr.com, or 614-561-3412)

In my experience, many of our seemingly complex challenges can be distilled down to basics. We consult trusted advisors and mentors to tell us the obvious.  Chances are the solution recommended will be straightforward, and we ask "Why didn't I see that?" and the answer will be because we were too busy, distracted, too close to the issue, or maybe not fully confident in ourselves.

This is nicely illustrated  by Stephen Covey's Time Management Matrix (shown here by Sid Savara) from his book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People".  The reason we don't see the simple answers is we are often consumed by the "urgent"  items (quadrants 1 & 3) and dawdle on time-wasters or "mental chewing gum" (quadrant 4). Our personal and business worlds are consumed by the day to day activity that steals the quantity of time we have, and we do little to proactively improve the quality of  the time we spend.

Legitimately, there are times when our waking hours are consumed with items that are urgent and important (quadrant 1), such as personal health or health of a loved one, or a struggling business facing great risks and challenges.  We can be consumed with just getting by. These are the times to leverage a consultant or coach, whether informally through those you trust and respect, or formally via an advisor or industry expert.

However, we can proactively circumvent these times by paying attention to the important things as Covey discusses. If we exercise, then we avoid health issues.  If we set up KPI's for our business and manage to them, we identify trends and risks and can take actions that protect our interests and profitability. If we continue to develop skills and knowledge, we avoid becoming irrelevant in the world of work.

The key for us is to make it a priority to identify and act on the activities that will help improve and sustain the quality of our personal and professional lives, the activities that will "build muscle", so to speak. Whether that comes through our own thought processes or through the help of others is not particularly relevant.

The thing to remember is to make it a priority to devote time and energy to the activities that will improve the quality of our lives, our businesses, and our relationships with those around us.