Paying attention: The Road less traveled

How to migrate from a ‘tell mode’ to a ‘seek mode’ in sales – Part VII
Throughout this series we’ve talked about “Knowledge Calls.” Knowledge Calls are intended to gain you valuable insight into your customer’s organization and business. They also are intended to move you from Vendor/Problem-Solver to valued Business Resource in the eyes of your client.
Last month, having set up the Knowledge Call correctly, we actually arrived there! This month we highlight the single most important thing you can do in a Knowledge Call: Listen. But listen as a Business Resource, not as a Vendor. Believe me, there is a difference.
Listen up
None of us is as good at listening as we think we are. And listening is certainly not a virtue for which salespeople are generally well known. At best, we’re listening only for an opportunity to sell the customer something.
Of course, there’s another aspect to Vendor/Problem-Solver listening that I refer to as “mindless listening.” Some salespeople, armed with a newfound awareness that they should listen, simply let the contact yak away, believing that they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
Learn to be an “active listener.” Let the customer “hear” you listening from your “Uh-huhs.” Follow the 90/10 rule, with the customer talking 90% of the time and you talking 10% of the time. Process the contact’s comments, pause, and ask a follow-up question.
Engage the contact. This process is the reason that a typical Knowledge Call, unlike most sales calls, tends to go much longer than you or the customer had scheduled. Of course, extending the time occurs only at the customer’s prompting.
Ask challenging questions
You’ll become known for the kinds of questions you ask. If you merely lob in softball questions, you are not going to be viewed as a Business Resource. Although it’s a good idea to open the Knowledge Call with questions that are easy for the contact to answer, you want to move from there to asking your best, most insightful questions. Exercise your strategic sense of curiosity.
Get comfortable
with dead air
We sales professionals do not like silence. Fortunately, that’s true of most people. When you ask a question that’s hard for the contact to answer immediately, don’t take her off the hook. Let her think about her response for a while. You have to become comfortable with the dead air that might result. The contact is likely to be drawn to fill the silence, often with very useful information. Moreover, you will get credit for asking insightful questions.
Ask questions in
an interesting way
I once heard an interview with musician Jimmy Buffett. One of the many good questions the interviewer asked went much like this: “If you were to lock yourself into, say, Carnegie Hall, with no fans, no audience of any kind, just you and your music, would you play ‘Margaritaville’? ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’?”
Some salespeople might say, “That’s not a good question because it’s closed-ended. We should be asking open-ended questions.” OK, here’s an open-ended version of that same question: “Jimmy, what are your favorite songs?” Which do you think is the better way to interest someone and gain a rich response?
When you’re on a Knowledge Call, don’t ask, by way of example, “What are the VP’s goals?” Try something such as, “If I were a fly on the wall during one of the VP’s staff meetings, what initiatives, projects, priorities, or issues would I likely hear about as he goes around the room asking the members of his staff what’s happening?” By asking questions in an interesting way, you prove yourself a skilled professional and elicit much richer responses.
Take notes
What better way is there to demonstrate that you mean business? Taking notes sends the message to the customer that you’re serious about this. It can even be somewhat flattering. Remember, don’t start writing any notes until you’ve positioned the call.
Watch the time
When the allotted time is upon you, use a phrase such as, “I want to be mindful of the time. I’ve noticed that our forty-five minutes are up.” Usually you don’t have to say much more to get a good read from the customer. More often than not, the customer tells you to continue with the meeting.
Suggest a next step
When it is time to close the meeting, don’t do it by acknowledging how important the customer’s time is. Don’t say, “I know how busy you must be,” or “I’ll let you get back to work.” That’s classic Vendor language. It sends a message that you’re wasting the customer’s time, as if he or she is doing you a favor by “granting” you the meeting. If that were the case, the contact shouldn’t be meeting with you at all.
Instead, express gratitude for the meeting, pause for a second to analyze everything that you’ve talked about, then suggest a next step. Don’t ask the contact what she thinks you should do next.
Just what that next step is depends on how your contact has reacted to the Knowledge Call itself. Quickly and accurately size up the session in your own mind. Do you sense your contact is something of a gatekeeper whose job is to keep you away from others? If so, this is one of the few times when you might want to keep the next step vague. You don’t want to give her an opportunity to exercise that power and keep you away from other contacts at the customer company, including executives.
At the opposite extreme, perhaps this contact demonstrates a strongly favorable view of you and your company and is very open to the idea of your returning to make a Business Presentation to senior management. Then your close can suggest that such a presentation seems like an appropriate next step. It might even offer an opportunity to enlist the contact to help set up such a meeting.
Confirm future access
This may seem unnecessary, especially for customers with whom you’ve had a relationship for a while. Confirming such access is helpful more as a barometer of how the meeting has gone. Simply ask the customer contact if it’s okay to contact him again if you need to clarify a few things. The answer will give you a good sense of his receptivity to the call itself. This step also helps you avoid a situation in which you call the contact on the phone a week later to clarify some things and he replies, “Gee, didn’t we already cover all that stuff?”
Letting your fingers do the hawking
Phone-based Knowledge Calls might be the most under-leveraged tool in selling. Virtually all the rules that apply to a face-to-face Knowledge Call apply as well to a telephone Knowledge Call. One obvious difference is that you can’t read body language, an important part of the total communication process. During a Knowledge Call, body language is a good indicator of what the customer is feeling about the call. However, you’ll quickly see that contacts signal their receptivity – or lack of it – in other ways over the phone.
Telephone Knowledge Calls are most appropriate under the following circumstances: