Archive for the ‘Trust and Credibility’ Category

How Would Peter Drucker Sell?

January 7, 2012 by Scott Olsen

When I review a sales team’s questioning guide, I typically find thoughtful questions. However, the questions are often in no coherent order. Or at least no natural order that would help the customer feel comfortable and confident to open up and engage in a truly productive and insightful conversation.

My main goal with any customer conversation is to add value to the customer’s thinking and decision making while uncovering and satisfying their critical success factors. When we ask good questions, we have a much better chance of getting good answers (no guarantee, it’s still sales). Furthermore, when we ask good questions in an optimal flow, we have an even better chance of getting really good answers.

The SPIN® Selling model provides one way of organizing your questions. Personally, I prefer an approach that helps me uncover BINGO information. Uncovering BINGO Information offers a slight, but important twist to the SPIN® Selling model. Here’s a brief overview:

  • Background
  • Issues/Impact
  • Need/Benefit
  • GO for the close

I was once told that Peter Drucker (1909-2005) said every business should be asking themselves two questions. The first is “what are we doing?” and the second is “what should we be doing?” Background questions are similar to “what are we doing?” Background questions deal with the general facts, goals, vision and what is working in your customer’s world. Furthermore, background questions help you warm up the conversation and are always safe, neutral or positive in nature. Issue questions are similar to Drucker’s second question, “what should we be doing?” Issue questions are far more interesting as they help uncover the difference (or gap) between what the customer is doing today verses what the customer could be doing. However, issues alone are rarely, if ever enough to propel a customer to take action. This is why we need to follow issue questions with powerful impact question. The purpose of the impact question is to help quantify the cost of not resolving the issue.

For example, the fact that a customer uses a paper process when they could be using an automated process is an issue. The impact is the quantification of what this issue is or might be costing the customer. How much extra time does it take? How much does this extra time cost? What else could they be doing with that extra time? It’s a domino effect and top sales professionals are skilled and helping the customer realize or visualize these impacts.

Once you’ve confirmed the issue is worth resolving, by asking impact questions, it is time to make the need explicit and ask the customer how they would benefit from the capabilities your solutions provide. Continuing with our example above, you might say something like, “It sounds like you need a streamlined process. How would it help if you and your colleagues could capture all of your requirements in one place and receive real time alerts to any update to your projects?” With a good benefit question, the customer herself creates the value statement. With the customer’s positive response, it’s time to go for the close or the logical next step in your sales process.

When you ask questions in the optimal flow, you ask questions in a way that naturally flows in the same way your customers make decisions. Ultimately, you put yourself in a position to close by providing the customer with the exact solution they’ve confirmed they need and desire.

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Categories: Creating Ideal Customers, Engaging Your Customers, Questioning Skills, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Selling Process, Tactical Selling Skills, Trust and Credibility, Uncategorized

The Oldest Negotiation Tactic in the Book

January 22, 2010 by Scott Olsen

My client met with a prospect who was interested in consulting services to help streamline product development cycles. During the visit, the President said, “we could really use your help, but we don’t have a budget for this, give us your best pricing and we’ll see what we can do.” Not having budget and not having resources to pay for services are two different things. Listen closely to your prospects and customers, but don’t let negotiation tactics get you down. When it’s time to present your proposal, make sure you share with your prospect you listened and understood his/her concerns about expenses. Point out specifically how you’ve taken his/her comments into consideration into your proposal to make sure you can meet the confirmed needs and budget requirements.

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Categories: Negotiation, Prospecting, Sales Skills, Sales Stories, Trust and Credibility

Establishing Trust and Credibility

July 22, 2008 by Scott Olsen

No Trust No Sale.

As animals, we sense things before our minds have a chance to think things through. We can sense if someone is being authentic, vulnerable and real verses hiding behind a mask or being guarded. 

What instantly imbues trust and credibility?

This is a question that is at the very core of my work as an executive coach and trainer. I had the opportunity to witness first hand the rise of a Regional Account Manager to the position of VP of Sales of a very large and successful software company. We hadn’t talked for over 7 years. In the interim, he left the company amid many changes, including several executive team transitions. With a new CEO on board, he was recruited to come back, not as a Regional Account Manager, but as their VP of Sales with an offer he couldn’t refuse. What was it about him? One of the things was the ability to establish instant rapport with others, especially his ability to do this over the phone with his customers with only the use of his voice. He left me a simple voice message about needing to miss a meeting I inviting him to. I was so impressed by it, I saved it to play it back to participants in my sales training courses (Tactical Selling Skills). In addition to being relevant and personalizing the message, what made his message authentic was the tone of his voice, inflection and pace. His thoughtfulness came through, as he used humor, laughter and vulnerability to explain why he hadn’t called earlier because he was at his daughters art class while his wife was traveling.

What establishes trust and credibility with you?

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Categories: Differentiating You, Engaging Your Customers, Sales Skills, Sales Stories, Trust and Credibility, selling

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