We've been relocating!

 The Blog is on the move!

Moving is really, really hard.  For a team that wants you to think "outside the box" (ugh!  cliche!), we've been spending a lot of time in virtual boxes moving posts over to this "blog office".

We have several years of posts to migrate over here, and we'll do it when we're not investing time in actual client work.  In the meantime, have a coffee, read some good selling books...  There are not that many, TBH, but here are our suggestions for ones that actually do some good:

SPIN® Selling by Neil Rackham

To Sell is Human by Dan Pink

Insight Selling by John Doerr and Mike Schultz

Premeditated Selling by Steve Gielda and Kevin Jones

The Trusted Advisor by David Maister et al

Selling the Dream by Guy Kawasaki

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman ("Wait, that's not a selling book!" Oh, yes it is...)

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (see above)

Getting Partnering Right by Rackham, Friedman, and Ruff

Rethinking the Sales Force by Rackham and Divincentis (okay, we like Neil Rackham; one of us was mentored by him so we're partial)

Maybe begin with these.  See how it goes.  Enjoy your coffee.  Watch for new blog posts...somewhat regularly?

 

Sales Hacks: Know Pain and Know Gain

February 20^th, 2023 (Two-minute read)

 

Last week, we wrote about the importance of questions in sales.  There is nothing new there, of course.  The idea that questions are helpful in selling is quite old – as old as Socrates, in fact.  We will take this up at SKO in May and in future Hacks, so stay tuned.

 

For this week’s Hack, though, we will return to last week’s STAR Session and the topic of Buyer Needs. 

 

Although Needs play important roles throughout the Buying Cycle®, they are most important in the Acknowledge Needs phase.  In this phase, the Buyer tries to answer the critical questions of Why Change and Why Now.  Needs are the catalyst that gets them moving forward.

 

Drawing on the research of behavioral psychologist Neil Rackham, there are two distinct categories of Buyer statements that we broadly call “needs”.  One contains problem-oriented language, which we call PAIN Needs.  The other expresses solution-oriented language, which we call GAIN Needs. 

 

PAIN Needs sound like:

·       We’re struggling with…

·       I’m not happy that…

·       One problem we experience is…

·       X leads to hassles…

 

GAIN Needs, on the other hand, sound like:

·       We’d like to…

·       It would be great if we could…

·       One fix that would be nice is…

·       Another way Y could help is…

 

Both Need categories are essential for answering the Why Change and Why Now questions Buyers ask themselves, but only GAIN Needs correlate with successful sales outcomes, according to Rackham’s findings.

 

 

Rackham’s observational data is backed up by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s ground-breaking behavioral economics studies, published as “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk” in 1979.  Acknowledged with the Nobel® Prize in Economics in 2002, the research demonstrated that humans ascribe significantly more weight to losses than they do to gains, as portrayed vividly in what is now called Kahneman’s curve.

Prospect Theory, in combination with Rackham’s findings on PAIN and GAIN and their correlation with successful sales outcomes, demonstrates at least two important truths for Sellers who want to win.

·       Finding “pain points” is only a starting point for building forward momentum with a Buyer and is insufficient to build a compelling case for change.  You need GAIN to win.

·       However, focusing only on GAIN, at the exclusion of PAIN, misses a huge opportunity to establish for the Buyer a compelling case for change.

 

In future Hacks – and future STAR Sessions and other venues – I hope we can continue to delve into these concepts and their implications for us and our Buyers. 

 

Remember: Know Pain and Know Gain.

 

Sales Hack: Let Your Buyers Draw Their Own Conclusions

February 13^th, 2023 (two-minute read)

 

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.  And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former
conclusions may remain inviolate.”

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

Cut through the ancient academic rhetoric and Bacon’s statement presents a commonly occurring cognitive bias known as confirmation bias.  In short, confirmation bias is the human tendency to “search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.”  Put another way, we prefer information that fits our preconceived ideas.

 

This has enormous implications for sales in particular, to say nothing for persuasion in general.  Here’s the lede:

 

ü  Buyers give precedence to what they think and say, more than what is told to them by a third party

ü  Buyers value their own conclusions more than conclusions drawn by someone else and then told to them. 

 

The old selling proverb puts it this way:  If you say it, the Buyer will doubt it.  But if the Buyer says it to himself, it’s true.

 

Telling Buyers what they need and how you will help them get it is a path to failure.  Which only confirms another selling proverb, one which we will spend some time talking about in the months ahead:  Ask.  Don’t tell.

 

Confirmation Bias reminds us that Buyers prefer to identify their own needs, and the skilled salesperson asks questions that direct a customer’s decision-making without overtly “telling” them where to go.  But before asking questions, be sure they are the right ones. 

 

Buyers are not interested in filling in knowledge gaps.  They want you to help them structure their thinking, so they can see patterns and connections that were previously unrecognized or unanticipated.  Your questions must lead them down the path of self-discovery. 

 

To win in consultative selling: Ask.  Don’t tell.

 

Sales Hacks - “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”

 

Sales Hack – “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”

December 5^th, 2022

 

The phrase in the title – a children’s counting-out rhyme – has been around for a long, long time.  Counting-out rhymes are used to randomly select someone from a group.  They exist in different forms across many cultures and in many different languages (for example, Norway’s version goes “akka, bakka, bonka, rakka”, which would be quite fun to use at the office in selecting who has to run for coffee or change the toner in the copier).  The British Library has a sufficiently distracting article for a fascinating detour into this tradition.  Like flipping a coin or drawing straws, these counting-out rhymes are a way to make choices. 

 

Choosing fairly and correctly is a hard thing for children to do.  It is orders of magnitude more difficult for working adults trying to choose an option when thousands – or perhaps millions – of dollars are at stake.  What if something goes wrong?  What if the vendor does not come through?  And what if there are several options, but they all seem distressingly similar to one another, with competing advantages and disadvantages which also look similar?  Choosing poorly here is career-limiting.  It’s no small wonder that, according to Sirius Decisions, some 60% of deals that go into a CRM pipeline never come ou
t again.

 

Welcome to the dilemma of your Buyer in the Assess Options phase of the Buying Cycle®.  The 40% of Buyers who transition through this phase tend to follow a predictable path forward, with some general tasks that Sellers like you should note.

 

STEP 1)  Articulate what the Brave New World will look like when they have completed their purchase decision and fully implemented the solution.  Forrester Research calls this a Buying Vision.  And according to Forrester, 75% of executive decision-makers prefer to buy from a Seller who helps them establish a Buying Vision.

STEP 2)  Establish Decision Guidelines (DGs), which are the criteria by which the Buyer will choose the winning Option.

STEP 3)  Prioritize the DGs: which ones are “must have” and which ones are “nice to have”. 

STEP 5)  How do the various Options compare with one another, relative to the list of DGs? 

STEP 6)  Choose a short list of Options to consider and to negotiate with.  Buyers in this phase will either select one preferred Option to do final negotiations or negotiate with their shortlist along parallel negotiation paths.

 

These six steps are completed informally for some purchase decisions, with a series of conversations among influential stakeholders and invited Sellers.  For other decisions, these six steps follow a more formal and deliberate pattern, such as a Request for Proposal.  But whether the process is informal or formal, you need to be mindful of what’s behind the process: how does the Buyer make the best (and least risky) decision.

 

What is your role?  According to the best evidence-based practice, your first task is understanding.  You need to identify and define the Buyer’s Decision Guidelines, from the Buyer’s point of view.  Then, you should try to understand the Buyer’s priorities (that is, which Guidelines are more important, and which are least important).  Next, you should attempt to understand how they assess your solution relative to your competition.  Are you strong or weak?  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you should influence how your Buyer sees this picture.

 

There is a lot more to say about Assess Options.  In fact, it’s probably worth an entire workshop to not only present the evidence-based methods to manage Buyers in this phase, but to also put those methods into practice.  We will take up this topic in more detail later.