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The sales classic—updated with newcustomer-focused methodologies!

Thanks to the web, today’s customers are savvier and more results-oriented: they do theirhomework. Do it for them by communicating with them in the ways that work best for them,and you’ll find that doing so works best for you, too. When they know they’re being listenedto, they’ll listen back.

In CustomerCentric Selling, you’ll find practical, step-by-step tips on:

• Turning sales presentations intocustomer-focused conversations
• Asking the right questions—of the right people
• Empowering buyers to achieve goals,solve problems, and satisfy needs
• Developing optimal strategies for winning the vital three-monthsales cycle—regardless of your client’s actual sales cycle
• Using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and othersocial networking sites to engage buyers andstrengthen client relationships
• Defining and managing your content and revenue engines
• Optimizing the talent of salespeople andbuilding a quality pipeline

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CustomerCentric Selling

McGraw-Hill

Contents

Chapter One

What is this book about, and how can you use it to your benefit?

The main focus of this book is helping individuals and organizations involved in sales to migrate from one kind of selling to another. Specifically, we seek to help people move from traditional sales techniques to "customercentric" selling behavior. We believe that our methodology—CustomerCentric Selling—can help you become more customercentric, and therefore more successful.

We are in the sales process, messaging, and training business. The ideas in this book are the result of many years of field testing—first as salespeople ourselves, then at multiple levels of sales management, and subsequently as principals in a firm that teaches our methodology to our clients.

As teachers, we work with all levels within our client organizations. We teach chief executive officers (CEOs) how to own and shape their customers' experience. We teach sales executives how to define and manage their revenue engines. We teach marketing executives how to own and manage their content and create Sales-Ready Messaging. We teach first-line sales managers how to assess and develop the talent of their salespeople, manage a sales process, and build a quality pipeline. Last—but certainly not least—we teach salespeople customercentric behavior. In doing so, we focus on how to influence the words sellers use when developing buyer needs for their offerings.

What Is CustomerCentric Behavior?

What is this customercentric behavior? It has eight basic tenets. These are summarized in Table 1.1 and are explained in order in this first chapter. As you read these descriptions, we invite you to imagine a spectrum of selling behavior ranging from traditional on one end to customercentric on the other. Try to locate yourself on that spectrum. Are you where you want to be, to be as successful as you can be?

If not, what needs to change?

1. Having Situational Conversations Versus Making Presentations

Traditional salespeople rely on making presentations, often using applications like PowerPoint. Why? Because they believe that this approach gives them the opportunity to add excitement, in the form of highly polished graphics, animation, and so on. It gives them the opportunity to turn down the lights and increase the dramatic effect of their presentations.

In selling, we find that conversations are far more powerful than presentations. And yes, it is possible to converse with audiences using Power-Point—as opposed to presenting to them—but it is far more difficult. Have you ever had a conversation with a friend or a colleague that was based on a pre-scripted slide show? Of course not. So it shouldn't be a surprise that when senior executives see salespeople enter their offices with a laptop under their arm, many roll their eyes and sneak a peek at their watches.

In the same way, when they are making sales calls, how often do salespeople dominate by doing the majority of the talking? The salesperson has his or her own agenda of what they would like to accomplish. Good conversations require both parties to actively participate and exchange ideas. Sellers that do a great deal of telling and sharing opinions to have buyers draw the desired conclusions can be viewed as trying to manipulate buyers.

Here is the issue: In order to be effective, a salesperson must be able to relate his or her offering to the buyer in a way that will allow the buyer to visualize using it to achieve a goal, solve a problem, or satisfy a need. This, in turn, requires a conversation. For a variety of reasons, though, only a small percentage of salespeople are able to converse effectively with buyers, especially executives and decision makers.

CustomerCentric Selling has been designed to help you engage in relevant, situation-specific conversations with decision makers, without having to depend on canned slide presentations. In short, we can help you become more effective.

2. Asking Relevant Questions versus Offering Opinions

Traditional salespeople offer their opinions to their buyers, while customercentric salespeople ask relevant questions. It is far more comfortable for buyers if sellers focus on asking versus telling. This allows buyers to steer the direction of sales calls based upon their responses. It also allows them to draw their own conclusions.

Another potential issue occurs when sellers come to a vision of a solution to their buyer's goal or problem before their prospective buyer does. When a traditional seller sees the solution, he or she tends to project that vision onto the buyer, saying things like, "In order to deal with that problem, you will need our seamlessly integrated software solution."

But, meanwhile, what's happening on the other side of the table? Very often, the prospective buyer is thinking something along the lines of, "Oh, yeah? Do we now? Says who?"

People don't like their loved ones telling them what they need, much less a salesperson. Most people, when in the role of a buyer, resent it when sellers try to control or pressure them.

People love to buy but hate feeling sold. We have found that top-performing salespeople use their expertise to frame interesting and helpful questions, rather than to deliver opinions. Asking questions shows respect for the buyer. When buyers come to grips with a series of intelligent questions—questions that are on point and that can be answered, and the answers to which build toward a useful solution—they do not feel that they are being sold.

3. Solution-Focused versus Relationship-Focused

Traditional sellers are relationship-focused, and customercentric sellers are solution-focused.

If the seller does not understand how the buyer will use his or her offering to achieve a goal, solve a problem, or satisfy a need, he or she really has no choice but to fall back on relationships. Why does this happen? In many cases, the answer lies in the training that the salesperson receives. Most sales organizations commission their product marketing department to teach salespeople about their products.

Not surprisingly, the result is a sales force that can tell you all about the esoteric features of their products but can't tell you how the products are used or how buyers can benefit from them. And the rare product marketers who do understand the uses of the products tend to have that understanding at the day-to-day user level, not the decision-maker level.

Salespeople who are not trained to initiate a dialogue with decision makers about product usage tend to gravitate toward focusing on their relationship with their buyers. Many traditional salespeople have convinced themselves over the years that the seller with the strongest relationship will win. And in situations where the seller is selling a product to a repeat buyer—where there are no differentiators other than relation-ships—we agree. But in situations where the buyer is attempting to achieve a goal, solve a problem, or satisfy a need, we disagree. Under those circumstances, the successful seller has to do far more than simply cultivate relationships. Given a choice of having a buyer like us or respect us, we'd opt for the latter. Certainly the two are not mutually exclusive, and...