Everyone has a plan until they get popped in the nose and that’s often the biggest flaw of a salesperson. Most sales people know their script, know their pitch, know their product but don’t know their customer. That makes sense when you’ve practiced you’re pitch 1,000x but you’re only interacting with this very customer for the first time. So do you jump right into the explanation of your product/service and what you do OR do you focus on getting to know them and what makes them tick first? It’s my opinion that if you’re pitching on your first call, you’re not really selling.
I learned a tactic in my early sales career that I title, ‘the qualification interview.’ The qualification interview is where you start to explain your business but halt before you get too far so that you can ask your prospect a bunch of leading questions that you will use as ammo in the rest of your sales pitch to tailor to make the pitch more relevant and compelling to them. The same way that a customer has to qualify if they like your product, you have to qualify if you think they’re worth spending time on. This isn’t a nefarious act, this is just rational. If you don’t know your customer, know what they care about, their motivations then you’re pitching and hoping for receptivity. That doesn’t feel like a strategy to me. As a crutch to real process, I see a lot of sales people jump into the pitch prior to understanding their customer when in fact you have to understand the intentions before you ever jump into the proverbial ‘why you.’
I’m no saint in this regard. I sometimes grab my crutches and jump right into pitching Xeal. I’m excited to share with the world what we do and the huge problem we solve. I’m not immune to assuming the customer cares. Unfortunately for me, my customer might not be ready for my fun and engaging pitch - they might need a bit more exploration and discussion. That’s when you have to read the cues in the room and remain light on your feet to extricate yourself from the pitch-into-the-abyss and find another path to relevance. A bad sales meeting can be like a boxing match where once the bell rings for the start of the round, you just try to throw haymakers. A good sales meeting feels like a discussion - where both sides are working together to solve the problem that the customer continues to dig deeper into trying to solve.
Our VP of sales said to me the other day, ‘if you’re talking, then you’re not selling.’ What she meant by that is when you get your prospect to talk and expound on their needs, they are identifying what they want right before your eyes. A good salesperson is thus a problem solver that can tailor their offering to what the prospective client is describing. At Xeal we use a sales enablement tool that allows us to see our interactions with our customers. One leading indicator I look ais the average talk time of the Xeal sales team member. Directionally, those that spend less than 50% of the call speaking, are more likely to be successful. Those that talk more, uninterrupted, often have a lower conversion rate. I find those correlations most interesting but intuitive, good listeners win more often.
When you give your customer ample time to share their needs and situation then the adroit sales person can ingest, form and regurgitate their needs in a way that sets them up for the ultimate KO punch.