CONFIDENT THINKING -- BRIDGE TO CONFIDENT SELLING -- PART TWO

CONFIDENT THINKING – BRIDGE TO CONFIDENT SELLING

PART TWO

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 2006

FOCUS SALE TRAINING ON SELLER, NOT BUYER

The problem with sales training is that the emphasis is placed primarily on the company and its products, and on the seller’s technical competence, failing to see these are ancillary to interpersonal acumen. The seller must be able to read buyers; and to be able to read buyers; the seller must first be able to read himself. Obviously, competence is important, but competence will produce squat if the seller is unable to get the order.

I know. I worked for a company as a chemical sales engineer, and later as an executive. My initial orientation was intensive technical training in chemical technology, company products and services, but not an hour on how to approach the seller other than to wow him to death with my and my company's competence.

The same “technical dandies” called on me when I was an executive. They were trained in dazzling know how, but not in the sociology of meaningful exchange. It was as if it were an affront to consider selling worthy of their personal involvement. They were above seeing themselves as sellers, and yet that was their function.

The seller’s handbook may be replete with contrivances to get the order, but not when to close. The buyer provides these nuances if the seller is attentive.

How does the seller know? He feels it in his bones. It is then that he asks for the order, and not a token order, but an order to establish a new account, carrying the buyer over this vulnerable threshold with assurance, seeing it as a natural progression to an inevitable and mutual conclusion. Knowing and acting on this intelligence has been called the “killer instinct.”

The “killer instinct” is not to be confused with “winning through intimidation.” An intimidator is not a seller; he is a bully.

Seller and buyer are not adversaries, but partners. Partners must first be comfortable and trusting of each other before they can develop a common problem solving focus. When the seller punishes the buyer with his personality and knowledge, overwhelming him with his dance, success, at best, will be short lived. The seller needs to build a bridge of trust to establish a highway to loyalty.

Given these criteria, small wonder that introverted sellers are successful in the long run. They don’t have the charismatic dance, don’t have the fragile ego to be seen as a big deal, and consequently, have little inclination to be all things to all people. They treat buyers with respect, but expect buyers to give them the same. Introspective sellers see, listen, and act in accordance with the defined situation.

Is there still a place for the charismatic backslapping seller? Obviously, there is because most companies still recruit and develop them.

* * * * * *

Picture a company’s high talent young managers being assembled at a remote location, in this case, Starve Rock State Park in LaSalle-Peru, Illinois.

It is the mid-1960s of a company that had taken thirty years to reach $75 million, but it was soaring with international business. Could it reach $1 billion dollars in sales? The possibility produced an electric climate in this assembly. Little did participants know, however, that company sales would soar into the multi-billions in much less time than it had taken it to reach $75 million.

In this atmosphere, after dinner one evening, the national sales manager was holding court in a corner of the huge meeting room, surrounded by his adoring acolytes. They were four deep, spellbound by his every word.

He was the prototype of the charismatic leader, six five, 260, tall, dark and handsome with a booming voice and a roaring laugh that made the glassware tinkle on the meeting tables. His command of language exploded like firecrackers in the mind. Some treated him like a god.

My friend and I were not part of the group. We were sitting diagonally across the room a distant 100 feet away sipping coffee observing this scenario. Finally, my friend said, “I’ll never make it with this outfit.”

I asked him why. “Can you imagine me being a Tex?” I started to laugh. I got the giggles so bad I was getting a stomachache.

This caused the mountain roaring across the room to stop in mid-sentence. All heads turned accusingly towards us as if we mere Infidels. I had interrupted the soliloquy. Obediently, I raised my hand, palm up, in apology with heads turning back in unison to the droning staccato of their leader.

My friend said, “What was that all about?”

I had the incredible thought of Tex trying to be you, I said. My friend was small of stature, slim of physique, quiet with a small shrill voice that was not much above sotto voce, and an introspective disposition. Although only thirty, he was losing his hair, wore thick glasses that made him look like Woody Allen, and seemingly, moved with exertion.

He was offended. “Thanks a lot.”

Oh, no, I added, I meant no offense. Look at him, I said, poster board extraordinaire, two-dimensional. You’re the real thing, flesh and blood. You’ve outsold the poster board when he was in your shoes ten to one. That’s a fact.

My friend didn’t know how Tex had climbed the ladder. He didn't want to know. He took what he saw as the real deal. It wasn't. He didn’t know that Tex never sold, or that he had a mentor that greased his skids. The irony is that his mentor was the mild mannered executive vice president who closely resembled my friend. Apparently, the vice president felt he needed the charismatic fire that Tex exuded to complement his low-key personality.

My friend left me that night wounded still believing I had stuck a sword in his side, and then twisted it. Obviously, he recovered. He did leave the company, joined a competitor, and no surprise to me, rose ultimately to become its CEO. I’ve always wondered if he found himself a Tex as a direct report.

The point is there is no reason to attempt to emulate what we are not, or to apologize for why we are successful being what we are.

POWER OF THE SALES CRITIQUE


There is a habit that can be developed that can be more revealing than any book read, guru favored, or training program attended and that is the habit of critiquing every sales call, good, bad, or indifferent.

When the call is fresh in your mind, a few words scribbled into a diary can be priceless later. It is amazing what these words reveal in terms of patterns, themes, chronic problems, and opportunities in the cold appraisal when the face is no longer flush and the heart has been restored to its normal rhythm.

Words stare back written in the heat of the moment to reveal hidden meanings. They leap up to the mind to make known what lies beyond the hurt, wounded pride, humiliation, confusion, defeat, embarrassment, or euphoria experienced during the sales call. Patterns become apparent showing what works and what doesn’t, when and why. Seeing the sales call in the cool of review can become like footprints to success

* * * * * *

When I was a field sales manager traveling with one of my men, I would critique the sales call immediately afterwards, retiring to a coffee shop, writing on napkins my observations. A former salesman confessed to me one day that the stack of napkins he retained from those calls had grown to eighteen inches high. “I’ve referred to them over the years,” he said, “and found them useful especially as a manager.”

My aim with the sales critique was to impress on the seller the fact that we carry our geography with us, and no one more so than the buyer. By keeping these notes, the seller comes to appreciate the buyer’s motivation, as patterns are crying out to be heard as the seller steps into the buyer’s office.

The implicit behavior in an operation may be generalized as favoring comfort, complacency or contribution. Data will highlight one or the other or a combination as the buyer responds to the interview, his agenda, interruptions, or observable crises. The seller’s job is not to pass judgment on dominant cultural themes, but to use them, accordingly, in the best interest of the buyer’s operation.

Then there is the matter of how the buyer wants to be perceived. Again, this may be consistent or inconsistent with items displayed or the buyer's behavior.

Books, certificates, mementoes, honors, trophies, personal albums, type and condition of furniture, location of office, and its arrangement all have meaning to the buyer. It can be quickly gleaned as to whether this is a working place or a shrine. Without a word being said the seller can undress the buyer as a person. Capturing the essence of a place can avoid bouncing off the walls of resistance with none the wiser why. We all telegraph the pass of our identity.

* * * * * *

When I was a salesman calling on a General Electric facilities manager with my area manager, his office reminded me of a shrine. Not only were university degrees prominently on display but an honorary degree as well.

Before I could adjust to this exhibit, he blared, “Give me your spiel,” then turned his swivel chair around with his back facing us and proceeded to clip his fingernails. Not only was this insulting and uncouth, but his office was pretentious to the extreme with furnishings fit for a chief executive officer and he was only a departmental manager.

For fully ninety seconds, I did not say a word and motioned to my area manager with my hand to support my silence. He nodded. Ninety seconds of silence in a sales call is an eternity. Finally, the buyer turned his chair around, and in a stern voice, as if he were a principal addressing a troubled student, said, “What seems to be your problem, young man?” I said, apparently, we caught you at a bad time. I would like to reschedule when you have time to give us your full attention.

He came back, “What if that is never?” I fed this exact line back to him, what if that is never? And again, I sat there in silence. Meanwhile, my area manager was dying. But I was unwavering. Looking him in the eye, I waited. He shook his head, looked to my area manager for support, who turned away, put down his nail clipper, and said, “Set it up an appointment with my secretary.” I said, thank you and left.

The critique to that call was simple: prospect arrogant, cut his nails, no respect, office shrine, need to find another way, find George, made appointment but little point to follow up.

Before the next call, I did some espionage and found the buyer was not George, or the person who could buy. He was an administrator in power plant operations, a paper pusher who processed requests from the line.

Two other bits of information were learned as well: he was intimidated by technical people, and was embittered having been passed over for promotion several times. This was learned from the chief engineer who was “George,” and whom we were allowed to see on the subsequent call. We didn’t get an order on that call, but he was quite accommodating, and the prospects looked good.

How was this information learned?

A telephone call was made to the director of engineering. He was asked technical questions on power plant operations, politely referring me to the chief engineer. I have found executives are quite amenable to sloughing off such queries to men in their line of command.

The higher the position in the hierarchy the more aware office holders are of the power of public relations. That is why a customer complaint that arrives on a CEO's desk sends reverberations throughout the company. Every seller knows this but, in my experience, few are prone to use it as a tool to make the correct connections.

Clearly not a friend, the chief engineer informed me that the nail clipper, initially contacted, had the title of power plant facility management, but no direct involvement in power plant operations. It was also apparent that this person acted as a buffer to power plant personnel, saving them the trouble of dealing directly with sellers. So, as negative as the chief engineer was about the nail clipper, he was performing a designated role.

Few things are as they seem, and when they aren’t, it behooves the seller to use a little ingenuity to find out why.

THE CASSANDRA EFFECT

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. She was endowed with the gift of prophecy from the god Apollo. The only problem is Cassandra was never believed. Something of that nature has been my experience in this business of selling.

It has been so natural to use Confident Thinking translated into Confident Selling that I am not surprised that my colleagues saw my success as a matter of luck.

When I made presentations on this indirect and unconventional approach to selling, management, too, was skeptical of this departure from conventional wisdom of adversarial selling.

Adversarial selling involves overwhelming the buyer with benefits, finessing objections, and seeking the order with a manipulative close, an approach at variance with my intuitive one.

The audience for Confident Selling did not appear until 1970 when my book of that title was published. In my thirties, it was the year after my first retirement. That audience proved to be more than 100,000. Now, in the early twenty-first century with Confident Thinking in demand, it would seem the Cassandra Effect is equally apt as it was earlier for Confident Selling. The old adage seems to still apply, when the student is ready, the teacher will arrive. He is here.

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Dr. Fisher was a sales executive with Nalco Chemical Company working in the United States, South Africa, Europe and South Africa; and for Honeywell Avionics as an organization/industrial psychologist; and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. as a human resource executive. He is author of several books and articles in this genre. Check out his website: www.fisherofideas.com; email address: thedeltagrpfl@cs.com.