Clients Don’t Buy Solutions, They Buy Problem Definitions

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You’re familiar with the old idea that people don’t buy products, they buy solutions – not drill-bits, but holes, in Ted Levitt’s classic formulation. This idea became closely allied with the commonplace view that we should be selling value, and packaging up ‘value propositions.’

But when it comes to complex services, Uncle Ted understated things.  The very idea of what is behind the “sale” in the first place needs re-examining.

So here’s a provocative statement: People don’t buy your value proposition – they buy your problem statement – and give you the sale as a reward for having defined it in a way such that the buyer can see the road to success with greater clarity.

Value: The Usual Suspect

If sales were like the movie Casablanca, and you rounded up “the usual suspects” for getting the sale, at the top of the list might be “demonstrated value.” Salespeople like to think that the reason they got the job was they did a better job at “adding value,” “demonstrating value,”  convincing customers of the “value proposition” they put forth. “Go with us,” salespeople say, “and you’ll get the greatest expected value.”

We impute this decision-making process to our customers, too. If they bought from us, it must be because we did the best job of creating potential value – maybe modified just a bit by their confidence in our ability to deliver on the value we promised.

This value-centric view of selling confirms all the biases of today’s salespeople: it’s a matter of producing challenging ideas, grand scopes, clearly articulated solutions. The winners are those who conjure up the right mixture of smarts, expertise, and hard work.

So we like to believe.

The Truth: It’s the Problem Definition

My old colleague David Maister once said, “The problem is never what the client said it was in the first meeting.” And while at the time I thought he was being slightly hyperbolic, I came to believe he was, in the real world, exactly right. A perfectly defined problem rarely requires outside expertise – it just needs a purchase order.

Consultative sellers get called in for other reasons.

The reason is, buyers – consciously or unconsciously – want the benefit of sellers’ expertise. They are open – more, or less (often less) – to learning from the seller. Yet arguably the most common error of sellers in consultative sales situations is – they blindly accept the customer’s definition of the problem.

If the problem definition is wrong, then a solution based on it is going to be wrong as well. Worse yet, a fully worked out proposal grounded on a faulty problem definition becomes increasingly tenuous. Buyers acutely and painfully recognize this, and this fact explains why so many consultant CRM systems are full of entries that say “died” instead of “lost.”

Clients don’t want to admit the definition was wrong from the get-go, so they simply stop returning calls, the sellers get resentful – and everyone goes off to try the same thing all over again, getting, of course, the same results.

The problem definition is the heart of the matter, for two reasons. The obvious reason is if you don’t solve the right problem, you’ll just make things worse, and as noted above, that becomes increasingly clear to all concerned.

But there’s a deeper, psychological reason.  If you as a seller can truly engage a buyer in a joint process of discovery, you then trigger something magical: a willingness to explore openly the true issue, and a willingness to engage your expertise in the pursuit.

The result is huge: an expertise-based joint journey of discovery, with a greatly enhanced likelihood of a better problem definition, and a vastly higher level of acceptance of that problem definition.

Getting There is Way More Than Half the Battle

A joint discovery of problem definition requires an openness and a willingness to collaborate on the part of the client. No client I’ve ever met starts out that way – no client has ever come to me and said, “Gee, Charlie, we’re really not sure what’s wrong here, but we kind of hope that maybe if you talk to us, things might get better.”

Instead, clients come to sellers with the usual set of highly defined problem definitions, desired solutions, and specifications for how those solutions must be tailored to their organization. It takes a great deal of skill to get to the point where you can mutually confess imperfection, and go on a joint journey.

It’s the opposite of that old “I’m OK, You’re OK” paradigm – it’s more like “I’m a Fool, You’re a Fool, Let’s Figure This Sucker Out Together.”  (And you don’t get there by quoting Maister about how their problem definition is wrong, either).

Having gotten to a point of mutually confessed imperfection, the best problem definition begins.  And when you do get to a great problem definition, the amazing thing happens.

The client doesn’t buy the best solution: instead, they reward the firm that did the best job of helping them define the problem. You’re not getting paid to do the job – you’re getting rewarded for having created the best ah-ha for the client – the ah-ha that says, “Ah, yes – thatis indeed precisely the issue that we’ve been having all along here. That’s the heart of the matter.”

Having gotten that ah-ha, why in the world would a customer then hire someone else to deliver on the vision you’ve jointly created?  Why would you trust anyone but the ones who created the bond with you to develop the insight to actually get you over the river?   You just wouldn’t, that’s all.

Clients don’t buy value: they buy the people they have come to trust. In particular, they hire those who have helped them define their problem in a way that they can finally see their way clear to a resolution of their issues. The project, the sale, is not “the thing” – it is simply the currency of reward for having best-defined the problem.

This post first appeared on Trust Matters. 

Bleeding Trust from Every Sales Interaction

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If there’s one guaranteed head-nod, bromide, platitude that most marketers and salespeople would agree to, it’s that trust in the seller positively affects buyer behavior. Conversely, companies we don’t trust are adversely affected by a lack of trust. Pure data to support this claim is tricky to come by, but it’s a commonsensical proposition most of us are willing to buy on the face of it. And rightly so.

And yet – the degree to which modern companies bleed trust (hemorrhage might be a better word) is astonishing.

And I’m not just talking about the egregious mistakes – auto emissions software, blown drilling platforms, rigged interest rates. I’m talking about the myriad little, every-day, seemingly trivial ways that add up—ending in a virtual bloodbath of lost trust. In no particular order, let me identify a few.

Customer Tales of Woe

In Goodbye Avis, Hello Uber, danah boyd chronicles death by a thousand cuts at the hand of Avis Car Rental. Her rental car got a flat tire at 10 p.m. in Los Angeles, just seven miles from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). A customer service phone rep said he didn’t know how long it would take to get an exchange. He said he’d text her. An hour later, she had not received a text, so she called again. They said it would take four hours. Outraged, she pushed back. OK, they said, 90 minutes.

They then suggested she leave the car with the keys in it and get a taxi. She left the car but got a ride from friends to her destination. Avis texted that they’d arrive at 4 a.m. They didn’t. She called again, and Avis blamed the towing company. They said it would take 30 minutes. Ninety minutes later a tow truck arrived.

At 4 p.m. the following day she called to make sure Avis had gotten the car. Nope. They said she was still liable. Roadside assistance told her to call customer service, who said to call the LAX counter directly, who passed her call on to the manager, whose call went to voice mail. He didn’t return the call. And, it went on.

The Avis tale may sound exceptional. But I bet you have your own horror stories to relate that are just as bad. And you probably reacted the same way danah did—by changing suppliers, even though she’d been a loyal customer for years.

One Cut at a Time

Not all customer horror stories have 15 fails in a row in a 24-hour period. But it doesn’t matter. Like little cuts, they can add up, and each one adds its own traumatic toll.

  • I recently went to trade in a car. We had a deal until the salesman noted a discrepancy on the CarFax report. I said I’d fix it. It took six weeks to fix, but I did get it fixed. However, the salesman never called to ask how things were coming along, so I bought my new car elsewhere.
  • A friend went to a store at 5:55 p.m. The manager was inside, locking up for the evening. When my friend pointed to the “Hours: 8AM – 6PM” stenciled on the door and pointed to her watch, the manager shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
  • At my daughter’s recent wedding, I asked if we could borrow a golf cart for 20 minutes to ferry the bride and groom across the wet lawn for photos so as not to get her wedding dress wet. “Sorry, we can’t afford the liability,” was the answer we received.
  • A friend who does small group communication training sessions is routinely asked by large companies to purchase liability insurance to indemnify MegaCo Inc. against any possible harm or claim of harm from anyone for any reason arising out of his delivering a half-day communication training session. (Many of you face the same exact extortionate policy of your customers offloading “risk” to you and having you pay for the privilege.)
  • Some years ago I had a great first sales discussion with a client about doing training to increase trust in their sales process. At the end of the call, he said, “This is great, we have a deal. Now, I presume you’ll grant us our customary 15% discount?” This after having discussed how to help his salespeople to stop cutting prices.
  • I’ll never forget the brokerage office head who, on hearing about my upcoming talk on being a trusted advisor, said, “Hey, anything that’ll increase my share of wallet, I’m all for it!”
  • I constantly receive offers to write articles for my blog in return for links. Ninety-five percent of the time, they show no awareness of the subject matter of my blog, much less a sense for what quality levels of content might be expected.
  • Customer service scripts are increasingly being loaded with fake empathy and inappropriate apologies: “Oh, I am sure that must be terribly frustrating for you,” “Oh, I do apologize for the power outage you experienced. …” Don’t pretend-feel. An acknowledgement is critical, but apologizing for things you didn’t do is phony.
  • Yesterday a corporate online feedback site was generating error messages, sending me “not-deliverable” emails. Acting the good business citizen, I called the corporate 800 customer service number to tell them. The customer service rep told me, “The feedback page is not our department.” When at my suggestion she connected me to that department, they insisted on giving me an incident number so I could track my concern going forward. My concern?
  • On a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Charlotte, North Carolina, two months ago, two aircraft were taken off the gate due to equipment problems. The third aircraft finally left three hours late. I emailed the airline. I got back a generic apology and a voucher redeemable against future miles—no acknowledgement of the particular issue, much less suggestions about dealing with it. (That reminds me of my cable company: after showing up three hours late, they’re trained to quickly offer you a $20 rebate—a fair deal if your time is worth less than $7 per hour).

I could go on and on. And so could you. The cut-cut, drip-drip of such low-level, tedious violations of basic customer relationships adds up. It results in listless relationships at best and cynicism, surliness, and passive-aggressive hostility at worst. Finally, we customers jump ship when the opportunity presents itself.

This isn’t “just” about customer service. There is a steel cable linking all customer experiences—sales, service, whatever—with future sales. How everyone treats customers in all ways at all times is a big driver of trust and thus of revenue.

But you already get that point. The more urgent point is this: how can you be sure you’re not imposing such semi-conscious bloodletting on your customers? Here are two ideas.

1. Follow the 10% rule. At every customer interaction point, take 10% more time to close out the interaction in a trust-creating way.

  • If you couldn’t help someone after a five-minute call, then take 30 seconds to suggest an alternate vendor.
  • If you’re going to spend 15 minutes writing an exploratory letter, then spend another two minutes to find some value-add to include in it.
  • If a potential customer walks out the door after an inconclusive interaction, take a note about a content-specific way to follow up in two weeks with an email or phone call.

You think you don’t have 10% more time? Please. Consider how much you put at risk the other 90% of time you didspend by failing to leave a trust-based impression.

2. Personalize responses in some way. Buying is emotionally triggered, and that’s as true for B2B sales as it is for B2C. Don’t let your last impression be the customer seeing dollar signs in your eyeballs.

  • Responding immediately, or in some hugely fast way, is a powerful tool for showing you’re paying attention when someone reaches out to you. Just don’t automate the response. Fast and customized is a powerful combination.
  • If you are responding to an error, then over-respond. Don’t minimize it. Acknowledge, explain what must have happened, and—most important—say what you are going to do on your own to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Sales don’t just happen during selling. They’re a predictable result of your entire mode of relationship with your customers at all times.

This post first appeared on RainToday.com

How Bad Thinking Can Lead You to Discount Your Prices

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I originally wrote this post way back in 2009. And even though it’s been six years – the message is just as relevant. Keeping with the theme of sales and the ever-present fear of losing a sale (thus the reaction to lower prices and the need to face the demands for price cuts), I wanted to (re)explore the subject of sales – and how bad thinking is what can lead you to discount your prices in order to close a sale. (hint: there’s more to it).

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RainToday.com recently published its Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report: Consulting Industry 2008 in which they analyzed a ton of data from 645 consultants. There were six price-related topics, all of which are interesting. But one in particular caught my eye: the analysis on discounting.

As the authors point out, discounting is Ground Zero for hypocrisy in pricing. Everyone decries it, yet everyone, (actually, 65%), does it. It reminds me of dieting: “I know I shouldn’t, but this one little brownie won’t hurt. And I’ll get back on the wagon again tomorrow.”

Couched this way, the problem of discounting sounds like one of willpower: we all know we should stick to standards and principles, yet we are morally weak at the moment of truth.

I don’t think that discounting is a moral problem, however. Instead, it is one of bad thinking. And it centers around two false beliefs:

  1. The belief that certain customers are inherently “price buyers”
  2. The belief that feeding the price beast will make it go away.

Technically, price is a set amount of money given in exchange for various benefits. But in truth price has no inherent or default meaning. It is a proxy for several different fundamental buyer concerns that are very much tied up with the psychology of the buyer.

What Clients Mean by Price Objections

It seems obvious. A client expresses an objection to a price. They say they want a lower price. Clearly they are concerned about money, value and price. Right? So the only question is, shall we discount, and by how much. Right?

No, and no. Here are four distinct things that buyers are saying when they say they want a lower price. And not one is really about price.

  1. Mismatch with expectations: Only experienced buyers do a good job of guesstimating price quotes from professional services firms. They tend to focus on a basic mental model of time vs. rate, and naturally under-estimate each.

    (Recall your own shock at first finding out your billing rate as a newcomer; and the shock of industry hires when they first see time estimates for what they thought was just a request for a data-dump from an expert).

    Bottom Line: This “objection” isn’t an objection at all. It’s just the natural human expression of surprise and dismay when we find out our expectations didn’t match reality. Discounting just confuses them more, and rewards their delusions for the future.

  2. Mismatch with budget: Sometimes buyers just have a limited budget. They feel trapped, and often a little embarrassed that they have asked you to quote into a situation in which they under-budgeted or over which they have no real control. Their natural reaction is to push back, in hopes that you can solve their problem without their having to confess their embarrassing ignorance, or go back to their boss for more money.

    Bottom Line: This too is best not seen as an “objection;” it is a simple constraint of the world – budget vs. cost. Again, discounting just confuses the matter, and reinforces the idea that the client can afford to not be open and transparent with you.

  3. Mismatch with competitors: Frequently clients faced with competitive bid situations will say, “Company X is cheaper than you by 25% – you need to discount to stay in the game.”

    Let’s assume the claim is true on the face of it. There are two reasons for one firm pricing 20% below another; one is intentionally buying the business, with the intent to raise price later. The other, and most common, is that the client is comparing apples to oranges.

    The solution to the first is easy: explain to the client why your competitor’s cost structure is virtually identical to yours, and why a 25% discount is inherently unsustainable, thereby showing the client is facing a relationship vs. transaction issue.

    If they choose transaction, then be glad your competitor just trashed their bottom line to buy a price-shopping client. They’ll eventually be back.

    The solution to the second is to have the client carefully compare, component by component, the features of your bid to the features of the competitor’s bid.

    Most likely, you’ll be offering a value-added service that the competitor isn’t, and then the client can then pay the higher price for that service or have you drop it from your proposal – have the courage to give your client the data to do the comparison.

    Bottom Line: Competitive mismatches aren’t really price objections; they are fundamentally rooted in a misunderstanding of either industry economics or project design economics. The answer is not discounting, but education.

  4. Mismatch with motivation: Professional services firms suffer disproportionately from the delusion that clients make decisions on purely rational, monetary, statistical criteria. Clients, like everyone (including ourselves) make our decisions with the heart, and justify (rationalize) them with the brain.

    A basic human need is to make sure we didn’t get a “bad deal.” You can give all the “value” data you want, but unless a client feels you are being straight with them and/or they’re getting the best possible “deal,” they will remain suspicious. When suspicious, our innate tendency is to bargain, to determine some subtle psychological resistance point, just as we would at a bazaar or yard sale.

    This behavior has nothing to do with price per se, and everything to do with transparency of your economics and the prices others have gotten from you.

    Bottom Line: Not paying attention to motivations leads to discounting, which has the perverse effect of convincing buyers that – aha! – you really were holding out on them! Which leads them not only to haggle again the next time, but to fundamentally mistrust you because you quoted them a price that was an attempt to “get by.”

So what’s to be done? We all know the answer – don’t discount – but we think it’s a moral weakness, a failure of principles. It’s not. It’s a failure of understanding the reason for price objections.

Armed with the truth – that it’s not about price, and it never is about price – we can do the right thing: be curious, probe and sensitively get one level deeper when presented with price objections.

Back to RainToday’s research report. Why do 65% of consulting firms discount, even when, as the authors point out, the average 11% reductions could go straight to the bottom line?

It is simply fear, fear of losing the deal. Rather than asking curiously, “Please, help me know what’s behind that?” we fearfully back off in the face of the client’s aggressive tone…and start discounting.

The only reason to discount is to buy your way into a strategically new piece of business. And be careful when you do so, because only certain clients buy that way.

The most tragic result of discounting is not even the lost profit; it is that we confirm the client’s suspicion that we are untrustworthy. It leaves the client thinking, like Sir Winston Churchill’s apocryphal line, “We have now established what you are. We are merely haggling about the price.”

What’s So Different about Trust-based Selling?

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What’s the purpose of selling?

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Try Googling It – you’ll get “the purpose of selling is to gain revenue,” or “the purpose of sales is to create a customer.” But there’s a problem with viewing sales that way.

If you think the purpose of selling is to add to your firm’s topline (or your own bottom line), then you’re thinking in you-terms – not in client-terms. No matter how much you sugar-coat it with language about “serving client needs” and “addressing fundamental client problems” there’s no getting around your overriding purpose – to move money from their bank account to yours.

Clients feel this. They can sense your discomfort with selling, and feel it in your high-flying verbiage. They know in their bones that if your primary objective is to get the sale, then you are not on the side of the angels – you are on the side of the used car salesmen.

Harsh language? Not if you realize there’s an alternative – and there is. The alternative is to view your fundamental purpose, objective and goal as being to help – your – client. Regardless of whether they buy your canned solution. And to view the sale as being a byproduct – an offshoot – the collateral good fortune that comes your way by doing a fabulous job of helping your client.

Most people are skeptical. They have two concerns. First, is it realistic? Do clients really behave this way, or will they take advantage of us? Second, does it actually work? Do we really have time to run around being nice to clients all the time – ‘don’t you realize we have to make a living?’

Both these concerns are unfounded. Let’s address them head on.

First, about being realistic. Ask yourself: would you rather buy from someone who genuinely has your best interests at heart, or from someone who’s trying to extract money from you – and isn’t even comfortable saying so?

And, if you do run across someone who is competent, capable, and truly dedicated to your best interests – do you personally choose to rip them off and take advantage of their naivete? Or do you decide, ‘This is actually the kind of firm I prefer to do business with.’

The vast majority of buyers prefer such sellers – (and the cynical exceptions are easy enough to spot, so you can pass them on to your competitors).

Second, about efficiency – do we really have time to give away in just being generous? Don’t we have to focus on selling?

Again, ask yourself: how would you behave if you ran across a person and firm you could really, genuinely trust? Wouldn’t you stick with them? Wouldn’t you spend less time on lawyers? Wouldn’t you be more open and forthcoming about issues? Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable collaborating with them?

Of course you would. And that’s why trust-based selling produces higher repeat business, lower sales costs, greater insights, less scope creep, and higher levels of cooperation.

Put it this way.

  • In Scenario A, you focus on getting the sale: you win 50% of the time, and your average sale is $100K. Net expected value of a given sale, $50K.
  • In Scenario B, you focus on doing the right thing for the client – and as a byproduct you get 60% of the sales, and your average sale is $1.5 times X. Net expected value, $90K (60% x $150K)

Scenario B represents an 80% revenue improvement over Scenario A – before even counting lower sales costs!

That’s exactly what happens in Trust-based Selling. Buyers have a strong, predictable preference for buying from people who have their best interests at heart – and not from people whose main objective it is to sell them.

It’s a real paradox, isn’t it? By being willing to detach from the outcome, we actually increase the odds of that outcome. The “trick” is – you simply have to believe it.

When Clients Demand Price Cuts

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I first published this post on RainToday a little while back. But this is an evergreen topic – one that keeps coming back up into conversation. Especially when people ask me for sales advice. What holds most of us back when a client or a potential client demands a price cut is the fear of losing the sale. But sometimes, we have to let go of our fears in order to see what’s truly at the root of the “price” concern.

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“A long-standing client came to us and said our price was too high for a job we quoted. They said one competitor was priced 20% below us, and another 30% below. We’re seeing this a lot; word is we’re the high-priced firm in this market, and we’ve lost a few big jobs. It seems to be pretty much a question of price. This business is getting commoditized. Particularly in this economy, we need to seriously consider cutting prices, but our margins are already low.”

Have you heard those words lately? Perhaps spoken them? Before you act, make sure you investigate the situation. This article gives you a structured approach to addressing fee issues, looking at causes, solutions, and handling discussions.

Causes: What Drives Client Demands

Before you respond to demands for price, it is useful to understand what lies below such demands. Three things drive the vast majority of client demands:

  • Fear. The simple fear of being taken advantage of. If clients perceive that someone else is getting a better “deal,” they can quickly feel abused, and may react very negatively. Clients who feel abused become very creative about attributing causes—your rates, your profits, your margins, and so forth.
  • Miscommunication. The “apples and oranges” problem can arise from many project design issues, including the scope of issues addressed, the leverage of your team, the depth to which issues are explored, timing, and choices about staffing. If the client orders an apple and you price out an apple pie, the client may think you are charging absurd margins on fruit.
  • Quality. Misaligned assumptions about quality required. Many service providers make an implicit assumption about the quality required for a certain kind of work. Often the client doesn’t perceive the need for the highest quality solution, they think a stopgap will do just fine, and often, it will.

Clients demanding price concessions do not present the issue in these neat terms. They simply say, “your price is too high, and you need to cut it.” Listen carefully, this does not mean that your price is too high, nor that you need to take drastic action. But you’d better investigate what’s going on.

Solutions: Fix the Right Problem

When your client demands a price concession, he usually assumes that rates, costs and profit margins are the problem. Few clients (or providers) challenge this assumption. The client thinks a voracious provider is taking him advantage of him. The provider feels pressured by a callous client playing him off against others. Both then cast the issue in terms of greed and motives, and dig in for tough price negotiations.

Rates and margins are almost never the real problem.

The real problems lie in design issues and in misunderstandings. The worst thing to do is negotiate on a total price alone—it makes the client think you’ve been hiding something, and wonder if he should ask for even more. Too often both parties try to negotiate price when they should be discussing design.

To see why rates are not the issue, consider your economic model. The building blocks of a project bid boil down to:

  • The firm’s costs—i.e. compensation levels
  • Rates—a function of cost, utilization and margins
  • Project design scope
  • Project design leverage
  • Project design quality

Now ask yourself: how does my competitor’s model differ from mine, and what is he cutting to get his prices 30% below mine?

Compensation costs hardly vary at all. The salary market is extremely competitive. Nor do firms vary much on billing rates, utilization and models. None of it is enough to explain a competitor’s 30% discount.

That leaves two explanations: either the projects being discussed are just not comparable, or your competitor will lose money on this bid. The discussion you need to have with your client explores both options, in that order.

Handling the Pricing Discussion

Above all, clients want to know they are being treated fairly. Doing so starts with a fair price for work done, and the willingness to be open about how you arrive at that price. Very few clients actually want to pay an unfair price to a provider who has dealt fairly with them. Here’s how to have that discussion.:

  • Commit to resolution. Make sure you spend enough time understanding and empathizing with the client’s concerns. Say you’re committed to finding a mutually acceptable resolution—and mean it.
  • Suggest a series of price drivers, from scope and quality concerns to economic drivers, and commit to exploring each in turn.
    • Start with scope and design issues. Ask the client to compare in detail your project design with the competitor’s. That means nailing down modules, scope of research, staffing levels—everything that might be different. Then compare. More than half the time, discussion will stop right here. Most fears are simply misunderstandings of design.
    • Move on to quality issues. Determine whether quality in your proposal is higher than that proposed by a competitor. If so, then ask whether the client is willing to pay for extra quality—or not. If the answer is “not,” be ready to scale back or walk. Your “standards” may be costing you business.
    • If the issue is not yet settled, then put your structural economic cards on the table. Tell the client your billing rate structure, base compensation structure, leverage model and utilization rates. Explain why these numbers add up to a fair profit model for you, and why they probably don’t vary much by competitor—certainly not 30%.
  • Now you can face the competitor’s 30% discount head on. Confirm the project design is comparable. Say to the client, “I believe their economic model is similar to ours, and we could not sustain a 30% discount. How long do you believe you will continue to get that discount? Are you willing to switch again if and when they move to sustainable prices?”

If the client would be willing to switch yet again to find yet another discounter, then you should probably walk away and find a relationship buyer. If so, walk away smiling, your competitor just lost money, and you didn’t.

Price negotiations don’t have to be about power and control, trust and openness go a very long way. Most clients are happy to pay a fair price to a provider they trust. Just give them the information with which to trust you.

Should you ever cut price? Yes, in two cases. The first is for a volume discount, including existing-client discounts. In these situations, your cost of sales is genuinely reduced. That’s real money, and can be shared.

The second reason is to buy your way into a new business or client. Don’t do it lightly. Eventually you will have to raise rates to sustainable levels; and a client who switched to you on price is prone to switching again.

Stop Worrying About Closing the Sale

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You’ve heard the admonition “Always Be Closing.” Should you worry about it? For some of you, the answer may be ‘yes.’ But for many more – fuggedaboutit.

Here’s the truth: in some businesses, “closing” is a relevant art. Those businesses are typically highly transactional in nature (e.g. car sales), discretionary and small ticket price (cosmetics), or simple in nature (vegetable peelers). And even then (in the case of car sales), a great many of customers resent being “closed.”

But what about you? Does your business seek repeat customers? Are your benefits largely intangible? Do customer/client relationships matter? Is your ticket price higher? Is your product or service somewhat complex?

In those cases, “closing” is a dinosaur concept. You should distance yourself from it as far as possible.

Think about it. When was the last time you “closed a sale?” What’s your success rate in “closing” sales? Better yet, when was the last time someone tried to “close” you? Did it work? Was it a positive experience?

Here’s a guess at your answer. For a significant percentage of your sales, it’s hard to identify where “closing” happened – the decision just got made – or didn’t. When you do try to close, you often feel uncomfortable; worse yet, more often than not, it doesn’t work. When someone tries to “close” you, it generally doesn’t work–and when it does, you often buy despite the seller’s close, rather than because of it.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. The business development role in those kinds of businesses is antithetical to “closing” as commonly understood.

You don’t need to get better at closing. You need to stop doing it.

The Cult of Closing

The concept of closing probably goes back centuries. Think of itinerant peddlers, carnival barkers, open-air markets. You can hear closing “lines” being practiced today on infomercials and in street fairs (not to mention automobile dealerships). Done well (think Ron Popeil), they’re part of the entertainment of buying.

By the early part of the twentieth century, the concept had gone mainstream. The concept of “always be closing” was taught in the well-regarded Xerox Sales approach and many others.

It lives on today. Here’s what Amazon’s search algorithm produces when the word “sales” is linked to a related term:

Sales 421,684

Sales price 80,996

Sales leads 26,337

Sales close 17,336

Sales meeting 15,201

Sales buyer 12,206

Sales pitch 11,688

Sales presentation 4,610

Clearly, the idea of “closing” is alive and well in sales. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for you. The higher your average sale price, the more complex the sale is, the more relationship-driven it is, and the longer it takes – the less “closing” is likely to help you.

What Closing Is

Did you ever notice that all sales approaches seem to use arrow diagrams? It’s because they conceive of sales as a process that is linear and rational.

Here is typical language, taken from an 8-step version of a product sales process model:

The sales person checks that, if they can meet the specification, then the customer will give them the sale (‘If I…would you…’ trial close). After dealing with any objections, the target solution is presented:

  • Show features that meet customer needs (in priority order).
  • Show additional advantages.
  • Describe benefits that the customer is really buying.
  • Explain how it works (but don’t over do it!).
  • Confirm that they are comfortable with all of this.

The customer now makes the final selection of the product to meet their specification and criteria and hence solve their problems.

The sales person summarizes benefits (Summary Close), asks for the sale (using their favorite close), discusses any logistics detail and reassures the customer that they have made a good decision.

There are two critical assumptions buried in this approach:

  1. The purpose is to get the transactional sale
  2. Buying is a sub-category of rational decision-making.

These assumptions are what make you as a professional squirm in your seat when trying to “close” a real-life professional services client.

Motives Matter

Why do (most) automobile salespeople try to close you?

  1. To qualify you as a lead, so they can focus on likely-to-buy customers.
  2. Because if you walk out the door, you probably won’t come back.
  3. Because they feel you need that little “push” to make a decision.

The first reason is all about them, not you; they come across as selfish and manipulative.

The second is only a disguised version of the first.

The third infantilizes you, the buyer; fine for the emotionally needy, but not for most competent buyers.

Of all the components of trust, the most important is low self-orientation. Think of low self-orientation as client focus for the sake of the client, not for the sake of the seller. Most client focus is the client focus of a vulture; when we find someone who actually seems to care about us as an end, not as a means, we are positively inclined to trust them.

This is the first major problem with closing: it is inherently seller-oriented. It is all about this transaction, here-now. It casts the buyer in the role of means to the seller’s ends. It makes the customer an object.

It’s bad enough when you’re buying a car. How much worse is self-orientation when you’re an accountant talking to a CFO? A publicist talking to an artist? A consultant talking to a CIO?

Motives matter. Closing is an inherently selfish perspective. To close is to put your needs ahead of the client’s. That doesn’t work.

How Clients Buy

The other assumption buried in “closing” is the belief that buying is about rational decision-making. (Ironically, the old-time closing techniques stay purely emotional–see infomercials for an example; the rational add-on is one from modern corporate sales models).

If they haven’t bought, so the logic goes, there must be a reason. If I can uncover the reason, I will remove the blockage to their buying. Repeated attempts to close (the ABC rule, Always Be Closing) make sense based on this logic.

But it’s not quite right. As Jeffrey Gitomer puts it, “the buying decision is made emotionally, and justified rationally.” Lawyers, consultants and accountants think this doesn’t apply to their clients, but it most often does.

In almost all cases, you know more about your service offering than the client does. That’s why they’re buying from you. But they don’t want to become experts in your area of expertise–instead, they want to find an expert they can trust. Their need is not to make a rational decision–their need is to feel comfortable with a rational decision they have to make.

Unfortunately, the “closing” model plays right into three of the largest problems professionals have:

  1. We talk too much about ourselves.
  2. We talk too much about our product or service offering.
  3. We push too fast to move to action steps.

When buyers buy, it isn’t because their objections have been met, or they have been persuaded by rational arguments. It’s because they’ve gotten comfortable with the decision. If they come to feel they trust you–that you have their interests at heart, you understand their concerns, you can be relied on, you will have a commitment to dealing rightly with the inevitable unforeseen circumstances–then they will hire you.

In Place of Closing

The very concept of “closing” is misplaced in professional services. It presumes a transactional, seller-centric, linear, rational model of decision-making about a product or service. Instead, what is needed is a client-centric model of arriving at a level of trust in the seller.

What does that look like? Probably a lot like what you do when you’re successful:

  1. A focus on the relationship, not the transaction
  2. Ample selling that applies competence to the problem itself, rather than talking about qualifications (I call it Selling by Doing, not Selling by Telling)
  3. A lot of listening–open-ended, plain old, paying attention for its own sake
  4. Envisioning–helping the client envision an alternative view of reality, in rich detail.

As always, with trust, there is a paradox. If you stop closing, you’ll close more deals. But only if you do it for the client’s sake. You actually have to care about the client.

 

An earlier version of this post appeared in RainToday 

Buddhist Capitalism vs Competitive Selling: the Power of Trust and Collaboration

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When you think of capitalism, you probably think of competition as a central, driving force. We have enshrined the value of competition in our antitrust laws. We view competition between providers as a way to increase innovation and reduce costs; in today’s parlance, competition is what yields creative disruption.  Adam Smith is frequently (and somewhat inaccurately) cited as the prophet of competition in his concept of the “invisible hand.”

At a micro-level, we have also glorified competition. Athletic competition is seen as a metaphor, as well as a proving ground, for competition in business. Businesses line up to sponsor major athletic events and athletes.

And nowhere in business is competition more revered than in sales.

The truth is much of what we think about competition is dysfunctional, suboptimal, and actually destroys value. By contrast, what I’ll whimsically call Buddhist Capitalism shows another way that adds more value. I’ll explore this theme first at the business world level, then at the sales level.

Business Competition in the Real World

In the real world, pure competition leads directly to monopoly. Competition is inherently unstable, resolving to dominance of one more powerful firm over all the others. What we call “competition” in the modern Western world is a finely tuned mix of rules and regulations, as well as a few customs, that serve to keep behavior within socially acceptable bounds.

If you doubt this, think of what the U.S. economy would look like in the absence of the FTA, the FDA, the FAA, the SEC, or the FDIC. Or just look back a few decades in the history books. Maintenance of a state of competition depends enormously on the power of the referees.

Pure competition, even where regulatory regimes are strict, rarely exists. There are imbalances of labor, education, geography, and a hundred other variables. The point is in nearly every industry, there is an imbalance of power, exploited by one party at the expense of the weaker parties. “Competition” in the real world is more or less about zero-sum games, with one party holding the stronger hand.

The definitions of “capitalism” have been hijacked by extremist theoreticians in recent years: people such as Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Alan Greenspan, who believe in a moral purity produced by competition. (Never mind that an ethics built on selfishness isn’t worthy of being called ethics in the first place.)

Buddhist Capitalism

By contrast: imagine an economy relatively unencumbered by laws and regulations, but where trust and custom abounded. An economy with not nearly as many lawyers, but with fewer legal battles. An economy where the frictional costs of competition (and the regulation of competition) are lower, and innovation is higher.

You get such an economy when you introduce the concept of trust and collaboration. Zero-sum games shift to 1+1=3 games. Stephen MR Covey Jr.’s book The Speed of Trust is all about this: when trust is present, speed goes up and cost goes down.

If my Buddhist friends will forgive me the crude colloquial language, I’ll call this Buddhist Capitalism. What I mean is that it focuses on collaboration, not competition; on getting along harmoniously rather than vanquishing; on letting go attachment to outcome rather than obsessing over goal achievement.

It’s far from crazy. The lesson of the Prisoner’s Dilemma work in game theory is that a collaborative strategy always, always beats a competitive strategy if played long term. Research shows that collaboration produces more innovation than solitary introversion. Collaboration and trust build on each other, increasing knowledge of both parties to the point where they can jointly add value, cut costs, and reduce risks.

It may sound like a Beatles song—the more you give, the more you get—but it’s no less true for being musically suggestive.

Buddhist Selling

What does all this have to do with sales? Selling is just the micro-version of the same thing. We as human beings have a primal desire for survival, which can easily revert to competition. But we have an equally strong desire for connection, collaboration, and cohesion.

Except for pure commodities (and not even water or electricity is a pure commodity), buyers prefer to buy from sellers they trust. Trusted sellers have their customers’ interests at heart, ahead of their own. They play the long game because they know that the best way to long-term success is through their customers’ success, and, therefore, no particular sale is worth sacrificing the long-term relationship.

Trusted sellers are also not attached to a particular outcome. They don’t keep meticulous score at a detailed level, and they are willing to let their agenda be influenced by client needs. Finally, they keep no secrets from their customers because they see their interests and their customers’ interests as one and the same, and the value of shared information to both parties exceeds the value of secret information privy to just one party.

Of course, these attitudes are hard to come by in a world that prizes competition. Sellers everywhere are taught to compete not only with their competitors, but also with their own customers (that’s not a joke – go read Mike Porter’s Five Forces model of competitive strategy). Not getting a sale is considered bad form, if not unacceptable. Metrics in sales are short-term, incentives are largely extrinsic, and motivation basically consists of war chants.

But a seller who can “think Buddhist” will outperform a competitive seller over time because customers prefer to deal with sellers they trust. And they do not trust people who are in it for themselves.

The ultimate irony: by being willing to forego a sale and do the right thing, the “Buddhist seller” will end up selling more than the competitive seller.

 

This post was originally published in RainToday.com 

Do Clients Buy the Consulting Firm or the Consultant?

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This post is a distinctive take on an article originally published on RainToday.

—————————————————–

When it comes to decoding the thought process behind certain complex business questions, it’s often prudent to accept that “it depends” is the most concrete answer you will get – and move on to deciphering what “it depends” on. So it is with the classic “Do they buy the consultant or the consulting firm?”

When asked, the majority of clients (as opposed to leaders of consulting firms) are inclined to say they buy the consultant. After further reflection, most also then say they buy both—but in different ways, for different reasons, under different circumstances.

When people purchase a service that is so heavily rooted in the talent or performance of one individual, they often having trouble separating their rational analysis from their emotional response. They arrive at a decision, but they can’t compartmentalize the reasoning into nice, neat elements. For consultants trying to decide how to best market themselves and their firm, the uncertainty can be frustrating. So let’s make a studied effort at explaining the “depends” clause.

Most models of buyer decision-making portray a linear, rational sequence of cognitive thought. They begin with problem clarification and definition, then proceed to outlining alternative solutions and move on to defining criteria for selection, then to matching facts against those criteria. But this doesn’t fully capture how clients really buy.

CLIENTS BUY CONSULTING SERVICES IN TWO PHASES

Of course, the decision-making process is not completely rational or linear. But it does include two distinct phases – screening and selection. In general, screening comes first and focuses heavily on the firm. Selection comes second and emphasizes the consultant.

From this we can conclude that it is smart to market the firm in the screening process, and to sell the consultant in the selection process.

Let’s use the example of a client seeking a new consultant. Figure 1. below outlines this principle.

Figure 1. The New Consultant Buying Process

 

As a client embarks on a new-consultant search, the first step is screening. The client begins by putting together a “short list,” either of individuals or of firms, which is usually based on prior experience, reputation, recommendations, rankings and ratings, and some initial research. It is during this stage that marketing efforts promoting the firm are most effective.

As the screening process comes to a close – even if only one firm emerges as a viable candidate, though usually there are several top contenders – most clients insist on having some level of personal interaction with the firm’s leadership and/or consultants before they make a decision. This is the selection process.

The formality with which this stage is conducted depends entirely on the client, and as such, consultancies should be prepared with various levels of responses. The typical selection process involves phone calls, presentations or meetings, but in almost all cases includes personal interaction.

Following (Figure 2) are some distinctions between the screening process and the selection process.

Figure 2. New Consultant Selection Process
Screening Selection
Nature of process Rational, analytical Emotional, personal
Outcome Narrowing down Decision
Typical criteria Competence, scale, geography, industry Trust, fit, inter- personals, values
Typical venue Written, or structured Personal, interactive
Key firm function Marketing Personal selling
Key client question “Can they do it?” “Can I work with them?”

 

HOW FIRMS CAN MAXIMIZE THE TWO PROCESSES

A crucial part of working the two phases of decision-making is for consulting firms to recognize which stage a client is in when they make contact. Perhaps the most common error for consulting firms is to mistakenly continue behaving as if they are in the screening process when it comes time to work the selection process.

The screening process is generally done at a far remove. Clients rely on promotional materials available in print or on websites, through industry sources, through third-party references, and through initial, rather scripted inquiry phone calls. The best screening materials consist of concise statements of focus, and objective referent points of competence.

But once screening is over, the game changes entirely. Interaction becomes personal. Suddenly, clients are no longer interested in hearing about a firm’s philosophy or dry statistical information—even if they say otherwise.

When meeting in person for the first time, clients behave like every other human being, forming strong perceptions and projecting the experience into future scenarios. It is up to the consultant to set the proper tone and guide communication in a productive direction. This is an opportunity for the consultant to sell himself/herself. But here a paradox arises: You sell yourself best not by talking about yourself, but by talking about the client.

To stand out in the selection process, consultants should stop reciting their own expertise – whether the firm’s or the consultant’s – and apply it to the client’s specific issues.

This illustrates to the prospective client how focused on their business, and their unique needs, the firm and the consultant are. It also makes the consultant’s abilities (or lack of ability) tangible through real-world application. It actually removes the more fantastical elements of “selling” from the equation, allowing the consultant to showcase his knowledge, communication style, and problem-solving skills in a natural way – which makes both parties more comfortable in the long run.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE TWO-PROCESS RULE

When a client has a strong existing relationship with a consultant and sees the need for a new project, the natural first thought is, Can my existing firm handle this matter? In this situation, the two-step process is usually abbreviated. Choosing a new consultant is tough work, so the inclination is usually “don’t fix what ain’t broke.”

Other exceptions to the system include:

  • clients with a corporate policy that requires multiple vendor relationships
  • clients who are extremely wary of relying on personal “feel” to make selection decisions, therefore try their utmost to treat the selection stage just like screening (though even here their instincts may overwhelm their desire to appear ‘objective’)
  • clients who have pre-existing external relationships, and conduct searches only at the surface level to maintain the appearance of objectivity.

In general, these exceptions are fairly uncommon. Consulting firms are well advised to:

  • Market the firm in ways that help clients screen, and
  • Sell the individual in ways that help clients make selections.

Perfect Pitch in Sales: 9 Rules

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The dog and pony show, the beauty contest, the shoot-out. You may just call it “the pitch.” The term is especially common in some industries—advertising, executive recruiting, some law firms—but we all know it.

Typically we think of it as an event—a rather formal presentation by several professionals made to several members of the client organization that typically lasts 30 to 90 minutes. Secondary characteristics of a pitch often include PowerPoint and a timeslot among a few other competitors who are pitching on the same day.

Let’s be clear: there is no single perfect pitch, since the winning pitch is situational to you and your client. Still, there are some guidelines that hold true. Here are nine rules for perfecting your pitch.

1. When the Best Pitch Isn’t a Pitch

Sometimes the best pitch is one that never happens because both parties choose an alternative.

Think of a pitch as a blind date where each party is cautious. The quietly cautious buyer wants control and seeks it in an impersonal, formal event. The seller also wants control but expresses it by being assertive. One fears being “sold;” the other fears losing. When both parties are fearful, decisions get made on process, features, and price.

Both parties are often better off starting from a strong relationship. Though both know this, they don’t admit it. Sellers may try to go around pitch events. The trick—not really a trick at all—is to explore the possibility of meetings before the pitch during which personal relationships can be established. It’s critical that this be done from a position of respect and honest concern for what’s right for the client.

Sometimes the client then abandons the pitch idea altogether because they find one competitor that seems to understand them uniquely. That’s generally a good outcome for both parties. Do NOT try to force this outcome—you’ll jinx if it you do.

2. The Pre-Pitch Warm-Up

Your objective shouldn’t be to avoid the pitch, but to produce a good outcome for both parties. Any pitch will be improved by prior conversations with as many client people as possible.

If you are meeting the client representatives for the first time at the pitch, your odds are even less than one divided by the number of competitors. It’s less because with total strangers meeting each other, the “none of the above” option frequently appears on the table.

Of course, not every client wants to meet you in advance. Often the intent of the pitch is to prevent such meetings in the first place in pursuit of an “independent, fair” competition. Pushing too hard for meetings can appear distasteful.

How do you know how far to push the suggestion for prior meetings? Simple—ask the client. Point out the advantages of offering all competitors a chance to talk with them in advance, then gracefully yield if the resistance is too strong. You get a few points for offering if you do it respectfully—just don’t push your luck.

If you can talk to people in advance of a pitch, you’ll improve the quality of the pitch for both you and client. Of course, you learn valuable information, and you get to call people by name. But it goes much further than that because the next key to a great pitch is interaction.

3. Interact in the Pitch

Nearly always the client says, “Tell us about yourself.” And nearly all sellers assume that’s what the client wants—after all, they said so!

But the truth is, listening to someone—anyone—talk about themselves for 30 minutes is incredibly boring. Even more important, listening to others does not persuade human beings—they become persuaded by listening to others who have previously listened to them.

Letting clients be heard is critical to successful pitches. If you can’t do it before the pitch, then dare to be great and engineer listening into the pitch. Here are several approaches:

  • Tell the client ahead of time you’d like to ask for reactions
  • Build in “and what about you?” questions into your pitch
  • Offer data about similar situations and ask for comment
  • Ask the client if they’d consider a “first-meeting” approach. Instead of a standard pitch, offer to treat the pitch like a first meeting, as if you’d already been hired, and allow five minutes at the end to talk about how it felt. (This is not a crazy idea; I know of two success stories using it.)
  • If you’ve had any prior-to-pitch conversations, refer to them.

Remember: what you say in the pitch matters less than whether you have listened to them first.

4. Have a Point of View

Your qualifications, credentials, and references are worth absolutely nothing if you can’t show relevance to the client. To walk in without a point of view on the client and the issues facing them is arrogant, disrespectful, and selfish. Those are strong words; let me back them up.

If you want this job, you’ve (hopefully) thought about what you’d do if you got it. If so, why wouldn’t you share it? The probable answer is because you’re afraid you might have gotten it wrong.

But that fear is all about you. Now is the time when not to take a risk is risky. The client wants to see if you’ll do some homework on spec and if you’re willing to engage in real-time thinking about it. They want some sample selling. Showing up with nothing but a track record is like going on a blind date with just a list of past dates. It’s no better as a pitch strategy than as a dating strategy.

5. Collaborate on Talking Price

Conventional wisdom says don’t quote price until the client has heard benefits so that they can properly calculate value. This makes theoretical sense, but it ignores human psychology; price is the elephant in the room during the pitch.

While everyone listens (or pretends to listen) to your pitch, they are all mildly pre-occupied with what your price is going to be. That pre-occupation is death to their ability to listen to you, so air it.

When you walk in, place a five-page pile of paper on the table, saying, “This is the price part of our proposal—the bottom line and four pages of backup explaining it. We don’t want to focus on it, nor do we want to keep it from you. At any point in the conversation today, you can ask us to turn the page over, and we’ll talk about it. Wheneveryou want.”

The point is not when you talk price; it’s about who makes that decision.

6. PowerPoint Pointers

There seems to be an emerging consensus among presentation professionals that looks like this:

  • Most presentations are written as leave-behinds: build your pitch on the presentation, not the leave-behind
  • Less is more: limit yourself to several bullets
  • Don’t read aloud what’s written: get a picture and talk from that
  • Visuals are great, great, great: use photos, not clipart
  • Except for the title page, lose the logos and backgrounds

7. Handling Qualifications

Most big sales these days follow a two-step process: screening and selection. Most screening is done on credentials. That means if you’re in the pitch, your credentials got you there. The pitch is the sale you already got; stop selling it.

If the client specifically requested a section on credentials, don’t embarrass them by fighting it. But you can touch briefly on credentials, with a large leave-behind set of documents. Go through them only if the client insists.

8. Dissing the Competition

This is an easy one. Don’t. Don’t do it, don’t go there, don’t even think about it. If asked, demur, with, “We respect our competitors. You should talk with them. But they can speak well enough for themselves without our help.” Taking the high road never hurts, and it usually helps.

9. When to Ditch the Pitch

Imagine a pitch where an obstreperous client takes you off script away from the PowerPoint or raises a point well in advance of when you had intended to address it.

Disaster? Not at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. This is client engagement—exactly what you want—cleverly disguised as an objection. Greet it with open arms. Ask the client for permission to go off script and deal directly with the issue raised for as long as the client wants.

Remember: despite what the client said, it’s not your PowerPoint they want to see—they want to feel how it will be for you to interact with them. If you respect their wishes, move your agenda to fit theirs, and respond directly with relevant content, you will address precisely that desire. And you will more likely win the pitch than someone who stayed on (Power)Point.

Question Obsession: The Consultant’s Nemesis

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Consultants and salespeople (especially consultative sellers and sellers of consulting) have learned one mantra, and we love repeating it. It is the mantra that says, “Listen first; talk later.” In other words, it’s all about the question. Ask a great question, the logic goes, and all else will fall into place.

That is the great lesson of Sales and Consulting 101. The trouble is, if you never graduate from 101, you will end up in quicksand because an obsession with questions ultimately leads nowhere.

The Obsession with Questions

There’s good reason for the Sales 101 and Consulting 101 lesson of focusing on questions. Go no further than Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling, in the case of sales, or Peter Block’s classic Flawless Consulting for consultants. Each one shows with wisdom and data that artfully posed questions generate dialogue and interaction, and that is always superior to pre-emptively beating up the client with the answer.

Of course, we often forget our 101 lesson and go into meetings with answers blazing. But that’s not what this article is about. This article is about the downside of obsessing with questions. It’s what happens when we turn the 101 lesson into a mantra, and we begin to focus on questions alone.

Is questioning an obsession? Try doing a web search on “Top Ten Sales Questions;” you’ll get millions of results.

Now ask yourself whether you recognize these themes:

  • Should I ask open-ended or closed-ended questions?
  • Should I ask about implications or needs?
  • Should I ask about the client’s opinions or offer “challenger” questions?

As one sales website puts it, “Get the answers to these questions, and take action based on those answers, and you’ll get the sale. It’s that simple.”

No, it isn’t.

The sales version of question obsession manifests in lists. The consultant version of question obsession manifests in the Great Keystone Arch Question—what is the central supporting element?

You can recognize this form of obsession because it leads consultants speaking among themselves to say things like, “If we can set the data up right, we can frame the discussion such that when we finally pop the Keystone Arch Question, the whole logjam will be released. They’ll feel the pain, envision the solution, and fall all over themselves in a rush to buy our solution.”

No, they won’t.

That’s because good questions are necessary—but not sufficient. You have to have them, but they won’t get you to the end zone.

If all you do is focus on questions, you’ll end up obsessed with yourself, with your solutions and products, and with how clever you are. That’s called high self-orientation, and it will kill trust and sales both. Question obsession is quicksand for salespeople and consultants alike.

Beyond Question Obsession

The narrow purpose of a question is sometimes to get an answer. But there are broader purposes to most questions, and certainly a broader purpose to the art of questioning itself. One is to create a greater sense of insight for the client. Two others are to improve the client relationship and to give the client a sense of empowerment.

These goals are best accomplished not so much by focusing on the “what” of the question but on the “how.” Some examples:

  • Questions to create insight: Consultants often come up with “insights” that only an MBA could understand or that leave the client feeling helpless. These are not useful insights. We don’t want to leave our clients saying, “Gosh, that’s really smart. How will I remember that?” Rather, we want them to say, “Oh, my gosh, of course! it’s so clear when you put it that way, isn’t it?” Our objective is to create insight, not to demonstrate that we have it.
  • Improve the relationship: The better the relationship—buyer/seller or consultant/client—the better everything else gets. Innovation, profitability, time to market, and insights all improve with relationships. Great questions allow the parties to get closer together, more comfortable sharing the uncomfortable, and more willing to take risks by collaborating. Questions such as, “Let me ask you, if I may, do you personally find that scary?” have nothing to do with “content” insight, but they are critical to advancing the relationship.
  • Create client empowerment: The point of all this questioning is not, ultimately, to understand things. It is to change them. And change will not happen if the client feels the insights are threatening, depressing, or out of his control. The key to action is to help the client see ways in which they can change, take control, own, and improve their situation.

It’s not what you ask; it’s how you ask it. All three of these broader objectives have little to do with the content of, or the answer to, a business question. Instead, all of them focus on the outcome of the question-answer interaction. From this perspective, it is not what you ask that is important, but how you ask it. We need to get past the Q&A outcome, which is just about knowledge, and focus on the outcome of the interaction, which is how we help our clients drive change.

Avoid the quicksand: get past questions for questions’ sake, and focus on real business outcomes.