Question Obsession: The Consultant’s Nemesis

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Do you go into sales meetings – even meetings with your existing clients – with a slew of prepared questions? Do you constantly find yourself asking question after question in a meeting?

You may be thinking, “Duh, of course. Aren’t we supposed to? How else are you going to demonstrate value added, explore hypotheses, prove your expertise?”

But let’s explore this apparent no-brainer. The fact is, Question Obsession can actually be detrimental. Lets explore why and how.

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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. And I have no beef with it.  The problem is – if you never graduate from 101, you will end up in quicksand because an obsession with questions alone 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.

Competing with Colleagues

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When I wrote The Trusted Advisor with David Maister and Rob Galford, it became reasonably successful within several months. (Amazingly, it still ranks #11,014 – as of this morning – on the list of all books on Amazon. That’s all books, including Harry Potter (#218), Capital (#16,000), etc. I’ll take long-sellers over best-sellers any day of the week).

With its success came a happy problem: how to parcel out the leads between the three of us? Let me be clear, the book wasn’t drowning us in leads; any one of the three of us could have happily fielded all inquiries. And while we wanted to be fair to each other, we were also all of us very clearly in competition with each other.

So the question: how do you compete with colleagues?

Competing with Colleagues

What if one of us got a lead based on the book? Did we have any obligation to pass it along to the other two? If so, how?  Should we establish a quota system, whereby each of us would get every third lead?

Should we let the market dictate things, and let whomever the client had reached out to handle the response? What if the client had written to all three of us?  Should we all respond confidentially, or in some sense share our responses?

The problem was not unique to us, though it seemed so at the time.  You may face a similar problem within your organization – who gets the lead? Who gets to present?

Or, you may come face to face with an  old friend who has changed uniforms and now works for a competitor. In any case, the tension is much the same – the sensation of being a colleague feels intensely in conflict with the sensation of being a competitor.

How do you resolve it?

The Solution

The answer to the problem came to us fairly quickly, on reflection, and I documented it as part of the Four Trust Principles in my later books. The answer lies in true focus on client needs.

In our case: we agreed that we should all respond similarly to all client inquiries, regardless of to whom they were addressed. In all cases, we would say words to the effect of:

The Trusted Advisor was written by the three of us. I suspect that each of us could do an excellent job in response to your query, and each of us would handle the work slightly differently. You would be best served by having discussions with each of us, and making up your mind on that basis.

We will each be candid with respect to our own strengths and weaknesses, and answer questions to the best of our ability about the others. Each of us will respect your decision, and we are each committed to you making the best decision possible for you.

The best decision for you is what all three of us seek, and each of us will do our best to help you reach it, regardless of your choice.

This solution made everything easier. It kept our relationship collegial. It removed any awkwardness about responding to clients. It removed any awkwardness that clients might experience in choosing whom to talk to.

And, of course, it resulted in the best decision for clients, as each of us have our own particular skills and drawbacks.

So what’s the answer?  Grindingly relentless focus on client service, and the willingness to pursue that logic wherever it leads.

How You Use Your Smarts Is What Attracts Clients

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“It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.”

You’ve probably heard that. But – you’ve also probably heard the exact opposite.

You’ve heard, “You’ve got a limited amount of time to impress them; use it.” But you’ve also heard, “Let the client do most of the talking.”

And you’ve probably heard, “You’ve got to be just a little smarter than your client.” But you’ve probably also heard, “Don’t think you know more about your client’s business than your client does.”

So, what’s the role of smarts? How important is it to be smart? In fact – what does that even mean?

To define terms, I’m not talking here about emotional intelligence, political savvy, or so-called street smarts. I’m talking about what we usually mean by “smart” in business, which generally boils down to three things:

  • Native intelligence, IQ-ish talent
  • Subject matter mastery
  • Industry knowledge

But let’s also be clear: being smart is less about what kind of smart you are and more about how you use your smarts. And usage, in turn, deconstructs into timing, amount, and context.

Kinds of Smart

I’ll use “IQ” as shorthand for some measure of native intelligence, mindful that there’s a lot of debate about its validity. IQ is seen as an innate form of smarts—you’re supposed to be born with it.

People with high IQs tend to think highly of high IQs, but that doesn’t mean everyone else does. In fact, if clients perceive someone as more clever, sharper, quicker, adept than them, it can be perceived as a negative—particularly if you’re selling.

“Watch out for this one,” the client thinks. “He might pull the wool over my eyes and outwit me.”

Subject matter mastery is different. It’s not an innate kind of smart; it’s derived from experience.

“I could be as smart as him,” thinks the client, “if I had chosen to work in that area.”

In fact, it’s that mastery that clients seek. A client hires a lawyer who knows the law precisely because the client doesn’t know it as well. A subject matter expert with a slightly lower (perceived) IQ than the buyer is even better. They are seen as knowledgeable but unthreatening.

Like subject matter mastery, industry smart is derived, not innate. But unlike subject matter mastery, its presence isn’t a plus so much as its absence is a minus. Clients, particularly those in professional and financial businesses, look down on “generalist” subject matter experts and functional specialists. There’s a general feeling that “our people won’t accept advice coming from you unless you have industry smarts” (though the speaker usually refers to ‘our people’ and not to himself).

In general industries, it is believed that management is management and sales is sales, that the know-how is transferable across industries. That isn’t the case in the professions—rightly or wrongly. You won’t win fighting that feeling; it runs deep.

Timing: When to be Smart

The time to show your IQ smarts is before you meet. Show it in your resume, qualifying documents, and your website’s “About Us” section. That’s because IQ smarts are the only kind of smarts that are potentially embarrassing to the client. The client doesn’t want to be over- or under-estimating you in real time; they’d prefer to know what kind of person they’re dealing with up front, in advance of meeting you. That way they feel much more in control, which is a good thing.

Once you’re in a meeting or interacting with the client, never mention IQ smarts again. Don’t bring up your resume, your degrees, your globe-hopping upbringing, or the brilliant circles in which you travel unless, of course, you’re asked a direct question.

You also want to show a little bit of subject matter smarts and industry smarts in advance of a first meeting or interaction—enough to assure the client they won’t be wasting their time and that they might well benefit from meeting you.

In short: be IQ-smart before you meet. And in face-to-face meetings, be subject-matter and industry-smart.

Amount: How Smart Should You Be?

No one likes to feel condescended to. Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid being condescending in subject matter and industry smarts. The main place to worry is in IQ smarts. If you really think your IQ is so much higher than your client’s, remember that your client is likely to resent or fear you if you make a point of it. Go work on your emotional quotient.

For subject matter and industry smarts, there is no natural upper bound. You’re being hired in part for your expertise, and your client will respect high levels of knowledge of your industry without fearing it. Your biggest challenge here is to be gracious in revealing how smart you are.

Context: Being Gracious about Your Smarts

The single most common sales error regarding smarts that professionals make is to think they have to show how smart they are. They somehow believe that a goal of client interaction is to demonstrate how smart they are. This is almost always unfounded, and frequently it accomplishes the very opposite of what’s desired. It makes the client feel you are self-centered and ego-driven and that you’re only out to make the sale.

Instead, the rule should be to use your smarts as necessary in support of the right thing for the client:

  • If it’s useful to mention that a particular recommendation has been followed successfully by three other clients, then say so. But if you say so just to demonstrate your clout, it’s better to leave it unsaid.
  • If it might be useful to the client that you know so-and-so, a big industry player, then mention it. If you do it only to prove your industry smarts, don’t.
  • If a question is asked to which you clearly know the answer, answer it. But if it’s another question that was asked, and you’re piling on to that question to answer another one, unasked, stifle yourself.

Following that simple rule demonstrates that your driving motivation is client service, not the pursuit of the sale and not your search for ego gratification. And if you’re worried about not knowing the answer to an occasional question, remember a client would rather hear an honest “I don’t know” than a transparent struggle to fake your way through an answer.

The smart call is to use your smarts only in service to your client.

Best Practice for Opening a Sales Call: Bring a Risky Gift

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How do you open a sales call?

Do you strive to establish credibility? Thought leadership? Make a positive first impression? Establish trust rapidly?

There are lots of answers to that question, and I’m going to suggest most of them are sub-optimal. And, I’m going to suggest, there is one single Best Practice way to do it. It’s called Bring a Risky Gift—BARG for short.

Why Your Opening Sales Conversation is Critical

First, let’s be clear. This question is more important than it used to be – not less important. Many sales authors are fond of noting that the sales process is becoming far more composed of pre-meeting interactions – collecting data from websites, emails, search engines and the like. They then draw the wrong conclusion – that the actual sales meeting itself is declining in importance.

The opposite is true. As long as complex B2B buying decisions are made by human beings – that is, protein-based entities who are the products of eons of emotional and social evolution – we require some kind of personal interaction before making a major decision. Let’s call that the sales meeting.

The fact that less total time is taken up by face to face meetings these days simply means that those meetings’ relative importance in the entire sales process has increased, not decreased.

A Metaphor

Let’s say you and your spouse or significant other are invited to dinner at the home of a business acquaintance. It’s your first time meeting them in a primarily social context. What must you do?

You know the answer to this one. On the way there, you stop at the liquor store and pick up a nice bottle of  wine. It’s what you do. The culture of gift giving in a thousand forms (including simple gestures of respect) is deeply embedded in every culture, including modern western business culture.

By doing so, you fulfill a minor cultural obligation. The host thanks you, and the evening begins on a fractionally higher note than before you walked in with the gift. But notice – this is more obligation than generous gesture. The downside of not bringing a bottle of wine is probably greater then the credit you get for doing so. You’re supposed to do this.

But imagine this. On the way to the liquor store, you say to your SO, “I think they went to northern Italy last year. What if we bought them a really nice bottle of Barolo, with an Italian looking gift card?“ and maybe you spend a few dollars more than you might have otherwise.

What happens when you present the gift? Notice – there is a risk here! It’s possible they are alcoholics. Or perhaps it was Spain they went to, not Italy. But here’s the magic: you actually get more credit for having taken that risk – even if you were wrong – than you get for buying the conventional, safe Napa cabernet.

What happens if your host really is an alcoholic? They are likely to say, “You know, we don’t drink, but that’s very thoughtful of you – we’ll save it for our next guests who do.“

And if it was Spain they went to? They are likely to say, “Ha ha, we used to confuse Spain with Italy too,“ or, “No, it was Spain, but with wines like this Barolo, we’re thinking Italy is our next destination – have you been?”

The point is: yes, you get credit for bringing any wine, but not much more than for fulfilling an obligation. You get serious extra credit for having been willing to take a risk – even if you’re wrong! It shows you are willing to be vulnerable in service to the client.

The act of showing vulnerability and taking a risk first means that you are playing the role of the trustor – the one who initiates a trust relationship – rather than waiting to passively play the lower-risk role of merely being trustworthy.

The possibility of being wrong is critical to that extra credit: it says to your host, “I may be wrong here, but I have put serious thought into this, and I’m willing to accept the gamble that I could conceivably be wrong; I trust that you will appreciate my well-intentioned gesture and the quality of thought that went into it.”

Now let’s see how that metaphor plays out in opening up a Sales conversation.

BARG to Open the Conversation

First, notice that you rarely get an opening sales conversation without already having established serious credibility. B2B buyers don’t waste their time, they’ve done their homework on you, and you have established enough credibility to get this meeting.

Do not waste their time by launching into a demonstration of how smart you are. It is annoying, and they’ve already acknowledged that point. Continuing to do so is all about you, not them. Worse, it’s rude. Any sales author who tells you you should open a sales conversation by establishing your credibility is oblivious to the serious emotional undercurrents happening in these moments.

That includes authors who suggest you should open with a breathtaking demonstration of how you are able to challenge their thinking. If that’s all you lead with, it is not only rude, it is insulting and arrogant.

Insights are great, but they must come well-packaged in the emotional wrapper of respect and etiquette. That’s where BARG comes in.

(It should go without saying that the wrong answer to, “so, tell us about yourself“ is to launch into your prepared deck about yourself. They were merely being polite by asking that question; you should not take it as any more than a pleasantry, which the rules of etiquette suggest requires only a 30-second answer.)

Here’s what you should say after the minimal pleasantries are complete:

Thanks for having us here. It is apparent to us, having looked through a lot of available information about you, that you are truly expert in [insert something] [insert something more]. It would be arrogant of us to claim that we know more about these areas than you do.

However— we do know a thing or two about similar situations, and one thought arose as we looked over your circumstance. It seems to us – please correct me if I’m wrong – that [X] might be a critical issue for you. Is that the case? And if so, could you tell us more about how X plays out in your business?

Two things: first, note that X had better be a meaningful, thoughtful insight.

But second, and frankly even more importantly, X had better be possibly wrong. If it is an absolutely 100% safe hypothesis, then you get no credit for having taken a risk. If you cannot be wrong in your hypothesis, then you are refusing to show any vulnerability. You are refusing to take the first step in creating trust. That is simply a variation on “I’m smarter than you are, and I’m going to start off by showing you why and how that’s true.”

There are two possible answers to your risky gift, and they are both good:

  • The first answer is, “you’re totally right – anything you have to say about that critical issue, we are very interested in hearing.”
  • The second answer is even better. “You know, most people think of X as the big issue, but the fact is – it’s really Y.”

In which case, you respond with, “Oh my gosh, I see it now – of course you’re right. Please, tell us more about Y, and how that plays out for you.“

And of course they will be happy to tell you about Y: because you have demonstrated vulnerability, you are showing sincere interest in what they have to say, you are focusing on them not on you, and you are demonstrating the willingness to learn from them.  At that point, the polite thing for the client to do is to answer your question of them.

If you think these rules of social propriety are vague and imprecise, think about how you respond when someone extends a handshake to you: how often do you spurn them and turn away with a cold shoulder? Pretty much never. You can make serious book on the hard-wired social responses of human beings in these situations – we are extremely predictable.

Insight by itself is worse than useless if not wrapped in the package of social propriety. BARG is that wrapper. It triggers hard-wired responses of etiquette, respect and other-focus in an ever-ascending spiral of reciprocating exchanges between two trusting and trustworthy parties.

To close the loop: should you open a Sales conversation with credibility? With a first impression? With insight? With rapid trust creation?

The answer to all of those questions is Yes. What’s critical is how you do it. And how you do it is BARG—Bring a Risky Gift.

 

What Buyers Really Want

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What do buyers really want?

In particular, what is the true role of expertise in evaluating the purchase of complex intangible services?

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The head of marketing for a US East Coast major law firm was asked by 3 partners to help rehearse and prepare them for a key sales meeting at a major potential new client. “If only we can convince them that we are absolutely the best in this area, which we are,” the lead partner said, “then they’ll have to go with us.”

This point of view seemed so self-evident to the senior partner that it didn’t feel like an opinion; it seemed like an obvious truth. Unfortunately, not only is it just an opinion—it also is not particularly accurate.

Lawyers, accountants, bankers, actuaries, consultants—all behave more often than not as if the key to selling lies in a powerful display of expertise. Most complex intangible services sales are sold with the implicit, if not explicit, belief that expertise is the issue. But that doesn’t make it right. And if it’s not right, then we must answer three questions:

  • if expertise doesn’t sell best, then what does?
  • don’t buyers seem to want to buy expertise?
  • if selling expertise isn’t the best approach, why is it the dominant one?

Good questions all. The answers lie in the psychology of buyer and seller of complex intangible services, and in trust—which is what really lies at the heart of successful sales.

WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?

If buyers don’t primarily buy expertise, then what are they buying? The answer, in a word, is trust.

Take a simple case. Imagine you have recently moved to a new city, and must find a pediatrician for your 2-year old child. You have a list of 6 doctors, referrals from a combination of health plans, co-workers and neighbors. One doctor clearly has a slight edge in reputation of medical school; another has the most years’ experience; another is on staff at a teaching hospital and has written several articles.

But there is one who hits it off immediately with your 2-year old. This pediatrician connects with and seems genuinely focused on your interests as a parent and on those of your child, rather than on getting you as a new patient. In other technical respects, this physician is in the top half, but not number 1 in any category.

What do you do? Not everyone, but a majority nonetheless, will go for the pediatrician who seems to care, as long as he or she is within an acceptable range of expertise. And, they will use the word “trust” to describe their decision. There are exceptions, of course; a few people always buy purely on the basis of technical specifications, a few more buy only on price, and occasionally one seller is overwhelmingly dominant in the technical realm.

But the majority behave as if expertise has an acceptability threshold. Achieving that threshold is a necessary condition for getting hired—but even expertise beyond the threshold is not a sufficient condition. Given an acceptable level of expertise, people prefer—strongly—to buy from someone whom they trust. In other words, expertise serves as a first-order screen in the buying process—but not as a final decision-making criterion.

To put it simply: most buyers of complex intangible services prefer to find an expert they can trust, rather than to evaluate expertise across experts.

THEN WHY DON’T BUYERS BEHAVE THAT WAY?

They do. They just don’t say so. There’s a difference.

First, buyers are a little intimidated by the role of buyer. Usually the seller has greater expertise. There is often a lot at stake, and the services are costly. It is often truly hard to choose between several very competent sellers. So, buyers feel a need to display some level of technical expertise themselves, partly out of natural human ego, and partly to keep the seller on his toes.

Second, corporate buyers of complex intangible services are usually professionals themselves—they worship at the same altar of expertise. And, they are particularly concerned to be able to justify their decision. Justification in business almost always consists of rational, mostly financial, arguments. Therefore buyers drive discussions in the technical direction, even while looking to assess their level of trust with the sellers.

How does this play out? Buyers look for rational reasons to justify what is finally an emotional decision, built heavily on trust. The most commonly accepted rational reasons are price and features. (Price is a very comfortable excuse for saying no—it is quantitative, impersonal, and only the buyer has all the numbers. However, price is rarely given as a positive reason for selection). Very few chief counsels will say to their CEO or board nothing more than, “I think we should go with XYZ because, basically, I think like them better and trust them more.” Yet that is how most of us do behave when buying complex intangible services.

THEN WHY DO SELLERS SELL EXPERTISE?

Professionals over-emphasize expertise for three reasons.

First, that’s what they think (falsely) the buyer wants— and the buyer encourages them in that belief.

Second, expertise is what we professionals are most comfortable with. Very few lawyers went into law because they wanted to sell, or because they wanted to work with people. They went because they love the law, and the vast majority of their learning, development, evaluations and study consist of greater and greater mastery of content expertise. The same is true for consultants, commercial bankers, accountants and actuaries. Why would anyone want to sell on any other basis than what they’re good at and spend all their time and energy at?

Finally, professionals have an emotional vested interest in selling on expertise. It is not comfortable to believe that success in selling might depend on something other than what we spend almost all our time and energy focused on. Still, it’s the truth.

Most buyers of complex intangible services prefer to use technical expertise as a screening mechanism, and then make final decisions based on trust. Sellers who recognize this will listen more, talk less, and focus on the issues of the client at hand (rather than those of past clients). These simple client-focused behaviors are the ways buyers assess trust. Get yourself in the door by focusing on expertise; but once in, drop it and focus on the client, not on yourself.

Ditch the Elevator Pitch and Take the Escalator or the Stairs

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As tech infiltrates every aspect of our personal and business lives, efficiency becomes an ever-more celebrated virtue. This is as true in communications as elsewhere. Think one-word book titles (Blink, Switch, Drive); think the obsession with CRM metrics; and think the Elevator Speech.

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You know the “Elevator Speech.” It’s the hypothetical answer you would give if you were alone in a high-rise building elevator with the CEO of a potential client. Presumably the CEO says, “Tell me about your company,” or “Tell me why we should work with you.” Your presumed answer – sometimes called “the elevator pitch” – turns out to be a good solution in search of the right problem.

There are situations where a 30- to 60-second answer to those questions is exactly what’s called for. But there are other situations – far more, in fact – where different approaches are called for – let’s call them the Escalator Speech and the Stairs Speech.

THE STANDARD ELEVATOR SPEECH

Try searching “elevator speech.” Depending on whom you read your elevator speech should last 30 seconds – or maybe 120. It should answer the question, “What do you do?” or maybe it should just make an impression. It should – or shouldn’t – be a sales pitch. It is applicable to a job hunter, as well as to an entrepreneur in search of venture capital.

One size does not fit all, of course. But there is one simple question to help you craft your response speech, and it is this: What does the other person really want from you?

There are three possible answers, each requiring a different “speech”:

  1. Do I want to be involved with these people?
  2. What can these people do for me?
  3. Who are these people, and do I care?

Let’s examine each.

DO I WANT TO BE INVOLVED WITH THESE PEOPLE? THE TRUE ELEVATOR SPEECH

If you’re an entrepreneur pitching a venture capitalist, there is a definite frame of reference established simply by naming those two roles. A venture capitalist’s key question is, “Shall I invest more time, and ultimately more money, in developing an investor relationship with these people?”

Answering that question is part of what venture capitalists do. They deal in business models, competitive analyses, concept descriptions, and corporate story lines. A snappy 60-second comprehensive, high-talk, low-listen pitch is very right – if you’re an entrepreneur in an elevator with a venture capitalist.

WHAT CAN THESE PEOPLE DO FOR ME? THE ESCALATOR SPEECH

That question rarely comes up in other corporate roles. A line executive doesn’t spend much of his time interviewing consulting firms or deciding on systems or communications vendors. Even an HR executive doesn’t spend a lot of time interviewing candidates.

If such clients are approached by someone in a captive audience situation and forced to endure a 60-second speech – no matter how insightful or clever – their reaction is likely to be one of resentment. They didn’t ask to be informed about the benefits of a relationship. If anything, it feels presumptuous if a consultant or vendor starts to talk about one. If they’re with you on a trip to the 46th floor, this is when they hit the 26th floor button and say, “Oh, I just remembered, I have to…”

And yet consultants and vendors are often encouraged to think about the “elevator speech” concept – to emulate the entrepreneur – and begin telling their “life story” to a stranger who hasn’t invited a relationship conversation.

Meanwhile, the client is stuck back at something like, “Relationship? Slow down – I don’t even know what you can do for me. Let’s not put the cart ahead of the horse.”

This is the question more commonly being asked in a happenstance business encounter. The client is not interested in an investment relationship, but they might be interested in a simple services relationship. It depends on what we can do for them. So, answer that question. Do it with what I’ll call the “Escalator Speech.”

The Escalator Speech should be limited to about 20 seconds and culminate in a question. The rest of the time is entirely up to the client—who can, after all, choose to invite you to continue the conversation on whatever building floor they choose.

Your “speech” needs to sound something like this:

Mr. Jones, I’m James Smith from XYZ Associates. We’ve worked with a customer of yours, ABC, and I’m acquainted with Janice Johnson of your firm. We work to improve trust levels in our clients’ sales processes. It’s always seemed to me there’s untapped potential for improved customer relationships in your insurance business by changing the way benefits payments are transmitted. Do you see it that way too? Why isn’t there more personal contact at that critical point in the industry’s business process models?

Then shut up and listen for the rest of the escalator ride. There are two possible outcomes to this conversation, and both are good:

  1. The client says, “You’re right, it’s a constant source of amazement to me that we don’t do a better job on that. Let’s talk some more about how you’ve gotten organizations to do that.” Good conversation ensues.
  2. The client says, “Ah, that’s what many people think, and it sounds right at first, but there’s a hidden reason it doesn’t happen this way, and I’ll let you in on it. The reason is….” Even better conversation ensues, because you learned something, and the client had the pleasant experience of giving a smart person an even better education. They get to look smart – always a fun thing. Your original insight doesn’t have to be right; it just has to be intelligent and thoughtful.

The Escalator Speech starts off by giving the bare minimum of information required for social comfort, then it offers a piece of free insight to the client, ending with a genuine question. This gives the client total control over whether to take the conversation further.

DO I CARE WHO THEY ARE? THE STAIRS SPEECH

Both the elevator and escalator speeches happen in a business context – a semi-random event within a non-random environment. But other situations arise as well. You sit next to someone on an airplane who turns out to be a potential client. You go to a neighborhood cocktail party and run into someone who works at a potential client organization.

In such a situation, even an escalator speech is presumptive because the occasion is largely social. The impression you make here is based first on obeying the social roles that govern the situation. And rule number one is you don’t get deeply into business.

In this situation, if someone says, “What do you do?” they’re not inviting you to assess their business, much less pitch your own. And remember, they probably don’t care much about your answer. Their question was a social nicety; they didn’t come to this event looking for business contacts.

Here, you need to say something like this:

“I spent 12 years in consulting. I then joined a small healthcare client company as their CEO. Last year, I started my own consulting firm focused on the health industry. And you – what do you do?”

The rules of this dialogue are that it’s back and forth, and you shouldn’t spend more than 30 to 60 seconds on your side before tossing the conversational ball back to the other side. Your only business objective here is to give the client enough information to know if they care who you are. If they do care, then further discussions can be held later – exchange business cards or email addresses, and look for signs that the other party prefers to start talking about football. Follow their lead.

Let’s call this the Stairs Speech – so named because you take it one step at a time.

The next time someone says to you, “So, tell me, what is it that you do?” ask yourself what that questioner really wants to know.

  • Are they just being polite? Give the Stairs Speech.
  • Are they interested in what you might do for them? Use the Escalator Speech to escalate from monologue to dialogue.
  • Are they interested in investing serious time and money in you? Use the Elevator Speech to show you’re on top of your business and respectful of their time.

There are several ways to get up in a building, and only one involves an elevator.

Handling Sales Rejection Without Becoming a Narcissist

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You know the age old saying, “It’s not personal, it’s business.” We’ve all heard it countless times, in office settings and in the movies. It may be something you try to tell yourself after a deal you worked for so hard for goes sour – yet you still have trouble believing it.

Yet, with all that wisdom awash in the atmosphere – why is it that we continue to take sales rejection so personally?

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It’s one of the hardest parts of selling – that knife edge space where company revenue stream meets interior personal psychology. The fact is – it is business, and it is personal.

Most solutions share one problem; they are narcissistic, leading the salesperson to believe it’s all about them.

But it’s not all about you. And the sooner you build that insight into your selling, the better.

This is a topic I wish I had written more about in Trust-based Selling, so I’m glad to amplify it here.

Why Dealing with Rejection Messes You Up

Let’s start with the obvious. If you’re not getting some rejections, you’re probably not taking enough risks. So if you avoid rejection, you’re avoiding risk; which means you’re losing sales.

But that’s not all. If you’re avoiding rejection, on some level you know it. If you know you’re avoiding something, you know you’re not doing what you know you could do; you’re not living up to your own self-image. That soaks up a whole lot of energy; it makes you inward focused and unhappy. None of which helps you as a salesperson.

So avoiding rejection hurts your business, and it makes you feel unhappy. Inability to handle rejection hurts you everywhere it counts.

The Three Usual Solutions to Rejection—and Their Weaknesses

There are three common approaches to dealing with rejection. I’ve given them each distinctive names. They are:

1. Endure it. This approach suggests there is some natural relationship between the numbers of rejections you have to endure to get to the good stuff. If you spin the wheel long enough, your number will come up. Get out there and dial for dollars.

The problem: it’s hard to treat prospects as people if you’re just counting their no’s.

2. Shrink it. This approach says. “It’s not about you, it’s not personal, you shouldn’t feel hurt.” Bring in the shrinks; think your way into not feeling.

The problem: it really is personal. In fact, it’s about as personal as it gets – and you know it.

3. Motivate through it. This approach relies on getting you ‘motivated,’ which usually means pumped up, psyched, and able to just play through the pain.

The problem: prospects don’t appreciate being bulldozed.

Why “Handling Rejection” is Narcissistic

All those solutions have one defect: they’re all about managing your psychological response to an issue called “rejection.” But here’s the key: rejection is an imaginary concept – a fiction, a figment of your imagination.

“Rejection” is a belief that if something happened that affected you, then it must have happened to you – that it was about you, concerning you, because of you, etc. And that’s what I’ll refer to as narcissism – a tendency to view everything as being about you.

(Not-so-ancient societies used to believe that the sun and the planets revolved around the earth. There’s a very natural human tendency to believe that we are at the center of our own anthropomorphic universe, our own private Idaho. Much of growing up is getting over this idea, and most of us are only partially successful at it).

Instead of “dealing with rejection” let’s focus on what’s really going on in the real world – the world outside your head.

Curiosity is the Real Antidote to Rejection

Think of selling as a scavenger hunt. On a scavenger hunt, you go off into a relatively unstructured environment, looking for pre-defined items to collect. Of course, you’re interested in winning; but the game itself is fun as well.

In the game, you decide how and where to spend your time. You set priorities, and notice how and what your competitors are doing. There is skill involved in collecting the items. And you often end up in blind alleys when a particular path didn’t pan out for you.

What you don’t feel on a scavenger hunt is rejection. There simply is no such thing. It is not about you; it is just a process involving many people, of whom you are one.

All you need on a scavenger hunt is curiosity. And curiosity is a perfect emotion to bring to sales. Curiosity means you don’t have to ignore your emotions, or play through them, or convince yourself you’re immune to them. Instead, you’re just paying attention to a different set of issues. Let’s call those issues ‘reality.’

In the real world, nothing is being rejected; there are simply solutions and fits, or not-solutions and not-fits. It’s not a struggle – it’s a puzzle. If you’re a good solution to that puzzle and are curious enough, you might solve it. If you’re not a good solution for it, and/or aren’t curious, then you probably won’t.

So where’s ‘rejection’ in all this? In your head. So just stop it.

Three Steps You Can Take to Reject Rejection

1. Make a list of questions you’d like to know about each of your key prospects. Real questions, things you’d really like to learn.

2. Just as you would in a scavenger hunt, keep track of what you’ve learned at each blind alley. You don’t win scavenger hunts sitting back at the office; you learn by going out and finding blind ends.

3. Be alive. Have fun. Keep your ears open. There’s no point in blinding your senses in a scavenger hunt; why blind your emotions in the sales hunt? Just use them to figure out the puzzle.

Did the post-Copernican western world feel “rejected” by the sun when they found out it didn’t revolve around the earth? Of course not – though they probably did feel deflated. But that was just because they were cosmologically narcissistic. You don’t have to be that dumb or that narcissistic.

Nobody can reject you without your complicity in defining ‘rejection.’ Any time you hear ‘handling rejection,’ learn to laugh at yourself for thinking it’s about you – and go back to being curious.

Santa Does Trust-based Selling

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Some of you are partaking in the annual ritual of watching Christmas movies – most notably the perennial It’s a Wonderful Life. This is not about that movie.

Instead, I want to remind you of an interesting lesson from the seasonal also-ran, Miracle on 34th Street.

Nominally a cute tale about the existence of Santa Claus and the power of belief (featuring a starry-eyed 6-year-old girl, and the comic relief of the US Post Office dragging in all those letters to Santa as proof-of-existence), it has a hidden gem buried within about the power of trust-based selling.

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The “real” Santa (a kindly old man who is or is not deluded) is employed by Macy’s in its flagship store as, of course, Santa. Santa is nearly fired by a numbers-driven Type-A middle manager for suggesting to a shopper that she buy the toy from Gimbel’s across the street.  (The cynical shopper confounds the manager by congratulating him on “this wonderful new stunt you’re pullin’.”)

This “stunt,” of course, is the Acid Test of Trust-based Selling: the willingness to refer a customer to a direct competitor, if that is the right thing to do for the customer. But it doesn’t end there, with a whimsical sappy Santa.

Macy’s President happens along and instantly realizes that Santa’s customer focus is far more effective for Macy’s than the conventional approaches to sales.  He announces:

…not only will our Santa Claus continue in this manner…but I want every salesperson in this store to do precisely the same thing. If we haven’t got exactly what the customer wants, we’ll send him where he can get it.

No high pressuring and forcing a customer to take something he doesn’t really want. We’ll be known as the helpful store, the friendly store, the store with a heart, the store that places public service ahead of profits.

And, consequently, we’ll make more profits than ever before.

Exactly.

If you focus relentlessly on the customer, you-the-seller will do just fine. Even better “than ever before.”

The good news is you don’t have to believe in Santa Claus to do this. You just have to follow the Four Trust Principles:

  • Customer focus for the sake of the customer
  • Long- not short-term timeframe
  • Transparency
  • Collaboration

Sometimes we view this as a paradox: relentlessly focusing on the Other ends up serving You as well – but only if you do it genuinely, rather than as a means to an end.

Paradoxical yes, but a Truth well-known to most who delve into human relationships. You get back what you put out. Do unto others. Pay it forward. Be the change you want. And so forth.

Truly a message for the season. And not just for sellers.

Is it Ever Trustworthy to Go Around Someone to Get to the C-Suite?

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Today’s post is by Trusted Advisor Associates’ own Andrea Howe and Stewart Hirsch.

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We just led a webinar on how to take a trust-based approach to building C-suite relationships. (We decided in the moment that we should call it the Hirsch and Howe Show.) There was a great question asked that we didn’t have time to adequately address, so we’re taking a moment to share our thoughts here.

For context, our webinar proposed three fundamental steps to building trust-based C-suite relationships:

  1. Get your “why” right: Your reason for pursing a relationship affects everything.
  2. Get your “what matters” right: Look thoughtfully and expansively at what would motivate them to engage with you.
  3. Get your “how” right: Follow trust-based best practices for (a) getting and (b) navigating the CXO conversation.

The question came up in our discussion about getting your “how” right:

What if your client below the C-level exec is blocking your access to develop a new relationship with the exec—do you ever go around him or her?

The short answer is possibly, but IF AND ONLY IF, two conditions are met:

  1. You have a darned good reason.
  2. You then do it very skillfully.

First, the darned good reason part.

The hardest work to do with this situation may not actually be the difficult conversations that are required should you choose what we’ll call a “go-around,” but rather the mental prep required to assess the situation in a trustworthy way in the first place.

What’s key is making sure you’ve asked yourself WHY you want access to the C-suite person (step 1 above), and that you’ve arrived at a good answer from a trust-building standpoint.

Let’s pause here for a quick poll: What are good reasons, in general, to pursue a C-Suite relationship? Choose all that apply:

  • So we can show them our capabilities
  • Because <insert competitor name> is in there
  • To show them we’re better than the competition
  • To secure a champion to help us expand our offerings
  • Because the lower levels aren’t listening
  • Because they’re the real decision-makers
  • Because we’re getting nudged/pressured/pushed to have more “eminence” by our colleagues
  • All of the above
  • None of the above

The answer that reflects the most trustworthy approach is … drumroll … none of the above.

Think about it: every other option is actually a demonstration of high self-orientation—sometimes sneakily-so. In other words, it’s you wanting something for your benefit, not for theirs. The same is true when it comes to go-arounds.

Going a little deeper, consider what’s often at the source of (and problematic about) each of these motives:

The Why The Source What’s Problematic
So we can show them our capabilities ·      The desire to be heard, which is often far greater than our desire to listen

·      Ego needs

·      A firm norm/assumption that this is the right thing to do

 You’re leading with what matters to you, not them.

 

You become a hammer searching for a nail.
Because <insert competitor name> is in there ·      The desire to win/gain power <Competitor name> might be doing really well by your client. If you’re a true trusted advisor, you’ll celebrate that (gasp!).
To show them we’re better than the competition ·      The desire to win/gain power

·      Ego needs

 If they’re happy with their current provider, they’re not going to believe you’re better. And you won’t convince them that you’re better by talking at them about your capabilities.
To secure a champion to help us expand our offerings ·      The desire to win/gain power While you care about expanding your offerings, it is highly unlikely that your client cares one iota about expanding your offerings. Leading with your desire to gain more share of the account/market because that’s what your annual goals state (for example) is all about you. Your needs aren’t their problem.
Because the lower levels aren’t listening ·      Avoiding rejection/embarrassment

·      Avoiding what might be hard work to improve these relationships

 It’s possible they’re not listening because you’re not being effective, or because they don’t trust you—a go-around therefore doesn’t address the real issue(s), and might even exasperate things. Imagine if someone tried to go around you.
Because they’re the real decision-makers ·      The desire to win/gain power

·      Ego needs

 Decisions are often left to—or strongly influenced by—those very people you are trying to go around. So the “go-around” could backfire, because the decision-maker and those in the client organization at your level are both annoyed.
Because we’re getting nudged/pressured/pushed to have more “eminence” by our colleagues ·      Avoiding rejection/embarrassment

·      Ego needs

 This is a you-centric motive, not a client-centric motive. And it’s an internal issue to address, not a client issue to address.

 

If some of what’s in the table above seems harsh, well … our language may be too strong to apply to you. Or maybe not. Consider that you can be a well-meaning person of high integrity who likely still falls prey to some variation of what we’ve sketched out simply because you’re a card-carrying member of the human race. The mindsets we describe are actually common, and we’ve heard them from many humans.

Also consider that, in general, everyone’s first “why”—in other words, your rational reason for a go-around—is almost always wrong.

So, what are some good reasons for a go-around?

We brainstormed, and so far we have come up with only one clear, unambiguous reason:

The project, organization, or CXO her/himself is at serious risk—either because the lower-level person is incompetent or is sabotaging (perhaps consciously, perhaps not).

That’s it.

If your situation meets the criterion above, read the next paragraph. If not, jump two paragraphs down.

How do you go-around skillfully?

We came up with at least three best practices:

  1. Talk to people inside your firm about your plans so that you understand how other firm relationships with the client will be affected. You need a full understanding of just how much risk the go-around implies. The stakes could be high. A go-around that backfires, and upsets the CXO enough to call the firm’s relationship into question, could be very costly. Buy-in from your colleagues is worth seeking.
  2. Be transparent with the person you’re going around, either before the go-around, or immediately after, with one exception. The exception: if the person is a “bad actor”—i.e. someone whom you truly believe, based on evidence, is likely to act in an unethical way.
  3. Name It and Claim it with the CXO. Use caveats to show your sensitivity to the situation. Acknowledge that you’re taking this risk because you wholeheartedly believe it’s in her/his best interests, rather than yours. Let it be known that you’ve been (or will be) transparent with the person you’ve just gone-around. In other words, handle it with an “all cards on the table” kind of approach that belies your own sensitivity and vulnerability in the matter.

What are some viable alternatives to a go-around?

We brainstormed this, too, and came up with two for starters. Note they are not mutually exclusive:

  • Take yourself out of it. If a relationship with “the boss” is the right thing to pursue for the right reasons, but your current relationship(s) are creating a barrier, then look for someone else in your firm who could work that C-level relationship instead of you. If it’s really about what’s best for the client, then you, personally, are not all that important.
  • Work the relationship with the person who seems to be gatekeeping. This may be the hardest of all the options—maybe even harder than the go-around. Dare to put the gatekeeping issue on the table. Find out why she or he is hesitant or concerned or just plain obstructive. What’s missing in your relationship? In what ways might you not seem trustworthy enough for that person to take a risk on you? An honest dialogue could open many doors wide—including the one leading you directly to the executive. You might also discover ways to make the gatekeeper look good for being the one to bring you in to the CXO.

Now you have the Hirsch and Howe point of view on the matter. And now you know why we couldn’t adequately answer the question in the two minutes that we had on the webinar. It’s complex, with a lot of nuance, and requiring masterful mindsets as well as skill sets.

Kind of like the nature of trust.

It’s Always Risk-on for Selling

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In the financial trading community, there is a concept called “risk-on, risk-off,” or RoRo for short. It refers to the general market sentiment at a point in time. Simply put, if the prevailing trend is toward more risky and aggressive instruments (e.g., stocks, emerging markets), that is called “risk-on.” If the trend is toward less risky and conservative assets (e.g., cash, developed markets), that is called “risk-off.” Traders have evolved all kinds of complex strategies to deal with this indicator.

What does that have to do with selling professional services? It’s tempting to view selling as a series of RoRo moments, where sometimes it’s appropriate to take a risk and sometimes it’s not. Maybe the client has become complacent, and you need to shake things up. Or maybe the client seems overwhelmed, and you need to back off. It feels only natural to construct our responses to situations based on our readings of “risk-on, risk-off” coming from the client.

That might seem natural, but most often it’s more wrong than right. In selling, particularly in the complicated worlds of complex or professional services, we systematically make one mistake. We err mostly in one direction. We keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. We have a built-in bias to view the world as risk-off, and we need to shift our attitude toward risk-on.

People and Risk

Adult humans have a well-developed sense of fear and suspicion. Maybe it comes from our ancestors’ close encounters with saber-toothed tigers (that food looks enticing, but I’ll pass it up if I have to walk too close to the tigers). If we view the world as full of such threats to our existence, then we behave in a risk-off mode, being very careful.

If we view the world as risk-off, we will guard against a Bad Thing Happening. And if that means we leave a Good Thing Undone, we are fine with that decision. Who wants a close encounter with a sabere-toothed tiger, anyway?

But suppose the world is risk-on, and we constantly behave cautiously. Suppose we always leave Good Things Undone, not taking a small risk, never daring to take the next step forward. Suppose we are so afraid of doing “sins of commission” that we constantly commit “sins of omission.” That can end up very badly, too.

The world of sports has plenty of adages about this situation. No pain, no gain. Just do it. Swing the bat. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. As Wayne Gretzky put it, “You’ll never miss a shot you never take.”

Finally, add the dimension of time. If the Good Things are far in the future and the Bad Thing is here-now, we are likely to focus much more on the here-now Bad Thing even if the future benefit is much greater and well worth the risk. In fact, even if the Bad Thing is far in the future and the Good Thing is here-now, people tend to be very cautious about the future negative, even if it is smaller than the positive.

Again, we have sayings: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Really? Unless you’re starving, turning down a two-to-one deal isn’t very smart. A poker player who constantly folds will never lose big, but he’ll slowly bleed dry. The suitor who never asks out the enamorata is never rejected, but nonetheless always dines alone.

Risky Business

Business is full of risks, to be sure. Hiring the wrong employee, investing in the wrong market, those things are real and we are right to worry about them. But in selling, the risk of not doing the right thing is a lot higher than the risk of doing the wrong thing. We act as if we are in a risk-off world, but in selling, more often than not it’s a risk-on world.

The saber-toothed tigers we face in selling seem to come in droves: The client might be offended. I don’t want to look unprofessional. If my price is too high they might not buy. That might be inappropriate. I don’t really know that area of finance. It’s too early in the relationship. They might not like me. They might go with my competitor. My peers won’t respect me. I might be wrong. I might say the wrong thing.

So we do nothing. We take the easy way out, the path of least resistance, all the while telling ourselves that we have avoided an imminent saber-toothed tiger. And sure enough, no tiger appears. By folding our hand, we avoid catastrophic loss. But we never win, or never win much. We act like the world of sales is risk-off when in reality it is far more risk-on.

Fighting Human Nature

The world of product sales approaches the problem as mainly one of motivation. Sales books and conferences are full of admonitions to get out there and try some more, it’s a numbers game, don’t take rejection personally, read this book, listen to that motivational speaker.

You probably don’t see yourself that way. You think motivational speakers are cheesy, and losing a widget sale pales in comparison to the agony of being told that your particular service just isn’t all that good. You need something deeper, something that really changes your approach to risk-taking. And reviewing the odds isn’t going to cut it. It’s human nature we’re dealing with here, and the brain is over-matched when it’s up against the heart.

Instead, recognize the powerful-positive role that risk-taking actually plays in sales. Unlike with saber-toothed tigers, the act of taking a small risk now actually lowers the odds of a big risk later. Yes—small risk-taking mitigates big risk. If you take risks, you lower the bigger risk.

Think of a vaccine. For the small pain of a shot in the arm, we gain protection against a plague. For the small risk of a hand extended, we gain greater likelihood of a conversation to follow. For the small risk of making a phone call instead of an email, we lower the risk of later emails being left unread.

The key to taking more risks lies in taking a broader view: the risk is not the risk of one transaction now; it is part of a series of transactions to happen over time. In that broader view, taking the small risk now is the least risky thing you can do.

This is where we part ways from our product-selling brothers and sisters. They have to sell widgets, pretty much one widget at a time. It is much easier for us, selling complex services, to envision relationships and lengthy time horizons. And that is the key to mastering the risk problem.

The world of sales is far more risk-on than we think; the environment is much more welcoming of small risks than we think. The key to beating risk lies precisely in taking the small risk of making that phone call, commenting on that shared intimacy, being transparent about your experience, and being open about your price.

It’s a risk-on world out there for those of us willing to see the bigger picture.