Episode #113: Client Need Clarity

Do we have a clear understanding of what the client’s needs are? These can vary beyond the obvious of increased profitability. It might be more important to gain market share, than drive profits. Or, it may be that profits are not as much emphasised, as investing in further growth. How do we seek to understand their needs and at the same time differentiate ourselves from every other salesperson, equally raring to go with their interrogation of the client’s needs? What does intelligent client question design look like?

If we access the client’s website and they are a listed company, we can find out a lot of basic information about the firm’s business, strategy and direction, from the annual reports there. If they are an unlisted company, we can do a media search on their activities to get an understanding of how they are positioning themselves in the market. Failing that we can use our industry knowledge to make some insightful comments about where the market is at the moment and ask them how they see it. Turning up at the client’s office and simply asking “what does your company do?” is pretty pathetic, but very common on the part of unprofessional salespeople.

We would be better off asking things like, “I see that your global CEO is calling for 15% profit growth in the annual report. Is that also the number for Japan or have you been allocated a higher number?”. Hopefully the answer will be 15% or a higher number. This will mean they are challenged to meet the targets and maybe, we can be of assistance. If they answered 15%, then we would ask, “So how realistic is that target in the current economic conditions in the market here?”. We are trying to get a feel for their confidence to achieve these targets by themselves.

Of course, we want to know where they are now in their business and where do they want to be, so we can gauge the size of the gap and their appetite for change. The worst sales conversations are with client’s who don’t see any big gap, that they can’t close on their own. No matter how whiz bang our question design, if they feel they are close to where they want to be, they won’t be seeing us as adding any value beyond what they can do internally. What do we do in this case?

We have two levers to pull – opportunity and fear. There might be some opportunities they haven’t thought of. In sales, we see many companies and what they do. We have the ability to take a successful idea from industry “A” which could be applied to industry “Z”. The people working in those distant industries never mix, but we do. We can see applications for ideas across industries and we should be playing a positive role to make these suggestions to help grow their business.

A recent example was when I was calling on a foreign manufacturer, who amongst other things, makes industrial drill bits. I asked the President if he had ever seen Blendtec’s “Will It Blend” videos on You Tube. These are viral video sensations by an American company making food blenders aimed at consumers. They are very strong blenders and to prove it, the President, wearing a white lab coat and protective goggles, blends iPads, mobile phones, hockey pucks, you name it, captures it on video and posts it up on YouTube. I told the Japan President, “what about a “Will It Drill” local version in Japanese, hosted by you because you speak Japanese, to highlight the strength of your product?”. Blender companies and drill company’s representatives are unlikely to ever meet, but we salespeople can be great connectors. There will be many such opportunities where we can prove ourselves useful to the client and we should be constantly thinking of how to do that. Even if nothing comes of “Will It Drill” as an idea, I have been able to differentiate myself from every other salesperson coming through his door. This is what we all want.

Often, not taking action is thought to be a safe option by clients, but it also has a cost – an opportunity cost. Our job is to open up the client’s thinking to taking the opportunity to aid their business in the future, by taking action now. We might say, “You know we talk about saving up for a rainy day, don’t we. Well in business too, we know there are up and down cycles the economy passes through and the worst situation is to face a downturn and run out of cash. You have mentioned you feel confident about the current situation of the business, but have you factored in dealing with a downturn in the next few years? We know it will come, we just don’t know exactly when. What if we were able to take the opportunity now to position ourselves to deal with that eventuality, would that be helpful for your business?”.

We are trying to move the clients thinking from “I am okay and don’t need to do anything” to “maybe I am not okay and need to do something I haven’t planned for yet”.

The other option is fear. We know our own situation and we have knowledge of our business, but we are not alone. We have competitors who can take actions which impact our business. Because we are in sales, we deal with many different clients and so we pick up valuable commercial intelligence about what is happening. We can try to open up the client’s mind to taking action now on the basis that they have competitors who can change the game.

We can say, ”You mentioned to me a minute ago, that you felt the situation in your business was stable and progressing on course. Are there any actions which could be taken by one of your competitors which would force that situation to change?”. By asking this type of question we are asking the client to think beyond what they can control, to a future business situation they cannot control. There may need to be some actions taken, to counter activities by competitors and these actions need to be taken now. We need to shake up their complacency about their business situation, by getting them to contemplate scenarios they may have neglected to consider.

Questioning skills are important to not only uncover the client’s existing needs, they are also critical to reveal needs the client hasn’t yet focused on sufficiently. The salesperson who can ask these types of questions is soon considered a valuable partner to the business bringing in some external “Brains Trust” elements to assist their company. This is how we can get business with clients and it is extremely low cost, in terms of client acquisition. All it requires is some hard thinking and good communication skills about how we can help them.