Episode #128: Helpful Selling

As salespeople, we can become very focused and tunnel vision like, when it cones to dealing with our clients. This is especially the case when they are existing clients. We get into very narrow territory, when we discuss possible solutions to help them achieve their goals. This process continues for many years and then one day you hear they bought a service or product you have, from a competitor. That hurts big time. That happened to me recently. The client bought leadership training from a guy I know who only specialises in sales training. I was really shattered to hear that news. I was thinking ,”why would you do that”. I realised I had not followed up enough with the President on what he needs. Painful lesson right there.

We have an exercise we do in our sales training, where we get a blank spreadsheet ready. Across the top, in the columns section , we write the names of our existing clients. Down the left side, in the rows section, we write down the various solutions we have to offer clients. Then in the cross section cells between the two, we mark with a letter Y for “yes” if they are already buying, or P for “possible”, if they are not yet buying. It is a shocking exercise, because you are always amazed at how many of your solutions your clients needs, but they are not buying from you.

Why is this? Mainly we get into a rut with our buyers. We only talk about the existing business. In effect, we become order takers. We never go back and investigate if the needs have changed, or if there are further needs. Maybe we tried to have those broader conversations in the past, but they didn’t have any interest. We therefore assume that subject is closed. This is why finding out they bought from your competitor really kills you. You have been calling on them regularly, but had no idea there was a possibility to sell them other things in addition.

We have to keep our eyes open too. There may be a change in the market that will make our offering more attractive and now possible, when it didn’t generate any interest previously. Or we might raise a new idea that hasn’t been discussed previously. I was calling on a client recently and had that experience. We had been talking about sales training for his team of new recruits. This was a follow up session to one completed a few months earlier and now the new recruits were on board, so we could get down to the details of when, where, who etc.

I happened to have seen him on video talking about a collaboration they had with a foreign chamber of commerce. I noted he was on camera making some remarks about the tie up. Here is the interesting thing. I didn’t jump in with a statement, “hey, I saw your recent video with X Chamber, you really need to do our High Impact Presentations Training, because it is a such a phenomenal course”. Like all serious salespeople, I asked him if he was likely to do more such videos? I was probing to see if there was a new and regular need emerging. We had never discussed High Impact Presentations before, because we were focused only on sales training.

He told me he was doing more and more of these types of things. So I asked, was there a need to do this at a high level, as the face and representative of the brand? He said “yes”. I asked, if I had something that was perfect for taking these types of skills to the highest level, would that help him in what he doing with the brand promotion? He said, “Yes” and that is when I introduced the High Impact Presentations Training.

Now if I hadn’t seen that video, I would have had no idea that there was a possibility of selling presentations training, as well as sales training. The point is we all get trapped into narrow gauge conversations discussing the detail of what we have done in the past and can become blind to possibilities for the future.

What should we do about that? We need to be disciplined to ask about new or different needs every time we contact the client. We don’t have to come across as desperate, grasping or pushy. We can just say, “I know we have been discussing X for some time now. Business is in constant movement though and needs change and new needs emerge. We haven’t had a discussion for a while on whether what we are currently doing is fully matching all of your needs. Have there been any changes to your business which may have created some needs we may be able to help with?”. This is a good closed question, which clarifies if there is or there isn’t a need. We want to know one way or the other. If it is a “no” we just park that information and make a note to ask on the next occasion, if there has been a change or not. And keep asking, every time.

These things are not difficult, but sometimes our habits defeat us. Having a mouthful of the bitter ashes of defeat, after finding out your competitor got there first, makes this type of exercise more compelling. There is no penalty for asking, provided you do it in the right way. So ask. Every time.