Episode #144: Stop Slamming The Square Peg Into The Round Hole When Selling

One of the most dangerous people on the planet is the salesperson who doesn't listen well enough to the client’s needs. They miss the key cues, misunderstand the problem, can’t override their fixation on what they want and do most of the talking during the sales call. They wonder why getting an agreement to buy is so hard.

One of my sales coaching students was relating how he took the client meeting into negative territory from the very kick off of the sales conversation and then proceeded to dig the hole deeper and deeper for himself. Small talk at the start is needed to set the foundation for building the trust, as buyer and seller get to know each other. In this case, the small talk conversation went into a death spiral. This is when the redirect button is pushed to make it more meaningful for the buyer.

In this case, he just lent harder on the shovel and dug faster. If we find things are not going well, then stop talking and start asking questions. This allows the buyer to feel in more control to direct things the way they want them and for you to regroup and prepare to take back the reins of the conversation. Usually we have the selling plan, but the buyer doesn’t have the buying plan. They are wandering around with no direction in mind, because they expect to hear what they need from us. We need to keep that conversation on track.

When we hear what the client is trying to achieve, the solutions we suggest have to be in line with delivering that. You would think that is the most logical thing in the world, but salespeople do the most surprising things. They try to redirect the client’s needs, to match their own needs. If there is a higher commission being paid on one product, over the others, then they want to stress that product, regardless of whether that is the best one for the client or otherwise.

They may be under pressure from their boss to push a solution that benefits the company the most. This is where you start getting into hole digging territory. The client may be following our advice because we did such a very good job of establishing rapport and building trust at the outset. When we FOIST the wrong solution on the client, we are haemorrhaging that trust immediately. The ROI we should be focused on is the client’s ROI not ours.

Our intrepid hero was sadly successful in convincing the client to buy the thing which would have zero return. When we had our coaching session together, I was drilling down into what would the client get in return for their hard earned money, based on the conversation that had covered what the client was trying to achieve. It was obviously zero value for the client but good for the seller, who was having trouble moving this product. Great, but this destroys your reputation in the market. You do get the sale and usually the size of the sale is a peanut, as it is the first sale. You blow all your credibility at the start and then the client tells everyone in town you are radioactive and to be careful of dealing with you. The lifetime value of the client means that the loss is enormous, when measured that way. That peanut will also be expensive, given the way it will shred your reputation.

We worked on a more custom solution for the client and took the solution in a completely different direction. This customisation process is always the best idea. We tend to have ready to go, off the shelf solutions, which are cost and time effective, but these won’t always match the needs of the client. The more customised the solution, the better in terms of client satisfaction, ROI and perceived value. Make the solution fit the client’s needs, rather than make the client fit in with the seller’s needs. No more square peg solutions please.