Episode #173: Dealing With Buyers Who Won't Reveal Their Problems

The basics of professional selling requires good questioning skills on the part of the salesperson. We understand the buyer need and then we match that need with our solution. Pretty straight forward stuff really. What do we do though when the buyer won’t reveal their real issues or are hiding the problem from us? This is a deal killer right there because you have no where to go. In desperation you start pitching your solution in the faint hope lightening strikes and you chance upon exactly what they need.

When we analyse the reasons for this buyer smoke and mirrors we can see a couple of factors at work. In the initial rapport building phase of the sales call, we failed to establish sufficient trust for the buyer to impart their woes to us. We may have assumed too much about their level of interest and just started banging away, interrogating them about all the dirty laundry of their company. Japan is pretty good at small talk in the early minutes of the meeting. This is not going to help us much though, because it doesn’t address the trust issue to any great extent.

We need to be looking for connections with the buyer such as shared experiences or people we know in common. Maybe we have the same alma mater or have lived in the same city or travelled to the same places or share the same hobby. We should use the start of the meeting to try and ascertain if we have anything in common. Familiarity breeds comfort in this case.

We also need to establish our credibility from the get go. Our Credibility Statement has some layers. We explain our company’s business in very broad terms. Next we provide an example of where we have helped another similar company, quoting some verifiable data points around results as evidence. We make the suggestion that “maybe” we could do the same for them. It is important that we say “maybe”, because the client doesn’t want to be given any hard sell. Finally, we ask their permission to ask questions in a way which makes it hard to refuse. How do we do that?

For example, “Buyer san, I have a bit of a dilemma facing me. As you know we have been delivering training around the world for the last 108 years and 58 years here in Japan. As you might expect we have developed a huge curriculum as a result. If I can get a hint of what would be of help to you, mentally, I will pinpoint only those parts of our curriculum which are the most relevant and of the highest value for you. I know your time is very valuable, so I don’t want to waste it. In order for me to do that, would you mind if I asked a few questions to see if we have something which may be of use to you?”.

Having established our credibility, we now begin structuring our questions in such a way that the buyer is inclined to give us an honest answer, rather than trying to hide from our enquiry. We project the buyer into the future, say three to five years ahead, about what would success look like for the firm at that time. This makes it easy for the client to answer because it is all aspiration, rather than any hard facts about the company. Now we ask them, “Given these are the goals for the company, can I get some idea of how you see the current market, particularly in relation to your competitors. How do you think you are doing against them?”. The focus is not on company secrets, but a comparison with their rivals and how they are doing. This is easy to answer. Once we have the “As Is” and their “Should Be” information, we ask a simple question. “I understand where you want the firm to go and where you are now, so may I ask you what has been slowing you down to bridge that gap?”. This will bring out some of the hurdles using this Barrier Question.

Finally we ask about what is in it for them if they are successful in reaching those goals. “I read recently that even the Keidanren, the Japan Business Federation, is advocating that companies get rid of the old system of everyone getting the exact same annual wage increases and instead start basing the rewards and promotions on performance. It sounds like leaders are going to be held more accountable for results than in the past. If you were able to make your targets, given this new environment, what would success mean for you personally?”

By asking these pointed questions in this way we make them disarming and easier to answer. The key is to build trust at the start, establish our credibility and get permission to ask questions. Once we have that we draw the answers out of the buyer in a very indirect way, which is hard to resist. The other component is that this whole communication piece must be practiced and polished, so that we can deliver it is a very mild non-threatening manner to relax the buyer. If we do that, our opportunities to cement a relationship with this firm increase dramatically.