Episode #294: How Good Are Your Supporting Documents To Drive The Sale

Japan just devours data, statistics and information. When you visit some scenic spot, there will be an amazing level of data available about that venue. The announcement on the subway train when you arrive at your stop will warn you that there is a specific gap in so many centimeters between the platform and the train, so be careful. I first discovered this data addiction when I was here as a student, some forty years ago. I attended a scholarly conference on Sino-Japanese Relations, as that was my area of specialty, trying to combine my Chinese and Japanese skills to access original source documents for my research. A Japanese Professor was making a point in his lecture about the differences between China and Japan and he used a story about the introduction of Zen into Japan. Zen originated in India and came to Japan via China, so various Japanese Zen monks would make the perilous journey to China, to study there.

There was a Zen story involving a well and a bucket to make some esoteric point about the condition of humanity. In the Chinese version, the concentration was on the broader allegorical point. The Japanese version had that too, but went into supreme, finite detail about the dimension of the well, its construction, how the rope and bucket were made, etc.

This love of detail and data still permeates in business today as well. Because there is that distinct fear of making a mistake, one of the clear antidotes in Japan, is to amass masses of data, so that you can analyse everything before you take any decisions. We have the same thing in the West and we characterise it as “paralysis by analysis”. When we turn up to sell our widget, we had better come packing data, lots of data. This is a slippery slope though.

The temptation is to wade straight into the detail, the facts, the stats, the data. This is certainly what the buyer wants, but we have to temper that data obsession. The data doesn’t sell anything. We know we buy benefits, we buy the application of the benefits, we buy results and the data is just the detail to explain how we can provide the required benefits. We should certainly lug around a lot of information to the sales meetings, but we shouldn’t show it.

My recommendation is to have the product catalogue, the flyers etc., at the ready but either leave them in your bag or place them on the seat next to you, well out of sight. If you put them on the table, the magnetic attraction will be too great and the buyer will want you to start wading through the minutiae.

The point is to know which part of that thick, bulging catalogue you should go to or which Flyer you need to bring forth. We need to find out what they need first, before we have any idea if we actually have what they need. If we do, then we need to dole out the information sparingly in the meeting. We only have limited buyer time, so that part should be concentrated on digging deep into how we can add value for them, such that they don’t do it themselves or do it with our competitor.

The other part of this equation is do we have the information needed at two levels – very high level and the into the morass level. Our Flyers should have a structural split between the key points and the nitty gritty details. We should avoid the deep detail dive at this point, but assure the buyer we have it and they can parse the entrails later by themselves. If we don’t get to the benefits part, then this won’t become a purchase decision. It may not happen in the one meeting. Often, we will go away and put together a proposal. One key thing is to get the appointment for that discussion during that first meeting. Everyone is so busy and you don’t want to be ghosted, when you are trying to get things moving to the concrete stage. Set the day and time right there and lock them in.

When we are going through the Flyer or the catalogue, don’t just hand over the details and let them read it by themselves. We must control what they are looking at and we decide what that will be. Turn the document around to face them. Using your pen, draw their attention to the parts of the catalogue or the Flyer which you want then to look at. If it is an online meeting then share the screen. Use the annotation tool to draw lines on the document on screen, directing their attention to the key bits you need them to know.

There is an ocean of information in our materials and we need to be very time efficient as to which parts we highlight. Naturally, the materials must be set out professionally and must be clear in the presentation of data and information, such that it is easy for you to find and also easy to show to the buyer. If we need to leave supplementary materials with them then certainly do that, but don’t concentrate there, rather focus on the areas where the sales decision is most likely to be made. Your supporting materials should be just that – supports – not the dominant element in the sale. You are the key part of the sale and let’s make sure we keep the attention there.