Episode #28: Don't Tell Me, Sell Me

Nothing happens in business until a sale occurs. By the way, we are all in sales, whether we know it or not. If we are doing sales properly we are providing an immensely valuable service to our buyers. We are connecting them with goods and services which will help to grow their businesses. We fail our clients when we are not professional in sales and that means the ability to understand what the client needs. It is so simple so you have to ask yourself why so few Japanese salespeople do this?

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately. We have immigration in Japan but it is disguised. Prime Minister Abe has officially announced that his administration will never adopt an “Immigration policy” to address the acute labour shortage the country is facing at the moment. In reality though, they are bringing in migrant workers under the Government’s Trainee system. However when the Labor Standards Inspection Office inspected 5,672 workplaces hiring foreign trainees they found 71% were violating labor laws, including work hours, safety measures and wage payments. Vietnamese workers in Japan have grown tremendously. They have increased nearly 8 times in number over between 2011 and 2016.They rank number one ahead of workers from the Phillippines and Brazil. If we defined an immigrant as a person who has resided in a foreign country for a year, then by that measure Japan has 400,000 immigrants here. This would place it fourth overall among advanced economies behind Germany, the US and the UK. Japan needs foreign workers because of the population decline but is not ready for an open immigration scheme just yet.

This is episode number #28 and the topic is Don’t Tell Me, sell me.

Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

He slid effortlessly into the chair and before I knew it, he had popped open the oyster shell of his laptop and was pointing his screen menacingly in my direction. Uh oh! Wow, powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide bombarded me with detailed data, specs, diagrams and text information. After about 20 minutes he stopped the torture. “Incredible”, I thought, “he hasn’t managed to ask me even one teensy weensy question during this session of our first meeting”. His business card announced he was the Sales Director – that seemed a definite worry if he was responsible for others. He was in his forties, so he was no rank kid. I imagine this is how he has been operating his entire work life. In this day and age how could that be possible?

The irony of this sales presentation was that I had requested it. I was in fact, a very hot prospect. I had heard his President at a function talking about the new whizbang service their firm offered and I was intrigued. So intrigued, I approached the speaker and asked that he send one of his crew over to see me.

I should have suspected something was amiss though, by the reaction of the President, when I made my “please visit me” request. Did he become buoyant with anticipation of a sale and reassure me that this product was the best thing since sliced bred? Surprisingly aloof, I found him, in fact almost disinterested. Was this a Nordic thing, I wondered or just his personality? I will never know, but what I did think to myself was, how important it is in sales to be positive and upbeat about your product at all times. I made a personal note to myself to always become effusive about our offerings anytime someone asks me about them. In sales always radiate confidence and belief from the word go.

So back to the sales meeting, after a death of a thousand power point slides, I miraculously revived and started questioning the Sales Director. Why? Well because despite his incompetence, I still had a need. In the end though, I was not a buyer.

What could he have done with me? He could have asked me a few questions to ascertain what I was interested in. I asked for the meeting after all, so there is a big hint there. What was it the President said in his presentation that grabbed my attention and interest? The Sales Director could have holstered his weapon instead of drilling me with detail, dross and pap. Of the ten functionalities of the whizbang, there were only two or three that were of any match with what I needed. There were many, many slides but I did remember a couple that seemed the most relevant. We could have dispensed with all the irrelevant detail and gone straight to the finish line with the “hotties”, those slides with the greatest match for what I needed. We could have spent the bulk of our time talking about the key aspects which were most likely to lead to a sale. We had limited time and he limited his own chances of gaining a new client by telling me everything I didn’t need to know, instead of only those things I really needed to know, to make a buying decision. Too much irrelevant detail distracts the buyer and confuses them and that is what he did with me.

So what can we learn from this example?

Reading this little vignette, I hope you take immediate action and self-audit whether you are any better at questioning than this guy? Do you have a sales process in place? Most salespeople don’t and so they have no ideas what they are doing. Are you spending the bulk of the client interface time, laser focused on where they have the greatest likelihood of success? Or are you waffling on about things which are of zero interest to the buyer?

If you are a “teller”, then stop doing that and become an “asker”. Here is a simple questioning formula that will help you get to the heart of the matter and uncover where you can be of the most assistance to the client. Start with either where the client is now or where they want to be – it doesn’t really matter which one you ask first. This is because what we are trying to understand is how big is the gap between “As Is” and “Should Be”.

By the way, unless the sense of immediacy about closing that gap is there, then there will probably be “no sale” today. Clients are never on the salesperson’s schedule and will take no action, unless they clearly understand there is a benefit to doing so. We have to create a sense of urgency in the buyer in order for them to take action. The way we frame our questions is how we do that. There is no point in just making a statement such as “you need to take action now”. That won’t work as well as coming up with carefully designed question which leads the buyer to their own decision, that they need to take action now. This is why statements are so bad and questions are so good.

Having plumbed the parameters of the current and the ideal situation, next enquire about why they haven’t fixed the issue already. This is an excellent Barrier Question and depending on the answer, you might be the solution to fix what they cannot do by themselves. We are often the solution for them to take action and fix the problem. They haven’t been able to do it sufficiently well enough yet from their own internal resources, so they need what we have to make it happen. Listen very carefully to the answers to the Barrier Questions, because that is where the persuasion points lie.

Finally, check on how this would help them personally – what is the Payoff? They may need this fix to keep their job, hit their targets, get a bonus, get a promotion, feel job satisfaction, rally the troops – there are a myriad of potential motivators.

Why would that particular question be important? When we come to explain the solution to the problem, being able to address their closely held personal win, helps to make the solution conversation more real and relevant.

If my sales Powerpoint slide maestro had applied some of these basics, he may have had a sale that day. As I said, I guess he was in his forties, so one can expect that he has probably been repeating this same flawed performance for decades. Adding it all up, the total amount of lost sales over that period would be mind boggling. Such a shame really and so unnecessary. If you want to see revenues go up, ask clients questions, before you mention one word about your magical widget. Don’t show anyone the solution until you know what their problem is. Do this one simple thing and watch the difference.