Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed the evolution of selling, from transactional to relationship to conceptual.  We discussed the ‘whys’ of the evolution of selling, and I admitted that, to be 100% truthful, few of the companies I talk to are implementing a conceptual model.

I also promised that, in an upcoming article, I’d discuss the objections to conceptual selling.  Even if company managers have been exposed to conceptual selling, they (in many cases) are reluctant to move toward this sales model.  There are numerous reasons why, and we should discuss them here.  Some have validity – but many do not.

Nobody is doing it that way in our industry.  This is one I hear a lot; in many cases it is true.  There are industries where conceptual selling has not made its presence known yet.  The problem with this objection is this – conceptual selling tends to be one of those areas where early adopters have a HUGE advantage.  For instance, in the world of integrated supply, the companies that first began are now juggernauts, and make it very hard for late entries.

There’s nothing for us to conceptualize.  This is perhaps the strongest argument against conceptual selling; that whatever the company is doing simply can’t be integrated into a larger concept worthy of top management’s attention.  I think that there’s a fear, or philosophy, that smaller product categories can’t incorporate larger ones.  That’s false.  I have a client whose primary business is fasteners, and yet they have successfully created an integrated supply program incorporating the larger consumables and OEM products that their clients need.  Again, it’s a situation where the early adopter wins.

We don’t want to lose our current business.  One of the big ‘fear factors’ of conceptual selling is the idea that, by setting salespeople up to sell conceptually, you lose the right to have your salespeople still sell in your current model, whether that be transactional or relationship.  That’s false.  Usually, a few probing questions early in the process will let you know whether or not the client is open to a conceptual solution – and if they are not, you can simply continue on your old pattern.  If they are, you can steer the conversation to a conceptual one while still retaining your old model as a fallback.

Our salespeople can’t do it.  This is another one I hear a lot, and again, it has a certain validity.  Conceptual selling requires a higher level of sales acumen, a stronger ability to think on one’s feet, and a higher level of versatility in the call.  That said, how do you know they can’t if you haven’t given them the opportunity?  With the proper training and backing, most competent salespeople can succeed at conceptual selling.

There are, of course, others, but these are the ones I hear/read the most.  Let me give you a moment of encouragement.  Conceptual selling is coming, if it isn’t in your industry already.  Period.  And if you’re not ready for it, your competitors will be.  You don’t have to adopt it immediately, but you should be somewhere in the process of building a conceptual sales model.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve done a technology reboot.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a ‘tech guy,’ by any means.  Hence, when I made my two laptop purchases, I felt that the path of least resistance would be to simply use a sync cord setup to transfer my files from my old laptop to my new one.  What I wasn’t aware of was that it would also transfer all my settings, bloatware, and other nonsense – meaning that after two laptops’ worth of syncing, my current laptop was about as fast as me swimming in a pool full of molten caramel.

So, after some research, I pulled all my files off, and did a clean install of Windows on my laptop, then reinstalled what I wanted.  Not surprisingly my laptop is now performing the way it should.  In the process, I also decided to update my email provider (to Google G-Suite) and my CRM (to Hubspot), and I’ve been pleased with both.  These are great sales tools.  Technology, applied correctly, can be a great asset to the sales process.  The trouble is, some technology gets in the way of the sales process.

Many times, the technology that we think is an asset is an impediment.  Here are a few examples I’ve seen:

Auto Dialers:  Let me be blunt.  I hate auto dialers with a passion.  Yes, I understand – they do speed the calling process, and in so doing, they can increase dials per hour.  Let me tell you this – it’s not worth it.  I’m sure a lot of people do what I do.  You see, if you call me (and I’m not occupied with a client), I will answer the phone, “Troy Harrison.”  In other words, you called me and you’re talking to me.  And after I answer the phone, my expectation is to hear a conversation.  But when an auto dialer gets me, there’s always that ten seconds or so of silence.  Enough time for me to silently curse, knowing that I’ve been hit by an auto dialer again and what comes afterwards probably isn’t going to be what I’m answering the phone for.  So….I hang up.  And I know most executives do the same thing.  So, what are you really gaining from the increased efficiency of an auto dialer?  Do yourself a favor.  Turn the dialer off, use your fingers, and punch in the number yourself.

Autoattendant:  Did you know that sometimes, your most expensive employee isn’t human?  By that, I mean the ‘hello, your call is important to us, please press pound for a company directory’ autoattendant.  Sure, it’s a savings, right?  You don’t have to pay a receptionist, you don’t have to deal with phone coverage on breaks, etc.  Sounds great.  Except…..I always wonder how many potential business is lost by people who, instead of pressing pound, press “disconnect” and call someone who will answer the phone.

A while back, I had a client who had an autoattendant that was particularly tough to surf my way through to get to his extension. When I explained how tough it was to talk to a person at his company, he said, “Sure, but you eventually did.”  I asked him, “Okay, who’s more determined to get to you – me or a paying customer?”  A week later, he had a receptionist.  If you’re in the business of providing customer service or selling, you need a human being for people to talk to.

Cumbersome CRM:  If you’ve ever been a sales manager implementing a CRM program, you know how tough it is to get salespeople to buy in and enter data.  If salespeople see CRM as an extra task, rather than an asset, it’s going to be even tougher.  To have a good, useful CRM, you need a system that integrates and ‘talks to’ the other key tools that salespeople use – particularly Outlook and your accounting system.  I realized how behind the times I was after updating my own systems.  How I use Hubspot, which integrates with my Google calendar and with my Outlook, as well as my Quickbooks system.  I can access any piece of data on my laptop, my phone, and my tablet.  Any email I send syncs with everything else.  I’m loving the visibility.  Hubspot might not be your best solution – there are solutions for companies large and small – but whatever you use, you need to make sure that salespeople have ONE place to enter data and access it.  Create situations where salespeople have to look in multiple programs, or worse, double or triple enter data, and your system is bound not to work.

The key to technology is to be tech savvy (use tech as an asset and adjunct to a great sales program) and not tech handicapped (have tech that impedes your customer relationships and your sales process).  While I’ve made some comments about specific systems, they are the ones that work for ME – they might not necessarily work for you.  Find ones that do, and use them.

Last time out, I covered what I saw as the “evolution of selling.”  As I see it, professional selling has moved through three significant phases in recent history:  First, there was transactional selling, where the object was to win the order.  Next, there was relationship selling, where the object was to form a bond with the customer that enabled all, or most, of the orders to simply be routine.  The next evolution – which is here now in some spots but is still ahead of the curve in many industries – is conceptual, where the customer is asked to buy into a concept of purchasing (such as fully integrated supply) where the actual transactions are managed by the vendor.

Since then, I’ve been hit with a number of messages asking me why I thought this evolution was happening, and where certain industries fell on the scale.  That’s the topic of today’s article – I’m going to answer the ‘why’ of the evolution.

The evolution from transactional sales depended on three things:  Product uniqueness, limited information, and a transactional buyer style.  All three of those things have changed or are changing.

Product uniqueness is difficult, if not impossible, to find these days – and where it exists, it seldom exists for long.  Even Viagra (to use one example) gained a competitor within a year, and now there are generics and multiple competitors.  The bottom line is that everyone has product.  Ultimately, pure product feature/benefit based transactional selling ends up being a race to the bottom, with competitors playing chicken over who will accept the lowest profit margin.

Limited information was another key element of transactional selling.  Even if the buyer knew, or was pretty sure, that a like solution to his/her problems could be found (and perhaps a price competition started), it took a lot of work in the pre-Internet days to find the competitor and get a sales presentation.  Now it’s easy.  Need a cost-per-page comparison on that new copier/printer the salesperson is showing you?  A few taps on your smartphone and you’ve got it before the salesperson can even get to the price.

Finally, Buyer styles have changed.  Buyers have less and less time to buy transactionally and review each purchase order and invoice – blanket PO’s and standing orders are the custom of the day.  That means that the salesperson whose focus is on capturing one order for one product can end up being left at the back of the line.

Relationship selling has also been affected by this.  I remember that, in the early 90s, my then father-in-law told me that the best thing I could do to advance my career and build more customer relationships was to learn to play golf.  Full disclosure:  I dislike golf.  Maybe someday I’ll take another swing at it (pun completely intended), but at the moment, I can think of 100 things I’d rather spend three hours doing than playing golf.

When I talk to golfing salespeople today, they often lament that it’s harder to get customers out of the office and on the course.  This is due to the fact that companies have done so much downsizing and right-sizing that important manager simply don’t have time to get out of the office – and when they do, the last thing they want to do is spend three hours with a salesperson.  That means that the traditional relationship-building activities (golf, lunches, dinners, football games, etc.) are going by the wayside – and not coincidentally, sales are being made more by rational business means than by buddy relationships.

This means that the environment has been perfectly prepared for conceptual selling.  Conceptual selling typically removes many of the transactional burdens from the buyer (hence freeing up a lot of time), and presents other operational advantages as well.  It also ends up being more profitable for the vendor, this getting away from the ‘game of chicken’ pricing model.

That said, it’s a fact that very few of the companies I’ve talked to either have implemented, or are implementing, a conceptual model.  We’ll discuss the objections to conceptual selling next time.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about what I called “the escalation of needs,” in which I described the change I’m seeing in selling. Today’s salesperson must work at a higher level, be more savvy, and more polished than ever before. However, based on emails I’ve received about this article, I’m not sure that I made my point very clearly. Maybe “escalation of needs” is the wrong phrase.

When I started my business in 2004, I would tell people that I was a sales trainer, and they would respond by asking, “Do you do product sales or service sales?” My response was always the same – that sales in the modern era was all about service. Everyone had great products, so the sale was about wrapping a great service model around those products and showing why you were the best resource. That was one evolution of selling, but there’s been another, more significant evolution.”

The evolution in the last twenty years has been from transactional selling to relationship selling. The new evolution – or maybe it’s a revolution, and I’ll explain why in a moment – is toward conceptual selling.

Let’s use, as an example, an industry that I spent quite a bit of time in as a salesperson – bearings, power transmission, and industrial supplies (that’s all one industry handled through one distribution channel, not three separate industries).

In the mid-90s, much of the selling was still based on products. Here are the features and benefits of my product, here’s how it fits your situation, please buy it – and as you’re buying the product, you’ll buy it from us. This was reinforced by our company’s emphasis on product training (I once went to a 3-day school on ball bearings), and on the emphasis on vendor ride-alongs to sell their products. Very little time was spent on our service model, and the relationships that were built were specifically between the salesperson and particular contacts at the customer. Not surprisingly, most customers split their business between us and competitors, depending on who had the “best” products. We were selling mostly to mid-level or low-level managers like stockroom or maintenance managers.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, smart salespeople evolved to a service selling model. Salespeople (including me) approached customers saying, “Look, we have great products. I’ll be frank; so do our competitors. You should buy from me because my company has the service eithic and expertise to better take care of your needs. When you’re in doubt, we’ll pick the products ourselves, and when you know what you want, we’ll make sure you get it, on time, when you need it.” This model worked better because instead of competing for transactions, we were competing for customers. And once you won that sale, you typically got a majority (although not necessarily a full share) of your customer’s spend in your product category. Since the company’s processes and people were so integral to the sale, the key relationship was between companies. Most of the time, the contacts remained the same, although sometimes we ended up in an assistant plant manager’s office.

Also in the late 90s came a concept called “Integrated Supply.” In the integrated supply concept, a salesperson approached the corner office and said, “Let’s agree that great service and great products are expectations, not bonuses. What we bring to the table is the ability to handle the entire procurement process for everything you consume in your plant. You’ll still get the great products. You’ll still get the great service. But, you can focus on your core business because you will no longer have to make mundane buying decisions about everything from conveyor rollers to toilet paper.” The concept of integrated supply was sold to the ultimate decision maker (Plant Manager, President, CEO, etc.), and all the supplies came along with it.

In the industrial environment, integrated supply took hold in the mid-2000s, and most large accounts buy this way now. This means, of course, that salespeople who are selling product or service to those same mid-level managers as before are left on the sidelines.
The same phenomenon is happening in multiple industries. For instance, the copier and office technology industry is evolving from product (buy our copier because it’s the best) to service (managed print services where we handle everything from copiers to toner to paper and charge you per-click) to conceptual (let us install software that manages your entire document process, from creation to duplication to archiving). It’s probably happening in your industry – and if you’re not working, or getting ready to work, at a conceptual level, you’re going to get left behind.

That’s my whole point. When selling went from transactional (product) to relationship (service), some good product salespeople got left behind because they couldn’t transition. There are still a number of transactional salespeople out there (and transactional sales processes), and they are struggling. However, that transition was less difficult, because in most cases, the contact remained the same – so the major change was in approach.

Today’s evolution is tougher, because now relationship salespeople are getting left behind. They’re finding that their relationships aren’t with the right people to keep them alive in their customers. A great relationship at mid-level does no good when someone sells the concept of a different process to the mid-level person’s boss.

I’ve been saying for some time that the successful salesperson of the next 20 years will be far different from the successful salesperson of the last 20. Here’s how I see the successful salesperson of the next 20 years:

• Highly polished and professional: The successful salesperson of the future will be able to meet, and win sales, with the top officer in the company. He or she will be able to speak to the CEO as an equal, not as a supplicant. This means more than looking good in a suit.

• Great businessperson: The salesperson of the future will need more than expertise in products and services; they will need to understand how to read a P&L, how to help build and grow their customers’ businesses, and understand instinctively how to address issues like opportunity costs, hidden costs, and other high-level and big-picture issues that officers face.

• Versatile: That said, the salesperson of the future will still need to shift gears and work with the downstream implementers and influencers that will put their concepts to work. Yes, you’re going over the head of the midlevel managers when you approach the CEO – but if you do it right, they never feel like they’ve been disrespected.

• Well trained: Finally, that salesperson will need to be incredibly well trained in all three sales models – transactional, relationship, and conceptual – and know when to use each.

If that sounds like a big challenge, it is. But challenging is different than impossible. Are you up to the challenge?

Is there a person reading this email who would deny that selling is a tough profession?  I doubt it – if you’ve been in the business for more than six months.  Selling is very tough.  I have a good friend who’s working as a salesperson after seventeen years as a nurse.  She once told me, “Saving lives is easy.  Sales is hard!”

So, when she called me yesterday to tell me that she was having a rough day – she’d made dozens of phone calls with only three contacts and no appointments – I gave her some advice that nearly blew her mind.  In fact, it might blow yours, too, but I’ll tell you what it was.

“Stop,” I said. “Just stop.  Take a sanity break.”  I could literally hear her jaw drop over the phone.  See, I know what my line is supposed to be.  “Keep at it, stay positive, work harder.  Persistence pays off.”  That’s true.  Persistence pays off.

Except when it doesn’t.

Can we be 100% honest and real with each other?  Like I said, I know what I was SUPPOSED to say.  Every manager, sales trainer, and author knows what they are supposed to say in that moment.  A good rah-rah, go-team-go speech, and she’ll be hitting her numbers in no time.  The problem is that, in reality, it doesn’t always work.

As I’ve said many times before, sales achievement is a simple equation.  Quality of activity, multiplied by quantity of activity, equals results.  The trouble is that sales is a MENTAL game, and your mindset can greatly affect the quality of your activity.  In this case, I quickly assessed that her mindset was so low that the quality of activity was near zero – and she would probably burn some contacts that might have done business with her in a different mindset.

It happens.  If we’re honest with each other, it happens to every salesperson.  It happens to rookies.  It happens to experienced pros.  And yes, it happens to the Sales Navigator.  We all have those days when we are figuratively getting our posteriors handed to us on a silver platter.  Maybe prospecting is going badly, maybe a couple of proposals didn’t come through, or whatever – but you’re on a bad run.

This is the moment where a bad run can get interrupted, or it can get worse.  You must assess your mindset.  Ask yourself these questions:

1. Am I mentally in a place where I can put those setbacks behind me?
2. Is my mindset such that I can be positive enough to turn a bad call into a good one?
3. Am I ready to receive success?

In other words, do a quick head-check on yourself.  If your mind isn’t in the right place, you might burn opportunities that shouldn’t be burned.

As tough as this moment can be for a salesperson, it’s tougher for a sales manager.  We have an internal conflict.  We know what advice we’re supposed to give (GO TEAM GO), but as human beings, we also recognize that sometimes it isn’t the best advice. Go with your gut here; ask yourself the same questions about the salesperson’s mentality.

If your head isn’t right, it’s sanity break time.  This is something that’s up to YOU.  You need a way to disconnect from whatever bad day you’ve been having, but it should be a way that’s meaningful to you AND easy to transition back into work.  Let me give you examples.

I often work from my home office. So, an easy reality break is to go pet my dogs.  I’ve never failed to make a sale to my dogs in my entire 27-year career in sales.  And after about 20 minutes of that, my mind is right to go back to work.

On the other hand, one of my other ways of disconnecting is to go into the garage and work on a car.  That works great at the end of the day, but there isn’t much I can do to a car in 20 minutes, so that’s not a good midday fit.  I also like to take a quick ride on my motorcycle, but if the weather is bad, that doesn’t work.  You might need multiple options for a sanity break.

One that works well for some people – but not for me – is to read a good book for 20 minutes.  It doesn’t work for me because, if the book is really good, I can’t stop at 20 minutes.  WHAT you do isn’t as important as recognizing the need to disconnect and reconnect.  I would advise one thing, though.  When you disconnect, REALLY disconnect.  Get away from your desk, silence your cell phone, get all the way out of ‘work mode’ and get right back in again.

Sometimes what makes you effective isn’t your ability to persist or to push through – it’s your ability to hit “control-alt-delete” on your mind and reboot.  Don’t be afraid to do so every now and then.

And if you’re a sales manager, don’t be afraid to let your people do so.

I’ve said for years that the ancient sales art of ‘schmoozing the gatekeeper’ is dead.  D-E-A-D, as in doornail.  And yet, I had a conversation the other day that reminded me that it is not, and that sometimes, salespeople do have to know about gatekeepers.

Before I dive into that conversation, I want to remind you that, for the most part, today’s gatekeeper is technological, not personal.  The “gatekeeper” is the dial-by-name directory, it’s voice mail, it’s a million other ways that people have invented in order to keep from reaching over, picking up a telephone, and answering it.  With that in mind, every now and then, there is a gatekeeper, and what follows is one such tale.

She recounted the conversation thusly:

Salesperson:  Hello, may I speak to Jim?

Gatekeeper:  Is Jim expecting your call?

SP:  No, but it’s an important matter that Jim will want to talk about.

GK (she noted that it’s a small office, and Jim was standing right there, shaking his head): Jim’s not available at the moment, can I take a message?

Let me interject something here.  It rarely happens these days that the person who answers the phone (usually a receptionist but not in the case of my story) offers to personally take a message for you, instead of send it to voice mail.  When someone offers to take a message, you leave a message.  Human involvement in this process is always better than anonymous technology.  That said, the conversation went on:

SP:  I’d really rather leave a voice mail.  Could you put me through, please?

GK:  I’d be happy to personally take a message and get it to Jim.  Can you tell me what this is regarding?

Interjecting again.  At this point, the jig is up.  If the gatekeeper didn’t already know that this was a cold call from a salesperson (unlikely), she knows it now.  The only real solution is honesty.  The worst thing you can do is become rude or demanding – but yet, that’s what the salesperson did.

SP:  Look, I’d just like to leave a voice mail.  Can you please put me through?

GK:  I’ll take a message.

(CLICK) the call ends here.

Here’s the funny part.  The salesperson blew an opportunity.  The gatekeeper is a friend of mine and doesn’t hate salespeople at all; in fact, she always gets messages to the decision makers, and if they’re nice to her, she says so – and those people usually at least get a phone audience with their target contact, if not an appointment.  This guy will not.

So what happened?  I think several things made this call go badly.

First, the salesperson obviously wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with a live message taker.  Voice mail, hard as it is to believe, has conditioned some people to think that dealing with a live human is somehow wrong.

Second, he believed too much in the power of whatever he’d say on a voice mail.  Here’s a hint:  The best voice mail messages get a response about 10% of the time.  Best case scenario.  Your voice mail message isn’t magic.

Third, he never learned that anyone in the building can block him from a sale; hence, we treat everyone with the courtesy that we do the decision maker.

How could this call have gone differently?  Had he handled it differently, I think it would have gone something like this:

Salesperson:  Hi, could I speak to Jim, please?

Gatekeeper:  Is Jim expecting your call?  (This, by the way, is the moment where the jig is really up.  How you react to this question will determine your chances of getting to your prospect.)

SP:  I didn’t catch your name?

GK:  It’s Mary.

SP:  To be honest, Mary, no, he’s not expecting my call. My name is Troy, and I’m with (Company X).  You’ve probably guessed that I’m a salesman doing a cold call, and you’re right.  But, I really do have something that will help Jim (insert strong benefit/win statement here), and I think he’d at least like to know about it.  It’s helped other companies like yours. So, I’m calling to see if I can get just a little bit of his time.

Mary:  Well, if you leave a message with me, I’ll make sure that he gets it.

Troy:  No problem.  Could I give you one sentence to write down verbatim, and then I’ll give you my contact information?

Mary:  Sure, that would be fine.

Troy:  (Gives strong benefit statement, then contact info).

Mary:  I’ll be sure that he gets it.

Troy:  Thanks, Mary.  If I don’t hear back, can I call you again in a few days?

Mary:  That would be fine.

CALL ENDS.

You may be sitting there thinking this is a fantasy-world call, and maybe you’re right.  But, in this case, had the salesperson been polite and respectful, this is EXACTLY how that call would have gone!  Further, the gatekeeper would have suggested that Jim return the call.  Granted, this doesn’t happen all the time, but when there is a live gatekeeper, it’s not difficult.

1. Know when the jig is up; i.e. when you’ve been spotted as a salesperson. It’s almost always quicker than you think.
2. Get the gatekeeper’s name.
3. Treat the gatekeeper with respect and as a person who can make decision, because he/she can. Maybe not FOR you, but definitely AGAINST you. Make sure that the gatekeeper at least stays neutral.
4. Don’t be fake. They can spot phoniness a mile away and will block you.
5. Just sincerely articulate your pitch and why you will help. Then make sure you follow up.

It happens nearly every seminar that I do.  During the question and answer session, a salesperson – many times a very good one – describes a situation where the customer is putting them through the proverbial mill.  The situation they describe often differs, but the result is the same – the customer is leading the salesperson around by the nose.

It might be coincidental, but much of the time, these same customers are not necessarily BUYING a lot from the salesperson – but they have the POTENTIAL to buy a lot.  These tend to be what I call “neon light” accounts – accounts where every salesperson sees a neon light above the building saying “great potential here!”  Hence, salespeople line up at the door for an opportunity to beg for business, and are ready to do nearly anything to get that business.

You’re probably already seeing the problem.  Too often, these accounts know exactly the potential that they possess, and have no problem wielding said potential to play one salesperson against another, one company against another, etc., to get the most advantageous terms.  Sometimes the eventual terms mean that nobody is really making any money!  I don’t begrudge these customers for doing whatever they can do secure the absolute best buys for their companies.  That’s business.

But we salespeople don’t have to participate.

In this particular situation, the salesperson was explaining a very common scenario – she gets RFP’s, can’t contact the decision maker, fills out the RFP’s, doesn’t get business.  We’ve all been there.  And the only thing that will break this cycle – the only way YOU have a chance of getting anything good to happen – is to use a word that frightens salespeople more than any other.

NO.

That’s right.  Say, “no.”  Tell the customer that their process of doing business simply isn’t compatible with yours.  Let the customer know that you’d love the opportunity to do business with them, but you need to do X.  In this case, the need is to speak with the person who is making the actual decision, not the person who is gathering information.

At this, the salesperson began to protest – the fear factor was kicking in.  “Well, I’ve tried to tell them before, but they just keep doing what they’re doing.”

The problem was that the salesperson had in fact said no.  But, she hadn’t LIVED the no.  In other words, she had the conversation, and then the next time the RFP came in, she dutifully filled it out and responded.

It’s not enough to say “no,” you must LIVE the “no.”

I often wonder how much overall sales time is wasted by salespeople who simply respond to RFP requests without ever getting business – and how much more productive those salespeople would be if they devoted that time to finding other customers that were more interested in establishing relationships and working cooperatively.

Whenever you feel like the customer is putting you at an extreme disadvantage, you’re probably right.  At this point, ask yourself if the customer is really working cooperatively or just wasting your time to keep another salesperson honest.  If it’s the latter, don’t be afraid to say “no.”

And live it.

If you don’t protect your time and resources, no one will do it for you.

Today, I saw an interesting meme on Facebook.  Most Facebook memes are, of course, meaningless at worst and semi-humorous at best.  This one was pretty good, though.  It said, “You talk to yourself more than anyone else.  Make sure that what you say is meaningful.”

That started me thinking about our self-talk.  We all have a self-talk, whether we admit it or not or whether it’s out loud or not.  I’ve always found that my self-talk has a lot to do with my success, whether the self-talk is right before I speak or right before I sell.  I’m guessing that you feel the same way, so the question is – what IS your self-talk?

If your self-talk isn’t contributing to your success, maybe it’s time to rethink it.  Here’s my template; you don’t have to follow it exactly, of course, but if yours isn’t working for you, you might adopt parts of it that work.

Me:  The first aspect of the self-talk I give is about myself.  Don’t get me wrong; I don’t go down the Stuart Smalley route of “I’m good enough, I’m strong enough, and gosh darn it, people like me,” (although if that works for you, do it) but I do like to review some recent successes.  If I’m giving a speech, I recall a recent speech where I got a great response.  If I’m selling, I remember some recent wins that I put on the board.

The Other Party:  Now, I review what I know about the “other party;” if it’s a customer, I recall what I’ve learned about the customer, and if it’s a speech, I recall the audience.  To take it farther, in a sales call, I will bring a cheat sheet of details about the customer.  In a speech, I can’t do that, but I will review the key points of what I know about the audience, their needs, and their wants. To be completely frank, I’ve often wondered if I’m not doing this in the wrong order.  After all, the customer or the audience is far more important than me!  Should I be reviewing them first? Perhaps – but I’ve been doing it this way for 25 years and it works for me.

The Conversation:  The final review for me is the start of the conversation.  In my experience, this is the hardest part of a speech or a sales call.  For the remainder of the sales call (or speech) to be successful, I need to open meaningfully, and do so without yet getting a “feel” for the mood of the customer or audience.  In a sales call, I’ll review my introduction and the first 3-4 questions that I plan to ask.  In a speech, I’ll review my opener, which might be a question for the audience or a story that sets the table for the speech.  I find that once I’m past this point in a speech (or a sales call), that experience lets me be in the moment and lets the conversation flow.

My Tools:  I’ll do a quick check – I always call it my “paranoia check” – to make sure that whatever tools I plan to use are intact and working.  In a sales call, I typically take in a cheat sheet of details about the customer, a question list, and perhaps my speaker one-sheet.  I seldom use more than that.  In a speech, I’ll have done my ‘technology check’ well before the audience arrives, making sure that my Powerpoint works, that my slide advancer has battery power, that the microphone works, etc.

With those four points of my self-talk, I can walk into a speech, or sales call, with confidence.  And now, if you attend a speech, arrive early, and see me testing my Powerpoint, you’ll know why.  And if you happen to see me sitting in a parking lot in front of a building where a potential customer might be….and through the car window you see me talking to myself…..let me be.  I’m not crazy, I’m just doing my self-talk.

We can see it all around us, every day.  Good relationships gone bad – whether personal, professional, networking, even romantic.  And many times, the people involved don’t know why.  Right now, you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, Troy, those relationships are so different that it’s simply not possible for all of them to go bad for the same reasons!”

You’re partially right.  The truth is that there are a huge number of moving parts in any relationship, and those moving parts differ greatly between the types of relationships.  You want different things (hopefully) from a business relationship than a romantic one, for instance.  But the reasons that these relationships go bad boil down to three characteristics.

Those characteristics are Knowledge, Ability, and Desire.  In any type of a relationship, everyone has a certain level of effort or investment that they will put into a relationship, and that level is governed by Knowledge, Ability, and Desire.  This means:

The person has Knowledge of what the other person wants in the relationship;

The person has the Ability to provide those things;

And the person has the Desire to provide them.

Let’s look at a networking relationship.  We’ve probably all had potential referral partners that turned out to be successful, and others that turned out to be unsuccessful.  A ‘successful’ relationship is one that generates good referrals – an unsuccessful one is one that does not.  In this case, our three characteristics would look like this:

Your potential referral partner would have to have the Knowledge of what makes up a good referral for you.  It would be your responsibility to teach your referral partner what makes up a good referral – a type of contact, or a situation, that indicates a need for your services.  If they don’t know what makes a good referral, they are unlikely to give one.

The potential referral partner would have to have the Ability to provide those referrals.  That means they’d need to have access to the people you want to talk to.  For example, if you’re looking to speak to owners of small businesses below $10 million, and your potential referral partner has a contact base made up of office managers of larger companies, you’re unlikely to get good referrals simply because they don’t have the contact base.  You can’t expect referrals to people that your contact doesn’t know.

Finally, the potential referral partner would need to have the Desire to provide you with referrals.  This is the one area that’s really out of your control.  If you’ve spelled out what you want in terms of referrals, and the referrals are within the new partner’s ability to give, and they simply don’t give them, it’s an issue of desire.  They don’t have the necessary desire to help.

A successful relationship of any type requires all three of the characteristics.  Even in interpersonal relationships, we see relationships crash because of a lack of one of these.  In analyzing your business relationships, do both of you have all three?  If not, is there a way to instill all three?  If not, you might consider spending your time elsewhere.

Recently, customer conflicts have been in the news, thanks to United Airlines.  UA has exhibited some textbook examples of how NOT to handle a customer conflict (including not starting one), but UA, along with all airlines, has one thing going for them that most of us don’t.  Federal law.  It’s actually a federal crime to NOT obey the command of a flight attendant or any other member of a flight crew, so they can pretty much do what they want and the police will enforce their dictates.

The rest of us don’t have that backing us up (although I’m sure many of us wish we did), so we have to resolve customer conflict the old-fashioned way:  through people skills.  With that in mind, let’s look at some ways to handle an upset customer.

Since the customer conflicts on the airlines are a unique situation that, many times, is initiated by the airline itself, let’s put that scenario off to the side and look at the much more common scenario where an upset customer contacts us, either by phone or in person.

1. Let them vent. This is critical.  The first thing an upset customer wants is to be heard.  Our instinct in these moments is to try to calm the customer down, to interrupt the negativity, to change the direction of the conversation.  That’s the wrong thing.  When you interrupt the person while they are venting, you actually escalate the situation – which means that when you have to work to calm the person down, you actually have more work to do.
2. Analyze the problem. Once the customer has vented, it’s time to start doing a little digging.  Your customer has likely given you the EFFECT of the problem; i.e. the way that it hurts them.  Your job is to find the CAUSE of the problem.  Do so as best you can without verbally casting blame or doubt on the customer.  Even if the customer is at fault – and they might be – right now is the wrong time to put that blame there.
3. Fall on your sword. Now is the moment for a big ‘mea culpa.’  What your customer wants to know is that you’re sorry, that you empathize, and that you really do regret that the problem happened.  So do that right now.  Don’t get mealy-mouthed, either, and blame ‘this department’ or ‘that person.’  You are the company, so take the responsibility for the whole company.
4. Ask for their input. Once you have an idea of the problem and its cause, you probably have a way to solve it.  Your instinct will be to quickly solve the problem as best you can.  Don’t.  Instead, ask the customer what THEY would like to have happen to make things right.  The customer will likely be shocked and pleased to be involved in the solution.  You might be scared that the customer will ask for something unreasonable – and most of the time, you’ll be surprised that customers usually tend to ask for reasonable rectifications.  Sometimes they’ll ask for less than what you might have given.  This step also lets them partner in the process.
5. Give options if possible. If there’s more than one way to resolve the issue, ask the customer for their preference.  Again, this partners the customer in the process, and helps them to feel empowered.
6. Do what you tell them you’ll do. This should be obvious, but when you make a promise, you must keep it.
7. Follow Up. Once you’ve put the resolution into action, it’s time to follow up and make sure that the resolution has satisfied the customer’s issue.

If you execute these steps faithfully, many times, your relationship with the customer can come out stronger than it would have been without the problem happening.  And you probably won’t make national news!