Am I curious salesperson?

First in a series on how to migrate from a ‘tell mode’ to a ‘seek mode’ salesperson
JERRY STAPLETON
For SBT
While on a consulting engagement at E.I. DuPont’s headquarters in Wilmington, Del., a few years back, I was waved into the office of the head of the company’s US sales operations.
“Jerry, what do you think is the one most important characteristic a salesperson must have to be effective?” he asked me. I could tell he’d been thinking about it and believed he had discovered the answer.
Never having given that specific question much thought, I did what any self-respecting consultant would do: I launched into a lengthy response pointing out that it was a combination of things, blah, blah, blah!
Then, also in true-to-form consultant fashion, I turned it around and asked his opinion (Gee, do you think he saw though me?). His answer, though, was clear, concise, and simple: “A sense of curiosity!”
It hit me immediately that he was right. Sure, there are lots of other very important qualities, such as self-motivation, ego, empathy, and the like, but they’re largely rendered inert without a strong sense of curiosity. Indeed, as I thought further about the best salespeople I’d ever worked with, I realized they all had that one characteristic in common: a sense of curiosity.
Strange, isn’t it, that when we conjure up the caricature of the “typical” salesperson, just the opposite jumps out at us – it’s the gift of gab we think of instead?
Perhaps you think this is going to be yet another lecture from yet another “sales expert” telling you to listen more. It’s not. I’ve been on countless calls with sales professionals who spent an hour or more simply listening to a customer. Too often it ended up to be just that: aimless listening to the customer’s similarly aimless talking.
I’ve also worked with sales pros who can drill down on listening to “customer needs” to the minutest level, returning from the call with pages of notes representing the most thorough needs assessment you’d ever want to see. Then, after losing the deal, they wondered what went wrong, since they knew they’d understood the customer’s needs and met them better than the competition. What these – and so many – salespeople fail to recognize is that operating in seek mode goes far beyond understanding the customer’s needs.
When I had my epiphany-type encounter with the DuPont executive, selling was still immersed in its old paradigm. I didn’t realize that selling was already in the early stages of being totally redefined. Yet even then, in the older world of traditional selling, a sense of curiosity was a trademark of the select few who could be labeled “great” salespeople. For the most part, though, salespeople could still do pretty well if they were particularly skilled at telling customers about their stuff.
In today’s new era of selling, however, with the value of “tell” mode selling evaporating almost overnight, a sense of curiosity, properly harnessed, is part of the “minimum system requirements” just to be in the new game.
Operating in seek mode is one of about 10 essential traits of the Business Resource. I’ll go a step further: it is the most important trait of all. It’s also the most difficult for salespeople to acquire.
This series of articles will show you how to develop a seek mode mindset and put it into practice.
But make no mistake, it does start with the right mindset. Without the right mindset, all the tips and techniques you might use to get a customer talking are hollow manipulations that the customer – your customer – will see right through.
2,500 years ago, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu said, “We are not fit to lead an army unless we are familiar with the face of the country.” Likewise, we are not fit to lead a sales campaign unless we are familiar with the face of the customer. And the face of the customer can be revealed only if we know how to operate in seek mode.
Jerry Stapleton is president of the IBS Group and author of, From Vendor to Business Resource: Transforming the Sales Force for the New Era of Selling. For more than 10 years he has been showing companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune 500, how to sell to large accounts. www.theibsgroup.com
July 6, 2001 Small Business Times, Milwaukee