Was it Groucho Marx who said, “I’d never be a member of a club that would have me as a member?” Regrettably, it seems that salespeople feel the same way about themselves and their “membership” (that is, relationship) with customers.
No respect, no respect at all!
Let’s change that low self-image, shall we? With that said, however, my goal isn’t to help you get you more respect from your customers, but more results from them.
First, let me repeat my advice of a few months ago that came from an article with a similar theme. I exhorted you as follows: Eight times per day, every day, for the next month, repeat aloud to yourself, “I am protective of my time and my company’s resources and I will make sure that every single prospect and customer somehow understands this.” You must convey this to customers with real finesse, which isn’t easy. But by the end of the month, you will have figured out how…and you will never look back.
Wait a minute Jerry, that advice is about my resources, you said you were going to help my self-esteem. It is and I am; because the only way to change your self-esteem is to change how customers think about your resources.
But again, clients don’t pay me to help them improve their self-esteem (with a lot of “I am salesman hear me roar” nonsense); they pay me to help them improve their results.
One assumption all customers make
We need to start our image repair work by wrapping our heads around a key empirical reality: virtually all customers assume that salespeople, because they want to appear responsive and accommodating, will spend almost any level of resources (including their own time) in the pursuit of a piece of business. In most cases this is not a malicious assumption on the customer’s part. In fact, it’s usually not even conscious. It’s simply how customers are wired.
It’s not enough to respect our resources. Customers must know that we respect them.
How respect led to results for one salesperson
Here’s one way that Andy applied that thinking, and it really paid off.
Andy had been working on a multi-million dollar RFP (request for proposal) response from a company that his company hadn’t worked with before. Andy and some of his colleagues already had a few man-weeks of time sunk into developing their proposal.
Up to this point, Andy had been working almost exclusively from the design specifications sent by the prospective customer. In other words, he’d been working in a vacuum, in that he’d had virtually no substantive conversations or meetings with this prospect.
But Andy knew that to have any hope of his proposal being viewed as any more than just a number he’d have to do two things: have at least one high-impact interaction with the customer and gain insights from the customer to help him find some kind of differentiating angle. Fortunately, Andy knows that both objectives are always met in the same interaction. One cannot happen without the other.
It was only a few days before Andy’s bid was due. So he started down the path of trying to get a meeting with Doug, the main customer contact.
After sending a few properly spaced –but unanswered – emails to Doug, along the lines of, “Doug, there are some questions I’d like to run by you to help me put together the best response for your company, could I get a few minutes of your time on the phone in the next few days?” Andy realized he needed a different “hook” to get Doug’s attention.
So, with some trepidation (salespeople always approach this subject with trepidation), Andy sent an email that included the following excerpts:
- “…to this point, we have put a fair number of resources into our RFP response and have our base design laid out.”
- “…we are about to take the next leap in our level or resource commitment to this response”
Fifteen minutes later Andy received a reply from Doug that included the following excerpts:
- “Sounds good, can you talk tomorrow afternoon?”
- “Would you like me to stop by your office??? Would that help???”
- “We could also get Mark Williams on the phone as well. Let me know your thoughts”
By making it about you, you make it about the customer
How’s that for a response? Who would have thought that by using the counterintuitive positioning of doing what’s best for my company would be so much more effective than the traditional positioning of doing what’s best for the customer would pay off like this?
Transforming our thought process as salespeople from, “I want to appear responsive and friendly so I don’t want customers to know that I protect my company’s resources” – which occurs subconsciously in virtually all salespeople – to one that’s characterized by, “I want all customers to know that I protect my company’s resources” takes time, practice and guts.
Start by using more phrases like, “Sure (Mr. Customer), let’s step back and see what can make the most sense for both of us,” and you are on your way to membership in a very elite club: having true respect – and the results that go with it – from your customers.
