Common Sense - Not Skipping the How Step

One of my major tenets, if not the major one is, 

• When you sell something it should stay sold - no charge backs, refunds or returns. 

Returns, charge back or whatever your term might be, are not only financially devastating, but, from my experience,  are relationship killers.  You want to assist the client in making a purchase decision - not make that decision for him and the only way I know how to assist is to not allow them to skip the how step.

My father had an Olivetti agency in Evanston, Illinois.  When I was in my teens, I watched him demonstrate an Editor 5 proportional or variable spacing typewriter.  This machine gave different spacing value to each character of the alphabet, so the letter "i" had 1 space value will the letter "w" had 5 spaces values.  The output was a document which looked as though it had been actually type set. Extremely easy these days, but extremely difficult in the '60s. All office machine companies,  IBM, Smith Corona, Remington and Royal typewriter companies had a similar machine and all of them were extremely hard  master because of this variable spacing.   Additionally, these types of machines were extremely expense about a thousand dollars in 1960 dollars.

The demonstration completed, the man, a professor at Northwestern,  purchases the machine outright. We remove one from a box, check it out, he pays and he leaves.  Needless to say, I am pretty impressed until my dad says;  "He will be back and more than likely with the machine."  Baffled, I ask why?  "Because he has not listening and did not think it through.  He liked what he saw but does not realize the how of getting there - mainly the difficulty of the spacing"  Sure enough, a week later the typewriter came back and the original check was returned  my father never even deposited the check. 

As I learned then  and have continued to learn over the years, the how step in sales must not be skipped.  In this specific case, the how step for the our professor was when he was asked;  how are you going to use this machine?  Will it be you are will one of your student aids from the university? Will you have time to explain and show how to calculate the values for the characters?  The professor should have answered these questions and had he this type of machine would have been ruled out immediately.

So what is the how step and when do you use it?  The how step should begin almost immediately - right after you have introduce yourself.  It is the discovery part of your discussion and  establishes your crediibility,  your trust and your value to the client,  building upon the business relationship. You must get the client thinking:

• How do you know we have a problem? 
• How have you defined the problem
• How do you know the problem does not come from a bad process?
• How do you better to understand the requirements to correct the problem?
• How will this project/software/product correct the problem?
• How will we know the true budget – financial and staff time?

 By probing and discussing questions like these, the client should start to analysis the situation and not:

• Jump to any solution before you completely understand the problem

• Try to match a product or technology to an undefined problem, looking  for the silver bullet solution 

• Implementing a solution that  interferes with their best practices

• Forgetting  that these best practices create the value their customers will buy and therefore generates needed revenue

By using the how step, you have helped the client think through his problem so they can make most informed decision regarding the needed solution to his problem.  I realize that the underlying purpose of all of this is to have them purchase your product and service.  But even if they do not, you have  shown them your value and created a working, trusted relationship leaving the door open for future discussions and sales.

Please do not skip the how step.
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