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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Up Selling - Common Sense Distroyed

Up Selling, you know what that is right? Convincing someone that they need to purchase more than they needed so the seller can make a profit. Forget about integrity or trust, just make the margin type thinking. Let me give you my most recent example of this game.

A friend of my took her Toyota in for the 90,000 service. She follows the suggested service schedule pretty good in an effort to keep the car trouble free. Previously, the service manager stated she would needs back brakes during this scheduled service. She asked me to look at the brakes to see what I thought. Having my share of second, third, fourth hand cars, I ran my fingers over the disks, found no real cutting so I told her if she wanted to wait I thought she could at least 5 to 10,000 miles

Several days later, I called her to find out what happened. The service writer did in fact tell her she needed the brakes - okay his call no harm no foul. Additionally, she needed a serpentine belt- at 90,000 miles and that makes sense from my experience with Volvo. Now here comes the travesty, something this agency should be ashamed - the up selling. He tells her, that since they are replacing the serpentine belt, and since they will be able to get to the pump, they should replace the water pump as well which would be about $450.00 [the part being $300 of the $450.00]. I did not see leaking when I looked at the car and asked her if any gauges came on during her driving to which she stated no. Then why the pump? Well, the service manager kind of put a scare into me so I thought it would be a good idea.

I could not believe this, the water pump. In all the cars I have had, I have only replaced three water pumps and they were on the same Mustang II had in the '70s and the second two were my fault. I could not believe this. She took it in for a $49.95 oil change but thinking it could be $400 with the brakes and her total bill was over $1200 dollars all from up selling

My common sense tells me that this is just not good customer relations. Do they laugh at you when you leave? Do they realize once you figure out what has happened, you more than likely will not come back? Do they even care?

So what is my point? My point is that up selling has no place in the long-term relationship building process. In reality, it has no place in transactional sales either. My common sense tells me I do not like being treated this way so I had not treat anyone else in the same manner.

Make sense?

Common Sense - Elevator Pitch

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be a co-host of InTimeTV's "Association Executive Today" an online program addressing those issues that might be keeping ExD's awake at night. www.intimetv.com One of the guests, Steve Yastrow, discussed his book, Brand Harmony and We: the Ideal Customer Relationship.

Steve believes and I totally agree that:

"Every time you interact with a customer, three things can happen:

• Your relationship gets better
• Your relationship stays the same
• Your relationship gets worse"

A major point Steve discussed was "Ditch the Pitch" again which I totally agree. In my thinking and experience, the "elevator pitch"must go - now. I have no idea how many times I have been instructed to create one of these things by someone, other than a common sense driven salesperson and they never work.

Have you every really tried this elevator pitch thing? Try it sometime, and watch the eyes of the person, watch them glaze over while shaking their head pretending to listen. Did they learn anything? Will they follow up with you? I doubt it. Now ask yourself, if I was in their shoes, how would I react? Would I have learned anything? Was there a call to action for me? Will I act? My experience has shown me that none of these things happen.

So my common sense approach is to use that time and that moment to engage in a genuine dialog or even better, engage in a genuine listening that will allow you to gain the needed insight for the next conversation - the one, in my experience, that really counts

This elevator pitch thing is kind of like the Bett Midler's line when she states:

" Okay, enough talking about me honey. Let's talk about you. "
"What do you think about me."

Maybe what is needed are listening questions developed instead of elevator pitch's?

Common sense can, at times, be as simple as thinking outside of the box.

Last week, I was touring a clients manufacturing facility when he took me through their graphic arts/reproduction area. This group produced all of their collateral material for Sales, Marketing and office use. It had half a dozen or more people working on what most people would consider the latest generation of graphic design and reproduction equipment.

Before I could say anything, it was explained to me that early on several of the smaller manufacturers in their general area had approached them for help with graphic arts and reproductions. The owner saw a way to create a win-win situation for everyone so she negotiated a price for these services. Over the years, strictly by word of mouth, these outside revenues have grown to the point that the department is now a profit center for the company

Have you ever sat in a sales meeting or sales presentation and you been asked - "But what are the business values? What value does this bring to my company." You sit and stare at your paper or brochure or maybe even the product while your mind races. You have presented all the benefits, the cost savings, the ROI issues not to mention the correct positioning, so what other value can there be? Well, have you gone over the most important benefit of all? Mainly, you - both your knowledge and experience of product/service as well as the people skills need to bring the total business value to partition? Too many times, we, as business development professionals, are so concerned with using the correct process that we overlook the most important business value that the client can expect to receive and fail to articulate this benefit to them. Paraphrasing the Pogo comic strip, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

An example of this is, I find it extremely important, as a business professional to remain in contact with the client during the project to assure the business value is received. This is not to say product knowledge is unimportant but times the manor in which a certain issue is addressed, aka hand-holding, becomes more important to the projects success. One of the things I have done over the years is to position myself, at the start of the project/implementation, as a "safety valve" for the client. Several times over the past years, personalities within the project team have clashed putting the project at risk. By remaining in contact with the client, and completely outside of the project management team, the client felt they could discuss these issues with me. This allowed us to make the needed personnel corrections keeping the project on track. The elegance of the situation was there is little to no loss of face - placing everyone into a win-win situation for future project work.

So, as business development professionals, we should recognize and articulate the fact that one of the major business values our product/service delivers to our client's is our expertise and ability to sell and communicate with the client, using our people skills, to ensure he receipt of all the business value.