Copyright (C) 2023. SIMmersion LLC, All rights reserved
Table of Contents
- Spectrum of Sales
- What is Success?
- The Problem: Ambivalence
- The Contrarian Buyer
- Champions Take Ownership
Chapter 2: The Four Guidelines
Chapter 3: The Four Steps
1) Setting the Tone and Purpose
2) Getting a Statement of Needs
3) Presenting a Solution
4) Developing a Follow-Up Plan
Chapter 4: Tools for Selling
1) Following Up Tools
2) Building On Tools
3) Shifting the Balance Tools
4) Using the Tools
Chapter 5: Supportive Selling in Action
Chapter 6: Special Selling Circumstances
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Additional Resources
About the Authors
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Foreword
It has been my pleasure to be in discussion with two of the great thinkers on the art and science of selling at the time they were each “birthing” a book through a long gestation period and a lot of “labor”.
My first conversation early in 2014 with Dale Olsen, who was then working on the book now in your hand or on your screen, brought to mind a conversation some years earlier with Neil Rackham, who had sent me the pre-publication manuscript of his very influential book, SPIN Selling. I had already taught the SPIN seminar in the US, Europe and Asia, and was now pleased to see the full story of the research and the ideas behind the concepts and advice. Neil and I had a lively conversation which he referenced in his book.
Dale Olsen’s SUPPORTIVE SELLING approach, which you will learn in this book, builds upon key SPIN SELLING concepts including the importance of finding needs in their early, often undeveloped stages and then, as a principled seller, leading a buyer through a collaborative conversation that explores and develops those needs. The goal, of course, is to help the buyer see and then to describe their own need as important enough and urgent enough to deserve, perhaps require, a timely solution.
SUPPORTIVE SELLING also makes good use of concepts and terminology that my partner, Joe Friedman, and our colleagues at Zehren-Friedman Associates have used in the Sophisticated Selling Skills seminars that we created and delivered on six continents.
Through his long association with Johns Hopkins University and his deep experience with a conversational method called Motivational Interviewing, Dale Olsen has now added some very important thinking to the art of conversation and the process of persuasion by providing a psychological understanding of how buyers react to a seller’s manner and words during a sales conversation.
Dale describes the key ideas and techniques of Motivational Interviewing in more detail in the pages ahead. Let me settle for an analogy:
SPIN Selling and Sophisticated Selling Skills give you an easy-to-read road map and a powerful vehicle. SUPPORTIVE SELLING will make you an excellent driver.
Dale Olsen’s second significant contribution to sales effectiveness involves new technology for building selling skills through on-line simulations. If the concepts and ideas in this book appeal to you, check out Supportive Selling With Dan Williams at SupportiveSelling.com for a real high tech driving experience.
David Zehren
Zehren-Friedman Associates
Introduction
One of my first big sales was to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, when I was representing scientists and engineers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). APL had many capabilities that could benefit both the war on terrorism and law enforcement, and I was hoping to find ways my organization’s technical capability could help the FBI.
After a series of meetings designed to demonstrate the capabilities we brought to the table, we all huddled together with a team of top FBI scientists for a final discussion in a large conference room.
Despite all the potential for a great partnership, the conversation had bogged down, and it was clear nothing was going to happen. There was no immediate connection between APL’s presented competencies and the FBI’s top priorities at that moment in time. The meetings produced a real interest in APL’s capabilities, but the next steps were unclear. It seemed as if everyone would just go back to their offices to work on their current programs. I had seen it before, and I have seen it since. It would have all been a waste of time.
Then I asked a simple question: “What is your highest priority?”
This question got the potential customers thinking and matching capabilities with real needs. A few days later the FBI called with an answer. It turned out their highest priority was not in one of the capabilities we had first presented. Once I understood their stated need and proposed a solution, the sales process was complete and the contracting process, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, began.
Decades later, I still think about what that sale taught me.
I now see that, in the early part of my conversation with the FBI, I focused on my ideas of what we had to offer. My arguments for why we’d be useful to them. My sense of where the sale should go.
Everything changed when I got them talking about their priorities, their goals and needs.
Our capabilities now had context. The problems that needed solving were out in the open, so we could figure out solutions together. I wasn’t fighting to persuade them anymore; I was supporting them and their goals. The sale was made because I had helped them identify and solve an important problem.
Using the right model for sales conversations can get you to results like this more often than you might expect. That’s the model laid out in this book: Supportive Selling.
With this book, I’ve put my experience and thoughts about selling into a model that can give sellers, like you, a new way to think about how to approach their buyers. You will find practical advice on everything from the mindset to take into a sales call and the way to structure your time with buyers, down to specific techniques for what to say and when. My co-author, Ben Allen-Kingsland, and I have set out to give you a resource to improve your chances of success with buyers of any size.
Let’s get started.
Dale
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Chapter 1
Supportive Selling
A New Approach to Sales
What is Supportive Selling?
Supportive Selling is an approach you can take to create value for your buyers and help them through the stages of their decision-making process, all the way to ultimately making a purchase.
By drawing out what they need and presenting your product or service as the solution to that need, you’ll find yourself generating sales and building good relationships in the process.
Sounds simple? The core idea is, but the details draw on decades of research on how people make decisions, and how outsiders (like we sellers) can speed that process along or stop it in its tracks.
The point of this chapter is to build a foundation for the rest of the model. I’ll start by going through a few ideas you’ll see throughout the book:
- The Spectrum of Sales
- What success looks like
- Ambivalence
- Contrarians, and
- Champions
The Spectrum of Sales
Think about the selling you do. Do you go on your first meeting with a buyer hoping to leave with a sale, or do you go months or more on a single account?
Do you deal with one decision maker with buying authority, or a whole roomful of stakeholders with different interests?
Do you typically close a sale in one visit, or does it take dozens of emails, conference calls, and sit-down meetings before anyone thinks about printing out a contract?
How many zeroes are in the average contract you bring in?
There’s a whole Spectrum of Sales out there that varies from industry to industry and business to business. The spectrum ranges all the way from what I’ll call Simple Sales on one end, and Complex Sales on the other:
Simple Sales
- Short timeframe (a week or less)
- One stakeholder with buying authority
- One or two meetings before contract
- Relatively small amounts of money (a few thousand per contract or less)
Complex Sales
- Long timeframe (many months)
- Multiple stakeholders with veto power over a purchase
- Many meetings and information exchanges before contract
- Relatively large amounts of money (tens of thousands per contract, or much more)
SALES EXAMPLE: Signage
You sell custom signage to businesses.
A simple sale would involve revamping the sign on top of a mom and pop diner.
A complex sale would involve working with a restaurant chain on entrance signs and standing banners for display in all their locations.
At the diner, you may do one or two meetings with the proprietor and walk away with a contract within a week.
With the chain, you may have many meetings and calls with people all up, down, and across the corporate hierarchy for months before the large order is finalized.
Most selling doesn’t fit neatly on either extreme. There might be many stakeholders involved, but a quick turnaround time of only a few weeks.
You might have many meetings with only one stakeholder, and bring in a thousand dollars or less on the sale.
I don’t put any value judgment on either end of the spectrum. Sellers make a great living at either end of the spectrum and everywhere in between. And “simple” only means that it’s easy to explain what’s going on, not that it’s simple to get a buyer to say yes!
The approach does change a bit depending on whether your business falls on the simple side or the complex side. One of the biggest ways your approach changes is in what you should be looking for as a “Win” from any call you go on.
So what is a Win for you? What does it mean to succeed in a sale?
What is Success?
In simple sales, it’s usually easy to tell what success is: either the customers buy, or they don’t. (Again, this doesn’t mean it’s easy to accomplish, just that it’s easy to define.)
In complex sales, it often takes months of work and many conversations with many decision makers to bring a prospect to contract. Success and failure are less cut-and-dried for each individual call. If a clear sale/no-sale result isn’t realistic to expect early on, how can you know if you’re making progress?
The trick is to listen to how committed your buyer sounds by the end of the sales call.
If you hear something like:
“We’ve decided on 10,000 units. I’ll have a purchase order on your desk in the morning.”
Then, congratulations—your hard work has paid off, and your sale has resulted in a Contract.
For simple sales, ending a call with a Contract is usually a reasonable goal. In complex sales, a result this clear is very rare early on.
A more common response in a complex sale would be something like:
“I’d like to share this material with some others. Would you be available for another meeting?”
Or
“Sure, I’d like to try it for myself. Please give me access online; I’d like to test it out and get some others to look at it, too.”
In cases like these, your buyer has committed to do something active related to your solution, like bringing in other decision makers or getting to know your product better. Agreeing to attend a site visit or a demo would also fall in this category, which I call Movement.
In simple sales, Movement is not as nice as having a contract in hand (what is?), but it’s not cause for concern. There may be more stakeholders than you initially suspected, and your buyer may require their support before going forward. The fact is, your buyer is taking initiative to get things closer to a sale. That’s a good result.
In complex sales, some form of forward Movement is likely to be your goal for the majority of your calls. When there’s Movement in an account, your contacts in the buying organization are doing legwork on your behalf to move the process closer to a sale. Buyers are interested in hearing more of what you have to say, so keep following up!
Now imagine hearing a response like one of these:
“That was a great presentation. I see that your offerings have value for us. We need to talk it over, but I will be in touch.”
Or:
“Thanks for coming out today. Can you leave me a few of those brochures?”
Or:
“We can’t do anything now, but why don’t you give me a call back in the new fiscal year?”
What do you make of a response like that? On the surface, they sound encouraging. The buyers are polite and seem to be holding the door open to the possibility of business in the future.
But look a little more closely: are the buyers talking about specific steps they’ll take, or speaking generally? Are they agreeing to take action themselves, or asking for more activity from the seller?
I call these kinds of responses Treading Water. Buyers are not willing to commit to doing anything active on behalf of your solution. While not disastrous, calls that end in Treading Water did not create Movement.
Note that responses like these don’t have to be the end of the call. Following up immediately with polite probes (“Who are you going to talk it over with?”) can sometimes help you learn what you need to create Movement. But other times, Treading Water is inevitable because of factors within the buyer’s organization.
Be sure to assess your approach in a clear-eyed way as well. Is there room for you to develop value more diligently in future calls, or to make a stronger, clearer suggestion for a next step from your buyers?
Research shows that the most successful salespeople are good at recognizing the difference between Movement and Treading Water, and structure their calls to make buyers more likely to agree to Movement. They also follow up vigorously with accounts that are Treading Water and refuse to be discouraged by a slowdown. Supportive Selling will help you make these shifts in your own calls.
Finally, a sales call can end with something like:
“This is not something we want.”
Or:
“As good as this is, we have higher priorities now.”
Or:
“We’re going to have to pass for now.”
I call this result a Termination. In simple sales, these buyers just aren’t going to buy. In complex sales, not only are the buyers not willing to move your solution forward, they openly declare themselves against it.
Terminations are sometimes the result of prospecting errors or when a buyer organization turns out to be a genuinely poor match for the solution. But serious mistakes during the sales call often make buyers who would have Treaded Water more likely to Terminate instead.
Let’s sum up.
In simple sales, a Contract is a tough but usually realistic goal. Creating Movement in the account is a close second. Anything below that should prompt a bit of thought or soul-searching to see if anything went awry, either in your prospecting or your approach.
Since Contracts and Terminations are rare results from complex sales calls, where long time horizons and webs of decision-makers make definitive decisions less likely, most of what you’re likely to experience at the end of your calls is either Movement or Treading Water. The Supportive Selling model is designed to help sellers of all experience levels create the conditions that increase buyer commitment to the solution and make Movement more likely.
The Problem: Ambivalence
You know where you fall on the spectrum, and you know what success will look like. So what’s standing in your way?
One simple fact: selling is not about you. It’s about them.
Buyers have to decide to buy. You can do and say all kinds of things to try to shape the decision they make, but the actual decision always comes down to them.
The trouble for you and for them is that buyers (like all of us) don’t always know what to decide.
Though buyers generally have some initial resistance to making any purchase, they tend to fall somewhere between being completely resistant to any sale and ready to move forward with the sale as shown in the figure.
In short, they’re ambivalent. They’re stuck in the middle between different choices: to buy, or not to buy?
Buyers are often ambivalent when it comes to making decisions. They don’t want to take on dangerous risk, but they don’t want to pass on good opportunities either.
This is completely appropriate, by the way. It doesn’t make them wishy-washy or stubborn or airheaded, or anything else you may have wanted to mumble under your breath after a frustrating call. This is just how decision-making works for most people.
Just because they start out ambivalent doesn’t mean they have to stay there. In fact, they’ll probably feel a certain amount of relief once the decision is over and done with, one way or another. Haven’t you ever felt more tension and stress just before a big decision than right after it?
Understanding the ambivalence of buyers and how to help them work through it can give you a significant edge in your selling.
If you get an appointment with potential buyers, they are almost surely ambivalent. If they were completely resistant, they would not accept the appointment. If they were ready to move forward, no significant selling would be required; they might simply place an order, call for a contract, or talk through implementation with you over the phone.
It’s the ambivalent buyers in the gray box above that need to be sold. It is the seller’s job to support these buyers on the path from wherever they are in their ambivalence to being ready to buy.
It’s at this point—how you decide to approach your ambivalent buyers—that many of us run afoul of a sleeping monster hiding inside almost every buyer: the contrarian.
The Contrarian Buyer
Almost anyone who has discussed politics knows that others rarely buy into your ideas, even if you can give a long list of reasons why your position is clearly the only reasonable one. When you try to sell the benefits of your heartfelt beliefs, they may seem to automatically take a different position. They look for flaws in your argument and take the opposite point of view.
In short, the Contrarian comes out in them.
Say it’s been a long week and you and your significant other want to go out for dinner.
“We should get Indian,” you suggest. “We haven’t had that in ages.”
“That’s too elaborate. I want something simpler,” he or she says.
“Okay. Let’s go to the pub and get burgers or something. Comfort food, nice and simple.”
“No, that place is too loud.”
“Fine. We’ll get Chinese takeout and eat it here, then. It’ll be quieter and cheaper.”
“The whole point was to get out and unwind. If we’re going to eat here, we might as well just cook something.”
Exhausted yet? Conversations with contrarians tend to be stressful and unsatisfying, and may even spiral into bigger arguments. (“I’ve given you idea after idea, and all I get is ‘no!’”) But don’t be so quick to put all the blame on your partner before taking a closer look at the language in the example.
“We should get Indian…” “Let’s go to the pub…” “Fine. We’ll get Chinese.” What do these suggestions have in common?
They’re all focused on you and your ideas. Instead of involving your partner as, well, a partner, these suggestions only ask for a rubber stamp yes or no. Your intention might be something more open, like “What do you think about Chinese takeout?” but your literal words stake out a position that your partner has to take or leave.
When people feel like they’re being told what to do, their tendency is to want to do the opposite—or, at least, to do something different. Psychologists call this “reactance.” It’s the natural thought process that’s kicking in to play when perfectly rational people start acting like contrarians.
Unlike the significant other above, most people aren’t likely to be contrarians for long on low-stakes decisions like figuring out where to eat dinner. They may not care enough to express an independent view, or they may be easier to wrestle into submission with force of argument.
But when it comes to bigger decisions, like which politicians to support, the more forcefully you articulate your own views, the more likely you are to entrench your audience into an opposing view, complete with contrary arguments and nitpicking.
Did this discussion bring out the contrarian in you? Did you start trying to find flaws in the examples we described? If so, I have made my point.
Buyers are the same way. When buying, being cautious with a large purchase is normal and should be expected. It is in our nature to look for faults and, when we have authority to make or influence purchases, it is our job to be critical and raise objections.
When selling, listing your reasons for a purchase is not an effective approach, since it encourages buyers to lock into contrarian positions, finding flaws and stating counterarguments. So what do you do instead?
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Changing the Contrarian’s Opinion
As a seller, the best way to convince contrarians to make the purchase is to:
- Involve them in decision-making, and
- Help them reach the conclusion that they need your solution.
Extensive research shows that people change their behavior when they themselves articulate a need to make the change.
If you say aloud, “I’m going to lose weight. I need to for my health,” you’ll be much more open to talking about (and following through on) the details of that change than if someone else tells you “You need to lose weight for your health.”
It comes back to that contrarian impulse. Someone else giving you orders steps on your freedom, so you resist, even if you know they’re right. If you come up with the same idea yourself, there’s nothing to react against, so real change is more likely.
There are almost always pros and cons on every side of a choice, whether it’s as small as deciding where to eat dinner or as large as a job offer or a marriage proposal. A very natural part of decision-making is finding yourself in the middle between choices, figuring out where your priorities are and what you’re willing to commit to: in other words, being ambivalent.
Supportive Selling is designed to help you maximize the amount of time you keep that contrarian sleeping and to increase your odds of drawing out someone much more pleasant: the Champion.
Champions Take Ownership
“Nice to talk to you again, Dale. After your last presentation, I sent your slides to three other people in my department. We got together and gave our VP a quick brief on what you offer and how it fits with what we do. She seemed to like it, and wants to see a demo for herself. What’s your schedule like early next week?”
What’s a Champion?
A Champion is any individual within a buying organization who is enthusiastic about your solution and will take concrete steps inside the organization to influence the process towards a sale. For instance, Champions will set up other meetings and bring in stakeholders necessary for the sale.
The real difference between Champions and any other buyers involved in your call is that Champions take ownership of your solution. They’ve decided they want their organization to buy from you, not another supplier.
Average buyers may understand your solution, recognize its value, and even be impressed enough to want to learn more or see you again.
Champions begin to think in specific ways about what your solution can do for their business. They imagine the positive implications. They consider challenges to implementation and ways to overcome them. They begin to form a picture of how their lives would change if a sale went through. In short, they’re “sold” on your solution.
In simple sales, a Champion may have the authority to place an order or go to contract. In complex sales, no one person is likely to have the ability to make that kind of decision, but a persuasive and prepared Champion can have a dramatic effect on your likelihood of moving a sale forward.
Working to convert buyers into Champions should be one of your primary goals in a complex sales call.
Supportive Selling is designed to give you tools to increase your odds of converting buyers to Champions in your early sales calls.
Integrating the Ideas
Buyers may be contrary, but they’re also ambivalent. The best way to turn buyers into Champions is to get them to take ownership of your solution– to articulate for themselves how your capabilities match their needs. How can we put these ideas together?
Thinking beyond the world of typical sales methods can help us get where we want to go.
For decades, a counseling technique called Motivational Interviewing (MI) has helped clients recognize their needs and make plans to change. Thousands of published research papers show that MI influencing techniques are highly effective. Its origin is in addiction treatment, but it has been broadly applied to other disciplines. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been used as a selling model before.
MI is an inspiration for how to recognize ambivalence and help buyers work through it. Combining this approach with ideas from Dr. Neil Rackham’s excellent research-based SPIN Selling model, David Zehren’s interpretation of that model, and my own experience thrown into the mix, gives us the Supportive Selling Model.
As with SPIN Selling and MI, the Supportive Selling model requires you, the seller, to check your agenda at the door as much as possible. Of course, everyone knows that you are a sales person who has the goal of selling your product. But you can only sell your product if buyers decide to buy it; and because buyers are contrarians, you cannot push, argue, trick, manipulate, fast-talk or force them into that decision –at least not more than once!
Especially in complex sales, there’s not enough hot air in the world for you to be able to wrestle a whole range of decision-makers into submission time after time.
You can’t make decisions for your buyers, so save your energy and focus instead on what you can do: supporting them through their ambivalence on that age-old question, “To Buy, or Not To Buy?”
Research demonstrates that careful listening, relevant presenting, and an attitude of genuine respect are the only consistent ways to bring buyers over to your side of the table—all of their own free will. This is the spirit of the Supportive Selling model.
Supportive Selling
Supportive Selling is organized into four general Guidelines to keep in mind throughout the call, four specific Steps to help structure the call, and a variety of Tools for Selling to help you decide what to say moment-to-moment within the call.
The four Guidelines define your philosophy or attitude towards developing and maintaining a collaborative relationship with buyers. The Guidelines are to:
- Accept the Buyers as They Are
- Develop Value
- Roll with Buyers’ Resistance
- Support Buyers’ Autonomy
The four Steps are a sequence of actions to help guide the discussion to the end goal of getting a commitment and include:
- Setting the Tone and Purpose
- Getting the Statement of Needs
Presenting a Solution
- Developing a Follow-Up Plan
Finally, the Tools for Selling provide specific tips and techniques for supporting the buyers’ movement from ambivalence to taking ownership of the solution. These conversational techniques are adapted from many sources, including Motivational Interviewing, to fit the structure of the sales call. The Tools include actionable tactics, such as reflections, consequence questions, summary statements and more, which sellers can use during the conversation to help convert buyers into champions.
Let’s begin at the top level of the Supportive Selling model with the four Guidelines.
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Chapter 2:
The Four Guidelines
“I can’t sell you something, but I can help you buy something.”
This anonymous seller’s quote gets at the spirit of Supportive Selling’s four Guidelines. To “sell” someone a product might imply manipulation, coercion, power struggles and conflict.
To “help them to buy” implies partnership, collaboration, respect, and clearly defined power roles.
This simple conceptual shift can make a big impact on how we approach our buyers, and how positively they respond to us.
The four Guidelines should be in the back of your mind during every sales call. Think of them as the big ideas behind the nitty-gritty of how you structure the call, and the moment-to-moment choices you make.
1. Accept the Buyers as They Are
“It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.”
—Bill Watterson, Cartoonist, “Calvin and Hobbes”
Sometimes it can be tempting to pass judgment on your buyers. After all, it’s obvious what their problems are, and it’s obvious that what you’re selling is the solution. How can it take them so long to make decisions? How can they be too lazy to read the materials you sent before the meeting? How can they not have thought about this problem before?
Falling into judgment is one way to sink into a selective reality about your buyers. Whenever you choose what to believe about another person, you run the risk of missing what’s actually there. And if you want to be an effective seller, you can’t afford to miss a thing.
Instead, strive to accept your buyers as they are. That includes their ambivalence, opinions, feelings and attitudes. Leave judgmental or critical attitudes behind, and show them respect.
2. Develop Value
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
—Warren Buffett, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
Value is the measure of how well your solution satisfies the buyers’ needs.
Your buyers are aware of their organizational needs, but may not have thought through all the costs associated with the status quo or the benefits of a purchase. It’s your job to help them see that the benefits of change outweigh the costs of staying put.
To develop value, you help your buyers identify both a list of costs of the status quo and a list of benefits associated with buying and discover for themselves that their own list of benefits outweighs the list of costs. They will see that your solution is their best option.
You should not be the one arguing the case for the purchase or the status quo, since that will draw out the contrarian in your buyers. Instead, work to help the buyers develop their own case.
3. Roll with Buyers’ Resistance
“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.”
—Peter M. Senge, Author, “The Fifth Discipline”
Remember that laying out a strong case for your solution is an approach destined to bring out the contrarian in your buyers. Many objections to your solution may actually stem from an objection to your approach; too
unilateral, too pushy, too unrelated to their experience.
Using the Supportive Selling model and keeping your buyers’ needs front-and-center in the conversation will go a long way towards reducing the resistance or objections you hear.
Still, since not every solution is right for every account, and since buyers are in the business of scrutinizing purchases carefully, you’re bound to hear resistance, questions and challenges.
You don’t want to bring out the contrarian in your buyer, so when you hear an objection, don’t turn it into an argument; turn it into a CHAT:
- Clarify the objection
Objections are sometimes expressed in general or ambiguous terms that make them sound more imposing than they are. Probing in a neutral way can help you tease out the specific concerns the buyer has, which will give you a clearer idea of how to respond.
Don’t clarify it yourself. Take the time to ask your buyer to clarify it, even if you think you already understand it.
“Can you tell me more about your concern?”
- Honor it
To honor an objection is to make an understanding statement that shows you can see where they’re coming from. It doesn’t mean you agree, or you’re caving in; it’s just a concrete way you can show respect (Guideline #1) and support their autonomy (Guideline #4).
Honoring objections is important for maintaining a good relationship throughout rocky patches in the sales call.
“I can certainly understand why price is so important to you.”
- Answer it
Only after understanding the objection and honoring the buyers’ right to object, should you attempt to respond directly.
Do you need to bolster your credibility by drawing on testimonials or research? Explore the buyers’ needs more fully? Educate the buyer about the proven capabilities of your solution? Make the case for value as spread over the lifetime of a solution’s use?
Your points will carry more weight if you take the time to set them up with this model.
“Here’s how I see our solution creating value for you that goes beyond this sticker price.”
- Test for Acceptance
It doesn’t matter how well you think you addressed the objection; it matters how well the buyer thinks you did. Asking them if they’re satisfied is important to make sure there aren’t lingering concerns before you get the conversation back on track.
“Does that address your concern?”
Clarifying, Honoring, and then Answering objections and Testing for acceptance will help you keep the sales call productive and professional.
An objection isn’t a crisis. It just begins a CHAT that you’ll be able to navigate by following the Four Guidelines.
4. Support Buyers’ Autonomy
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong.”
—Mark Twain, Author
Remember, it is your buyers’ decision to make the purchase, not yours. You are an expert on your solutions, and your role is to help clarify the issues at hand, but only your buyers can decide what course of action to take.
Supportive Selling is designed to let you help buyers through their ambivalence about a purchase, ideally in a way that makes your solution seem more valuable. It is not a trick that fools buyers into making decisions against their own interests, or forces them to make decisions at all. Come into the sales call with patience and respect. Let your buyers know that only they are the decision makers, and you’re there to support them, not to pressure them.
“You’re the one who knows your business best. I’m just here to see if I can help.”
This doesn’t mean you should act like a completely disinterested observer who is quite indifferent as to what decisions buyers make. Important purchase decisions are often risky in one way or another for a buyer. If you truly believe that your solution is the best path for your buyers, then be sure to convey that through tone and words and body language. Buyers will appreciate seeing your confidence in the value of your solution as they face this difficult, perhaps risky decision.
With these general Guidelines in mind, let’s look at the actual steps of a sales call, from the minute you walk through the door to the final handshake when you leave.
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Chapter 3: The Four Steps
Every sales call varies, but many will fall roughly into the framework of the four Steps below. Keep this structure in mind as you approach your buyers, so you’re always prepared with where to go next (unless they throw you a curve ball, which, of course, never happens!)
1) Setting the Tone and Purpose
I know a buyer in a large organization who was given a pitch by a seller. The presentation ended and the seller said his goodbyes. The moment he left the room, the buyer dismissed his whole presentation out of hand.
Why the tough treatment for this guy? The seller had worn flip-flops to the sales call.
Yes, it was warm out, and this was Florida, but to my friend, that fashion choice was so unprofessional that there was nothing the seller could do or say to get past it.
I wish I could say that the key to success in selling is to stay away from flip flops, but that’s not what the story means to me. It points out the double standard associated with first impressions. If they’re bad, they can destroy your sale. But if they’re good, you’re still far away from closing the sale. (There’s no opposite story, where a seller walks into a call with shoes so nice the buyer hands him a signed contract right away.)
So, if first impressions really do count, how much time should you spend prepping for the first 5 seconds of your meeting?
Here’s where the flip flops story actually makes your life less stressful. When it comes to first impressions, to borrow a maxim from medicine (with all due respect), “First, Do No Harm.”
For medical professionals, that’s a serious oath that governs everything they do. For sellers, consider it a gentle reminder that if your clothes are within what’s normal for your profession, your demeanor is reasonably warm, you’re prepared and on time, and buyers can hear you when you speak, you’re doing what you need to. The content of what you do in the sales call is going to have a much bigger impact than the trappings.
Your goal is to set a cooperative, collaborative, helpful atmosphere, and avoid any serious gaffes. Other than that, the specifics of what you do and say are up to you.
Specifics in Simple Sales
When it comes to simple sales, where you’re speaking directly to someone with authority to buy and you can theoretically get them to contract in one meeting, the Do No Harm approach to first impressions will free up your attention to focus on careful listening and the kinds of questions that will help buyers work through ambivalence.
Consider beginning the call with a few moments of small talk to build rapport and learn more about your buyer. Looking for areas of common ground (“I see you live in Reisterstown; my brother works out there”) may feel less forced than the chit-chat topics you might use in a social setting (“Did you watch the game last night?”). Your focus should be on drawing them out and getting them talking, not using them as a captive audience for your favorite stories.
Always follow your buyer’s cues about when to transition from chatting into the next step of the sales call. Err on the side of getting to business more quickly; this will show respect for their time.
Another note: if you’re selling directly to consumers, as in vehicles or houses, the competition for their attention is so strong that there’s very little time to waste. Just Do No Harm, be friendly and attentive, and start learning as quickly as possible about their needs and what brought them to you out of all the other vendors or outlets they could have chosen.
If in the course of the conversation you can answer their questions or help them sort through their ambivalence, they’ll develop a good impression of you that can last all the way to a contract. Focus on service, and a relationship will follow naturally.
Specifics in Complex Sales
It’s safe to say that in most complex sales, you should be prepared to get to business after a very brief exchange of pleasantries. The culture of larger American organizations tends to be fast-paced, so many buyers will not have a great deal of patience for questions about their families, hobbies, or other areas of small talk.
Exceptions certainly exist, however, so pay close attention to the cues and body language of your prospects. A buyer who seems relaxed, at ease, and asks you small talk questions may prefer a few minutes of chat before shifting gears to the business agenda.
Consider chit-chat that relates to common ground (“I see you got your Master’s at Northwestern. I did my undergrad work in Chicago. Where did you live?”) or professional connections (“I read that your company partnered with XYC Corp on an initiative last year. We’ve done business with them for ages. Do you know Laurie Bloom in purchasing?”).
These topics may be more acceptable to busy buyers than questions about family or pop culture because of their potential relevance to the business relationship. They also give you a natural opportunity to demonstrate preliminary research you may have done about the buyers and their company, which will make you seem prepared.
In general, buyers with rural roots may have more tolerance for small talk than those from urban centers, but each individual will be different. Don’t let your preconceptions get in the way of following your buyer’s cues in the moment.
If your sales call involves international business, it’s prudent to research cultural norms about how business meetings are typically opened in the country your buyers are from. In some cultures, small talk over a series of meetings may be indispensable before discussions of business are even considered.
So keep your buyers’ cultures in mind, pay close attention to their cues, and always expect to shift to business sooner rather than later.
Position Yourself for Success
So what do you actually say in that transition from small talk to sales call?
The specific words are up to you, but I recommend that you include these three steps:
- Ask buyers if they’d like to hear a brief snapshot of your company and, if relevant, of your own background.
“My goal is to ask questions and do more listening than talking today, but before you and I get there, would you like to hear a brief sketch about who we are?
- Give that snapshot, emphasizing your company’s credibility. If your company is new or not widely known, emphasize your own experience or expertise.
“Thanks! At Douglas and Associates, we have 25 years of experience consulting with banking sector clients to build strategic leadership capacity, empowering senior managers to make the most of opportunities and weather downturns.”
- Say what you hope the buyer will get out of the call
“Because of our track record with helping clients thrive in uncertain economic times, my hope is that this conversation will uncover some ways that Douglas and Associates could help you build competitive advantage while minimizing risk. How does that sound?”
Keep in mind that buyers are especially protective of two things: their time and their private information. Why are you worth their time? Why should you be the seller that they decide to open up to? You can use the three items above to position yourself as someone worth sharing time and information with. It’s much better to take a stab at creating that credibility at the beginning of the call than fighting for it twenty minutes later.
For best results, be sure to ask your buyers if they’d like to hear your brief pitch instead of jumping right in to it. The odds of them saying “no” are vanishingly rare; if they didn’t want to hear you, they wouldn’t have agreed to see you in the first place. So asking for their permission is a virtually risk-free way to show your respect and support for their autonomy right away. Odds are, too, that agreeing to hear your pitch will make them pay more attention than they would have otherwise.
Once you’ve positioned yourself and your company as a seller with something to offer, it’s time to make good on your claims of value. Remember, listing everything that’s good about your solution is likely to draw out the contrarian in your buyers. The best path to creating value begins with exploring your buyers’ needs.
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2) Getting a Statement of Needs
Perhaps the most important and sometimes most difficult step in a sales conversation is getting buyers to clearly state their needs. They may think they have a clear idea of what they want and encourage you to dive right into your pitch. Sometimes, they may have only a superficial understanding of their own needs, or they may be unaware of early warning signs of troubles or challenges that lie ahead. In any case, they probably aren’t thinking about the possible benefits of your solution.
Our instincts tell us to jump in and explain all the benefits of our solutions, but that’s a sure-fire way to bring out their contrarian natures and hear a list of objections.
Our goal is to get buyers to state needs and relate them to our solutions. How can we get this accomplished?
The methods used to draw out these statements are at the heart of Supportive Selling. First, let’s be clear about that all-important word need.
Defining Need
Need is such a basic word that it can be read or defined any number of ways. For purposes of this book, a need has two facets:
- It’s something that the buyer would like to be different
- It’s something that a seller can help them address
Fundamentally, needs are about the buyer’s desire for things to be different. The stakes can be existential (“We need help getting through this quarter or we’ll go under”), minor (“We need a new microwave for the break room”), or anything in between.
Needs don’t have to be mission-critical for them to drive sales, even complex ones with large price tags. Ideally, they represent an investment that will yield returns.
Notice that I say a need is something that “a seller” can help with, rather than “you.” It’s far from a given that your particular solution is right for every buyer. The hard work of prospecting and developing leads is all about winnowing down the world of hypothetical buyers to the much smaller subset who have needs that relate to what you offer.
So your buyers have needs of all sorts; things that they’d like to be different that you may be able to help them with. How do buyers tend to talk about their needs during the sales call?
When it comes to talking about their needs, I like to break down their speech into two categories: buyer’s talk and resistance talk.
Buyer’s Talk and Resistance Talk
Think back to a time when one of your appliances gave you nothing but grief. Maybe it still worked, but just barely, like a copy machine that stopped printing in color or a slow laptop that whirred like a lawn mower.
Did you get the problem gadget fixed or replaced the moment it started acting up? If you did, I’m impressed; you’re more proactive than I am. If you’re like me, you probably spent a while stuck in the middle—fully aware of all the problems, but not ready to go to the trouble of fixing them.
Buyers are often the same way when it comes to their needs. This comes out in the form of two kinds of speech.
Buyer’s talk is anything a buyer says that expresses a need, either by:
- Supporting the idea of moving towards a sale.
“Depositing checks remotely instead of dropping them at the bank would save us a lot of time.”
2. Recognizing costs, or hazards, or problems with the status quo.
“That old laptop is really slowing me down.”
Not all buyer’s talk is created equal. Sometimes it can be clear and urgent:
“I can’t wait to get my hands on that new product.”
Sometimes you have to read between the lines to see it:
“This old machine? I can live with it for now.”
The more pressing the needs statement, the better you’ll be able to tailor your presentation to it (more on that in Step 3: Presenting a Solution).
But even buyer’s talk that only implies a potential need— a dissatisfaction or yearning that you pick up on through careful listening—is valuable. The Tools for Selling can help you follow up on those potential needs and tease them out into more pressing statements of need.
So that’s buyer’s talk. Resistance talk is the opposite, consisting of anything a buyer says that:
- Defends the status quo
“I know how to use all the software on this laptop and don’t have time to learn all the new stuff.”
- Minimizes or challenges the value of a sale
“It’s not worth changing our whole depositing procedure just to save a few minutes a week driving to the bank.”
If the resistance talk is strong enough to balance out the buyer’s talk, your buyer isn’t likely to get anywhere close to a purchase.
So your goal is to encourage more buyer’s talk and less resistance talk, tipping the scale until your buyer makes pressing needs statements.
It’s easier said than done.
Getting Started
Start with friendly requests for information with statements like:
“In our phone conversation, you indicated that you would like to consider some other approaches. I’d like to hear more about that.”
“Tell me about your manufacturing processes.”
“I’d like to talk about your training programs, and how they are matching your needs.”
“I understand that you are recruiting new employees now.”
Notice that, technically, these are not questions, but statements expressing interest based on what you know about the customer. They invite the buyer to respond and provide more information.
Many sellers rely exclusively on questions to draw information out of buyers. A long series of questions without relief can make buyers feel interrogated. Varying your questions with interested statements like the ones above and the Tools for Selling described in Chapter 4 will enable you to keep buyers talking without putting them in the hot seat.
Using the Tools for Selling, you will be able to support your buyers as they work through the reasons to buy and the reasons not to buy. The reasons differ from organization to organization, of course, and can also differ widely depending on who you’re talking to within an organization.
Know Who You’re Talking To
Within a buying organization, different individuals are going to see their company’s needs in different ways.
A project director may see the need for solutions that help her design, implement and troubleshoot a project more effectively. Her needs are more likely to relate to the technical aspects of a solution, and the nuts-and-bolts details of how it works.
By contrast, the Vice President of R&D overseeing the project director is likely to be looking for solutions that help him maximize return on investment, keep costs down and shorten the development cycle. What he wants to hear is the business case for a solution; the specific ways it will help him stay under budget and on schedule to improve the company’s bottom line.
When you’re asking questions and using the Supportive Selling Tools to uncover needs, always remember the position of the buyer you’re talking to.
Say you’re selling industrial kitchen appliances to a small restaurant chain. Talking about the business case to a head chef may take him beyond his pay grade:
SELLER: “These ovens are certified for their energy efficiency, which will open you up for tax rebates to defray the initial outlay and increase lifetime ROI.”
BUYER: “Yes, but how many trays of bread can they bake at once?”
Similarly, focusing on product specifications to the Chief Supply Chain officer (a senior VP) may force her down to a micro-level she’s unaccustomed to:
SELLER: “The ovens have a capacity of X cubic centimeters, with customizable spacing for baking trays and roasting racks and best-in-the-industry temperature consistency.”
BUYER: “Yes, but how do they save us money or make us money?”
As a rule of thumb, if your buyer is going to personally use or oversee those who use your solution, consider searching for specific, technical needs. If your buyer is a decision maker and a manager of managers (essentially, at or above the VP level), focus your needs search on the business case instead.
This awareness of your audience is as important, if not more so, when it comes time for you to present your solution. The same rule of thumb applies—primarily technical details for users and managers, primarily the business case for their managers.
Take this guideline with a big grain of salt, though, and always be attuned to what you’re actually hearing from the buyer in the room. I’d be steering you wrong if I implied that buyers lower on the totem pole are never going to consider the business case, or that upper-level execs have no interest in product specifications. There’s plenty of cross-over.
I once briefed a high-ranking person in the Pentagon about a simulation to train specialists in how to conduct difficult conversations about service members killed in action. Though he was easily the equivalent of a C-level executive in the corporate world, his interest and most of his questions were at the level of specific product details. It turned out he had gotten his start training people in those very conversations, so he knew the needs and procedures of the population extremely well. It was important to adapt my presentation to address this unexpected perspective.
What’s the takeaway? In general, put a little more weight on the details that match your buyer’s authority level, but be prepared to talk about whatever your buyer asks for in as much detail as they want.
Preliminary Research
Your prep work before the sales call can position you to anticipate your buyers’ needs and understand them more fully. Arm yourself with knowledge about your buyers’ bios, their departments, their missions and their organizations at large.
Getting a sense of where the organization stands before the sales call will give you broad ideas for where to steer the discussion, and can help you craft informed questions. The more baseline knowledge you have about their business, the more value you’ll be able to bring to the discussion as they express their needs. Sellers who already have a good grasp of the information that’s publicly available about a company will be more likely to hear important private information from their buyers, since they’ll come across as more credible and knowledgeable.
Having knowledge of your buyers’ competitors can also help you understand where your buyers may feel threatened or see risk to their market share. Advance knowledge of potential points of concern can help you spark discussion in the call, and suggest an approach to your presentation that’s most meaningful to them.
If you’ve done some thoughtful preparation before the call and can use the Supportive Selling tools to keep buyers talking, you’re very likely to hear some clear statements of need. The next step is to match the buyer’s needs with your solutions as closely as you can with a presentation.
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3) Presenting a Solution
Needs Established
A shift is triggered in the conversation when you shift from primarily listening to needs to primarily presenting your solution. Though there will be room for listening carefully and moments to draw the buyer out, you’ll spend much of this step doing the talking.
You know your solution top to bottom and can talk about it at length, but is that what your contrarian buyer wants to hear? How can you preserve the supportive relationship you’ve worked hard to establish when it comes time to take the spotlight, not to give it?
In Supportive Selling, the key is to shape your presentation based primarily on their needs statements. Let the needs that they have clearly stated help you prioritize what to discuss and what to downplay. By tailoring your presentation to what you’ve learned about your buyers, you’ll maximize its relevance and capture their attention more effectively than almost any canned pitch would do, no matter how well-rehearsed.
The Bag of Features
I use the term Features to cover virtually every factual, descriptive thing that could be said about your solution, from its technical specifications to its performance to its price to its reputation in the marketplace.
If you’re selling parachutes, some of the features might include:
- The different sizes you offer by diameter
- The tensile strength of your fabric
- The details of safety testing data
- Relevant reliability and liability information
- The colors and patterns you offer
- Testimonials from users and clients that focus on product characteristics
- Pricing
The list goes on and on.
You walk into a sales call with a whole bag of features like these, representing all your knowledge of your product or solution. You want to make the best use of your time in front of the buyer, so it’s up to you to choose which features to pull out of the bag and bring to the buyer’s attention.
You walk into a sales call with a whole bag of features like these, representing all your knowledge of your product or solution. You want to make the best use of your time in front of the buyer, so it’s up to you to choose which features to pull out of the bag and bring to the buyer’s attention.
Some sellers rely on rehearsed presentations that emphasize what seem to them to be the most persuasive selling points; but remember that laying out your own reasons in favor of a sale is likely to turn buyers into contrarians, not—well—buyers.
In Supportive Selling, instead of relying on a rehearsed presentation to help you decide what comes out of the bag, let your buyer help you set your priorities. By paying attention to buyers’ needs statements, buyer’s talk and resistance talk, you’ll be able to sort your features in real time to craft a presentation that’s more meaningful to them.
The Four Compartments
Imagine that your full bag of features is divided into four compartments. These compartments will help you decide which features to emphasize and which ones to gloss over or not mention at all. As you listen carefully to what your buyer says during the first portions of the conversation, you begin to sort features into one of the following four spots:
Nos: A feature goes into the No compartment when buyers say or imply that it’s irrelevant to them, or counter to their goals. These features are the lowest priority for your presentation.
Example: If a buyer says, “I don’t care how it looks, as long as it’s manufactured on schedule,” then the feature, “We get rave reviews for the beauty of our designs” would be a No.
Maybes: A feature falls into the Maybe box when you don’t have enough information yet to decide how to prioritize it. Nothing you’ve learned about the buyer through your research or careful listening makes you confident enough to move it to another box.
These features are a moderately low priority for your presentation, to be drawn in if time allows, your relationship is good, and you think they’ll add value in the buyer’s eyes.
Example: If a buyer hasn’t discussed attitudes about tech support one way or another, then the feature, “We offer a 24/7 tech support line,” would be a Maybe.
Implied Benefits: A feature is an Implied Benefit if it can be tied to a need the buyer has hinted at but not made explicit.
Mentioning these features in your presentation can allow you to broaden the discussion beyond the needs statement, and may help buyers see more value in your solution. These features are a secondary priority for including in your presentation.
Example: If a buyer mentions “Our sales managers spend a lot of their time writing reports,” then that represents a potential need for solutions that would let them spend less time on reports.
You can either draw the topic out to encourage the buyer to see the problem as a pressing need instead, or work in a feature as an Implied Benefit during your presentation:
“Earlier, you mentioned that your managers spend a lot of time on reports. Our database software has helped sales managers at companies like yours file reports in 15% less time.”
Specific Matches:
A feature is a Specific Match if it ties in to a pressing needs statement from the buyer.
Putting these features front and center in your presentation should be your top priority, since they’re highly relevant to your buyer and likely to have a major influence on whether or not the call moves your sales process forward. Since the buyer stated the need, objections or contrarian behavior are much less likely to appear.
Example: If a buyer says “We need a 3-D printer that’s fast enough to print a prototype of our designs in under two hours,” then the feature “Our 3-D printer can print your designs in three minutes” is a Specific Match.
Rearrange your features in the compartments that fit them best as you learn more about your buyer. When it comes time to present your solution, feature your Specific Matches heavily, mention Implied Benefits to broaden the conversation, tie in any Maybes that seem relevant, and steer away from your Nos. Your presentation will be that much more focused and relevant to the buyer.
Beyond Specific Matches
The takeaway here is that features should be prioritized by how relevant they are to the buyers’ needs, with Specific Matches taking top billing. Packing a presentation with Maybes and Nos is a recipe for boring your buyers and hurting your credibility.
That said, there are cases where going beyond the cut-and-dried Specific Matches can help you create value for your buyer. People don’t always know exactly what they want, nor can they imagine every implication of a solution right away. If you’ve already established your credibility by following the four Guidelines and helping them explore needs, there’s room for you to use your judgment and toss in some Maybes that can help the buyer see things they may otherwise have missed.
Let’s get specific.
Say you’re in the business of leasing office space to corporate clients. A tech firm has outgrown its old offices and is looking for a new home. You found a property to show them that’s in the area they want, with the square footage and technical specifications they need, at a price per square foot that’s within their range. You’ve gained credibility by paying close attention to their needs and talking primarily about Specific Matches so far.
As you walk your buyers through the building and answer their questions, you realize they don’t seem to be paying any attention to the amenities of the building. Though they haven’t specifically mentioned it, you know that recruiting and retaining top talent is a challenge in high tech. You decide to toss in a Maybe:
“By the way, there’s a fitness center on the fourth floor that employees of tenants get unlimited access to for no extra charge. I thought I’d bring it up because sometimes perks like that help out in recruiting.”
“Hmm!” your buyers say, nodding thoughtfully, and the walk-through moves on.
There’s no breakthrough moment, and the needs they articulated are still likely to be the prime drivers of the decision to buy or not to buy. But tossing in a Maybe in this fashion can be helpful for your relationship and your sale overall.
The four Guidelines are key here, especially Developing Value and Supporting Autonomy. The whole point of including a Maybe is if you think it represents a cost savings or opportunity that the buyer isn’t aware of. In the above example, simply saying, “There’s a fitness center on the fourth floor,” would come across as part of a laundry list of features, dry and of little interest. By relating the amenity to something meaningful to the buyers—recruiting—it’s clear that you’re actively thinking about what they value and trying to put their perspective first.
Also, look at all the low-pressure language in the example: “By the way,” “I thought I’d bring it up,” “sometimes,” “help out.” By not putting unnecessary weight on the Maybe, you’re supporting the buyer’s autonomy. Let them decide whether or not the information is important to them.
Now imagine the opposite approach to mentioning a Maybe:
“I’m going to show you the world-class fitness center on the fourth floor, because I know that’s gonna seal the deal. A perk like this at no extra charge is going to be front and center when you’re recruiting talent.”
This pushy approach is much more likely to create objections and devastate your credibility, especially in complex sales. As I quoted before, people don’t resist change, but they do resist being changed. This goes double when you’re pushing for change on something like a Maybe that’s not necessarily important to them.
So use your judgment about whether or not to work in a few features that aren’t explicitly connected to needs the buyer has voiced. If you do it with a low-key delivery that emphasizes their autonomy, and try to relate the feature to something of value to them, you’ll bolster your credibility and give your presentation a little extra oomph.
Special Features
Sometimes, you’ll be in the enviable position of having a clear advantage over your competitors in an important area:
- Lowest price
- Largest distribution network
- Highest customer satisfaction
- Truly unique technical capabilities
- Etc.
These Special Features should always start out on the list of Implied Benefits that you hope to work into the presentation because of their inherent appeal to the majority of your buyers.
If you can, try to use the Supportive Selling Tools to bring up your special feature indirectly during the “Getting the Needs Statement” phase. If you can steer your buyers into making a needs statement about price, customer satisfaction, distribution potential, or whatever area your special feature relates to, then—as with any other feature—you’ll be perfectly positioned to bring it up during your presentation, and impress buyers with your attention to their needs.
Competitive Research
To know what makes your solution competitive, it stands to reason that you need to know what your competitors are offering. Researching your competitors’ solutions can pay off in your sales calls in several ways.
First, it acknowledges the reality that your buyers are also very likely to have researched your competitors, just as they’ve done preliminary research on you prior to the call. If buyers can surprise you by mentioning a competitor’s solution you hadn’t heard of, it may make you seem less prepared. The more closely your knowledge base can match (or exceed) that of your buyers when competitors come up during the call, the more prepared you’ll seem and the more value you’ll be able to add.
Second, competitive research can give you some preliminary ideas for how to position your features in advance of the call. If you know that there are areas where you have a clear competitive advantage, search vigorously for buyers who need those features. If you see that there are areas where you fall short, be prepared to put those features in the No compartment and anticipate ways to address the concerns of prospects who express interest. Finding the clearest ways to present the value you offer requires knowing what customers value—and don’t value—from your competitors.
One note of caution: remember that the presentation must always circle back around to how your solution provides value for your buyers. A customer looking for an urban commuter car will not appreciate hearing you brag that the model consistently beats the competition in off-road performance or towing capacity. Your competitive advantages are not motivating to buyers unless, like any other feature, they’re tied to the buyers’ needs.
If you can tie your car’s stellar off-road record into a reason why it will perform well on pothole-filled city streets, then your commuter might take more notice. As much as possible, let your buyers’ needs statements determine how you prioritize your features.
Forced to Present Early
“Thanks for coming in today! So, tell us what your software can do for us.”
“So you know, my 12:30 just got moved up; so instead of an hour, I’ve only got 30 minutes. Give me the Cliffs Notes version of your pitch.”
*arms crossed, stony silence*
Ever come across one of these buyers?
In some situations, you will have to present your solution before you are able to get your buyers to clearly state their needs. How do you prioritize features based on the buyer’s needs when you haven’t heard them articulated yet?
Here are two suggestions for how to preserve a Supportive Selling approach even if you must jump into presenting before learning about needs:
- Agree and Redirect.
Acknowledge the question with respect, and then try to redirect to questions that investigate needs.
“I’m eager to tell you about the product, but I also want to make sure I’m making the best use of your time. Before we get started, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your current capabilities?”
Acknowledge the question with respect, and then try to redirect to questions that investigate needs.
This isn’t about tricking them, or struggling for power just for the sake of it. You will make better use of their time and deliver a more meaningful presentation if they open up about their needs.
If buyers insist on hearing a presentation, then honor the request and consider the second approach:
- Integrate Needs Search in Your Presentation.
“Remas Rental Car provides vehicles to companies like yours and keeps them running at a cost lower than what you are paying now. Let me give you a specific example. For a company like yours, with… How many vehicles do you have?”
Here the sales person is giving the presentation and drawing out the information and bringing the potential customer into the conversation, by using the purchase as an example.
If forced to present early, your preliminary research about buyers’ potential needs will be a crucial resource. You can rely on your prospecting research to help you make educated guesses as to which features to focus on at the start, taking frequent opportunities to assess if the buyers agree with your conclusions. Work to get them involved in the discussion.
Here’s a tip: keep a close eye on their nonverbal behaviors and feel free to remark on them as a way to encourage more dialogue:
“I see you nodding your head. Did something like this example happen to you?”
By keeping the four Guidelines in mind and being polite, but persistent, in your attempts to encourage dialogue, you have a good chance of drawing buyers into an open discussion of their needs.
Special Circumstances
Note that presenting early is much more likely when selling to the federal government, as buyers are sometimes prevented by their regulations from sharing specific needs. Likewise, if you have an opportunity to present to a very senior leader of a large organization, then odds are good you will get into your presentation much earlier than the model above.
Please see Chapter Six: Special Selling Circumstances for more details on these cases.
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4) Developing a Follow-Up Plan
How to Maintain Momentum
Imagine your buyers seem enthusiastic after your presentation. In some sales models, now would be the time to “close hard” and push them into buying.
The way I see it, a collaborative approach got you all the way to a respectful, receptive, well-informed relationship with your buyers. Why take a sudden left turn now, of all times, when your objective is closer than ever?
In simple sales, concluding the sales call with too many aggressive closes or, at the other extreme, a passive lack of closing statements, will hurt your chances of success. Supportive Selling can help you find the middle ground, where you make a clear, respectful request for the sale without upsetting the buyer with a pushy tone.
In complex sales, the hard sell will not work. Your buyers will rarely make a quick decision to buy, either because they don’t have the authority, or because they’ll want to get the buy-in of other stakeholders. A more collaborative approach is what it takes to steer complex sales forward, even if progress is hard to measure.
If your primary goal is to at least create Movement, what do you do during the ending portions of the conversation to make that happen?
If your primary goal is to at least create Movement, what do you do during the ending portions of the conversation to make that happen.
Check for Concerns
Try to ensure that you and your buyers are on the same page. An especially important time to ask your buyers for concerns or questions is at the closing of your presentation, as you transition into the Developing a Follow-Up step. You will have just supplied them with a wealth of relevant information about your solution and its value to them, and it’s very likely that they will take some time to digest the implications of everything you’ve shared.
Simple prompts like
- “Before we go further, do you have any other questions?”
- “As you think back through the meeting, do you have any other concerns?” or
- “Is there anything else you want to be sure we cover?”
will give your buyers the space they need to raise any other topics of importance to them.
Asking for final concerns is not the same as inviting objections. It’s a way to demonstrate that you’re focused on what’s important to your buyers, and you don’t want to miss the opportunity to create value for them. It’s better to invite buyers to share their concerns than to let them go unaddressed.
Summarize the Meeting
After discussing any final concerns, an effective approach is to sum up the key points of the entire meeting, emphasizing the buyer’s talk but not dismissing the resistance entirely.
Imagine you’re selling medical imaging hardware to a hospital:
“Would it be helpful if I summarized our conversation so far? (buyer agrees) Thanks.
So, you’re adding a cardiac wing to the hospital next year, and new imaging machines will be necessary to let you diagnose the volume of patients you expect. This addition creates an opportunity for you to position this hospital as a regional leader in cardiac care, which is exciting for everyone on staff.
You mentioned that reliability is key for you in the imaging machines you choose, to cut down on lifetime costs. Ease of use is also important so you can get staff trained and up to speed in time for the opening.
You’re not looking for equipment with features you don’t need, since the expansion is expensive enough in itself.
Based on the outcomes you are looking for from your new equipment, we zeroed in on the 100-series CAT scanner and the 250-series, each of which has fifteen years of exemplary reliability data and leads the industry in ease of use and compatibility with the legacy equipment your technicians are already trained on.
You just asked if the equipment was suitable for patients from children to obese adults because that flexibility is important to you, and from the product specifications, we saw that it was. Does that leave anything out?”
A summary like this makes it crystal clear that the seller has been paying attention throughout the conversation, which shows focus and attention to detail.
It reiterates buyer’s talk, so buyers can hear their own needs statements and perceived benefits reflected back to them.
It incorporates resistance talk (“You’re not looking for equipment with features you don’t need…”) so the seller can demonstrate even-handedness and respect, but reframes the resistance talk as information that helps to further clarify the buyers’ needs from the standpoint of what they don’t want.
It goes all the way up through the concerns that were just checked and addressed, and ends with yet another opportunity for the buyers to weigh in. (“Does that leave anything out?”)
The end-of-call summary statement is a powerful way for the seller to establish a clear, mutually agreed-upon understanding of the conversation. Once the buyers agree that the summary is accurate, it provides a perfect foundation for discussing next steps.
Here’s where the approach diverges a bit, depending on whether you’re in simple sales or complex sales.
Simple Sales—The Goldilocks Principle
Like I mentioned earlier, research shows that when it comes to wrapping up a simple sales call, it’s a mistake to come across as too hot with aggressive or manipulative sales tactics:
“Well, since I can tell you’ve made your decision, would you like it delivered next Monday or Thursday?”
“So you know, I can only hold this offer for 24 hours; so if you want to act, it’s got to be now.”
“The only question now is, do you want it in blue or red?”
On the flip side, letting the call peter out without any clear request to close can leave your buyers feeling cold:
“So, what do you think?”
“Well, that’s my presentation.” *waits*
“Uh… I know I just asked, but do you still have any more questions?”
As in so many things, the ”just right” approach is somewhere in the middle: being direct without being manipulative; supporting buyers’ autonomy while pursuing your own objectives.
After checking for the buyer’s concerns and summarizing the sales call, consider a single question like:
“Would you like to move forward with this?”
“Are you interested in placing an order?”
“Do you think there’s room for us to work together on this?”
The answer can easily be “Yes,” “No,” or “Well…”
If you get a Yes, congratulations! It’s time to work out the details of the order.
If you get a No, consider probing for additional concerns. Answer them to the best of your ability, rolling with resistance as it occurs. By listening carefully and using the Tools for Selling, you may be able to turn that No into a Yes or at least a “Well…”.
That said, sometimes a “Well…” result isn’t an improvement. A clear Yes would take you to contract, and a clear No would free you up to focus on other leads. A “Well…” result that demands extra time and attention with no guarantee of progress can drag down on your overall productivity.
One seller reduced her number of “Well…” results significantly by adding some new language to the way she positions herself at the beginning of the call. She tells them:
“I’m only going to take ten minutes of your time today. If, at the end of that ten minutes, you want to make this policy available to your employees, then you tell me ‘yes’ and we’ll set it up.
“If you decide it’s not for you, I won’t be offended one bit when you tell me ‘no.’ I’ll leave you my card in case your needs change and be on my way.
“And if you want some time to think it over, that’s fine too; we can pull out our calendars and schedule a follow-up appointment any time that works for you. Does that sound fair?”
Do you see what she does? In a Supportive Selling-consistent way, she reframes the conversation so there’s no such thing as a “Well…”.
Instead, the three agreed-upon possible outcomes for the call are a Yes, a No, and Movement (a second appointment).
With very few exceptions, she reports, her buyers agree. This positioning technique has drastically reduced her number of “Well…” results, so she has more time to reach more prospects.
Speaking of “Wells…,” it’s not improbable at all to hear a new surge of ambivalence bubble up at this point in the conversation, even if the eventual outcome is likely to be a Yes. Making decisions is a commitment that can be tough or costly to undo. If a buyer makes positive noises (buyer’s talk) but also expresses some concerns (resistance talk) at this point, don’t be discouraged.
You may be able to use the Tools for Selling to help them work through this last moment and get to a Yes. Or it may be more appropriate to walk back from your request for a Contract and make a counter-proposal designed to encourage Movement. If you’re in this position, you now have the same objective that most sellers in complex sales have: creating an Action Plan.
When the meeting is over, the buyers at the meeting will return to their offices and resume their busy schedules. They will soon be lost in their other work, putting your sale at risk of the “Death by Lost Momentum.” One way to avoid this Death is to produce an Action Plan during the sales meeting with action items for both you and the buyer.
As the meeting closes, the customer may tell you that they will be meeting in the next few days to discuss what they have heard and get back to you. This buyer’s action item puts the responsibility of moving forward on the customer. Anything can happen then.
Complex Sales – The Action Plan
When the meeting is over, the buyers at the meeting will return to their offices and resume their busy schedules. They will soon be lost in their other work, putting your sale at risk of the “Death by Lost Momentum.” One way to avoid this Death is to produce an Action Plan during the sales meeting with action items for both you and the buyer.
As the meeting closes, the customer may tell you that they will be meeting in the next few days to discuss what they have heard and get back to you. This buyer’s action item puts the responsibility of moving forward on the customer. Anything can happen then.
Look for opportunities to create action items throughout the meeting. If possible, you want to create the required actions for your buyer, such as sending more information or arranging a referral within the organization. Still another approach is to take the lead with words like
- “Let’s talk about next steps. Would you like me to meet with your accountant so I can provide exact savings figures?”
- “Let’s talk about how we move forward. First, I will email you the material you requested as soon as I get back to the office.”
- “Would you like us to prepare a written proposal so you can see clearly what we are talking about?”
If you commit to taking concrete next steps, it may make it easier for your buyer to agree to a reciprocal action item.
It’s what your buyer does that matters: remember, the difference between Movement and Treading Water in an account isn’t how hard you’re working; it’s how actively your Champion is working to encourage the sale when you’re not in the room.
Most often the plan will be a verbal commitment, so take notes so you can summarize it later.
After the meeting, send an email to your buyer expressing your gratitude and providing your summary of the Action Plan, and any other bits of buyer’s talk you feel like highlighting. Ask the buyer if there is anything to add to the summary. This email is another chance for you to reach out to your buyer and maintain momentum.
Follow-up calls are generally well-received after a successful sales meeting. If the sales call went well, buyers will be receptive, as they will want to have a good relationship with their supportive teammate-salesperson. One successful salesman says he is like a rock in the shoe; he may be a small part of the buyers’ busy week, but it’s hard to forget that he’s there.
For a simple sale, action items and follow-up meetings are a good opportunity to uncover new needs, present new capabilities, and win over any new stakeholders before getting to a Contract within a handful of additional meetings. In complex sales, the Action Plan is your way of cultivating your most important resource: your Champion.
Complex Sales—Your Champion
Your Champion is the person within the buying organization who can help push the sale forward on your behalf. The higher-ranked that person is, the better positioned he or she will be able to (1) coordinate the effort, (2) make critical timing judgments, and (3) identify the stakeholders who would most likely support the sale and influence others.
To understand the possible role of the Champion and what can happen after a successful meeting, consider an example.
You are selling a form of high tech. Some stakeholders feel that the organization must adopt technology like yours, and others want to avoid unnecessary change. Also, assume that this organization is also expecting a large government contract. If the organization wins the contract, the purchase makes sense, but if not, there will be a significant reduction in staff and a sale will never be considered. This kind of information will likely not be publicly available. As a sales person, they will not share this sort of information with you. Your Champion, however, will be informed.
What behaviors from your Champion would help your cause the most in this scenario?
- Ideal Champion: The Ideal Champion understands the workings of his/her organization well enough to manage timing, expectations and stakeholders, shepherding your sale through obstacles.
In our scenario, if your Champion is effective, he or she will delay moving forward until there is news about the new contract.
Once word is out that the company will win the contract, your Champion may fill in the tech-friendly leaders on your capabilities and get their support. They will identify others who are most likely to be willing to support the sale and line up their support, creating positive momentum.
In other situations, the ideal Champion will bring your solution to a high-level person in the organization, knowing many of the more junior naysayers will follow the lead of the “big boss.” Your Champion will sell your technical solution, not as a sales person, but someone everyone knows has the best interest of the organization in mind. Follow-up meetings will be scheduled and you will likely be involved in some of them.
Give your ideal Champion room to take the lead in portions of these meetings, letting him or her start off by clearly stating the organizational needs and indicating how your solution fills a critical gap. Your job is to support your Champion however you can. Discuss ways you can offer the Champion support well in advance of these follow-up meetings.
- Imperfect Champion: If your Champion presents the idea of a purchase before the company is in position to move forward, the stakeholders will properly express reservations and the sale will be tabled only to die a “Death by Lost Momentum.”
While the Ideal Champion will identify those who are most likely willing to support the sale and line up their support, the Imperfect Champion will try to convince the most difficult ones first. Most groups have members who play the role of naysayers. However, the naysayers may not have had the benefit of your excellent sales interactions and will likely remain naysayers. Often, groups have a person or two who believe their contribution is to find fault and who resist changing their position. A Champion who approaches these contrarians first may make little progress—after all, he or she isn’t likely to be schooled in the Tools for Selling in the next chapter. If these early meetings discourage your Champion, the whole momentum of the sale may be threatened.
Regardless of the strength of your Champions, they believe that working with you is best for their organization and you are an asset. It is your job to support them in whatever way necessary so they can actively move the sale forward.
As part of supporting your champions, you will want to educate them about relevant features, possibly not discussed during the sales meeting. In follow-up conversations, try to learn who she will be talking with and what features are important to them, and then share relevant features.
If you have applied the Supportive Sales Guidelines, your Champion will view you as an asset who can help address these points, whether in-person during a follow-up meeting or by providing her with the necessary information.
Sometimes you will develop multiple Champions. This can be both an asset and a liability. The worst case occurs when each thinks the other one will carry the sale forward. To avoid this, it is important to establish a point of contact. That helps to clarify the assignment of Champions.
Making sure that each sales call ends by checking for lingering concerns, summarizing the conversation, and defining clear action items for both sides will help you cultivate Champions and make sure their efforts are being put to good use.
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Summing Up the Four Steps
In Supportive Selling, begin your sales call by Setting the Tone and Purpose. Dressing appropriately and projecting confidence may help you make a good first impression, and a few moments of chit-chat about areas of common ground or professional connection may help you develop rapport, but remember to “First, Do No Harm.” Watch your buyers’ cues and be ready to get to business quickly. Ask permission to give a brief snapshot of your company, and take that opportunity to position yourself as someone worthy of their time and privileged information. Creating value later on in the conversation is a more lasting way to build rapport and create a good overall impression.
Progress fairly quickly into Getting the Statement of Needs. With your preliminary research as a guide, use open-ended questions and prompts to encourage buyers to talk about their situation. The Tools for Selling in the next chapter will help you draw out buyer’s talk; that is, statements that focus on the cost of the status quo or the potential benefits of a change, each of which gives your sale forward motion. Hearing pressing needs, potential needs, and even resistance talk will help you understand your buyers better and give you information you can employ when you present.
Once you have a sense of the buyer’s needs, Presenting a Solution involves reaching into your bag of features and showing buyers those aspects of your solution that seem to be the highest priority to them. Everything the buyers say, and everything you know from your research about them and your competition, helps you organize your product knowledge in real time into four different compartments. By focusing on features that are a Specific Match to buyers’ pressing needs, bringing up features that provide Implied Benefits based on potential needs the buyer only suggested, tying in a handful of Maybe features that you feel are relevant and carefully steering away from Nos that wouldn’t add value, you’ll create a presentation that is likely to be relevant, memorable and persuasive.
Finally, your sales call ends with Developing a Follow-Up Plan. Checking to see if buyers have any remaining concerns and then offering a summary of the entire call, with a focus on the buyer’s talk you’ve heard, is a respectful and effective way to establish the foundation you need. In simple sales, make a clear, respectful request for a contract. In complex sales, suggest steps for an Action Plan with items for you and your buyers, as the more involved you both are, the less likely your sale is to die the Death by Lost Momentum. Be prepared to be persistent with emails, calls and follow-up meetings. With the right approach and the right conditions, you’ll have created a Champion within the buying organization whom you can support as the complex sale moves forward, ultimately, to a successful contract.
After one round through the four Steps, be ready to work hard on follow-up efforts and new research; you’ll have a sale on the books and be back into Step One pursuing a new opportunity soon enough!
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Chapter 4:
Tools for Selling
The four Guidelines of Supportive Selling can govern your overall approach. The four Steps give a flexible structure to the call. In this section, you’ll learn the Tools for Selling that you can use moment-to-moment within the call to increase the amount of buyer’s talk you hear and make Movement in the account more likely.
These are simple, powerful conversation techniques used by successful salespeople in a variety of fields. Counselors and consultants employ these techniques to help ambivalent clients talk through their situations and get closer to decisions. They are also used when coaching subordinates, soliciting information from a witness, interviewing job candidates and many other applications where influencing is needed.
For you, they can be a profoundly effective way to encourage buyers to share their needs and, if there’s a match between what you offer and what they need, to help them take ownership of your solution.
Different Tools apply depending on what your objective is at that moment in the conversation:
- To follow up on a buyer’s statement. These techniques should be used when you want to hear more about the last thing your buyer said, or draw attention to a point the buyer just made.
- Simple Reflections
- Amplified Reflections
- Complex Probes
- Simple Probes
- To build on a thread of ideas shared by the buyer. These techniques help you shape the conversation by reiterating multiple strands of buyer’s talk and resistance talk that you’ve heard, ideally in ways that subtly make the buyer’s talk seem more favorable. These statements also help you demonstrate that you’re listening to the buyer, and ensure that you’re on the same page, which is vital for maintaining a good relationship.
- Double-Sided Reflections
- Summary Statements
- Double-Sided Reflections
- To shift the balance of the conversation. This kind of technique involves suggesting a new topic, idea or implication to the buyer, instead of building directly on what they’ve shared. These tools allow you to steer the conversation towards buyer’s talk and away from resistance talk.
- Consequence Questions
- Value Questions
- Consequence Questions
Whether you work in complex sales or simple ones, these Tools have something to offer.
Ready? Let’s start with:
1) Following Up Tools
How to Keep Buyers Talking
Following Up tools are best used when you want to learn more information on the topic at hand, draw out more buyer’s talk, understand resistance talk more fully, or pursue the implications of a single idea.
A Simple Reflection paraphrases what the prospect said, getting the sense of their words or possibly extending the thought in a neutral fashion:
BUYER: I wish supervisors would give me honest assessments of their staff.
SELLER: It would help you if supervisors provided better assessments.
This technique is a powerful way to demonstrate that you’re listening to and understanding what the buyer is saying. The buyer’s typical response is agreement (“That’s right”) or elaboration (“Exactly. If their assessments were more reliable, we could…”). The buyer will naturally want to expand on the reflected statement. Simple reflections build rapport and help you follow up on threads you think will yield buyer’s talk.
Did you see how the reflection ends with a period instead of a question mark? This means you let your voice dip at the end of the sentence instead of giving it an upward inflection, as we do when asking questions.
Seems persnickety, I know, but it makes a big difference. This finesse point makes it seem more like you’re continuing the buyer’s thought and understanding it, as opposed to prying or challenging it with a question. Questions are often appropriate, but varying your delivery with reflective statements will make the sales call feel more conversational and less like an interrogation.
A more specialized technique that harnesses the contrary nature of buyers is the Amplified Reflection:
BUYER: Our supervisors are pretty effective coaches.
SELLER: So you’re completely satisfied with the coaching your supervisors provide.
With the Amplified Reflection, you reflect the buyer’s statement but deliberately include a minor error in understanding; for example, saying “So you’re completely satisfied” when the buyer called her supervisors “pretty effective.” The buyer, not wanting to be misrepresented, is very likely to respond with a version of:
BUYER: Well, I wouldn’t go that far. After all, there have been some problems. For instance….
The goal is to gently steer the buyer from articulating an ambivalent position (“pretty effective”) to one on the side of buyer’s talk (“There have been some problems [with the status quo]”). The ambivalent buyer can see both the pros and cons of the status quo. By implicitly arguing for the status quo with an Amplified Reflection, you encourage the contrary buyer to play devil’s advocate and argue the opposite.
The act of taking on the resistance talk position may help the buyer work herself through ambivalence, especially if you use other Tools to follow up on the buyer’s talk that results and expand it into a statement of need.
Note that the incorrect use of an Amplified Reflection will cause the wrong kind of contrary response:
BUYER: Our supervisors are pretty effective coaches. (ambivalence)
SELLER: So you’re not satisfied with the coaching your supervisors provide.
BUYER: What? I wouldn’t go that far. They’re doing great, given how busy we all are… (resistance talk)
The seller makes an error in understanding but in the wrong direction, directly attacking the status quo. Now the contrary buyer slips into resistance talk defending the status quo. The seller can still use other Tools to roll with the resistance, but it would have been better not to create it in the first place.
Keep your tone neutral when using an amplified reflection, as if you honestly believe you’re reflecting the buyer’s position accurately. If your reflection comes across as pointed, sarcastic or obtuse, you may damage the tone of respect that’s so important to the call.
Use these reflections sparingly.
If you’re curious to learn more about a given topic, sometimes a Simple Probeis all that’s required:
BUYER: There are some ways that our coaching could be stronger.
SELLER: Such as? OR Can you tell me more about that? OR Can you give me a specific example?
These questions are brief invitations for the buyer to elaborate. They can help you and the buyer dig deeper into a topic, uncovering new details or aspects of a situation.
They’re open-ended and free-form so the buyer stays firmly in the driver’s seat. They don’t demonstrate understanding of the buyer in the same way that simple reflections do, but they do indicate interest and, until you have some practice with reflections, may feel more natural than the other following up tools.
A Complex Probe will help you learn more about a specific detail you have in mind:
BUYER: There are some ways that our coaching could be stronger.
SELLER: Can you tell me more about how you assess your coaches now?
Questions like this explicitly reference words or topics the buyer has already used to ask a neutral question. They’re more directive than Simple Probes. They’re best when you have a specific detail in mind you’d like to learn more about, or you want to lead the buyer towards what you see as a possible need.
These four Tools for Selling will be your workhorses for much of the conversation. With them, you’ll be able to keep your buyers talking, draw out their needs, and zero in on specific points you think can lead to buyer’s talk.
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2) Building On Tools
How to Strengthen Your Case
Building on tools help you emphasize buyer’s talk and frame the conversation the way you want it.
You can use them to demonstrate your attention to detail, bolster your credibility and even-handedness, and lend extra weight to the buyer’s talk that your buyer has already shared.
In your efforts to help the buyer discover and state that your services are needed, you will sometimes hear both resistance talk and buyer’s talk at once. If you believe that the buyer’s talk outweighs the resistance talk, then a Double-sided Reflection can be effective:
BUYER: No one here wants to update the computers, servers and bandwidth because it’s expensive. Everything would change, but I see people taking a coffee break while waiting for data to download and that’s expensive too.
SELLER: So updating your IT infrastructure would be expensive, and it would save on wasted staff time.
The seller’s statement is effective because it helps the buyer realize that staff time is more expensive than the IT infrastructure. This tool lets you help the buyer compare the pros and cons of making the purchase. You have more value to your buyer as a knowledgeable consultant than a slick sales person hawking a product, so it’s in your interest to take note of everything the buyer says, both in favor of and against your solution.
Double-sided reflections are an appropriate way to sum up the buyer’s general ambivalence, as stated over several sentences. Because you get to pick and choose what’s included, you can ensure that even though resistance talk is included, the buyer’s talk is likely to outweigh it.
You can link the two ideas in a double-sided reflection with the word “but,” as in “It would be expensive, BUT it would save on wasted staff time.” Feel free to try other options too, like “and,” “on the other hand,” or “then again.”
Whenever a number of topics have been discussed and you think the conversation could benefit from a bird’s eye view, it can be helpful to offer a Summary Statement:
SELLER: Would it help if I take a second to put some of these pieces together?
BUYER: Sure, go ahead.
SELLER: Here’s what I’ve been hearing so far. Your supervisors have been doing an acceptable job with coaching, as far as you’re concerned. You know they have a lot of other duties on their plates. You’re also interested in seeing coaching get stronger, because you see connections to turnover and morale… [in summing up] What else?
This tool helps the buyer compare reasons for buying to reasons for maintaining the status quo.
Summaries give you a golden opportunity to frame the conversation in a way that puts the buyer’s talk you’ve heard in a better light than the resistance talk. When the buyer compares the two lists (as you present them) and realizes that the reasons for buying are more important than the reasons for resistance, you’re likely to get agreement and further statements of need.
Do be sure to include a bit of resistance talk when you summarize. If you only cherry-pick the buyer’s talk you’ve heard, the buyer may call you on it, putting your credibility (and the whole sale) at risk.
These summary statements can occur at any point in the conversation when you feel the need to gather several threads together and reinforce the buyer’s talk by speaking it aloud again. A much larger summary statement should always occur in the transition from Step 3, Presenting a Solution, into Step 4, Developing a Follow-Up Plan. That conversation-wide summary statement includes a wide array of buyer’s talk, resistance talk, statements of need, the specific matches and relevant features of your product, and your answers to the buyer’s concerns following your presentation. (See Chapter 3, Step 3 for an example of such a summary.)
These two Tools for Selling help you frame the conversation in ways that subtly benefit your cause. They bolster your credibility as a sales consultant by providing a safe format to reference pro-sale and anti-sale arguments in an even-handed way. They can help buyers clarify their thinking and draw out important questions or new points of discussion. These tools create powerful opportunities to shape the sales call once you’re experienced with them.
3) Shifting the Balance Tools
How to Keep the Conversation On Track
Shifting the Balance Tools help you bring value to the buyer and steer the conversation towards buyer’s talk.
First, you can evoke buyer’s talk with Consequence Questions:
“What problems have the slow access times caused?”
“If you don’t address this now, what could happen in two years?”
“Say you do stick with your current IT infrastructure. When do you expect to exceed capacity and what would that cost?”
These questions focus on the problems or limitations of the status quo, and what consequences will be suffered as a result in the future.
Asking buyers to articulate these negative consequences is a stronger approach than coming right out and making the arguments yourself. The exact same point that would draw the contrarian out if you said it will help them stake out a position if they say it themselves. The buyer’s responses to questions like these are very likely to create opportunities for more reflections, probes and more consequence questions.
Remember that there are two types of buyer’s talk: the problems with the status quo, and the benefits of change. You can get at the latter with Value Questions:
“How would things be different if the download delays were significantly reduced?”
“If your sales force improved dramatically, how would that affect your company’s bottom line?”
“Suppose you change your IT infrastructure. Where do you see this department five years from now?”
These more positive questions give the buyers the opportunity to imagine (and articulate) what they would value most about change. You could hardly ask for a better selling situation than sitting in a room with a buyer who comes right out and says what they’d like in a solution. These kinds of questions are instrumental to uncovering needs and increasing the buyer’s enthusiasm for change.
The more of each of these questions the buyer answers, the more buyer’s talk you’re likely to hear and the better you’ll be able to prioritize your features for the presentation.
Remember to tailor your consequence and value questions to the buyer you’re speaking to. On balance, a project manager will be more drawn in by questions about implementation than the business case, while a VP is likely to prefer business case questions.
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Using the Tools
How to Put It All Together
Tilting the Balance towards Buyer’s Talk
All the elements of Supportive Selling are focused on one objective: maximizing your chances of moving towards a contract.
A collaborative, respectful approach tailored to your buyers’ needs is not just an exercise in relationship-building. Years of research and my years of direct experience have shown that it’s the most effective way to shepherd both complex and simple sales to contract.
The key to Supportive Selling is to set things up so buyers themselves state the reasons why a sale has value; that is, reduces their costs (in money, time or hassle) and provides meaningful benefits. The way you approach the buyer’s talk and resistance talk you hear from your prospect will determine how close you get to this goal.
The more times a buyer speaks buyer’s talk aloud and hears those pro-sale points reiterated, the more the decision tilts towards a sale.
The more times a buyer voices resistance talk or hears those anti-sale points repeated, the more the balance tilts towards no sale.
Possible buyer’s talk:
“We could always stand to have our equipment be more efficient.”
“There’s an awful lot of money spent on travel to and from these meetings.”
“Our bookkeeping system is letting a lot of errors slide through the cracks.”
What can you do when you hear buyer’s talk?
- Tease it out with simple reflections and probes:
“You’re interested in improving your equipment’s efficiency.”
“Tell me more about the meetings that are taking all this travel.”
- Explore the costs of the status quo with consequence questions:
“How are those bookkeeping errors adding to your overhead?”
“If you don’t make any changes to efficiency, where do you think you’ll stand relative to your competitors a year from now?”
- Imagine the benefits of making a change with value questions:
“If you didn’t have to spend that money on travel, where would you allocate it?”
“If your bookkeepers didn’t have to deal with these system errors, would that free them up to address any other areas of concern?”
- Incorporate the buyer’s talk into a double-sided reflection or summary statement so the buyer hears their own pro-sale arguments a second time:
“So your equipment has been reliable and safe to use; on the other hand, you’re always interested in ways it could be more efficient.”
“If I may, I’d like to sum up a few points that you’ve raised. Meetings are a vital part of your business, and the face-to-face time they’re requiring has gone up. Business is up, so it’s natural to have more meetings as you get more clients. Travel to and from the meetings is taking a bigger slice of your resources, enough that it’s starting to concern you. Is there anything else?”
Try not to use Amplified Reflections in response to buyer’s talk. Amplified Reflections are a way to harness the contrarian spirit of buyers to make them argue the buyer’s talk side of a point on which they feel ambivalent. If they’re already expressing buyer’s talk, the last thing you want to do is encourage contrary behavior.
Instead, rely primarily on simple reflections, probes, consequence questions and value questions to help you make buyers feel understood, encourage them to expand on their pro-sale ideas and begin to take ownership of your solution.
Using the Tools to Roll with Resistance
By keeping the Guidelines in mind, following the four Steps and employing the Tools for Selling, you’ll greatly reduce your chances of drawing resistance talk out of contrarian buyers.
That said, even a Supportive Selling superstar is bound to hear some resistance talk, whether because your solution genuinely doesn’t have a capability the buyer needs, or (more often) because the buyer doesn’t yet perceive that your solution’s value is high enough to be worth the change.
Resistance talk boils down to statements that either talk up the benefits of the status quo:
“Actually, we get high marks for the way we coach employees. We’re very satisfied with the process we’ve put in place.”
or the costs, risks, or hassles associated with your solution:
“From what I can see, your online coaching tools add a lot of extra steps and take away from the little face time managers and employees already get.”
It’s tempting to prepare ways to “handle” common objections, but if you immediately respond with a counterargument, don’t be surprised when the buyers start to—well— argue.
Rebutting the buyers’ resistance talk directly is likely to draw out their contrarian natures. For most buyers, the more time they spend defending a resistance talk position, the more strongly they’ll believe it and the more important that point of mismatch between your solution and their needs will seem to them. Handling objections with direct counterarguments runs the risk of feeding resistance talk and making a sale less likely.
Instead, remember to turn the conversation into a CHAT (see Chapter 2) when resistance appears:
- Clarify the objection (Simple reflections and probes are good here)
- Honor it
- Answer it
- Test for acceptance
Consider the following examples for specific ways to use the Tools for Selling to respond to resistance talk:
For resistance talk in defense of the status quo:
- Amplified Reflections can help you investigate ambivalence, the first step towards buyer’s talk.
“So you’ve got your coaching system perfected, and you get top marks from everyone who goes through the process.”
- Complex Probes can help you tease out specifics in a neutral way, and may help you set up an evocative question about a particular detail of the status quo.
“So you get high marks for your coaching. Can you tell me more about the way you assess your coaches’ effectiveness?”
- Double-sided Reflections will let you put the resistance talk in context of a related piece of buyer’s talk you may have heard.
“You get good feedback on your coaching process, which is satisfying, and (as you shared with me a moment ago) the staff time spent on coaching and writing reports on coaching sessions is starting to crowd into other duties.”
- Consequence and Value Questions will explore the implications of the resistance talk and may make the buyer view it from a different, more pro-sale angle.
“It’s great to hear that your efforts to coach are paying off now. What can you do to make sure you can sustain this level of coaching as you grow?”
For resistance talk arguing against your solution:
- Amplified Reflections can help you uncover any ambivalence embedded in the resistance talk.
“You’ve never seen a solution like this succeed in your industry.”
- Complex Probes can help you understand the context of the resistance talk, and whether it’s grounded in an objective mismatch between what you offer and what they need, or a subjective one, possibly due to an incomplete sense of your solution’s value.
“If the performance review data were entered directly by the supervisor, tell me how that would affect accuracy and costs.”
- If you know of relevant buyer’s talk, Double-sided Reflections can reframe the moment.
“You’re wary of the costs and complexity and shift away from face time that could result from a new online system, and at the same time you’re worried that the high quality of your coaching now is centered in a few managers, not institutional capacity.”
- Consequence and Value Questions can encourage buyers to think past in-the-moment objections to brainstorm buyer’s talk or take ownership of a solution.
“You’ve got reservations about an online system that would take away face time between managers and employees. Imagine that the amount of face time was totally unchanged. What’s an aspect of your coaching process that you think would lend itself to being handled online?”
Summing Up
The Tools for Selling give you a variety of tactics to use with buyers to follow up on their words, build on entire threads of discussion, and shift topics in ways that evoke buyer’s talk.
If you’re accustomed to a selling strategy high in questions, it may take some practice to incorporate reflections, but research shows it’s worth it.
Once you’re comfortable employing the tools in a natural way, you’re likely to be surprised at how willing buyers will be to open up, and how adept you’ll become at steering your calls towards buyer’s talk.
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Chapter 5: Supportive Selling in Action
A Sample Case Study
By walking through a sample scenario, I’ll show how a seller can put Supportive Selling into practice in a call with a new potential client.
This chapter required choosing a specific industry to ground the example. I went with commercial real estate, a field that’s relatively easy for outsiders to wrap their heads around and that doesn’t change at the same rate as, say, web marketing. I’m grateful to Chuck Breitenother of KNLB real estate for his expertise at putting the scenario together.
While the details of the conversation are as authentic as possible for a hypothetical situation, this isn’t intended as a primer for how to make a killing in office leases. Look it over with the Supportive Selling model in mind to see, in general:
- How the Guidelines can inform the way you approach buyers
- How the four Steps give the call a productive direction
- How the Tools for Selling are used to uncover needs and roll with resistance
The Scenario
Helen is a principal agent for NTX Metro, a commercial real estate firm with listings across a large metropolitan area. She calls a small group practice of three family physicians to see if they’re interested in renegotiating their current lease or considering a move to a new property. As an agent, she can represent them in negotiations with property owners whether they want to stay or move.
The practice’s manager puts her in touch with one of the founding doctors, who agrees to an in-person meeting during work hours set aside for administration.
Before the call, Helen reads up on the bios for the doctors in the practice, the specifications of the building the practice is currently in and its management company. She also refreshes her product knowledge of the buildings she represents, filing away features about square footage, configuration possibilities, location, price per square foot, parking, amenities, and other details.
Let’s listen in on the call:
Setting the Tone:
SELLER: Good morning. I’m Helen. Thanks so much for seeing me today.
BUYER: Sure thing. I’m Dr. Subramanian.
SELLER: Nice to meet you, Doctor. I saw from your bio that you did your residency at Mount St. Michael’s. Did you know Dr. Neal Mellander?
Helen is trying some chit-chat about professional connections before getting into the meat of the call. Finding points of connection can help her develop rapport. Also, referencing the doctor’s bio is a natural way for her to show that she’s done some homework in advance of the call.
BUYER: Sure. We weren’t there at the same time, but a mutual friend put two and two together and made the connection.
SELLER: That’s great. I met him when we helped the Spinal Center find their current place a few years back. We just traded emails a little while ago.
The buyer is polite but shows little interest in exploring the small talk further. Helen elects to follow her cues and get to business.
SELLER: Well, my plan today is to ask you a number of questions and do more listening than talking; but before we start, would it help if I gave a brief picture of NTX Metro and what we do?
Helen makes sure to ask the buyer’s permission before positioning her company with a short pitch.
BUYER: Go right ahead.
SELLER: Thanks. We have worked with commercial clients across the metro area for 35 years to make sure they’re getting the spaces that meet their needs and the best deals once they’re there. We’re one of the top three holders of office leases in the area. I reached out to see if you were thinking about ways to make your lease or your space work better for you, and I’m grateful that you agreed to make some time to talk this through. If it suits you, I’d like to use this conversation to hear about what you see on the horizon for the practice, and discuss some ways our representation might fit in as you work for those goals.
Helen gives a very brief introduction of her company and the process that brought her into the office. She’s consciously positioning herself as a representative of a credible company that can offer value to the buyer. She then offers an open-ended agenda for the discussion, framing the conversation right away as an exploration of the buyer’s needs.
Getting the Statement of Needs
BUYER: Oh, I don’t have time to get into all that. Look, Helen, I only have half a day a week set aside for all my administrative work, and I need to get back to it as soon as possible. Can you just walk me through a brochure or two, and I’ll talk it over with the other physicians when we get a minute? We haven’t even decided if we’re staying in this space or going.
The buyer feels harried, and is reluctant to volunteer her needs right away. She has asked Helen to present early before needs have been explored. Helen decides to show respect by agreeing to the spirit of the request, without abandoning the idea of searching for needs:
SELLER: Sure. I know moving or staying is a critical decision. I’m not here to get in the way of that process, just to find out what you’re looking for and share some options that may relate. (Supporting Autonomy)
BUYER: Okay. Give me some information about other spaces.
SELLER: Let me pull out some of my brochures. For reference, can you give me a rough idea of the square footage you’re considering?
The buyer is unsure, and so gives Helen the square footage of her current space for reference.
SELLER: Thanks. So I can narrow down what to show to you, tell me something that would be important to see in a new potential space. (Complex Probe)
BUYER: I don’t know. I guess something like this building would work.
The buyer’s half-hearted answer suggests she might be ambivalent about the practice’s current space. Helen decides to try an Amplified Reflection to encourage buyer’s talk out of the ambivalence:
SELLER: This building meets all your needs. (Amplified Reflection)
BUYER: Well, no. It works; it was a good choice when we started, but it’s not, you know… we won’t be here forever.
SELLER: You don’t see the practice staying here and growing, year after year. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Right. Eventually, we need an office we can grow into, and I don’t see that happening here. This building doesn’t have any space for expansion. But moving is a question of resources and timing. This lease is up next spring. Is next year when we want to jump into a big move and an expensive build-out, or do we re-up the lease one more time? Negotiate a shorter lease to give us time to think? We keep going back and forth.
SELLER: There’s a lot to weigh in a decision like this. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Lots of ways it can go wrong.
The buyer seems stuck in ambivalence and concern about the hazards of change. Helen decides to use a Value Question to try to evoke buyer’s talk.
SELLER: You mentioned needing a space to grow into. The way you see it, what will the practice look like as it grows? (Value Question)
BUYER: More staff, so I don’t have to pitch in on paperwork!
SELLER: When you have to do paperwork personally, there’s a cost to the practice. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Yes. There’s some administrative work that only us physicians can take care of, of course, but if we had a third admin aside from Erica and Simone, who are already swamped, there are definitely aspects of what I’m doing today that could be passed on.
SELLER: What would you do with this time instead? (Value Question)
BUYER: See patients.
SELLER: If all three of you could see more patients instead of working on administration, how would that affect the bottom line? (Value Question)
BUYER: It would depend on how much we paid the new hire, but it would certainly help. But it’s not that simple, with us crowded like this.
SELLER: What’s an example of how you feel crowded? (Simple Probe)
BUYER: Just look around. There’s just no space to get another admin in here, when we’ve already got filing cabinets filling the break room and the other two physicians doubling up in an office. The new patients we’d see might pay for the admin help, but they won’t pay for moving to a bigger space.
There’s a mix of buyer’s talk (the benefits of a new administrator, and the deficiencies of the current space) and resistance talk (the expense of making a move) in what the buyer has said. Helen uses a Double-sided Reflection to sum it up and frame it in a pro-change way:
SELLER: Moving to a new location is an expensive prospect; that said, space here is already crowded with the personnel you have today, let alone the hires you want for tomorrow. (Double-sided Reflection)
BUYER: That’s what I keep saying; sure, it’d be expensive to move, but there’s a cost to working like this too. I haven’t convinced the others yet, though. Show me some of your properties; maybe having something concrete to talk about will help.
The buyer is still interested in hearing a presentation sooner than later. Helen can integrate questions about needs into the early stages of her presentation to prioritize her features in real time.
SELLER: Happy to! You said you wanted something similar to this building; I can certainly show you some options. By “similar,” do you mean in the look of the building, location, price per square foot…? (Simple Probe)
BUYER: Yes. Well, the overall look of the building—that’s less important. Location is important. We need to stay within two to three miles to keep our patient base, and it should be, you know, a comparable quality office park. That’s what our patients expect. But outside of that, price per square foot is what it’ll come down to.
SELLER: Staying in the same area and the same quality of facilities is key to keeping your patients. And you want a good deal, especially if you’re looking for a space to grow into. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Right. Eventually, we don’t just want more administrators; we want more physicians, and more RNs or PAs. Our schedules are mostly booked up five weeks in advance. We need more practitioners to meet patient demand.
SELLER: There’s an opportunity to capture that demand, if you had the people and the space that would make it possible. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: The thing is, we got such a good starting price on this lease, I’m sure it’ll be hard for anything else to match it. And that’s accounting for the escalation clause bumping it up a few percent a year. That’s why my hunch is we won’t be moving anytime soon.
Helen needs more information before she can address this bit of resistance talk appropriately.
SELLER: Can I ask what your price per square foot is? (Complex Probe)
The buyer tells Helen the price, and it is low for the market. Helen decides that putting the price in the context of other buyer’s talk will help her frame the conversation in a pro-change way.
SELLER: Okay, thanks. Let me make sure I’ve got a handle on what you’ve shared so far. As a practice, you haven’t ruled out either renewing your lease or moving on when next spring rolls around. You’re happy with the price per square foot here, and the practice is busy and doing well in this office. At the same time, you feel crowded, and it bothers you that the other doctors have to share an office and the break room doubles as storage for files. There’s administrative work falling in your laps that keeps you away from patients, and it’s the sort that could be passed to a new hire, except there’s not enough space to add a new employee. And when you think about your longer-term goals for the practice—adding new physicians, nurses and physicians’ assistants to capture the demand that’s already knocking down your door— it’s challenging to see them achieved while you’re in this space. Is there anything I missed? (Summary)
BUYER: We really need a bigger space. We’ve outgrown this one.
The summary has helped the buyer’s talk stack up favorably against the resistance talk, convincing the buyer to make a clear statement of needs. Helen feels more comfortable now getting into the details about her properties.
Presenting a Solution
SELLER: Okay. Keeping all that in mind, why don’t we start looking at these two options here? This way you can get some information, and I can hear from you if properties like these are on the right track.
BUYER: Sure.
SELLER: This first building is a flat top in an office park about ten minutes from here, very much like this building now in terms of quality, age and feel. I know that the whole east half of that first floor is waiting for a tenant, so there’s plenty of space.
BUYER: Okay. I don’t even know how much we’d need.
SELLER: If you like, we could talk that through.
With Helen’s prompting, the buyer talks through the configuration she envisions needing in a larger, upgraded space; the number of examination rooms, the target capacity of the waiting room, the number of bathrooms, the needs for administrative space and storage, etc. This line of questioning lets Helen deliver an estimate of the square footage required.
SELLER: All right. Understanding, of course, that the configuration we just discussed is preliminary and can be adjusted up or down any time you want, my back-of-the-envelope estimate says that new setup would be right around twice the square footage of the practice now. Should we use that as the ballpark figure for now?
BUYER: Phew. No, that’s probably about right as a space to grow into. It just brings home how important price per square foot is going to be. We’re talking a big, big jump in rent if we’re not careful.
The buyer is ambivalent, caught between the benefits of change (a new space that allows for growth) and the hazards of change (large perceived increase in cost).
SELLER: It’s important to keep an eye on the overall cost to the practice, but you think a space that size would set the practice up to grow. (Double-sided Reflection)
BUYER: Yeah. If we grow the way I want, and we’ve got three more physicians and dozens more patients, then a big rent will be sustainable. But getting from here to there makes me nervous, you know?
SELLER: It’s a chicken/egg situation; the space will create the growth, and the growth will make the space sustainable. (Double-sided Reflection)
BUYER: That’s it exactly. In the meantime, it’s a lot of risk.
Helen knows that it will be difficult to match or beat the price per square foot that the buyer is currently paying. The best way to help the buyer through her ambivalence, Helen decides, is to search for more buyer’s talk that can outweigh the resistance talk about price.
SELLER: Sure; it’s important to think about all the ways to keep risk in check. (Simple Reflection) If you don’t mind, what would you say your top three expenses are here in the practice? (Complex Probe)
BUYER: Well… Payroll and benefits, hands down; then rent; then liability insurance…
SELLER: Does your rent include utilities, or any other services? (Complex Probe)
BUYER: No, it doesn’t. When we were first looking at locations, years ago, we came across one building that offered to include our electric bill in the price per square foot, but the overall rent was so much higher that it wasn’t meaningful. We’ve really got a good deal here.
SELLER: Just having one utility folded into the rent didn’t influence your decision. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Right.
SELLER: But if the price per square foot had folded in enough other expenses to be good for the overall cost picture…? (Value Question)
BUYER: Well, then, it would have been a harder decision.
Helen knows that a number of her buildings include other utilities and services in the price per square foot; but if she states that feature outright, she might encourage the buyer to be a contrarian. She decides to keep using the Tools for Selling instead, to see if the buyer can identify downsides of the current arrangement or opportunities in the prospect of changing to a utilities-included lease.
SELLER: What other services do you pay for, related to operating the space? (Complex Probe)
BUYER: It’s all pretty standard. Electricity, heat, water, trash pickup, janitorial services. Biomedical waste pickup. Plumbers and handymen, too, not that that comes up very often.
SELLER: There are a few line items, but they’re negligible. (Amplified Reflection)
BUYER: Don’t get me wrong. They’re not in the top three, but they add up.
SELLER: They nickel-and-dime you. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Yeah, I guess so.
SELLER: Who on staff is responsible for paying the bills? (Complex Probe)
BUYER: The ones that don’t change month-to-month are automatically paid online. Erica handles the utilities. When it comes time for a repair or something, I generally do a quick authorization and Erica sets it up.
SELLER: And if there’s need to communicate with the trash company, or the janitorial company, who handles that? (Complex Probe)
BUYER: That’s Erica.
SELLER: What percentage of her time would you say she spends on handling the bills and services related to the space? (Complex Probe)
BUYER: Not much more than ten percent.
SELLER: And she makes…? (Simple Probe)
BUYER: Around $50,000 a year… I think I see where you’re going with this.
SELLER: Well, I’ll quit being so roundabout, then, and ask you what you see is the takeaway. (Consequence Question)
BUYER: The staff time Erica spends on keeping up with the utilities and such is one more cost that sort of goes along with the space. An extra $5,000 a year to the practice.
SELLER: Do you buy that conclusion? (Simple Probe)
BUYER: Sure. I mean, it adds up. Relative to the cost of moving and refitting a new space, though, that’s a drop in the bucket.
Helen uses another Evocative Question to take the implications of buyer’s talk a step further and increase the perceived value of change:
SELLER: Tell me, if Erica could take that ten percent of her work time—four hours a week— and dedicate it to other tasks, what would you have her do? (Value Question)
BUYER: Huh. With an extra half-day every week, she could take on some of this insurance company paperwork I’m dealing with today. She could take a little of the load off the three of us, so we save our administrative days for the things that only we can do.
SELLER: And how would fewer administrative hours for you and the other physicians affect the bottom line, if you were able to fill that time with patients? (Value Question)
BUYER: We could fill it in a heartbeat. Another few appointments a week would be good. Every little bit helps.
Helen decides to cement the buyer’s talk with a summary before outlining her features at last. Resistance talk is included as well, but at the beginning, so the influential final thought is reserved for the strongest piece of buyer’s talk.
SELLER: So there’s not a big benefit to leases that include just one utility in the price per square foot, like the site you considered before moving here that just covered electricity. The more services that are folded into a competitive price per square foot—things you’re currently paying separately, like electricity, gas, trash pickup, and handyman services— the fewer extra line items there are to add up to the overall cost picture. Erica’s administrative effort to keep up with all those separate bills and relationships also adds up, to about 10% of her overall work. If she could focus on other things instead of that cluster of bills and services, she could take a bit of your administrative load and let the practice see more patients, improving the bottom line. Is that about right? (Summary)
BUYER: Are you telling me that you’ve got buildings where more of these things are folded into the rent? I thought it was standard for practices to just, you know, pay their own way.
SELLER: Both of the buildings in these brochures include electricity, electric heat, water, janitorial services and trash pickup. Building services is also on call to service plumbing problems and other minor handyman work. (Feature)
BUYER: All that? Huh! So what’s the price per foot?
SELLER: Depending on the exact size of space you lease—bigger leases can usually negotiate slightly better rates—it starts from about 30% more in the flat-top building to 60% more per square foot than what you’re paying now in this office building. (Feature)
BUYER: That’s a lot… but when we crunch the numbers, maybe the time and money we save by having services included in the rent will even out. When I think about it, we do keep getting hit with other charges by the management company, on top of the rent.
SELLER: What’s an example? (Simple Probe)
BUYER: Well, they had to repave the parking lot last year—we pay extra for parking, by the way, I forgot about that. The cost of the paving showed up in the rent. The same for overhauling the HVAC system when the 30-year-old boiler blew. They pass everything they can on to us.
SELLER: How does that make you feel about the overall cost of staying here? (Consequence Question)
BUYER: Price per square foot is only a piece of the puzzle. If I really sat down with the books and totaled it all up, I don’t think I’d like what I saw.
SELLER: There’s more than meets the eye with that price per square foot. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: It’s not as if I didn’t know all this. It’s just that I’m taking the time to pay attention to it, because we actually have to make a choice about staying or leaving the lease.
SELLER: Of course.
BUYER: These other properties you’re talking about may not be such a jump at all when the true costs get factored in; especially if the rent is on the lower end, closer to that 30% increase.
SELLER: For the layout we talked about earlier, I’d estimate a starting offer between 30% and 45% higher. (Feature) And there’s always room to negotiate; asking for free months of rent, for instance.
BUYER: We’re hagglers, don’t worry. We’ll get a good price.
SELLER: (laughing) Well, I’ll just stand back and watch you work, then! Can I show you how the layout we discussed might fit into either of these buildings?
BUYER: Sure. I’ve got a few more minutes.
Helen gives the buyer the brochure and talks through the dimensions of the available spaces, and how the buyer’s preferred layout might fit into the space. She also outlines some additional details, such as a rundown of the other tenants, the parking facilities, the overall feel of the neighborhood—even the view, tossed in as a Maybe.
BUYER: Thanks for talking that through. I think Doctor Thomas will get a lot out of seeing these brochures; he was the driving force behind the layout for our current space.
The buyer seems open and receptive, and is bringing up the other members of the practice, which suggests she may be open to becoming a Champion. Helen’s goal is to create Movement inside the practice as a result of this call, not just to Tread Water by leaving brochures and hoping for a call. She keeps that goal in mind as she transitions into the final stage.
Developing a Follow-Up Plan
SELLER: Thanks; please do pass the brochures on. I’ll plan to leave a few extra.
BUYER: Great.
SELLER: Before I get out of your hair today, I’d like to take a moment to wrap things up. Do you have any questions or concerns about these properties we talked about, or the general outline of how a move might look? (Checking for Concerns)
BUYER: Oh, listen, the idea of moving definitely concerns me. Anything risky like that concerns me. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to do it.
SELLER: Taking a step like that is tricky, and at the same time, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing. (Double-sided Reflection)
BUYER: Right. But I don’t think I’ve got any questions. I feel like we covered a lot.
SELLER: Me too. You told me about how you’ve been trying to decide whether to stay or go, since the price per square foot is still good in this building and the practice is busy. You outlined the growth you’d like to see, which starts with a new administrator, and goes on to add several new physicians and other practitioners to meet the patient demand that’s loading up your calendar. There are a few ways this space feels crowded even at your current size— the doubling up of offices and the files in the break room, for instance— which would make growing here tough to envision. There’s no available space in the building to do so, anyway. You told me your parameters for an expanded office space, and we walked through how those dimensions could fit into two properties in particular (though those are by no means the only options out there.) This office has a low price per square foot for the market even after a few years of escalations. You also talked me through the ancillary expenses of this office space, like utilities and janitorial services, and the staff time it takes from Erica—and, by extension, you— to administer them. You also mentioned some big expenses the management here has passed on to you, like repaving and HVAC repairs. A competitive price per square foot that includes some or all of those services in a stable price might lead to a better cost picture overall. I gave you a tentative estimate for the kind of price you might expect, given all the conditions, but because this is a practice of hagglers I get a feeling the first quote you get isn’t going to be the one you sign to, wherever you go or whatever decision you make. Was there anything else that comes to mind? (Summarizing the Meeting)
BUYER: No, that feels like everything. I think we’ve got to get serious about considering a move. There are lots of ways this space doesn’t cut it anymore.
SELLER: You’re ready to think about a move. (Simple Reflection) I find it helpful at times like this to think about an Action Plan: the specific things I’m going to do next. Would it be helpful if I could set up a showing for these two properties?
BUYER: You know, I really ought to talk to the other physicians before I do anything like that. We have to all be on board with this process.
Bits of resistance talk are common towards the end of a conversation as the buyer weighs making an actual commitment. The Tools for Selling can be just as effective at rolling with this resistance as any other time.
SELLER: Of course. The whole practice needs to make any decision, and from what you’ve said you feel serious about considering it sooner than later. (Double-sided Reflection)
BUYER: That’s right. These things take time. The sooner we decide, the better, regardless of which way we go.
SELLER: How would you like to go about getting your colleagues up to speed? (Complex Probe)
BUYER: We take a half-hour lunch together once a week. Our schedules hardly ever align aside from that; it’s just catch-as-catch-can. So, I can plan to show them the brochures at that next lunch. Barring that… you know, sometimes we do videoconferences from home in the evenings, when we need to talk practice business. It’s a little easier than getting in the same room.
SELLER: That fits into your schedules better. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Yeah. Maybe I’ll set that up. I feel like that would be better than email, and I’m pretty sure trying to meet in person will just fizzle out.
The buyer is taking ownership of the solution, thinking about challenges that will get in the way of Movement, and looking for ways around them. Helen wants to support her budding Champion however she can.
SELLER: If you think it would be useful, I could be on call during the videoconference to talk through the properties and answer any questions.
BUYER: Oh, sure! If you could come on and do a quick pitch, like you did for me today, I think that would help a lot.
SELLER: I’d be happy to. And you can boot me or mute me whenever you need to.
BUYER: (laughing) Please. You’ll want to mute us by the end.
SELLER: You said evening. Would this Thursday work for you, anywhere between 6 and 9?
Helen starts off with a very specific suggestion to make the next steps as clear as possible. She’s standing by to be flexible if another time is better for the seller.
BUYER: Actually, we tend to do them on Saturdays, given how hectic the work week gets. I hate to take up your weekend evening.
SELLER: Not a problem at all. Working weekends is par for the course in real estate.
BUYER: Just like late nights in medicine. Well, let’s aim for Saturday. I’ll send the event invitation out this afternoon.
The buyer has agreed to a concrete step—bringing in other stakeholders—at a concrete time. Helen has succeeded in creating Movement in the account, and may have cultivated a Champion who can influence others inside the practice.
SELLER: Sounds great. Please keep me posted; if Saturday isn’t good for everyone in the practice, we’ll just look for another time.
BUYER: Exactly. And hopefully they’ll be interested in scheduling a showing after the meeting. This is all about keeping our options open, and seeing what’s out there, that’s all.
SELLER: You just want to be prepared. (Simple Reflection)
BUYER: Exactly.
SELLER: Well, I really appreciate your time today, Doctor, and I’ll look forward to talking to you again over the weekend!
BUYER: You too, Helen. I’ll get the invitation right out.
SELLER: Thanks! Have a good day.
Summing Up
By accepting the buyer, developing value, rolling with resistance and respecting her autonomy, Helen was able to build a collaborative relationship. The Guidelines steered her through Dr. Subramanian’s initial ambivalence and occasional moments of resistance.
The four Steps provided the structure for her call so she could keep a firm hold on her objectives. Setting a professional, respectful tone, working diligently to uncover statements of need even when asked to present early, tailoring her presentation primarily to the topics and needs covered, and suggesting concrete next steps from the foundation of an agreed-upon summary steered her call to Movement.
The Tools for Selling gave Helen an array of tactics to employ at different parts in the conversation to evoke buyer’s talk, develop value, and roll with resistance. Her weakest moments came at times when she stopped making use of the Tools.
All three portions of Supportive Selling worked together to make her call end with Movement, and her buyer into a Champion. As with most complex sales calls, there was no clear-cut victory; but her relationship with the buyer improved steadily during the call, as did her buyer’s clear perception of the value of her solution.
Supportive Selling is designed to help maximize your chances of seeing the incremental successes you need call after call to bring buyers to contract and achieve your own objectives.
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Chapter 6:
Special Selling Circumstances
Insider Details from a Career in Sales
These complex sales cases are different enough from other sales calls that they merited their own section.
Selling to a Senior Leader
Complex sales involve a number of people all who have a stake in the purchase. Rather than trying to sell each of these people individually, it is often best to reach as high up in the organization as is possible and start with that person.
If the senior leader gets the request for a visit, he or she may decide to participate in the meeting or pass it down one level, imposing the meeting on another senior executive. In either case, those reporting up will listen closely and you are in a good position to accelerate the sales process. If that senior person likes what you have to sell, others are more likely to follow. However, you need to be well prepared. You may be talking with someone above the normal purchasing decision-maker level, so a poor meeting can have lasting consequences and a good meeting can get you much closer to a sale.
In a meeting with the high-level leader, expect him or her to invite the available stakeholders, including an entourage of advisors. Imagine what happens if the lead is a three-star Army General or a Senior Vice President of a Fortune-100 corporation. In these situations, the meeting focuses on the organizational leader. Often he or she is very busy and has limited time, so you need to get to the point. Depending on the organizational culture, most of the others will say little unless asked to comment.
After brief introductions, you are expected to make your pitch. In this situation you can try to get buyer’s talk by acting as if the meeting is a one-on-one with the leader, but you can’t take more than a minute or two. In group meetings, there may also be several leaders with similar power or influence. In many of these situations, you will not be able to pursue a detailed needs search at all. The busy leaders will not put up with it and the others will feel that you are wasting their time. They will not want to sit there while the senior leader tutors you.
You are now put in a situation of describing features of your products or services and you have not heard any needs. As you list the features, the contrary buyers will be thinking of reasons why those features are not that important or the problems with implementing your solution. At the same time, they may become bored with you doing all the talking. You must generate buyer’s talk as you make your presentation.
Find opportunities to solicit comments and eventually draw out the buyer’s talk. As you proceed through the meeting, ask relevant consequence and value questions. As your audience becomes involved in a conversation, buyer’s talk will emerge.
Remember that a presentation tailored to the business case for your solution—how it improves ROI, minimizes risk, or otherwise adds to the bottom line—is the appropriate approach for any senior leader. Be ready to answer questions about the fine details of implementation, if they arise, but prepare yourself to primarily speak the language of money.
Armed with your extensive preliminary research, your business-case focused presentation, and your expertise at drawing out buyer’s talk while presenting, you can use Supportive Selling to realize success when selling to a senior leader.
Selling to the U.S. Government
Insider Details from a Career in Sales
The federal government’s goal is to make procurements competitive, so they can get the best product for the lowest price. However, the competitive process, with detailed preparations, extensive proposal reviews and loser challenges, often makes procurement unreasonably slow or effectively impossible. As a result, many mechanisms have been created to speed up the process, including the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule and Indefinite Deliverable Indefinite Quantity contracts.
It is not our purpose here to describe the complex process, rather to address the cases when Supportive Selling is applicable. With all these barriers, Supportive Selling still can be a critical part of successful selling to the federal government. The general guidelines, steps, and tools are all used, but are modified to meet the needs of the particular situation.
In order to better understand new and existing capabilities, the federal government sometimes allows vendors to provide capabilities briefings, even to high-level officials. The capabilities briefings would be called sales calls in other circles. It is not realistic to expect to close a sale or make a near final decision as a result of these briefings, since they are always a small portion of complex sales involving many decision makers with different perspectives. Ultimately, though, effective briefings can lead to sales via one of the existing procurement mechanisms and yield substantial amounts of money.
The sales briefs vary from one-on-one meetings to regularly scheduled vendor opportunities with a few vendors being represented. Often, there will be three to ten attendees with one person in charge. Sometimes, a contracting officer will attend and not allow the other participants to make any statements or ask any questions. Other times, the government officials may have some idea of the vendor capabilities and, if so, will likely start off by stating clear and specific needs, using much of the allotted time to amplify those needs. Only the contracting officer can make a government commitment. Your goal in the sales brief is to get buy-in and to find a Champion.
Contrary to popular belief, government offices are often understaffed, with many employees working long hours and not eager to take on more work. I have often walked into a room filled with people with their arms and legs crossed and an attitude asserting that they are being forced to sit through another one of those damn briefs when they already have too much work to do. For good reasons, they clearly feel the brief is just going to be a waste of their valuable time. They have sat through many before that are simply a rehash of the capabilities presented by others.
Time after time, though, I’ve seen those rooms of people go from being closed-off at the start of the brief to leaning forward in their chairs so they don’t miss a moment by the end. A Supportive Selling approach makes this transformation possible.
One key is to get as much information as possible about the buying organization’s interests and requirements in advance, so that when you need to go directly to discussing features, you are able to relate your features to the needs you hypothesize they have.
Involve them in your conversation as much as possible, drawing them out with questions or reflections. If they’re being close-lipped, reflections can be based on body language, if necessary. (“I see you nodding. Seems like you’re frustrated by this problem, is that right?”) Even if your audience may not be able to be completely forthcoming about needs, you can still establish a collaborative relationship and let their reactions help you triage your features in real-time.
Government agencies are often very large, with complicated chains of command. Don’t be surprised if a very successful sales call ends with a referral to a completely different department. Your buyers will know the hierarchy and spheres of influence within their organization better than you ever could. If a Champion tells you, “You should really be talking to Colonel Vasquez about this,” that may be the most effective form of Movement you could hope for.
Turnover in federal agencies can be high. Positions of leadership tend to cycle as frequently as every two or three years. A Champion you cultivate over the course of several calls may be reassigned months or even a year into your complex sale, leaving you with a critical hole in the middle of your sales effort. Follow-up efforts take on vital importance in selling to the government because of this turnover. Staying apprised of staffing changes and cultivating good relationships with a wide range of stakeholders will help you weather personnel changes on the buyer’s side with as little momentum loss as possible.
There’s no doubt that selling to the government differs from selling to the private sector. The most successful briefs are made when someone on your team has experience inside of the organization, so the special features include an understanding of the concerns of the government organization, personal relationships, and a detailed knowledge of the needs.
That said, even for sellers without extensive prior experience with the government, an advance understanding of needs, realistic expectations about the pace of progress, and the Supportive Selling approach can still help you keep Movement alive and cultivate the Champion you need for success.
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Conclusion
Supportive Selling is an innovative approach that’s compatible with most contemporary sales models. By bringing research-based methods inspired by Motivational Interviewing to bear in the sales call, this new discipline gives sellers like you practical tools to develop value, roll with resistance, and encourage buyers to share their needs.
By keeping in mind the four Guidelines:
- Accept Buyers as They Are
- Develop Value
- Roll with Resistance
- Support Autonomy
you’ll be well-positioned to create and maintain collaborative relationships.
By structuring the sales call into these four Steps:
- Setting the Tone and Purpose
- Getting the Statement of Needs
- Presenting a Solution
- Developing a Follow-Up Plan
you’re likely to come across as prepared, competent, and buyer-focused, and maximize the impact of your presentations.
By employing the Tools for Selling to:
- Follow Up
- Simple Reflections
- Amplified Reflections
- Simple Probes
- Complex Probes
- Build On
- Double-sided Reflections
- Summary Statements
- And Shift the Balance
- Consequence Questions
- Value Questions
you’ll be able to shift tactics in the moment to maximize the impact of buyer’s talk, roll with resistance, and encourage buyers to take ownership of the solution.
If you’re curious to learn more about Supportive Selling or want try some of these techniques before real sales are on the line, visit www.supportiveselling.com to learn about our training simulation Supportive Selling with Dan Williams. You can put your skills to the test in simulated sales calls with Dan Williams, a realistic buyer powered by the PeopleSim conversation engine.
Get detailed coaching on your selling techniques in simulated sales calls that never play the same way twice. Earn achievements and rack up simulated commissions from successful calls, and see how you stack up against other users in a global leaderboard! This companion training game is the perfect way to build on the ideas in Supportive Selling and take your own selling skills as far as you want.
Visit www.supportiveselling.com to learn more about this next-generation training opportunity.
Happy selling!
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Acknowledgments
A lot of people contributed ideas, anecdotes and constructive criticism to this book. We’re grateful to all of them for helping to make Supportive Selling stronger, clearer and more practical for salespeople to actually apply in their work.
Thanks to David Milliken at BlueLine Simulations for his partnership and support throughout the process, and his feedback all the way back to the earliest drafts. Equal thanks to David Zehren and Joe Friedman at zehrenfriedman.com for reviewing the drafts and lending their expertise on sales training to the process.
Thanks to Chuck Breitenother of KNLB real estate, Murray Arnold of GE and Jenna Zahner Thayer of Aflac for talking us through their sales processes. These sellers have had rewarding careers, and their real-world perspectives on selling brought incredible richness to the table.
Finally, thanks to you for picking up this book. If you have any thoughts or comments, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at www.simmersion.com or on social media. Best of luck to you!
—Dale and Ben
Additional Resources
SIMmersion
SIMmersion trains communication skills faster and more effectively by combining the world’s most realistic simulated experiences with highly interactive training content and extensive user feedback.
Blueline Simulations
The talent management specialists at Blueline Simulations “excite, engage and transform employees utilizing the world’s most innovative and effective training solutions…one client at a time.”
Blueline builds custom learning visuals, classroom simulations and games, elearning, esimulations and mobile learning solutions. Blueline helps organizations inspire new beliefs, expand knowledge and develop skills.
Zehren-Friedman Associates
Zehren-Friedman Associates have helped clients sell, present, negotiate and influence more effectively for over 20 years. Their team of skilled professionals draw from broad experience to custom-fit and then deliver seminars that focus on skill development and behavior change.
Books on Sales and Influencing
Rackham, Neil. SPIN Selling. McGraw-Hill, Inc. New York, 1998
Miller, William R. and Rollnick, Stephen. Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change. The Guilford Press, Third Edition. New York, 2013.