This week I had a remarkable experience.  A colleague invited me to give him some very direct feedback.  He said, “I want you to be comfortable enough to tell me I have bad breath.  In fact, if you care for me, you will.” 

Well, he didn’t have bad breath…but there were some other things that I wanted to tell him.  Some things that were really hard for me to share, but if my colleague was going to go from good to great he needed to know.  So with significant discomfort I shared with them what I had observed and what other people had said about him.  It was RAW!  The conversation was short, maybe 20 minutes.  It was the first time in my career that I REALLY gave uncensored, open feedback. 

A wonderful thing happened.  He thanked me...sincerely!  Just so you know, what I told him shocked him — really!  I openly shared feedback about blind spots.  As you might imagine there was a look of shock and hurt and a deeply felt, genuine question of “Really?”  Is this how you feel, and others feel this way too? 

The day after we had this meeting, we talked.  There were some new questions and thoughts.  Remaining was the question of “Really, is this what you see?” 

“Yes,” I replied. 

“Can you give me some evidence? A time when what you say actually happened?”

This was hard for me because, like many people, I don’t want to have the tough conversation – it is just too hard.  I stuck with it and gave very specific examples. 

He listened – and then said that he understood and could see what I and others see.  Suddenly I realized that he was receiving a gift, a gift that could change the trajectory of our relationship and his life. 

I too received a gift. He modeled for me how to solicit and actually get the critical feedback that I need to change my own performance. And this is what I offer you: can you handle the truth? Do have the benefit of straight-up feedback?

Scott MacDade was my first of many sales managers.  Scott had a keen ability to relate to clients, walk away from fuzzy opportunities, and close large deals faster than any other sales manager in our region.   

I was a new IBM account executive, and after several days in the field together, Scott and I had a conversation that went something like this…

 “Deena, you were a business major in college, right?”    

“Yes,” I replied.    

“So you know what a basic accounting ledger looks like, right?”  

“Sure.”  

“So here’s the thing—on one side of the ledger we have a client’s business needs: problems to solve, results to get, price considerations, installation timeframes, terms and conditions, that sort of thing.  And on the other side of the ledger we have what I like to call the client’s human needs.  You know, the things they need to feel good about, feel comfortable with, be sure of, in order to choose us over someone else.  

“So keep asking all of your good questions about desired results and issues and so on.  And start asking about the things the client needs to feel comfortable about. What’s important to them about a business partner, what would they need to see or have from us to feel really good about making their decision.”   

This guidance was one of the single best pieces of advice I have gotten in my career.  So often, the big decisions are made within the first two or three meetings with a client.  Understanding what’s emotionally and intellectually important to the client is often more important than the solution we offer, or price we charge.  In fact, most of the deals I have won and lost had nothing to do with what we charged or what our implementation team looked like. Rather, it had everything to do with whether the client felt they could trust us and work with us effectively. 

I have now come to refer to the “human side” as key beliefs—those things the client needs to intellectually and emotionally “check off” in order to make a decision.  We’ve all heard the expression and likely experienced the reality—people buy from people they like.  So don’t stop taking clients to lunch or playing a round of golf!  But when you do, find out about their key beliefs, as this is undoubtedly one of the keys to winning deals. 

Yellow lights (objections, stalls, doubts, concerns) posed by clients are processed first by the emotional centers of our brain and only after by the portions of the brain that generate reason and logic.  Since a yellow light can represent a threat to our success (personally and professionally), our first reactions can be the fear-based emotions of fight, flight, or freeze.  Sometimes these emotions are so strong they inhibit or diminish rational response altogether.

Any fear-based emotions we transmit are in turn processed by the client’s emotional centers and tend to reduce rather than increase confidence, and substantiate rather than eliminate any concerns.Experiencing emotional reactions is non-optional; that is just how we are wired.  Where we have a choice is in what happens next.  With practice, we can feel the emotion, recognize it, let is pass through, and move on to a considered (rather than a reactive) response.  Rather than stimulus / response we learn awareness and choice.Some yellow lights tend to cause more intense reactions than others.  The following hierarchy of reactions comes from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and is called Logical Levels.  The “higher” the level, the more emotion it tends to generate.  If we can get past the emotions and recognize the level at which it operates, one of our choices is to see if we can establish agreement at the next-higher level.  That agreement can then set a common ground for resolving the issue at hand.

Environment:  Challenges to where and when something should happen or to verifiable evidence and/or facts about the situation. 

 Tactics:  Challenges to your implementation of the solution.

Strategies:  Challenges to your major approaches to the proposed solution.

Beliefs:  Challenges to what you believe to be true/false, right/wrong, good/bad, etc.  This might show up in differences of opinion about the presumed problem or beliefs about the negative or positive consequences and implications of the problem.

Values:  Challenges to your personal values, such as honesty, fairness, or loyalty.

 Identity:  Challenges to who you think you are — personally or professionally.  This could be anything from misperception (“You are a tactical implementation company.  How can you help us with strategy?”) to outright, if unspoken, prejudice (The potential client won’t deal with you because of race, religion, gender, appearance, lack of credentials, age, etc.)If you disagree on environment, seek agreement on tactics; if a tactic is challenged, seek agreement on overall strategy; if you disagree on beliefs, seek agreement on values.  Challenges to identity can be difficult because “there is nowhere to go.”  One possibility:  “If I could get you the undeniably best solution for the best value, would you hold the fact that I was ______ against me?”  Or, “I get the sense that even if I could get you a superior solution at a great value, you wouldn’t be interested as long as I am a ______.  Is that a fair statement?”

Here are some examples:

1. CLIENT:  You’ve got your facts wrong.  We have 10 product lines, not 8.  And you misspelled the name of our Western Region VP.
   
   CONSULTANT:  I definitely want to get the facts right.  And I apologize for the misspelling.  That was poor proofreading on our part.  I don’t want to proceed if you feel the change from 8 to 10 materially changes the overall approach.  Should we stop now or can we appropriately take that into account and look at the rest of the proposal on its merits?
   
2. CLIENT:  I think you have this all wrong.  This needs to be centralized at corporate and not driven by the field.
   CONSULTANT:  As you can well imagine, I’ve heard strong opinions on both sides of that issue.  First, before we tackle the issue of centralized or decentralized, are you on board with what the initiative needs to accomplish, and it’s just a matter of the best way to do it?
   
3. CLIENT:  We can’t take people off current jobs to implement this and we can’t have people try to implement it who don’t understand how we do business.
   CONSULTANT:  That’s a tough spot to be in.  And unfortunately, not unusual.  It seems like we could either give up, or at least explore some options.  Are the challenges you are facing big enough that it would be worth at least a little discussion of some possible alternatives? 

Clearly, gaining agreement on the next-higher level doesn’t resolve the concern.  It can give common ground to discuss options, and as such, can be a helpful tool in our tool belt.

Recently we have been having trouble with our 7-year-old daughter.  What happened to our happy-go-lucky, agreeable little girl?  Her new answer to nearly any request was some version of “No.”  Hang up your towel?  “No.”  TV time is over?  “No, I’m still watching.”  It’s time to do homework?  “No, not now.” 

We drive her to school each day and that gives either my wife or me some good-quality one-on-one time with her.  Normally we incorporate a few minutes of reading or a workbook exercise into the drive time.  I say normally because recently…that’s right…the answer has been “No.”  No reading, no workbook.

Last Monday was my turn to drive.  My wife handed me a book and a workbook exercise and asked that I have our daughter read to me and complete the exercise on the drive.  “Good luck,” she said as I left.   

After about 15 minutes of talking I said, “Mom sent along a book and worksheet.  I put them next to you on the seat if you want them.”  She replied, “I don’t want to read.”  I responded with, “No problem…only read if you want to.”  After a few minutes she asked, “Dad, would you like me to read to you?”  After the book, she completed the worksheet without me saying a word about it.

When I got home, I handed my wife the book and completed worksheet.  She asked if it was a hassle getting these done—I simply said no.  Two days later, I drove again and I went with the same plan.  This time two books and two worksheets!  Aha…I figured it out.

Recently I worked with a client on a big opportunity with a prospective customer (I’ll call them BCI…Best Choice, Inc.).  After a long pursuit, it was down to two contenders and my client was in second.  BCI gave my client one last chance to present their best offer.  They told my client that they were ready to go with the competition but would endure one last meeting. 

My client and I discussed approaches for the meeting.  One was the ever-popular “Here’s why to choose us” plan.  This plan is normally full of slides and claims of being the best at this and that.  It also often results in the client sitting there feeling like the only choice you are offering and respecting is “Choose us.”  So they sit patiently and at the end, say “Thanks for coming in—we’ll get back to you.”

The second strategy (and the one my client went with) explicitly put the choices on the table and made either option okay.  The central thrust of the meeting became working together to address what would have to change with my client’s solution, terms, conditions, and so forth to give BCI another good choice.  Instead of having only one excellent option, they would have two and they could choose which was best for them. 

It took some work prior to the meeting to gain agreement to this approach.  In the spirit of choice, my client and BCI worked together until they felt good about the proposal.  The meeting ended with the client saying how much they appreciated the approach and that they now had a tough decision to make.  A few days later came the call to say “Congratulations…you won, and the approach to the final meeting made a BIG difference.”

This is one of many stories I can think of where explicitly stating and respecting the choices people have opens the opportunity to work together without pressure and nonsense, and get to a place where the client has our best thinking.  At that point, they can choose what is in their own best interest.  Hence, the old adage—People love to buy and hate to be sold to.

When making finalist presentations in a competitive environment, figure out when you would like to present and advocate for it.  If you don’t, other top professionals will and you’ll get the leftovers.

Two important considerations are primacy and recency.  Primacy is going first or towards the beginning and setting the agenda for others to follow.  Recency is going last or near last because people tend to remember most that which is most recent.  There is no fixed rule for which is best.  My bias is towards recency.  If you go last, that is the only time you could actually enable a final decision.  The buyer has heard everyone else; they hear you and they could decide.  I’m not saying they will decide—just that is the only time they could.  Additionally, you might be able to gather intelligence on what happened in the other presentations and build that into what you do.

That bias doesn’t always apply.  There are several factors to take into consideration including time, energy, complexity, and number and quality of competitors.

For instance, let’s say the presentations are complex, take most of the day, and are held on three separate days.  Strongly consider advocating for going last.  It will likely take the buyers one round just to get warmed up—to be educated buyers and know what to ask and what to look for.  And you’ll benefit greatly from the recency effect.  It is usually very realistic to state that you have difficult logistic challenges in getting your key people to be present on the first two days and would there be any possibility you could go on the last day—or even the day after if necessary. 

However, let’s say the buyer scheduled six 1-hour presentations on the same day (and you felt 1 hour was sufficient or weren’t able to get them to allow more time).  You might want to go second, allowing the first presentation to “warm up” the buyers.  Your presentation then sets the agenda for the rest of the day, while energy is still high.  You might even want to go first, if you feel your presentation is strong enough.   

If all the presentations are on the same day, going last risks pushing against fatigue and the desire to be done with the process.  In this case, a more effective strategy would be to find a way for the buyer to let you come in on the next morning.  They will have had time to process all the events of the day before, they will be fresh, you might go over an hour and they won’t have someone waiting, and you have at least the potential for getting the decision. 

Regardless of the order in which you would like to present, you won’t get what you want unless you ask.  If you state your request politely and with good rationale and they don’t comply, you can say “I understand and appreciate your willingness to at least consider it.  If we can’t do it the day after, could we at least go towards the beginning of the day—say second or first? That would really be a big help.”

On the flip side, if they were only two or three presentations on a day, I’d still prefer to go last unless there were other considerations.

One of those considerations might be the expertise of your competitors.  If you think the competitors will give the typical PowerPoint-dense, “talk at people” presentations and yours will be highly interactive and involving, going last will be a breath of fresh air (though admittedly, going first will be a tough act to follow).  If you expect the others to be highly polished, you might choose to go first and try to establish criteria in the buyers’ minds that others will find hard to meet.  Often the solution provider who owns the criteria owns the decision. 

One way you can turn this to your advantage is to provide a decision matrix the buyers can keep in front of them and write on that includes the key decision criteria you have elicited when talking with them in advance.  Chances are you are the only one in the room who has talked with all the decision makers and influencers—and thus the only one who knows all the criteria.  Without changing the criteria, you can shape them to best highlight how you will help the buyer succeed better than their alternatives.  You leave the decision matrix for them to refer to in the next presentations in the belief that others will have a harder time matching the criteria than you—or at least you have shaped how the buyers will judge your competitors. Here's a sample matrix that you can customize: Sample Decision Matrix.doc (31.50 kb)

Avoiding low-energy times, or times that are likely to come with distractions,  is common sense (yet not always common practice).  You would want to go to great lengths to avoid a situation where people would be anxious to leave to catch flights.  If it isn’t obvious, you would want to refuse to present while others are eating. 

To continue with the obvious (albeit sometimes ignored), here are some quick quotes relating to available energy from Yes!  50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive; Noah Goldstein, Steve Jarin, Robert Cialdini:

Those who had consumed the caffeinated beverages before reading these arguments were 35% more favorably disposed toward that position than were those who drank the unadulterated drink.

...you should make your presentations when people are most alert – shortly after they’ve had their morning coffee fix, and never right after lunch.  Even if you can’t choose the time of day, having coffee or caffeinated tea on hand should make your audience more receptive to your message.  But be aware that it usually takes about forty minutes for the full effect of caffeine to kick in...

[This is]...effective only if your arguments are genuine, thoughtful, and well reasoned…

The key message here is to pick the time slot where you would most want to present and find a good way to advocate for it.  Many times the buyer will comply.  If you ask politely, with good reason, and you leave flexibility to accommodate the buyer should your request not prevail—you usually lose nothing.  If you just take the slot they hand you and you are up against some tough competitors, you might lose a lot.  If you get stuck with a time slot, consider how to make best use of it.  Don’t just give the same presentation regardless of when you present. 

In short: Ask for what you want and make best use of what you get.

• Concentrate on others’ success and not your own (if you make the client’s numbers improve, they’ll be happy to make your numbers improve.)
• Let the client tell their story before you tell your story.
• This won’t always happen.  Sometimes you’ll need to tell some of your story before the client will share theirs.
• If they never tell their story, it’s a problem.
• When the client tells their story, forget about fixing it and just understand it.
• When the client tells their story, listen for the real pain or gain.  If you don’t hear any, say so.
• Find out how the pain or gain manifests (evidence).
• Find how big and how bad the pain is—and how big and how good the gain (impact).
• Try to get the whole picture (context).
• Find out what’s stopped the client from resolving this before now (constraints).
• If you hear something that doesn’t make sense, say so—tactfully.
• With the client, try to figure out how they could make a good decision in their own best interests.  If it doesn’t seem to make sense, say so—tactfully.
• Present your story in terms of the client’s story.
• When the client comes up with reasons your story doesn’t make sense, check your ego at the door.
• Listen carefully to what the real disconnect is. It’s not always apparent to either you or the client.
• Find out what a good resolution for the client would be, from their perspective.
• If you can’t resolve the disconnect with the client’s thinking/feeling criteria, see if you can offer a different way of thinking that makes more sense.
• If the client decides to work with you, do everything possible to make sure they get what they expected—or more.
• If the client decides not to work with you, understand why.
• And lastly, if the client doesn’t decide at all, work to establish a series of steps you could take together to allow them to say with confidence either “yes” or “no."

And remember—“no” is OK.

Working independently, I used the standard brainstorming technique and Mahan did a Q-storm.  It probably won’t surprise you to read that we came up with very different lists.  What is more interesting is that the Q-storm opened up thinking and possibilities that we would not have considered and gave the sales strategy a critical adjustment.

Next time you are working on sales strategy and tactics, try a Q-storm.  Make a list of all the questions that come to mind.  It only takes a few minutes and I bet you could find a nugget that will make a big difference.  Let me know how it goes.

When she found the bottle was empty, she called a doctor for a refill.  He insisted that I come into his office for a quick evaluation.  You tell him to “just…fill…it!” My death stare made it clear that I wasn’t going anywhere. She called back, and the answer remained the same.

Even with excruciating pain, I could see what was going on.  He wanted the “co-pay” that goes with the office visit.  No visit, no co-pay for his time.  I was furious. 

Susan drove me to the doctor’s office.  My head felt like it would pop with pain, anger was making it even worse. Almost incapacitated, I waited in reception until I met with the doctor.  True to the whole charade, he took my pulse, looked in my ears, made me say “ahh.”  Each passing minute increased my anger.  I would have screamed, but my head hurt too much.

That’s when he wheeled his stool next to me and patted my knee.  “Mr. Christensen, you’re not suffering from a migraine, you’re suffering from spinal meningitis.”  Everything after that was a blur. They whisked me off to the hospital, inserted a needle the size of a ball point pen into my spinal column to draw fluid, and then waited for a day to see if I had the good kind (where you live) or the bad kind (where you don’t).

I was fortunate. I had the good kind.

My doctor insisted on a quick diagnosis, even though the prescription seemed obvious to me. Because he caught it early, and didn’t blindly medicate symptoms, I avoided terrible consequences of the disease.  He wasn’t doing something remarkable.  On the contrary, it was mundane.  He was just doing his job.

You could say that it’s what doctors should do—“Diagnosis before you Prescribe.”  

Now, let’s loop this story around to how you can make your sales process more effective.  Here are a few ways you can diagnose before you prescribe.  It can be as simple as asking the right questions, and listening to understand.

Use the following tips to help you ask more effective questions:

• Obtain permission to ask questions.
  
• Ask one question at a time; wait for the answer.
  
• Reward their response and then ask your next question. When appropriate, use their words in your question. It's a powerful reward.
  
• Be cautious of leading questions (i.e., questions designed to get agreement, not information or understanding).
  
• Ask "how" or "what" rather than "why."
  
• Summarize what you've heard.

Use the following tips to help you listen more effectively:

• Listening is a matter of choice and concentration. You must choose to listen actively, and you must focus your complete attention on the other person.
  
• Focus on the other person's answer, not on your next question.
  
• Listen with your ears to the auditory communication.
  
• Watch with your eyes for the visual communication.
  
• Sense with your intuition the real meaning of their communication. Can you see a difference between what they say and what they mean?
  
• Expand or exit the communication when appropriate. Don't cut it short of understanding or prolong it past interest and attention span.
  

“Diagnose, then prescribe” is not a special tool, or a magic process…it’s just a sound principle.  It’s a simple habit of understanding first. It works for good doctors, and it can work for you.

We all have an ego, and our ego is focused on getting our needs met—that’s what egos do.  Often our response to client objections or challenges is to defend or attack, which can evoke a counter-defense from the client.  Sometimes we seek approval or acceptance and tend to overpromise and over-represent our abilities, or agree to things we should not.  At other times, we want to show how smart or skilled we are and end up impressing ourselves more than the client. 

In contrast, top consultants have a knack for staying centered, calm, objective, and clear-headed, even under pressure.  In fact, the more the pressure, the deeper their calm.  For me at least, that is a learned response.  It is a skill I can practice and get better at—and I can lose that skill through inattention or lack of focus.

So from personal experience, here are two methods of how to check your ego at the door.

The first I don’t really expect you to choose, yet I’ll offer it.  Lots of years of meditation seem to help.  When you sit calmly, watching your brain generate tons of thoughts and emotions, and experience yourself not reacting, it creates that space between stimulus and response.  I’m not saying that meditative composure can’t be overridden in the heat of human controversy.  However, when you choose to practice checking your ego at the door—to unwire yourself from the buttons people might push—you have a strong reference point for what it’s like when the button is pushed, and you can prepare for it.

The second one is more direct.  And the more I do it the better it seems to work.  However, please have the lawyers insert all the disclaimers of “non-professional at work.”  This is just one human being sharing with some other human beings—nothing more.  My internal process is:  trace it, face it, replace it.

Trace It
Those of you who are familiar with the Helping Clients Succeed content probably recognize the process of peeling the onion.  That’s what I do first—peel my own onion.  In relation to some hot-button response to client statements or actions, I ask myself, “What am I afraid of?”  Usually something bubbles to the surface fairly quickly.  I sit with it for a while, and then ask, “OK, so if that happens, then what happens?  What do I fear will happen next?” 

I don’t rush it.  Answers don’t always come as fast.  And it’s often unpleasant.  Yet if I stay with it, I usually fall though enough holes that I come to some bottom—the root issue or fear.  Typically, it’s not something I would have predicted when I started out.

Face It
I don’t think I’m alone in the experience of facing my worst fear, realizing I can handle it, and feeling a great sense of freedom or release.  And often, that’s exactly the experience.  There have been a couple of times when I got there and said, “Yeah.  That’s something I really don’t want.”  So part of the “face it” was understanding what it was I really didn’t want and starting to figure out what would have to happen to not get to that place—and get to some other place instead.  In either case, it leads to the next part of the process.

Replace It
Again—if you are an HCS fan, you know about flipping from what people don’t want to what they do want.  There seem to be three key steps here.

1. Validate and appreciate what I am about to replace.  It was serving an important service—trying to do something helpful for me.  You can reference Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) as a much better source on how to do this than what I describe here. 
   
   It also has a strong basis in persuasion theory—to change people from previously consistent behavior.  “To ensure our message is optimally persuasive, we need not only to free them from their previous commitments, but also to avoid framing their previous decision as a mistake.”  “Praise their previous decision as correct ‘at the time that they made it’.  Point out that the previous choices they made were the right ones ‘given the evidence and information they had at the time’.”  (Yes!  50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive; Noah Goldstein, Steve Jarin, Robert Cialdini)
   
   
2.  Figure out what I do want and create a “peak performance state” for it.  (Please see how to do this in the HCS reference material.)  For instance, if what I want is calm honesty, I deeply understand what calm honesty looks like, sounds like, and feels like for me. 
   
   
3. Practice wiring the new response to the old stimulus.  I first role play the scenario over and over with friends and colleagues, then I try it out live with clients.  I have a heightened awareness for what it is like when the button is pushed and I just reroute it to “what I want instead.”

There is much more technique we can apply to skillfully resolve client yellow lights and deal with tough negotiation interactions.  However, the ability to check our egos at the door is at the core of effective responses.  I welcome hearing what’s been working for you.

When it comes to improving performance, it’s a matter of focus…what you pay attention to.  Focusing on too many things is like focusing on nothing.  It’s like using a sledgehammer to cut wood. 

With all of the things you could do, which actions should you act on?  It’s the essence of honing in on your own personal leverage points. 

An alternate focus in competition is getting “better.”  Asking, “What can I do to be better?”  This simple shift can reveal the behaviors that are within your control.  It reveals direction and focuses your energy.  It’s easier to act on.

The best way to ensure winning is to become better.  Constantly, in practice and competition.  Become consistently better and the winning will follow.