The next two chapters are dedicated to better understanding how customers buy and to using that knowledge to develop a sales process that supports and facilitates any buying process. One of the things that is vitally important in developing a solid process is looking closely at the things you are doing now. What are the things that you do in every sales campaign that you know contribute to success? What are some of the activities that are required in special situations, and how do you know when a particular situation calls for one?
We want to begin to recognize the things we do all the time, or once in a while, that really don’t directly impact our success. Some of these activities might be wasting energy, or worse, could be slowing us down. I urge you to immediately begin collecting the information you’ll need to take your game to this next level. In so doing, you’ll become instantly far more effective in every sales campaign in your pipeline.
The easiest way to begin is by keeping track of what you do in each sales campaign or each opportunity. Just the mere fact that you’re tracking your actions will make you more efficient and effective. Think of it like a diary of each sales campaign. Look closely at the activities you have been engaged in for each sales opportunity and ask:
What did we do during our most recent meeting or phone call?
Topics discussed
Questions we asked
Information we presented
Why did we do each of these things?
What was the purpose or intent?
What were we trying to get our customer to think differently or do differently?
What did we recommend or ask them to do next?
Specific actions to take
Information (of theirs) to collect or provide
Information (of ours) to review
What did they agree to do going forward?
Which of our requests did they agree to?
What commitments did they make?
What had they done since last time we met or talked?
Which commitments, previously made, did they deliver on?
What did we agree to do going forward?
What commitments did we make?
Some will notice that this approach represents a slightly different way of thinking than they are used to. It’s not uncommon to see participants in our workshops a little taken aback when they read this list of questions. Many of us have been conditioned to do whatever the customer asks us or tells us to do. The customer wants this, the customer wants that, and we run around jumping through hoops for a living. We’re ‘professional hoop jumpers.’
Too often, when we do leave a customer meeting with anything in the way of commitments, they are things that we have promised to do, provide, or deliver to them. This is another pattern of behavior we simply have to break. Our customer, also, should be making commitments about the steps they will be taking within their buying process between now and the next time we meet. To properly qualify opportunities, and stay in step with our customer, we have to understand what they are planning to do, and when they are planning to do it.
If we can’t answer these questions listed above, it’s either because we didn’t have a reason for doing the things we did, or because we didn’t recommend or ask our customer to take any specific action of any kind. If this is the case, we are not following a process at all. We are letting our client dictate the things that we do. If we begin documenting and evaluating the things that we’ve been doing and that is what we discover, then so be it. We can’t change the past, but we can definitely change the way we think, and the way we sell, in the future. The remainder of this book is dedicated to better understanding how your customers buy, and the things we can do to influence their buying behavior.