Join The Conversation Going On In Your Prospect’s Mind
We have all had the experience of talking at cross purposes with someone. We are both having a conversation that makes sense to ourselves, which is logical and congruent, but which baffles our interlocutor. After a while we realise we were both talking about unrelated things. This is not the type of conversation we want to be having with buyers. We want to be on song, on topic, right on the button with what we are discussing. There is no point in solving a non-issue or a minor issue for the buyer, because we had misunderstood what the real issue actually was.
Great and all good. However, how can we be sure we are understanding the critical issue for the buyer. Part of this is structural, in the sense of how we construct the conversation with the buyer. Part of this is linguistic, our ability to parse the language being used. Part is our communication skillset, to fathom the nuances, perceive the unstated pieces of the puzzle, read the body language.
Structural here means how good a job did we do in building the foundations for the meeting. What research did we do prior to meeting? How much time did we allocate for thinking about how the conversation might flow. How much effort did we put into designing the questions we would ask, in order to understand where they are now and where they want to be?
The buyer has two conversations going on in his or her mind. We need to join both of those conversations. One is the conscious conversation. This is based on their present awareness of the issue, the scale and scope of the problem. The other is the subconscious conversation that has been crushed by the weight of the world’s current dilemmas requiring immediate, total attention. The issues are there, they are just mentally superseded by other dramas that are grabbing their more immediate attention at the minute.
They have something worrying them and we need to know what that is. We do this by asking questions about the business. If we have arrived at the meeting with a mental list of what questions we need to ask in order to find out what the key requirements of the buyer are, we will do much better. What normally happens though, is the salesperson just turns up and gives a pitch or if they do manage to ask a question, it is too spontaneous and isolated to be really effective.
It is much better to have mentally worked out the flow chart of questions like those you often see in project planning diagrams. If the answer is “yes”, then we go to this next question or action. If it is “no”, then we to to this next question or action. It is our flow chart of the sales conversation, constructed before we get into the meeting. Obviously, the client conversation never follows the exact path but our job as salespeople is to bring the discussion back on track, so that we can gain the answers to the questions we are asking.
The client has some self talk around the business. There are things that are concerning them. They are plagued with what has happened in the past, as they replay those events in their mind and are fearful of a repeat performance. There are issues in the future they fear will unfold to their detriment. They are hazy ideas at this point, but there are always dark clouds on the horizon in business. There are a tonne of conversations going on in the conscious and unconscious minds of our buyers, so we don’t lack for opportunities to find a connection. The point is we want to connect with those particular conversations around issues we can fix for them.
To increase the chance of that happening, we need to have planned out the conversation before we get there, looking for hooks and triggers to help us to connect. We need to be designing well structured questions, which will get the client talking. When they talk at length, we receive a lot of valuable information, and guideposts to help us to, in turn, help them. We are not doing this is in a cold, hard, bright lights in their eyes, interrogation fashion. We are doing it gently, with the highest of purposes in mind– to make their businesses thrive. We need to be very circumspect on asking the questions. It cannot be blunt or hard or harsh or too intrusive. This is our advanced communication skill on display now. We have to be able to phase a question in a way which is easy and comfortable for the client to answer.
This is how we join them in the conversation they are having in their own mind and when we do that we will be on their wave length and on point. This is how we can tailor our presentation to suit them. To introduce our solution in a way that is totally relevant and makes sense to the buyer. What we are offering is exactly what they are looking for and this is no accident. It is the sum total of our efforts in planning and plan execution to hit the bulls-eye – that is to solve their biggest problem.
