1: Let’s go back in time to when you were dating. Perhaps that is you right now.
“Now, what happens to you when you go out on your first date?” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer ask in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
Let’s say you start talking about yourself. And you keep talking about yourself. You spend the whole date talking about yourself.
What’s going to happen?
Chances are, your date will later tell his friends, “What a conceited, self-centered, egotistical person. All he/she talked about was him/herself,” Erik and Tim predict.
There won’t be a second date.
“Yet, if you really listen to most salespeople’s messages, you’d hear them making the same mistakes,” they note.
2: What role does the typical salesperson assume?
The hero, right?
“You,” the authors observe, “ride in on your white horse, saying: We can save the day! We can lower your cost. We can save you money. Our solutions allow you to… We helped ABC Company maximize its productivity.”
As a salesperson, you get it all wrong.
Who should be the hero in your story? The customer. Obviously.
“They are the ones that need to save the day—not you,” Erik and Tim suggest.
Which isn’t to say the salesperson doesn’t play an important role. But it’s the role of the mentor, not the hero, that the best salespeople become.
“You are there to help your customers see what has changed in their world and,” they write, “how they can adapt and better survive and thrive.”
Building on this idea, the next question is: “What does messaging look like that makes your customer the hero, instead of you and your company?” the authors ask.
That messaging examines the customer’s world, their goals, and their pain. Your solution helps them solve their problems and achieve their goals.
“In a real-world sales interaction, you should expect the customer to push back at this point,” Erik and Tim write. They might say, “It’ll take too much time, too much money. I’m really not in that much trouble.”
Your job as a mentor is to share the knowledge you bring with the client that they don’t have.
“You don’t just let your customers sit where they are, convinced that they can’t make changes,” they note. “You have the tools to challenge them and encourage them to make the changes they need to make. . . [to] make them the hero of this story.”
3: So far, we’ve identified the hero and the mentor. Now we need to find a villain.
“Every hero story needs a villain. Unfortunately, if you don’t pick a villain,” the authors explain, “sometimes the prospect sounds like the villain.
As in. . . “You have outdated processes. You haven’t kept up with the competition. Your people haven’t adjusted to the changing times.”
So, who or what plays the role of the villain?
“The villain is not the prospect’s systems or its people,” they note. “The villain is something that’s changed in the environment. It could be new government regulations. It could be new market conditions. It could be changes in competition or technology.
“Your story,” Erik and Tim explain, “needs to let your prospect know that back when she made the decision to buy the solution that she already has in place, it was the best decision they could have possibly made.
“And it’s only because of changes in the environment–changes that are coming now, and fast, that she needs to look at doing something different.”
This approach also applies when discussing your prospect’s people.
“You should never imply that the prospect’s people are anything other than hardworking, high-integrity, conscientious employees,” they observe. “Everybody wants to believe that about their people. . .
“Your story needs to be about good people who are trapped by systems or processes that no longer meet the needs of the changing environment.”
One of Erik and Tim’s clients was trying to sell a new software system to two brothers who owned the company.
The challenge? The person who had designed the existing system was the mother of the two brothers who owned the business.
“Now, how do you tell those two brothers that mom’s system needs to be replaced?” they ask.
Their messaging simply followed the hero model formula.
The salesperson explained that the system was originally a perfect fit, but the environment had changed.
“Unfortunately, things have changed. Since your system was put together, new government regulations have come out, and the competitive landscape and customer expectations have changed.
“Today,” they said, “you need a system that’s been designed to take those new realities into account. Your people have worked hard to overcome some of the new challenges, but it’s putting a greater burden on them every day.
“The reason companies are coming to us is that they are looking for a way to succeed in this new environment. And when they can do that, they’re able to gain a competitive advantage.
“As an example, one customer of ours faced exactly these same challenges. . .”
Erik and Tim write: “You can hear how a focus shift took an uncomfortable situation and turned it into great messaging.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I positioning myself as the hero—or am I helping my customer become the hero of their own story?
Action: Reframe one key message today to focus on my customer’s goals, challenges, and success instead of my solution.
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