1: “If you’re like most sales professionals, you think a successful client relationship is one in which everyone is always smiling,” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
You intuitively believe your job is to keep clients happy, as if being well-liked is the goal.
You send birthday wishes. You inquire about their kids. You do whatever it takes to resolve any problems quickly.
“Maybe you are subconsciously thinking that if the client really likes you,” the authors observe, they’ll “throw you the next piece of business.”
And that does happen sometimes.
The client will be friendly, too. You receive excellent reviews for the high level of service you provide.
“Then,” Erik and Tim write, “one day you are caught completely off guard when you hear that your great client is piloting a concept with one of your competitors.”
“Don’t worry,” they say. “It’s just a small side project that the senior executives asked for because they were at some conference and heard about a new approach that supposedly addresses some problems that we didn’t even know needed fixing.”
So, what caused this unexpected shift?
The competitor challenged your client’s status quo. They shared something the client didn’t know. About a problem they didn’t know they had.
They brought the bad news.
The bigger point? “If you don’t do it, someone else will,” the authors state. “Someone other than you will get the senior executives’ attention by telling them something that they didn’t know, about a problem they didn’t know they had.”
2: Too many salespeople default to pitching by telling their story in a generic way. Then, they compare their products or services with the competition.
They hope that the prospect will care.
“But, there’s no reason for a prospect to do anything different if they don’t understand the potential impact on them,” Erik and Tim write.
Trying to get your prospects to understand and care about the details of your offer is a loser’s strategy.
The better approach? “Clearly communicate the potential upside or downside of ignoring the challenges that they face,” the authors state.
“This requires being provocative,” they explain, “bringing a little bad news to get customers to see that change is coming, and it’s coming fast.”
Why? Because “your customers are looking for you to tell them something that they don’t already know, about a problem that they didn’t know they had,” Erik and Tim emphasize.
“Provoking and challenging your customers will be rewarded,” they note.
3: Erik and Tim share the example of their client, Volvo. In this case, the company’s sales reps typically emphasized the features of its tractor cabs, leading with their strengths.
“What the company discovered was that this usually translated into a ‘spec war’ with its competitors,” they write.
The authors led the sales and marketing team through an exercise to identify a more urgent business problem their buyers faced.
“The first step was discovering a link between fleet productivity and driver turnover,” Erik and Tim recall.
“It turns out that the average driver turnover is really high, and it is very costly to fleet managers,” they write. “The number one work environment issue was the drivers’ satisfaction with their trucks.
“Volvo was able to show how the specific advantages they built into their trucks eliminated the top causes of dissatisfaction among drivers,” the authors write, “and they introduced some new things that drivers really liked compared to other trucks that were on the market.
“Armed with a new story about fleet productivity, driver turnover, and how Volvo was the number one truck for driver satisfaction, the company’s salespeople completely changed the context of the conversation and created a differentiated dialogue where there had been perceived parity.”
By sharing a little bad news, Volvo’s sales team shifted their pitch to focus on business outcomes—how driver satisfaction reduces turnover, and how that impacts productivity and profitability.
Erik and Tim write: “Volvo was able to elevate its driver satisfaction features and rankings to a strategic necessity, instead of a traditional feature list and competitive matrix comparison.”
The sales reps gained renewed confidence because they had a powerful story to drive sales success.
“Volvo,” the authors write, “was able to measure improvement in terms of performance. Sales rep cycle time (the length of time required for a deal) went down by 25 to 30 percent, and pricing premiums went up by 3 percent.”
That’s the power of sharing bad news and challenging the prospect’s reality: More deals, faster deal velocity, and higher margins.
That’s what winning looks like.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Am I prioritizing being liked over challenging my customers with insights they actually need to hear?
Action: Identify one customer conversation where I can introduce a new insight or “bad news” that challenges their current thinking.
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