The value to buy your product is overwhelming, and yet the customer decides not to buy. Why? The optimism and status quo bias block customers from making the rational choice to buy your product. To help customers see the value of change, sellers can counteract these negative biases by performing a reality check on the customer’s baseline and completing a risk assessment of the status quo.
Counteract the optimism bias with a baseline reality check
After nine years of working with companies on sales messaging, I have found the number one inhibitor to salespeople articulating value is they don’t create enough contrast between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of owning their product. And when salespeople fail to make the contrast feel concrete, customers can’t see the value, so it just feels like magic.
I just had an article published in the HBR. It’s neuroscience meets sales, and it bursts the biggest misconception is sales (click here for HBR article).
The article looks at the sales expression that customers “Buy On Emotion, And Justify With Logic” and it turns out that neuroscientists claim it’s 95% correct.
By recognizing the difference between an insight scenario (i.e. an insight based story) that “pops” versus one that “flops,” you can see for yourself how your own insight scenarios can be changed so that they inspire prospective customers to buy, instead of providing them with no reason to change.
The mistakes made in the story that flops are common. Because the effects of not having the seller’s capabilities are abstract, the story fails to make the buyer want to change, because the risks do not feel real.
Even though insight is what buyers need, it may not be what they initially want. By the time buyers engage with a salesperson, they may already have an idea of their needs, the solution they believe they want, and what they are willing to pay. So how does the seller use insight to challenge the customer’s thinking without challenging the customer?
While many companies complain that 80-90% of their salespeople can’t sell value, they are spraying their sales force with product presentations, and praying that their salespeople will be able to figure out why customers should buy their product. But instead of complaining, these companies should feel blessed that they can increase sales by capturing and sharing this valuable tribal knowledge with the rest of their sales force.
Imagine running a sales team where the last person that your customers want to speak with is one of your salespeople? That’s the conclusion of a recent Gartner survey where Salespeople came in last place after technical and industrial experts, services and support, and senior executives as “the most influential personal interactions across the entire buying cycle.” (click)
So what’s the problem?
“Colleague Michael Harris wrote this blog post recently, and I couldn’t stop cracking up! I laughed so hard I had to read the story to my husband Tim. He laughed just as hard.
Michael uses storytelling in his sales training, and he uses this story to demonstrate why it works. Just imagine telling this story in corporate language. We’d be bored to tears.
But here’s another way to think about this story. We all have at least one story like this. A story when we screwed up big time. A story about a time we failed. A story about a near miss. A story about good friends who stick around even after misadventures.
In business, time is money, so the last thing you want is to waste time sitting through a dull detail laden presentation. And as you wonder where it’s heading, you ask yourself why they couldn’t have just giving you the top five bullet points so that you could get on with the rest of your day.
How do you deliver insight to your customers so that it challenges the status quo without challenging the customer?
Well, when you get sick, do you ever go onto WebMD before you visit the Doctor? So when you show up at the doctor’s office, all you want him to do is to write you a prescription for what you feel you need? And if the market for buying prescription medicine was truly competitive, wouldn’t you also be looking for a better price?
If I told you that a fact, wrapped in an emotional story, is 20-times more memorable[i], would you believe it?
I didn’t at first, and neither do most people. That’s why we continue to throw facts against the customer’s wall, and watch them stick like they are coated with Teflon.
In fact, I continued to load customers up with facts until I personally experienced the power of an emotional story to make a dull fact unforgettable a few years ago at my son’s soccer game (see video of story live below).
When the world’s largest business software company hires a Chief Storyteller, its news, because it’s a first for the industry.
And when the decision was made by SAP’s CEO, Bill McDermott, it becomes a great story.
Joel needed new customers. But he found that he wasn’t 100% committed when he picked-up the phone, because his fear of rejection made him apprehensive. It felt like he had one foot on gas, and the other on the brake. And because customers sensed that Joel wasn’t completely sold, they weren’t interested in what he was selling, because no one wants to be rescued by a drowning man.
So Joel’s turned to his VP of Sales for advice, but he didn’t find being told to ‘just suck it up and make the calls’ particularly helpful.
Fortunately Joel loved to read, and he was shocked to discover that his fear of calling new clients was due to an overactive instinct of survival.
One of Microsoft’s largest partners “…increased their pipeline by exactly 3-times in under 18-months largely due to StorySelling. ”
Two years ago Gord Smith, a Partner at Ideaca (one of Microsoft’s largest partner in Canada), hired a bunch of new salespeople to hunt for new business, because he knew the partners were too busy servicing clients (click for video).
When I asked for more details on how a customer could use our product, Tim, our Managing Director, joked: “Michael, you’re in sales, you’re too stupid to understand.” But the sad thing was that this was what he, and his delivery team really believed. And when I wanted customer stories, I only got the watered down versions from marketing. Because marketing didn’t trust sales to properly share these stories with customers, they had the executive team sand off the rough corners that made the stories interesting- to the point that they were useless. So there I was standing outside the walls of customer knowledge, trying to prepare for a potential customer meeting with the few scraps of information management decided to throw down to sales.
Salespeople are selling blind, because they are not being coached on customer knowledge. Without an accurate customer map, they can’t link their capabilities to their customer’s pain points. This results in lost sales, because customers are left to try to figure out why it makes sense for them to buy, or even worse, why they should care.
We’ll show you how simple it is to find, and then fill customer knowledge gaps. And your sales team will do it in as little as 10-minutes a week.
Simply have one of your salespeople share a relevant customer 2-min. story each week, and then have their peers provide feed-back.
By recognizing the difference between a customer story that “Sells” vs. a story that “Doesn’t Sell,” you can see for yourself how your own customer stories can be changed so that they inspire prospective customers to buy, instead of providing them with no reason to change.
The mistakes made in the story that “Doesn’t Sell” are common. Because the effects of not having the Seller’s capabilities are abstract, the story doesn’t make the Buyer want to change, because the risks don’t feel real.
Without making the risks of not having the Sellers capabilities feel more real than the risk of change, the Buyer will stick with the status quo.
32% of salespeople won’t achieve quota in 2012, according to a survey of 197-B2B technology companies in 2012 (source: The Bridge Group).
But will another sales process or sales methodology really help?
Most companies have tried 2-3 of them, but have they helped salespeople sell more? A sales methodology or process may provide better reports to management, and improve the sale team’s efficiency; but right now, do you really need to better forecast poor sales, or does your sales team really need to be more efficient at doing the wrong things?
But before we dive into the science, let’s do a thought experiment, so that you can discover what is more likely to inspire you to act, a story or a fact?
Story scenario: Imagine you are the VP of Sales for Software USA. After an overnight flight, you are walking over the Waterloo Bridge in London on a sunny April morning. You are on your way to the biggest interview of your life- to run your European operations.
After investing over $1,000 on a new wardrobe for this very important interview, you sidestep a puddle, to avoid getting your new shoes wet. Just then, out of the corner of your eye, you see a small girl fall off the bridge into the frigid water below. As she cries for help, without thinking, you jump in to rescue her.
As you emerge from the river, you notice that your suit and shoes are ruined. But that’s quickly forgotten, when you look down into the frightened girl’s eyes, and realize that she is just about the same age as your daughter.
Inspired to buy with stories that sell: Through the power of story, your salespeople will not only bypass the wall that protects customers from change, but also inspire them to buy.
The sales challenge: You may be surprised to hear that your biggest competitor isn’t another company, it’s the customer deciding to do nothing. Customers will not act, as long as the status quo is supported by:
I remember when the CEO invested in what I, the VP of Sales of a mid-sized company, felt was a foolish amount of money on a new Marketing Director. But what really bothered me, was what the new position represented, change.
Although my sales team was exceeding quota, the landscape changed. And I knew if I didn’t change, I’d get run over.
Although the value of your offering is overwhelming, customers resist. Why?
More important, how will you get past this irrational wall of resistance, and make the sale?
Not only will these questions be answered, but more important, you’ll receive a complimentary guide with simple and practical steps that you can start using today, so that you can inspire our customers to step out of the status quo, take action, and invest through you into a better tomorrow.
Overwhelmed Buyers
Ditch the pitch and have business conversations was the strap line on the front page of my web site.
And yet only 10% of sales people seem to be able to do this. So how does that help the other 90%? And what about the top 10% who sometimes need to present?
As I watched my son’s soccer game in the rain, the clouds grew dark, and thunder quickly followed.
“If there’s lightning, we’re in a bad place ” warned the CEO of Colgate. “But we’re right next to a tall light-post” I countered. “Yes” said Scott “ but it needs to be grounded, otherwise lightning can travel horizontally, and then… we’re toast.”
Oh please, I lamented, not another overly cautious warning. As Scott droned on about the dangers of lightning, I drifted away, and thought that Scott may know a lot about toothpaste, but meteorology… I don’t think so.
To find out how to challenge the customer’s thinking without challenging the customer, I asked Matt Dixon, co-author of the Challenger Sale and Executive Director of the Corporate Executive Board, for the answer. (Click here for video interview).
Q: How do you challenge the customer’s thinking without challenging the customer?
A: If we’d found that The Challengers were obnoxious and aggressive; we’d have called them The Jerk not The Challenger.
Q: Are stories the most effective way?
