Stop "Selling" and Start Building Relationships

Sometimes we can all use a friendly reminder to keep us from backsliding into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients.

New Thinking = New Results

Maybe it’s time to take a different approach. Maybe we need to seriously analyze our sales thinking so we can identify why we are not making more sales. Take a look at the comparison between traditional mind-set and the new thinking described below and think about your current selling mind-set. How would your selling behaviors change if you changed your sales thinking?

Traditional Sales Mind-Set vs. Unlock The Game Mind-Set

1.    Always deliver a strong sales pitch. vs. Stop the sales pitch and start a conversation.

2.    Your central objective is always to close the sale. vs. Your central goal is always to discover whether you and your potential client are a good fit.

3.    When you lose a sale, it’s usually at the end of the sales process. vs. When you lose a sale, it’s usually right at the beginning of the sales process.

4.    Rejection is a normal part of selling. vs. Sales pressure is the only cause of rejection. Rejection should never happen.

5.    Keep chasing every potential client until you get a yes or a no. vs. Never chase a potential client—you’ll only trigger more sales pressure.

6.    When a prospect offers objections, challenge and/or counter them. vs. When a potential client offers objections, uncover the truth behind them.

7.    If a potential client challenges the value of your product or service, you must defend yourself and explain the value. vs. Never defend yourself or what you have to offer—it only creates more sales pressure.

Let’s take a closer look at these central Unlock The Game concepts so you can begin to open up your current sales thinking and become more effective in your selling activities:

1. Stop the sales pitch and start a conversation.

When you call someone, avoid making a mini-presentation about yourself, your company, and what you have to offer. Start with an opening conversational phrase that focuses on a specific problem that your product or service solves. If you don’t know what this is, ask your current customers why they purchased your solution. One example of an opening phrase might be, “I am just calling to see if you’d be open to some different ideas related to lowering the risk of any computer downtime you may be having in your company?” Notice that you are not pitching your solution with this opening phrase.

2. Your central goal is always to discover whether you and your potential client are a good fit.

Let go of trying to “close the sale” or “get the appointment” and you will discover that you don’t have to take responsibility for moving the sales process forward. If you simply focus your conversation on problems that you can help potential clients solve, and if you don’t jump the gun by trying to move the sales process forward, you will find that potential clients will actually bring you into their buying process.

3. When you lose a sale, it’s usually right at the beginning of the sales process.

If you believe that you lose sales because you make a mistake at the end of the process, take a look back at how you began the relationship. Did you start with a presentation? Did you use traditional sales language like, “We have a solution that I believe you really need” or “Others in your industry have bought our solution, so you should consider it as well?”

When you use traditional sales language, potential clients can’t help but label you with the negative stereotype of “salesperson.” This makes it almost impossible for them to relate to you from a position of trust. And if trust isn’t established at the outset, honest communication about the problems they are trying to solve and how you might be able to help them, becomes impossible too.

4. Sales pressure is the only cause of rejection. Rejection should never happen.

Rejection happens for only one reason: Something you said, as subtle as it might have been, triggered a defensive reaction from your potential client. Yes, something you said. To eliminate rejection, simply shift your mind-set so that you give up the hidden agenda of hoping to make a sale. Instead, everything you say and do should stem from the basic mind-set that you are there to help potential clients. This makes you able to ask, “Would you be open to talking about issues you might be having affecting your business?”

5. Never chase a potential client—you’ll only trigger more sales pressure.

“Chasing” potential clients has always been considered normal and necessary, but it’s rooted in the macho selling image that, “If you don’t keep chasing, it means you are giving up—and that means you are a failure.” This is dead wrong! Instead of chasing potential clients, tell them that you would like to avoid anything that resembles the old cat-and-mouse chasing game by scheduling a time for your next chat.

6. When a potential client offers objections, uncover the truth behind them.

Most traditional sales programs spend a lot of time focusing on “overcoming objections.” These tactics only put more sales pressure on potential clients and also fail to explore or understand the truth behind what the potential client is saying. When you hear, “We don’t have the budget,” “Send me information,” or “Call me in a few months,” do you think you are hearing the truth, or do you suspect that these are polite evasions designed to end the conversation?

Rather than trying to counter objections, you can uncover the truth by replying, “That’s not a problem”—no matter what clients are “objecting” to—and then using gentle, dignified language that invites them to reveal the truth about their situation.

7. Never defend yourself or what you have to offer—it only creates more sales pressure.

When a potential client says, “Why should I choose you over your competition?” your first, instinctive reaction is probably to start defending your product or service because you want to convince them to buy. But what do you think goes through your potential client’s mind at that point?

Something like, “This ‘salesperson’ is trying to sell me on why what they have to offer is better, but I hate feeling as if I am being sold.” Rather than defending yourself, try suggesting that you aren’t going to try to convince them of anything because that would only create sales pressure. Instead, ask them about the key problems that they are trying to solve, and then explore how your product or service might solve those problems—without ever trying to persuade. Let potential clients feel that they can choose you without feeling “sold.”

You too can improve your sales effectiveness if you are open minded and willing to try a new and more natural selling approach.

Leadership Complexity

Coping with the complexity of today’s business environment is not about predicting the future or reducing risk. It’s about building the capacity, in yourself, your people, and the organization to adapt continuously and learn speedily, in order to maximize the chances of seizing fleeting opportunities.

Here the core distinction we want to play with is the distinction between thinking about predicting the future and thinking about the dispositions in the present. This shift is incredibly hard to think your way through, but it’s a way we act all the time. For example, think about planning a family reunion. If you work with a “predictive” world view (from a simple or complicated view of what a family reunion might be), you might create a proposal for the event, listing core outcomes you would have the event deliver. You might send that out to family members, get buy in from the most important decision-makers, and then work to deliver against your targets. To get buy-in you might have to create targets that avoid what most people name as the last reunion’s major disasters: when the teenage cousins spiked the punch and got great aunt Clara drunk and when the twins fell off the deck and Brad broke his arm. In order to avoid these terrible things, you create a no-drunkenness target and a safety-first target. You eliminate all alcohol and call around to venues to check on their safety standards.

I am guessing this is not the way you would think about it. Our minds often turn naturally to complexity thinking when dealing with family events even when we spend most of our work time pretending we live in a complicated world. We are more likely to learn from the past about what the system (in this case the extended family) is disposed to do. Teenagers are disposed to push the edges of the adult world in helpful and unhelpful ways. Little kids are disposed to use energy, often physically. The grown cousins are disposed to tell stories about being kids together. And, so on... How could you take your current knowledge of the system to create a family reunion that was the most fun, without risking life and limb?

Here’s the next part of complexity theory. Now that you understand what the system is disposed to do, you create ways to attract the behaviors you want and repel the behaviors you don’t want. Teenagers like to push the boundaries of adulthood? You could create ways for them to engage that freedom without access to alcohol. Little kids need to burn energy? You’d put the reunion someplace where little kids could play whether it was sunny or raining. This is obvious, right?

So, why is it that when we are planning a corporate retreat, we don’t think that way? We tend to create project plans, outputs, targets. We tend to ignore the ways the system currently acts (and why) and instead focus on our aspirations for the system—the way it rightly should be acting. We put our energy into defining the future rather than understanding the present and what holds us in unhelpful patterns (and what might create more helpful ones).

Imagine planning a retreat with a complexity approach. You’d need to learn lots about the individuals and the patterns of their interaction and work. You’d need a sense of what sorts of things brought out their best and what sorts of things brought out their worst (here my ideas about biggest selves and smaller selves are one helpful lens). And you’d need to experiment with ways to create the conditions you wanted. You couldn’t get it right every time—especially if you were trying to do something that hadn’t been done before. But what evidence do we have that the complicated world of targets and outlines gets it right every time? By considering the “safe-to-fail” approach, you can think about risk and reward in whole new ways.

Make a list, describing things that are simple? Or complicated? And even more complex? Now just begin to check your mindset about them. Are you treating them differently? In what ways?

Genuine Leadership Beliefs

Get it right on the inside and you will get it right on the outside. 

That’s good advice that is rarely followed in today’s global corporate management circles. Instead there seems to be a focus on just getting it right on the outside. This can work, but it will probably leave your direct reports feeling a little empty at best—or distrusting at worst.

When leaders focus only on their behaviors and outside appearances, they are presenting a thin veneer of leadership that can work for a short while, but it eventually breaks down—especially under pressure.

Wondering how you can get it right on the inside instead of working so hard to act in a prescribed way on the outside? Here are some ways to get started. These are based on answers to such questions as, “Who was your best boss?” and “What made them so special?”

See people as assets to develop instead of liabilities to manage. Good leadership begins with a fundamental belief in people and the value that they can bring to a company. Where do you stand on this? What do you believe in? Do you focus on people’s strengths and how to maximize them, or do you tend to focus on weaknesses and how to correct them? How does that impact your leadership behaviors?

Assume the best. People have good days and bad days. They make mistakes; they exhibit poor judgment; and they sometimes let you down. How do you react to these situations? What is the story that you are telling yourself about their actions? Are you assuming they had good intentions and just fell short, or does this just go to show that you were right about them all along? Your resulting leadership behavior will be very different depending on your mindset.

See yourself as a leader instead of as an evaluator. Part of leadership is matching skill sets to the overall goals of the organization. The ability to discern talent and apply it effectively is an important quality. But don’t make that the sole focus of your leadership. Instead, go beyond getting the right people in the right positions and actively work to help them succeed in their roles. See their success as a partnership between you and them. When people sense that you are on their side, helping them to succeed, they act and perform very differently than if they feel that you are primarily judging and evaluating them.

Beliefs and attitudes drive your behaviors. In today’s open and connected world, you have to be genuine and authentic. Leaders who get it right on the inside naturally display genuine behaviors on the outside that people respond to. Take a look at your leadership beliefs. Work on the inside first.