I’ve been hearing a recurring theme from sales professionals for a some time… their desire to become a trusted advisor to their customers.  Wanting to be a trusted advisor and having your customer perceive you as one are very different outcomes.  What they really want is for the sales process not to be a transaction that anyone can bid on but to be a true relationship where the time and energy spent with their customer will increase the probability of getting their customer’s future business.  And most of the people believe it’s dependent on one thing – customer relevance!

This is most prevalent when the sales process has several different levels of people involved from the customer’s organization; the solution itself is complex, intangible, or technical in its nature; it’s not a “one-call close” sale; there are multiple meetings involving different people or committees; several events need to occur prior to a decision being reached; and, the sales cycle usually runs anywhere from 90 to 180 days.

What’s Relevance?

I wanted to find a working description of customer relevance so here’s what I thought I’d use:

- Power to see what is not evident to the average mind.  I like this one.  I never wanted to be average.  And I liked power to see what others cannot!

- Ability to distinguish what’s true.  Here’s where it starts to become a little more difficult.  Early in my sales career, I thought people would tell me the truth.  Then I found out differently.  It wasn’t that they were intending to lie to me.  It was just too risky for them to tell me the truth.  They were afraid they’d end up buying something they didn’t need or paying too much for it.

- Contributes to the understanding of the matter at hand.  Wow!  If relevance helps me to better understand their problem, I’m far more likely to define and provide the best, most cost-effective solution to their problem.

- Keenness in practical matters.  I think of this as the fine edge for applying the potential solution to a problem.  The elegance of the solution is often in its simplicity!

All these items add up to the ability to help our customer identify and define their problem so we can lay out our best possible solution for them.  But being relevant is a lot like being happy.  We can’t just go get it.  It’s the result of the action we take all along the way in repeatedly helping our customer attempt to solve their problems.  So the real question is “How do we create relevance?”

It’s not what we say that’s important -- It’s the questions we ask that matter.  Until relevancy has been established, our prospective customer may not believe everything we’re saying.  And why should they?  Buyers have been trained for years that all a sales person was interested in was making the sale. Those salespeople didn’t care whether they helped the customer solve the problem… they just wanted the commission!  It takes a lot to undo that type of thinking.

So we ask questions.  Questions are what enables discovery… that magical process where our prospective customer finds the answer themselves and it’s far more believable!  Our job is to simply be the guide.  In order to create relevancy in our interaction, we probe gently with questions to peel away the layers of intellectual protection that surround the real issue.  This isn’t done by asking question after question.  We don’t want it to seem like an interrogation or a game of “Twenty Questions.”  We want it to be more like a conversation.

Question Spirals

The real art to finding the truth is using Question Spirals.  It requires a high level of product knowledge.  As with any spiral, we start slowly in a wide arc and increase our precision and specificity as we shorten the radius of the circle.  You simply start with a general, non-threatening question related to one of the key problems you help your customers resolve.

Now comes the hard part.  Listen very carefully to what they say in their response.  I find it very beneficial to take notes during the process because it keeps me focused on listening to them.  It helps me remain in an intellectual versus an emotional state.  I don’t have to be thinking about what I should ask them next.  I find I don’t take any of their responses personally if it starts to sound like an attack.

I then use their response as the basis for my next question, preceding it with some sort of phrase acknowledging what they’ve said like “Good point” or “that makes sense.”  As the radius of the spiral decreases, I ask for more clarity or a better understanding of what they said in their response.  This increases the precision of their answer.  In their head, a little voice says to them “make it clearer so this person understands what you meant.”  Now I’m getting deeper… peeling away one layer of intellectual protection at a time.

When they find I’m not trying to sell them and don’t start pitching features after each of their responses, they relax and get a little more comfortable each step of the process.  The spiral begins to tighten.  This is where the rapport and trust begin to develop.  The hard part is being patient.  Don’t rush and don’t push.  Give it time.  You can reframe their response by repeating your understanding of what they said in a slightly different way.  This will peel away another layer of intellectual protection.  The specificity of their response increases with each iteration.  That’s the nature of the spiral.

Before you know it, all that’s left is the truth and it’s usually accompanied by the pain they may associate with the issue.  Let them know it’s not uncommon for your customers to have experienced what they’re going through, that this type of problem has happened to others, and that you were able to help resolve it without telling them how it was done.  The temptation to launch into your presentation will be great but don’t do it!

An Elegant Solution

As you meet and speak with the different people in the organization, your perspective and understanding of their problem set as well as their decision-making process may change and increase.  You may even start to become a resource for your customer… a trusted advisor!  One by one, we see we have the tools and the process to create relevancy.

Our Question Spirals give us the power to see what is not evident to the average mind because most people don’t know where to go with questions nor do they go deep enough to find the real issues to distinguish what’s true.  As we put the information together, it not only contributes to our understanding, it becomes the simple and practical solution to our customer’s problems.  Relevancy is created through our understanding by presenting them with an elegant solution based on all the information we’ve gathered from their organization.