ARTICLE...
Understanding Your Client - Winning Their Business
Five Powerful Strategies for Uncovering Everything You Need to Know
Whenever I'm working with sales professionals, be they directly 'in the line of fire' or Client Relationship Managers / Account Managers who, while they are responsible for bringing in more business, do not always see themselves as 'sales', I find myself making a very clear distinction between two things.
I will say to them: "Tell me about your client."
They then proceed to tell me what they know about that client. They will tell me about the client's company, their products and services, their position in the market, their competitors, the structure of the company etc.
They rarely, if ever, tell me about the other thing.
Let me explain. There is a huge distinction to be made between knowing and understanding. And my experience is that while salespeople are pretty good at knowing their clients, they are less good at understanding them.
I like to think of it in terms of an iceberg. The bit above the water line represents what we know about client, the information they are happy to give us, the information any self-respecting sales professional will have at their fingertips.
The 90% that lies below the water line holds the information that, if we can get it, is the key to our success and forms the foundation of long term business relationships. And having this information allows us to say we understand our client. And I have often thought that it isn't by chance that the word 'understand' begins with the word 'under'. The idea being that we have to, metaphorically speaking, don our scuba diving gear and explore below the surface to find the real pearls.
Remember too that what sunk the Titanic was the part of the iceberg they couldn't see!
What I guarantee is this: If you fully understand your client, you understand what they want, what's important to them, how they make their buying decisions and what concerns the, you can present your solutions on the back of an envelope and they will buy from you. And not only will they buy, they will buy more, more often and be happy with their decision.
In order to start this journey of discovery, lets look at the key distinctions between knowing (information) and understanding.
Knowing
What factual information do you need about your client?
This will be the kind of information you already know how to get from a client – or where to look it up. It would include all the information you would normally be able to get from their website.
Clients expect us to have done our homework and you should only spend time gathering more information in this category if it cannot be found on their site or if you need some explanation for clarity. You do not need to spend time telling the client everything you know about them. Your knowledge will become clear from the other questions you ask about what the client is telling you.
Take a moment to think about all the factual information you need to gather about your clients before you can sell your product or service to them. Use these classifications as a checklist during sales meetings to ensure you understand your client's business at both the operational and strategic level.
The Seven Ps You Need to Know...
- Purpose – the integrated vision and direction of the company
- Plans – their structures, strategies and objectives
- Products – what their offering is and how it is delivered
- Position – where they are in the marketplace, their competitors, relative strengths and weaknesses
- Processes – the procedures and routines processes, communication and information systems
- People – the personnel categories and the distinctive knowledge, skills and attitudes in the organisation
- Power – the decision-making process and the financial and political landscape
If you have all this information readily available, then the top 10% of your work is done... you're ready to dive!
Understanding
"Never assume you understand until you really understand."
What you say is a very limited version of what is going on in your mind.
This means that information gets disconnected from its true meaning and leads to misunderstanding, something we simply can't risk in sales.
How often have you misunderstood someone because you simply haven't asked them what they mean? The basis of misunderstanding is thinking that your representation of a particular word or phrase is the same as someone else's.
How many clients have ever asked you to provide 'added value'? I once asked a client what he meant by added value and he couldn't answer. He simply didn't know what he meant.
The key here is always to question until you are clear. The same strategy will reap rewards wen applied to handling what are commonly known as objections.
Clients sometimes (often!) make statements (objections) about your product that you may feel you have to defend. These statements limit our ability to convince the client that they want our solution. Traditionally, in sales, we are taught how to ANSWER these statements.
I prefer to think about these statements in a different way. How about thinking about what information the statement is giving us about the client's thinking, rather than answering the client's objection?
Sometimes questioning the client this way actually makes the problem go away.
The following story illustrates this brilliantly.
My wife won one of our biggest training contracts of the past few years after she answered a big objection to the training. Having outlined our strategies for questioning she met the objection 'none of our clients want to be questioned this way'. Given that the workshop was about questioning, this was a very big one. In a previous life she would have answered this statement with an explanation of how questions are important. Instead, she thought about what the client must be thinking in order to say such a thing and simply asked him politely 'how do you know none of your clients want to be questioned this way?'
His reply was surprising: "Well, I don't know I suppose!"
End of objection.
Think about what lies behind the client's statement and ask them about how they came to think that way. You will be surprised at the results.
So before we meet again, start putting these strategies into action and notice the quality of information and understanding you get.
And, if you have any questions, post your request on my blog at www.timfearon.co.uk... happy discovering!
Original article by Tim Fearon (Director, The Extraordinary Coaching Company), courtesy of Consumer Credit..
