Exceptional SELLING
HOW THE BEST CONNECT AND WIN IN HIGH STAKES SALES
JEFF THULL
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Adv a nce Pr a i se f or Exceptional Selling
“ I am a Jef f T hul l fan. I n E xce ptional Sel ling he zeros i n on t he key i ng redient of sales of any sor t: i nt i mate ment al and emot ional con nec t ion wit h t he cu stomer—wh ich leads to deep underst andi ng, a successf ul sale and it s successf ul i mplement at ion. I cal l t h is ‘con nec t ion bit ’ t he ‘missi ng 98 percent ’ of t he sel li ng process, over looked by most sales t rai ners and salespersons alike. Jef f ’ s book has somet h i ng profound to teach each of u s, regard less of profession, f rom t he pizza par lor to t he pulpit , st ar t i ng wit h me!”
Tom Peters, Aut hor of Re-im ag ine! Busine ss E xcel le nce in a Disr uptive Age
“A s a CEO, I h ighl y recommend t h is book as a g uide on execut ive and f i nanc ial level conversat ions. Jef f shows you how to gai n access and est ablish relevanc y and c redibilit y wit h people t hat hold t he power and make t he dec isions. It ’s wit hout a doubt t he best way to step out of t he c rowd and con nec t wit h execut ives ”
—Chr is Capdev il la, CEO, Log icalApps
“ If you want to be an except ional communicator, you mu st read Jef f T hul l’s book s. E xce ptional Sel ling is a complete no nonsense approach to sales—how to get i n, how to con nec t and how to wi n! It conveys a v it al message: Open, honest , and st raight-for ward communicat ion is t he shor test pat h to long-term success. ”
—Frank Tof foloni, U.S. Direc tor of Sales, Diag nost ica St ago I nc.
“ Jef f has been sharpeni ng t he sk il ls of my sales organizat ions over t he past 20 y ears. H is latest book, E xce ptional Sel ling keeps h i m out f ront wit h sensible techniques t hat work . Top sales producers wil l quickl y recog nize how to i mprove t heir result s; rook ies wil l f i nd t he f i nest road map to success i n t he sel li ng profession.”
—Peter Muldow ney, Chairman, Spec ialt y Mater ials Div ision, Morgan Cr uc ible Co. PLC—Ret ired
“E xce ptional Sel ling is a comprehensive and power f ul f ramework for buildi ng st rong relat ionsh ips based on i nteg r it y and t r u st. Ju st as he has done for ou r f inanc ial adv isors, Jef f T hul l shows you how to communicate wit h conf idence and c reate except ional value for bot h you and you r cu stomers.”
—R ichard G. Aver it t I I I, Chairman and CEO, Ray mond James Fi nanc ial Ser v ices
“Get your Post-its® ready! From the very first chapter, I found myself tagging pages so I could present and put into practice the dozens of actionable takeaways. I highly recommend this book for any consultative sales team looking to make their product stand apart from the competition.”
—Gary Robbins, Partner/Vice President, Frost & Sullivan
“Exceptional Selling is the masterful continuation of Mastering the Complex Sale and The Prime Solution. At a time when we’re all searching for new ways to leverage our strengths, Jeff’s ‘taking it to the street’ wisdom redefines communication strategies and sets a new benchmark for competitive differentiation. This book will dramatically shift your thinking and show you precisely how to achieve lucrative sales results.”
—Nat Geissel, President, DMS Health Technologies
“Jeff Thull has assembled a real street level guide that uncovers how true value is recognized, assembled, and realized. If you are a sales manager and your team is not having the kind of conversations outlined in this book, your sales opportunities will most likely be lost to someone who is.”
—Brooks Hoff, Western Regional Sales Manager, Fluke Corporation
“Jeff brings clarity to the sales process through his discovery and diagnostic methods that promise higher closing rates and help you convey, in cooperation with your clients, relevance and credibility to solving their problems. We’re all looking for that differentiation factor and Jeff shows you the way to gain new levels of respect and credibility from your clients that you may not have experienced in the past.”
—Guy R. Manuel, President, Transcontinental Printing, Marketing Products & Services
“Jeff Thull has done it again with Exceptional Selling—he truly provides a fresh and innovative perspective to the art of sales. By using logical and practical conversation examples throughout the book, Thull identifies and conquers common sales traps and defines successful keys to breaking down communication barriers. Geared toward the individual sales professional, Exceptional Selling is a powerful, applicable tool in the complex world of sales, and is a mu st-have in the library of any sales executive.”
—Kerry Gilger, President and CEO, FYI Corporation
“Exceptional Selling is a tremendous learning tool for sales professionals. Jeff’s done a great job of expanding on the diagnostic selling concepts from his previous books by emphasizing the amplified role required of a salesperson to quarterback a complex sale—both externally and internally.”
—Chris Ostrander, General Manager, Eaton Corporation
“It’s finally here—a word-for-word, step-by-step guide from Jeff Thull for those of us in the sales trenches each and every day. I have worked with Jeff and Prime Resource Group for over 10 years and have literally begged Jeff to put all of his best strategies in a single resource. Exceptional Selling is that resource. Jeff’s past two books were wonderful, especially from a macro seniormanagement perspective, but this book contains the keys to the kingdom that the ‘prime resource’ in any sales profession is looking for. I look forward to using this as a tool to help our team take results to a new level.”
—David B. Patchen, Regional Vice President, Raymond James Financial Services, Inc.
“Exceptional Selling clearly articulates the skills and habits that hold back many sales professionals from maximizing their potential impact. Jeff provides tangible and specific techniques that you can start to implement immediately that will truly differentiate yourself in the eyes of your customer. Additionally, the Exceptional Selling message translates well into the sphere of marketing communications and provides a significant counter tactic to the intense ‘commoditization’ being experienced in our crowded market space.”
—Bruce S. Moloznik, Vice President of Global Marketing, Cookson Electronics Assembly Materials
“The Diagnostic Selling methods in Exceptional Selling represent a step change from consultative sales in working collaboratively with clients to jointly understanding and addressing the needs for complex business performance solutions. They give commercial staff the skills, discipline, and confidence to effectively engage at senior executive levels in client organizations to create and capture increased business value.”
—Ian Galliard, Global Manager, Sales Development, Shell Global Solutions International BV.
“While reading Jeff Thull’s Exceptional Selling, I was struck with the thought that this book not only teaches an exceptional sales process but shows how a healthy mind-set provides the foundation for effective communication for solving any complex problem. If you have watched helplessly as disapproving purchasing agents, onerous requests for proposals, and uncommunicative customers continually commoditize your business, Jeff’s exceptional book will give you a solid path to building a healthy mind-set for effective communication and a powerful ‘nonsales’ sales process for creating true value, both for you and your customers.”
—John Hines, PhD, Business Manager, Georgia-Pacific Resins, Inc.
“To serve the global financial community with enterprise software solutions requires exceptional credibility and precise communication skills. Exceptional Selling is a great guide on how to do exactly that. Read it, follow it and enjoy your success!”
—Pierre
Gatignol,
President and CEO, GL Trade
Exceptional SELLING
HOW THE BEST CONNECT AND WIN IN HIGH STAKES SALES
JEFF THULL
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 by Jeff Thull. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suit able for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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ISBN-13: 978-0-470-03728-7
ISBN-10: 0-470-03728-8
Printed in the United States of America.
10987654321
To Pat Thull, my lifelong spouse and business partner, for her guidance in building this company, her tireless and selfless efforts to assure our customers receive the highest quality programs and professional services, for making Prime Resource Group an exceptional place to work, and for her insights and experience that have greatly enhanced the content of Exceptional Selling.
Foreword
When I ’m not look i ng a f ter t he C or porate Educ at ion
Prog ra m at D uke Un i ver s it y, I te ac h cou r se s on so c ia l
a nd org a n iz at iona l ps y c holog y i n D uke’s Depar t ment of Ps y c holog y. Bot h aspec t s of my profe s s iona l l i fe h ave t aught me t h at h av i ng a good conver s at ion—i n bu s i ne s s or a ny where else f or t h at mat ter—i s not as s i mple as it m ight appe ar. I n f ac t , it ’s a major c h a l lenge, e spec ia l l y i n t he wor ld of complex s a le s a nd mu lt icu lt u ra l bu s i ne s s relat ionsh ips i n wh ic h Jef f T hu l l work s.
A s Jef f was le ad i ng a sem i nar w it h ou r ma nag i ng d irect or s, it st r uck me t h at bu s i ne s s t oday i n genera l, a nd s a le s a nd bu s i ne s s development profe s s iona ls spec i f ic a l l y, are not de s ig n or solut ion const rai ned; i n f ac t , we are f ar more “d iag nose” const rai ned. T here i s a g re at tendenc y t o le ap bef ore we l i sten. I made t h at ob ser vat ion t o ou r g roup a nd Jef f was so moved by it s brev it y a nd it s ac cu rac y t h at he sugge sted it wou ld be t he per fec t i ns ight f or t he Foreword t o h i s new b ook . T hu s, I f i nd my sel f i nt roduc i ng you t o a b ook t h at i s a g re at re ad.
Aut hent ic a nd compel l i ng cu st omer conver s at ions are t he key t o wh at Jef f refer s t o as “pr i v i leged ac ce s s” a nd “pr i vi leged i ns ight.” Pr i v i leged ac ce s s i s wh at we need t o t ap i nt o t he be st sou rce s of i nf or mat ion w it h i n ou r cu st omer ’s org a n iz at ions. To g ai n t he r ic he st i ns ight s, we of ten need t o
hold conversations at senior levels and it seems like everyone is trying to gain access there. The crass commercial reason is that the revenues are bigger up there. But more important is the fact that senior managers are the ones who best understand the critical issues in their businesses. Privileged insight is what we need to clearly understand our customers, their responsibilities, and their metrics. It is the only way we can create compelling offers and it is the reason customers will understand and embrace those offers. To create exceptional sales, we need to earn access and develop insight.
One of the insights that I drew from Jeff’s first book is that the best salespeople are integrators—they orchestrate all the pieces needed to solve customers’ problems in novel and intriguing ways. To be the integrator, you have to understand your customers and their issues and bring them to a deeper understanding of their situation. You also have to understand the solution capabilities your company offers and bring your customers to a deeper understanding of how those capabilities apply to their businesses. Somehow, you have to integrate all of that information in a collaborative effort with your customer to ensure that it yields a coherent and compelling exchange of value.
How do you accomplish this? It is usually achieved through a structured series of conversations in which you listen to and talk with your customers at a higher level of understanding on both sides. Jeff’s book is about how to conduct exceptional conversations. Instead of treating conversations as something we do all the time, frequently with no preparation before, no special consciousness during, and no particular analysis afterward, Jeff proposes that we become expert conversationalists and raise the bar of professional excellence. We should become so good, in fact, that the style and substance of our conversations create all of the credibility and relevance we need to win our customers’ confidence and their business.
The strategies and techniques that Jeff describes in this book can help you improve your ability to communicate with customers in ways that will far exceed your expectations and theirs. You will be able to really hear what customers are telling you and add value to what you are hearing. I think of it as having “diagnostic ears.” Customers will actually want to tell you more, give you access, and invite you deeper inside their world. Finally, you will be able to convert what you are hearing into compelling solutions. Customers will clearly understand their situation and see how the value of your solution applies to the challenges in their business.
Jeff’s work can help you raise the tenor of your conversations on a number of levels.
Understanding Your Customer’s World
How do we understand their world? Most sales books tell us to become better listeners. They’re right, of course, but the idea of being a good listener seriously oversimplifies what we need to be doing in successful business conversations. We need to listen beyond our customer’s words and look beyond nuances of body language. We need to understand the client’s meaning system—the whole set of assumptions, experiences, values, and beliefs that create the context for their perceptions, judgments, and decisions.
Before we can listen at this level, our customers have to be willing to talk to us as equals. We need to establish peerto-peer relationships with them. How can this be done when everyone is competing for their attention?
It’s not an easy task. As CEO of Duke Corporate Education, if I’m talking to you about the corporate educational curriculum we can provide to your business, I need to acknowledge that you know your business better than I
do. At the same time, I need to have a point of view and be able to make some preliminary assumptions ab out your business or I don’t belong in the room with you. Since I live in the world of professional development and education, it is likely that I know education better than you do. At the same time, I better recognize and respect what you know about education or you are not going to engage and pay attention to any advice I’m going to give you.
Establishing a mind-set of mutual respect is the secret to walking this fine line. We have to assume that our customers are experts in their businesses and, furthermore, that they know their own organizations far better than any outsider ever will. And then, from that context of respect, we need to establish parity by demonstrating our own expertise in the customer’s business. We also have to assume that our customers are knowledgeable about our solutions and capabilities, and again, from that context of respect, demonstrate our own expertise in those solutions.
This is the most constructive and respectful way to approach a sales conversation. We don’t have to insult customers by telling them everything we think they don’t know, nor do we have to defer to them if they choose to treat us as inferiors. It’s a great way to set the stage for a clearer and more useful understanding of the customer’s world.
Getting to the Customer’s Real Problem Together
I frequently see salespeople jump to the solution. In the rush to sell something, as soon as the customer mentions a
problem, the salespeople start talking about how to solve it with their solution. They make premature judgments, and in doing so, they shut down or change the direction of their conversations and miss the richness of insight, perspective, and depth of knowledge that the customer could provide. The usual outcome is a dissatisfied customer—dissatisfied because he knows that the salesperson has stopped listening and won’t know enough about his situation to propose the best solution.
The ideal sales conversation starts with actually hearing customers in their own terms and with their own meanings. As a conversation progresses, you migrate to a more structured discourse in which you are trying to make sense of what customers are telling you in light of the frameworks in which you are expert. You’re situating your expertise inside the customer’s world. This is what leads customers to begin to experience “ah-ha” moments and start to see their world in a new light. They begin to connect the conversation to their reality rather than some nebulous general perspective and give the access required to further explore the possibilities of a solution.
Jeff shows you how the diagnostic conversation is the mechanism that will allow you to place your expertise in the customer’s context. This is not a shallow interview that presumes the first hint of a problem justifies the solution, but one that gets deep into symptoms, causes, and consequences. It has to be a true partnership, founded on a mutually agreed upon premise that guides an inquiry and journey that is shared and jointly conducted. Otherwise, you are simply selling. This is how customers and sales professionals avoid bias and predetermined outcomes. They construct meaning together and develop a broader perspective on and deeper understanding of the customer’s situation.
Designing Solutions That Sell Themselves
Solution design doesn’t really exist in many sales processes. Salespeople don’t design solutions; they most often present prepackaged and off-the-shelf solutions. Even when design has a place in the sales process, solutions tend to be created in a vacuum by the seller with the customer having little or no participation. And we wonder why customers are skeptical about the efficacy of our offerings and don’t leap to take advantage of them.
This is a problem that we face in the business of education. Universities are based on specific disciplinary expertise. Students pass through the various disciplines and integrate them in their own minds. That’s the way the whole system is designed, and if you look at most executive education programs, they are also designed supplier-out, as opposed to client-in. That’s why education is not considered a strategic tool today—it’s expert centered rather than client centered. I believe the fact that we are aware of it and struggle to avoid it, that we are working at understanding and solving clients’ problems rather than declaring our expertise, has helped earn Duke’s Corporate Education Program its number-one ranking.
Jeff’s work is well aligned to a client-in perspective. He has virtually eliminated the unhealthy dependence on presentations that causes so much suffering among salespeople and their customers. Jeff’s emphasis on establishing design parameters that are based on customer criteria and independent of solutions is also an important factor in designing solutions that don’t need to be sold. If you help the customer create the criteria that she needs to make a quality decision and then offer her a solution that meets those criteria, there is no “close” required. What usually happens
is that your customer looks at you and says, “When can we get started?” That’s a great thing to hear a customer say.
Sales professionals who are exceptional conversationalists as well as exceptional diagnosticians are like chess masters. They know the pattern of the board, the strategies of the game, and they know where they are, where they’re going, and their options at every instant. This not only takes innate talent, it also takes systems, skills, and discipline and, of course, a serious amount of practice. In this book, Jeff identifies the conversations that need to happen in a successful business relationship (the openings, the interactions of the middle game, and the end game, an outcome of mutual benefit), and describes the detailed dynamics of each of those conversations in a way that you can apply to your own customer conversations. He will help you raise the bar of excellence and achieve great results.
BLAIR SHEPPARD,CEO Duke Corporate Education
Durham, North Carolina, USA
www.dukece.com
Preface
As a b oy, I was pr i v i leged t o watc h my dad sel l. I n t he
su mmer du r i ng sc hool bre a k, he wou ld t a ke me a long on a few of h i s bu s i ne s s t r ips. He sold g ra n ite t h at was u sed i n t he const r uc t ion of mu lt i m i l l ion-dol lar commerc ia l bui ld i ng s. I ac compa n ied h i m on t r ips t o v i s it t he arc h itec t s who cou ld spec i f y h i s compa ny ’s g ra n ite f or t he bui ldi ng s t hey de s ig ned.
I remember be i ng i mpre s sed w it h t he conver s at ions my f at her h ad w it h h i s cu st omer s. I d idn’t recog n ize it at t he t i me, but he wasn’t ac t i ng l i ke t he stereot y pic a l s a le sper son, t a l k i ng up t he qua l it y of h i s produc t , or w it h order pad i n h a nd , pu sh i ng people t o buy. I nste ad , he seemed t o work w it h t he arc h itec t s as a n equa l, por i ng over bluepr i nt s a nd render i ng s. He t a l ked w it h t hem ab out t he ae st he t ic s of t he ir de s ig ns, wh at t he ir f ir ms were t r y i ng t o ac compl i sh w it h t he ir projec t s, a nd t he requirement s a nd v i s ion of t he bui ld i ng s’ ow ner s. Toge t her t hey wou ld exa m i ne s a mple s my f at her brought a nd d i scu s s t he color of t he st one, s ize of t he pa nels, a nd t he f i ni sh. I n re t rospec t , my dad c re ated a ver y st rong i mage i n my m i nd of how profe s s iona l s a le speople sou nd a nd ac t , a nd how cu st omer s re spond t o t hem.
I n t oday ’s wor ld , I cont i nua l l y seek out a nd st udy h igh-per f or m i ng s a le speople, t he be st of t he be st. T hey
think differently, behave differently, and produce exceptional results. I have been defining the skills of highperforming sales professionals, providing research, and most importantly, establishing systems, skills, and disciplines into a methodology that can be replicated to produce very profitable results.
Considering the thousands of people whom our practice has worked with over the years, I have also encountered a lot of struggling salespeople. Over and over again, I’ve watched them engage in conversations with their customers in which they unknowingly shoot themselves in the foot and undermine their own best efforts. They’re so ingrained in their traditional and standardized approach that they have difficulty stopping to think about what they’re doing to themselves.
Even today, with so much experience around us, the marketplace is cluttered with seminars, consultants, trainers, and books espousing antiquated approaches to selling. Many salespeople, unknowingly caught up in the conventional sales approach, continue their self-sabotage and end up alienating and shutting down customers. But by replicating the top-performing professionals you read about in this book, t here are new, exceptional ways to sell that can set you apart and pull you ahead of the pack. And those of you who have been very successful and are looking to notch up your skills to continually compete effectively in an everevolving market will see that fine-tuning some areas of your approach can make a major impact on your results.
In this book, you will also be warned about the pitfalls that can get us into trouble. Have you ever heard yourself say to a customer, “You’ve probably never thought of this, but...” or “We save companies like yours millions of dollars in wasted...” Both of these statements could very well be true, but they create what I refer to as “dangling insults.”
They imply that the customer doesn’t think and wastes millions of dollars. While you believe you are enlightening your customers, they may be hearing a criticism. You can tell when customers and best-qualified prospects hear these dangling insults: They lean back, cross their arms, and shut down. The salesperson can keep talking, but the conversation is over.
Sales conversations are rife with traps like these. This book exposes those traps and offers logical and proven alternatives that enhance the clarity, relevancy, credibility, and trust we are trying to create in our conversations with customers.
In the chapters that follow, we drill down into the core of exceptional selling practices and expose three root causes of failure that can prevent us from succeeding: confrontation, comprehension, and compliance.
You will see how ingrained reactions and traditional selling strategies and techniques combine to create an atmosphere of confrontation between salespeople and their customers.
You will find it incredible how preprogrammed behaviors and reactions often get us into trouble. As an example, as salespeople, we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that if we can secure an appointment with the right people and put forth our best presentation, we can turn most opportunities into sales, that objections are meant to be overcome, and that with the proper grit and persistence, we should be able to close any account. However, the more we wrestle with indecisive customers, aggressive competitors, drawnout sales cycles, and unpredict able outcomes, the more dependent we become on these unquestioned behaviors. The reality that we are ignoring, however, is that our conditioning, along with traditional selling lore, promotes an adversarial style of communication that only exacerbates our
problems and causes us to work harder and with less successful outcomes.
In this book, we will look at specific examples of how salespeople consistently overestimate the customer’s comprehension of the problem to be solved, the solutions we propose, and above all, the customer’s readiness to make decisions. Think about how the complexity of our products and services has escalated, how the customer’s workload has increased, how their staff and technical evaluation resources have decreased, and how the pressure to perform has increased. This harsh reality becomes even more problematic. As complexity increases, customers require more outside expertise to make high-quality decisions, but for the most part, our customers understand less and less of what we tell them. And what are we doing in response? We are trained and encouraged to present relentlessly, to work hard to convince, to persuade, and above all, to be persistent. We lecture our customers about solutions that they don’t comprehend, can’t differentiate, and really aren’t sure they need. Then, we wonder why they buy a suboptimal solution or, as happens too often, don’t buy any solution at all, not from you or your competitor.
Finally, in this book you will see how communication can fail when customers place pressure on salespeople with their buying processes in an attempt to control the sales process themselves. If our customers don’t have a complete comprehension of their problems and our solutions, compliance with their process has a high probability of suboptimal results. Yet, when prospects send us requests for proposals (RFPs), invitation to tender bids (ITBs), or requests for information (RFIs), and invite us to reply, t here is this irresistible tendency to jump. Granted, the customer may have made considerable efforts in preparing the request, yet we have no idea whether this is a viable opportunity for the
customer or our company, yet we willingly contribute limited time and resources.
The goal is exceptional selling systems, skills, and disciplines to manage exceptional conversations for exceptional results for both you and your customers. You may have the world’s greatest solution, but if you can’t communicate with relevancy, build credibility and respect, and build clarity for your customers, your potential will be severely constrained.
I’ve devoted my career to studying sales strategy and the behaviors that drive exceptional conversations and have consulted with individuals and executive teams involved in high-stakes sales environments. This book is loaded with conversation examples built around business-to-business sales scenarios. Don’t feel constrained by that focus. Highstakes or complex sales include any sale in which the customer requires personal assistance or guidance to make a high-quality decision. Fundamentally, the conversation is between two people and t herefore these conversational strategies and techniques will work in business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer sales. As the scale of the decision increases, the number of conversations will increase, yet at the heart of any relationship is the one-to-one communications that we will focus on. The decisions may range in complexity from quick turnover transactions, to the most complex multimillion-dollar multi-organizational “value exchanges.” As you’ll see, it is a matter of scale and you can easily adjust that to match your situation.
Further, this b ook can also help you become more effective within your own company. One of the commonly overlooked elements in a career in business-to-business sales is the fact that sales professionals often have to sell the same deals within their own companies that they sell to their customers. More often than not, the internal sale is
even more difficult than the external sale. When sales professionals don’t approach their internal customers with the same processes and discipline, their deals and credibility often fall apart because they did not equip their colleagues and superiors with what is needed to make high-quality business decisions. You can use the lessons in this book to ensure that doesn’t happen to you. The bottom line is: This book is about creating conversations that achieve relevancy, credibility, and respect between individuals, no matter what the context.
An overview of the book’s chapters is important so you will have a sense of its contents and how it is organized, especially for future reference. However, I don’t recommend using this as a guide to cherry-picking the text. The style and substance of exceptional sales conversations are based on the critical components of clarity, relevancy, credibility, and respect that you build throughout the sales process. You are given a guided path. Each step in the process supports and facilitates the next step. This book shows you how to be more efficient and more effective, but there aren’t any shor tcuts to exceptional sales results.
In Part I, we will explore the communication barriers that stand between salespeople and their customers. The fact is that most salespeople are working harder for diminishing returns because of fundamental and widespread miscommunication with customers. This miscommunication has two facets: errors in style, or how salespeople talk with customers, and errors in substance, what they choose to talk to customers about.
In Chapter 1, “The More You Sweat, the Less You Sell,” we will examine the style facet. You will begin to understand why salespeople often have two strikes against them every time they engage a customer: they are relying on unconscious patterns that were already set in stone by the
time they entered kindergarten; and they are working with a sales process that encourages an atmosphere of confrontation. You will see how these combine the pressure and stress of sales to sabotage our relationships with customers.
In Chapter 2, “Nobody Buys a Value Proposition,” we will explore the substance facet of customer conversations. All sales, at their essence, are value transactions, but too often salespeople misunderstand the realities of value. They communicate in the simplistic, generic terms of value propositions, that is, in hypothetical terms that do not have the power to compel customers to connect and t herefore act. Customers find these propositions indistinguishable from one another and often, undistinguished to boot. This is why customers act as if all salespeople sound alike and the only relevant differentiating factor between their offerings is price.
In Chapter 3, “You’ve Got to Get Your Mind Right,” we get to the good news. You can make the greatest leaps in sales performance and raise your results from average to good or good to great by simply changing your mind. How we think precedes how we behave and our mind-set is without a doubt the critical foundation for success. We will analyze the five fundamental elements of the mind-set that opens the way to value achievement, as well as creating, expanding, and protecting customer relationships.
In Part II of “Exceptional Selling,” we will travel through four series of conversations that result in exceptional sales. These conversations enable sales professionals to guide customers through the value life cycle as it applies to the customer’s unique situation and how the sales professional can create a robust dialogue that yields privileged insight into the customer’s world.
In Chapter 4, “Earning the Keys to the Elevator,” we will detail the conversations a salesperson must undertake
to identify and initiate optimal opportunities. You will learn how to conduct initial engagements that quickly and effectively gain executive sponsorship and privileged access to the customer organization.
In Chapter 5, “Diagnosis Trumps Presentation Every Time,” you will see why sales presentations stunt customer relationships and sales results, and learn how to conduct diagnostic conversations that help customers fully comprehend the inefficiencies and performance gaps that are constraining their business results. In doing so, you provide the customer with the incentive to change.
In Chapter 6, “Cutting Through the Smoke and Mirrors,” we will explore the problems inherent in designing solutions in a vacuum. You will learn how to work with customers to define solutions, and in doing so, capture an unparalleled opportunity to set yourself apart from your competitors, anchor the customer in your solution, and gain an inside track to winning the sale. This is where you see how to give your customer the confidence to invest.
In Chapter 7, “It Doesn’t Pay to Surprise a Corporation,” you will see how salespeople sabotage themselves when they avoid discussing the challenges and risks associated with their offerings, and as a result, set the stage for mistrust and destructive surprises. In essence, they end up losing customers because they are afraid to lose customers. You learn how to conduct constructive conversations about negative issues and how to further enhance your customer relationships.
In Part III, we will explore how to establish exceptional credibility and cement it with the ability to overcome two of the most difficult conversational challenges in today’s complex sales environment: the urgent need to quantify value and the demand that salespeople engage with customers at the highest levels of their organizations.
In Chapter 8, “Show Me the Money,” you will see why customers do not respond to standard return on investment presentations and salespeople are intimidated by financial conversations. You will learn how to harness the most effective sales accelerant. You will also learn how to guide customers through conversations that enable them to quantify the cost of their problems, as well as to establish the expected return on solution and the appropriate investment to earn that return.
Finally, in Chapter 9, “Connecting at the Level of Power and Decision,” you will see why salespeople lose their confidence and ruin their chances when they reach the C-level in their customers’ organizations. You learn the five rules of senior executive conversations and discover how to gain credibility with, sponsorship of, and guidance by the top leaders.
That’s the big picture and enough said. Let’s get started learning the conversational mind-set, strategies, and skills that power exceptional selling.
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“You’re welcome,” he replied, with equal concern for the formalities.
“This is my school.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“You’ll come up at two to-morrow? Number 142, third floor.”
“I will.”
They shook hands limply. He glanced back as he walked off, whistling. Lee was standing on the steps hastily disposing of her apple. She nodded gaily to him.
CHAPTER V
THE next afternoon Lee made an elaborate toilette. She buttoned her boots properly, sewed a stiff, white ruffle in her best gingham frock, and combed every snarl out of her hair. Mrs. Tarleton, who was sitting up, regarded her with some surprise.
“It’s nowhere near dinner time, honey,” she said, finally. “Why are you dressing up?”
Lee blushed, but replied with an air: “I expect that little boy I told you about, to come to see me—the English one. He carried my bag to school yesterday, and gave me an apple and an orange. I’ve kept the orange for you when you’re well. His name’s Cecil Maundrell.”
“Ah! Well, I hope he is a nice boy, and that you will be great friends.”
“He’s nice enough in his way. But he’d just walk over me if I’d let him. I can see that.”
Mrs. Tarleton looked alarmed. “Don’t let him bully you, darling. Englishmen are dreadfully high and mighty.”
There was a faint and timid rap upon the door.
“That’s him,” whispered Lee. “He’s afraid of me all the same.”
She opened the door. Young Maundrell stood there, his cheeks burning, his hands working nervously in his pockets. He looked younger than most lads of his age, and had all that simplicity of boyhood so lacking in the precocious American youth.
“Won’t you come in?” asked Lee politely.
“Oh—ah—won’t you come out?”
“Come in—do,” said Mrs. Tarleton. She had a very sweet voice and a heavenly smile. The boy walked forward rapidly, and took her hand, regarding her with curious intensity. Mrs. Tarleton patted his hand.
“You miss the women of your family, do you not?” she said. “I thought so. You must come and see us often. You will be always welcome.”
His face was brilliant. He stammered out that he’d come every day. Then he went over to the window with Lee, and with their heads together they agreed that Mrs. Tarleton was a real angel.
But Cecil quickly tired of the subdued atmosphere, and of the crowd below. He stood up abruptly and said:
“Let’s go out if your mother doesn’t mind. We’ll take a walk.”
Mrs. Tarleton looked up from her book and nodded. Lee fetched her hat and jacket, and they went forth.
“My father took me to the Cliff House one day. We’ll go there,” announced the Englishman.
“I was going to take you to a candy store—”
“Nasty stuff! It’s a beautiful walk to the Cliff House, and there are big waves and live seals.”
“Oh, I’d love to go, but I’ve heard it’s a queer kind of a place, or something.”
“I’ll take care of you. Can you walk a lot?”
“Of course!”
But like all San Franciscans, she was a bad walker, and she felt very weary as they tramped along the Cliff House road. However, she was much interested in the many carriages flashing past, and too proud to confess herself unequal to the manly stride beside her. Cecil did not suit his pace to hers. He kept up a steady tramp—his back very erect, his head in the air. Lee forgot her theories, and thought him adorable. His shyness wore off by degrees, and he talked constantly, not of his family life, but of his beloved Eton, from which he appeared to have been ruthlessly torn, and of his feats at cricket. He was a champion “dry bob,” he assured her proudly. Lee was deeply interested, but would have liked to talk about herself a little. He did
not ask her a question; he was charmed with her sympathy, and confided his school troubles, piling up the agony, as her eyes softened and flashed. When she capped an anecdote of martyrdom with one from her own experience, he listened politely, but when she finished, hastened on with his own reminiscences, not pausing to comment. Lee experienced a slight chill, and the spring day seemed less brilliant, the people in the carriages less fair. But she was a child, the impression quickly passed, and her interest surrendered once more.
“We’ll be there in two minutes,” said Cecil. “Then we’ll have a cup of tea.”
“My mother doesn’t let me drink tea or coffee. She hopes I’ll have a complexion some day and be pretty.”
She longed for the masculine assurance that her beauty was a foregone conclusion, but Cecil replied:
“Oh! the idea of bothering about complexion. I like you because you’re not silly like other girls. You’ve got a lot of sense—just like a boy. Of course you mustn’t disobey your mother, but you must have something after that walk. You’ve got a lot of pluck, but I can see you’re blown a bit. Would she mind if you had a glass of wine? I’ve got ten dollars. My stepmother sent them to me.”
“My!—I don’t think she’d mind about the wine, I’ve never tasted it. Oh, goodness!”
They had mounted one of the rocks, and faced the ocean. Lee had thought the bay, girt with its colourous hills very beautiful, as they had trudged along the cliffs, but she had had glimpses of it many times from the heights of San Francisco. She had never seen the ocean before. Its roar thrilled her nerves, and the great green waves, rolling in with magnificent precision from the grey plain beyond, to leap abruptly over the outlying rocks, their spray glittering in the sunlight like a crust of jewels, filled her brain with new and inexpressible sensations. She turned suddenly to Cecil. His eyes met hers with deep impersonal sympathy; their souls mingled
on the common ground of nervous exaltation. He moved closer to her and took her hand.
“That’s the reason I wanted to come again,” he said. “I love it.”
The words shook his nerves down, and he added: “But let’s go and freshen up.”
She followed him up the rocks to the little shabby building set into the cliff and overhanging the waves. She knew nothing of its secrets; no suspicion crossed her innocent mind that if its walls could speak, San Francisco, highly seasoned as it was, would shake to its roots, and heap up its record of suicide and divorce; but she wondered why two women, who came out and passed her hurriedly, were so heavily veiled, and why others, sitting in the large restaurant, had such queer-looking cheeks and eyes. Some inherited instinct forbade her to comment to Cecil, who did not give the women a glance. He led her to a little table at the end of the piazza, and ordered claret and water, tea, and a heaping plate of bread and butter.
It was some time before they were served, and they gazed delightedly at a big ship going out, and wished they were on it; at the glory of colour on the hills opposite; and at the seals chattering on the rocks below.
“It’s heavenly, perfectly heavenly,” sighed Lee. “I never had such a good time in all my life.”
She forgot her complexion and took off her hat. The salt breeze stung the blood into her cheeks, and her eyes danced with joy.
The waiter brought the little repast. The children sipped and nibbled and chattered. Cecil scarcely took his eyes off the water. He and his father went off on sailing and fishing excursions every summer, he told Lee, and he was so keen on the water that it had taken him fully three months after he entered Eton to decide whether he would be a “wet bob,” or a “dry bob.” Cricket had triumphed, because he loved to feel his heels fly.
Lee gave him a divided attention: her brain was fairly dancing, and seemed ready to fly off in several different directions at once. “Oh!” she cried suddenly, “I’m not a bit tired any more. I feel as if I could walk miles and miles. Let’s have an adventure. Wouldn’t it be just glorious if we could have an adventure?”
The boy’s eyes flashed. “Oh, wouldyou. I’ve been thinking about it but you’re a girl. But you’re such a jolly sort! We’ll get one of those fishing-boats to take us out to sea, and climb up and down those big waves. Oh, fancy! I say!—will you?”
“Oh, won’t I? Youbetcherlife I will.”
Cecil paid his reckoning, and the children scrambled along the rocks to a cove where a fishing smack was making ready for sea. Lee wondered why her feet glanced off the rocks in such a peculiar fashion, but she was filled with the joy of exhilaration, of a reckless delight in doing something of which the entire Hayne boardinghouse would disapprove.
Cecil made a rapid bargain with the man, an ugly Italian, who gave him scant attention. A few moments later they were skimming up and down the big waves and making for the open sea. At first Lee clung in terror to Cecil, who assured her patronisingly that it was an old story with him, and there was no danger. In a few moments the exhilaration returned five-fold, and she waved her arms with delight as they shot down the billows into the emerald valleys. Out at sea the boat skimmed along an almost level surface, and the children became absorbed in the big fish nets, and very dirty. Lee thought the flopping fish nasty and drew up her feet, but Cecil’s very nostrils quivered with the delight of the sport, although his surly hosts had snubbed his offer to lend a hand.
Suddenly Lee rubbed her eyes. The sun had gone. He had been well above the horizon the last time she had glanced across the waters. Had he slipped his moorings? She pointed out the phenomenon to Cecil. He stared a moment, then appealed to the Italians.
“Da fogga, by damn!” exclaimed the Captain to his mate. “What for he coming so soon? Com abouta.”
The little craft turned and raced with the breeze for land. The children faced about and watched that soft stealthy curtain swing after. It was as white as cloud, as chill as dawn, as eerie as sound in the night. It took on varying outlines, breaking into crags and mountain peaks and turrets. It opened once and caught a wedge of scarlet from the irate sun. For a moment a ribbon of flame ran up and down its length, then broke into drops of blood, then hurried whence it came. Through the fog mountain came a long dismal moan, the fog-horn of the Farallones, warning the ships at sea.
The children crept close together. Lee locked her arm in Cecil’s. Neither spoke. Suddenly the boat jolted heavily and they scrambled about, thinking they were on the rocks. But the Italians were tying the boat to a little wharf, and unreefing her. The dock was strangely unfamiliar. Cecil glanced hastily across the bay. San Francisco lay opposite.
“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you going across before that fog gets here?”
“Si you wanta crossa that bay you swimming,” remarked the Captain, stepping ashore.
Cecil jumped after him with blazing eyes and angry fists. “You know I thought you were going back there,” he cried. “Why, you’re a villain! And a girl too! I’ll have you arrested.”
The man laughed. Cecil, through tears of mortification, regarded that large bulk, and choked back his wrath.
“My father will pay you well if you take us back,” he managed to articulate.
“No crossa that bay to-night,” replied the man.
“But how are we to get back?”
“Si you walka three, four, five miles—no can remember—you finda one ferra-boat.” And he sauntered away.
Cecil returned to the boat and helped Lee to land. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “What a beastly mess I’ve got you into!”
“Oh, never mind,” said Lee cheerfully. “I reckon I can walk.”
“You area jolly sort. Come on then.” But his brow was set in gloom.
Lee took his hand. “You looked just splendid when you talked to that horrid man,” she said. “I am sure he was afraid of you!”
Cecil’s brow shot forth the nimbus of the conqueror.
“Lee,” he said in a tone of profound conviction, “you have more sense than all the rest of the girls in the world put together. Come on and I’ll help you along.”
They climbed the bluff. When they reached the top the world was white and impalpable about them.
Cecil drew Lee’s hand through his arm. “Never mind,” he said, “I think I have a good bump of locality, and one can see a little way ahead.”
Lee leaned heavily on his arm. “I can’t think why I feel so sleepy,” she murmured. “I never am at this time of day.”
“Oh, for mercy’s sake don’t go to sleep. Let’s run.”
They ran headlong until they were out of breath. Then they stopped and gazed into the fog ahead of them. Tall dark objects loomed there. They seemed to touch the unseen stars, and they were black even in that gracious mist.
“They’re trees. They’re redwoods,” said Cecil. “I know where we are now—at least I think I do. Father and I came over to this side one day and drove about. It’s a regular forest. I do hope——” He glanced uneasily about. “It’s too bad we can’t walk along the edge of the cliffs. But if we keep straight ahead I suppose it’ll be all right.”
They trudged on. The forest closed about them. Those dark rigid shafts that no storm ever bends, no earthquake ever sways, whom the fog feeds and the trade winds love, looked like the phantasm of themselves in the pale hereafter. The scented underbush and infant redwoods grew high above the heads of the children, and there were a hundred paths. The roar of the sea grew faint.
Lee gave a gasping yawn and staggered. “Oh, Cecil,” she whispered, “I’m asleep. I can’t go another step.”
Cecil was also weary, and very much discouraged. He sat down against a tree and took Lee in his arms. She was asleep in a moment, her head comfortably nestled into his shoulder.
He was a brave boy, but during the two hours that Lee slept his nerves were sorely tried. High up, in the unseen arbours of the redwoods, there was a faint incessant whisper: the sibilant tongues of moisture among the brittle leaves. From an immeasurable distance came the long, low, incessant moan of the Farallones’ “syren.” There was no other sound. If there were four-footed creatures in the forest they slept. Just as Cecil’s teeth began to chatter, whether from cold or fear he did not care to scan, Lee moved.
“Are you awake?” he asked eagerly.
Lee sprang to her feet. “I didn’t know where I was for a minute. Let’s hurry as fast as we can. Memmy will be wild—she might be dreadfully ill with fright——”
“And father’s got all the policemen in town out after me,” said Cecil gloomily. “We can’t hurry or we’ll run into trees; but we can go on.”
In a few minutes he exclaimed: “I say! We’re going up hill, and it’s jolly steep too.”
“Well?”
“That Italian didn’t say anything about hills.”
“Then I suppose we’re lost again,” said Lee, with that resignation so exasperating to man.
“Well, if we are I don’t see who’s to help it in the fog at night in a forest. Perhaps the ferry is over the hill, and as this is the only path we’ll have to go on.”
“I wouldn’t mind the hill being perpendicular if memmy was at the top.”
Cecil softened at once. “Don’t you worry; we’ll get there soon. I’ll get behind and push you.”
They toiled and panted up the hill, which grew into a mountain. The forest dropped behind and a low dense shrubbery surrounded them. They were obliged to rest many times, and once they ate a halfdozen crackers Lee found in her pocket and were hungrier thereafter. But they forebore to discourse upon their various afflictions; in fact, they barely spoke at all. Their clothes were torn, their hats lost, their hands and faces scratched. When they paused to rest and the vague disturbances of night smote their ears, they clung together and were glad to hasten on. Lee longed to cry, but panted to be a heroine in Cecil’s eyes, and win the sweets of masculine approval; and Cecil, whose depression was even more profound, never forgot that the glory of the male is to be invincible in the eyes of the female. So did the vanity of sex mitigate the terrors of night and desolation and the things that devour.
The fog was far below them, an ocean of froth, pierced by the black tips of the redwoods. On either side the children could see nothing but the great shoulders of the mountain. They seemed climbing to the vast cold glitter above.
Gradually they left the brush, and their way fell among stones, rocks, and huge boulders. Not a shrub grew here, not a blade of grass. They climbed on for a time, they reached level ground, then the point of descent. They could see nothing but rocks, brush, and an ocean of fog. Their courage took note of its limitations.
“I’m not going to cry,” said Lee sharply. “But I think we’d better talk till the sun gets up and that fog melts. Besides, if we talk we won’t
