Here’s the question:   “Why do you need this?”

This simple question helped a salesperson turn a $5,000 opportunity into an $8 Million contract. Too simple? Perhaps, but maybe you’ll think differently about it after I’ve shared the story with you.

I had just spent two days conducting sales training for the inside sales team of a global computer manufacturer. Their job was to support the field salespeople by providing customers with information, quotations, etc. Essentially, the field salespeople treated them as glorified Executive Assistants. In working with this group, however, I believed they could be much more of an asset to the company by taking a proactive role in the sales process than just simply responding to requests from the field. So one of the things we discussed during the training was qualifying, and what questions should be asked in order to ensure customers were investing in the right solutions.

When we finished the training, I headed out on to the sales floor to do some side-by-side coaching with individual salespeople. Round about 3:00 in the afternoon, I landed at Craig’s desk. Craig was a seasoned pro, with over 25 years of sales experience. I asked him what calls he had lined up for me to coach him on that day.

He told me he had just received a request from his field salesperson to provide a quote to a customer for a computer server.  Craig showed me the e-mail from the field person, and the gist of the message was:

This guy called me and left a voice mail. He wants a quote on a server, but didn’t give me any specifications. I haven’t been into this account since they do very little business with us, and I’ve never met him or spoken to him. Could you give him a call and find out what he needs, and send him a quote? Thanks.

I asked Craig how he intended to proceed, and he said:

“Normally I just follow orders from the field person, so I would just call the customer, get the specs, and send him a quote. End of story.”

“Well,” I replied. “Today isn’t a normal day is it? You have me sitting next to you observing everything you’re doing. So what are you going to do differently today that you wouldn’t normally do?”

“I guess I’m going to have to use some of the stuff you’ve been teaching us, aren’t I?”

“That would be nice,” I said. “What specifically are you going to do?”

“Well – I usually wouldn’t ask this, but since you stressed it, I guess I should ask what they are going to be using their new server for, instead of just blindly quoting it.”

“Sure – that would be good.”

I could see that, even with such a simple question, Craig was out of his comfort zone. He was used to following the orders of his field person, and was nervous about trying something new that the field person hadn’t sanctioned. I suggested we rehearse the call first, with me playing the customer.

We rehearsed how the call might go and how he would work the question into the dialogue. I also reminded Craig not to forget to engender cooperation from the customer by first conditioning him that he needed some answers to a few questions.

When I felt Craig was at least somewhat more comfortable, he made the actual call.

“Hi, this is Robert.”

“Robert – this is Craig calling from ……  I’m your Inside Account Manager, and I work with Andrea Jones, the field manager for your account. Andrea told me you had requested a quote for a server so I’m just calling to get some specs so I can send that out to you.”

“Okay….” and then Robert was off and running, relating his needed specs to Craig, which Craig duly started to note down. At this point, I knew if I didn’t intervene, Craig would slip into his established habit of just taking down the required specifications, and then writing up a quote. I gestured to Craig that he should ask the question. First, Craig remembered to preface the question with:

“Robert, to make sure you’re investing in the right solution, do you mind if I get your answers to a couple of quick questions?”

“Sure.” Robert said with a sigh. He was obviously just expecting to be able to give his specs, and get a quote.

“Do you mind if I ask why you need this server? What you will be using it for?”

There was a 2-second pause while Robert weighed up whether or not he should enter into this dialogue with Craig, and then he said: “Do you have half an hour to spare?”

“Absolutely!” Craig replied. He looked over at me with a quizzical look as we both wondered what this was about.

Robert then proceeded to tell Craig the reasons why he needed the server. He had joined his company just a month before. He had been hired to organize and complete a physical move of the company’s data centre from Chicago to San Francisco – a massive undertaking, of which the purchase of the server was merely the first step. Robert shared that the project was much larger in scope than he originally believed, and he admitted that he was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by it all.

“I really need some help here – can you help me?” he asked plaintively.

Long story short, Craig connected Robert with his Services Division, and Robert ended up contracting out the data centre move to Craig’s company – an $8 Million contract for the firm.

Craig would have been happy that day taking a $5,000 order for the server, and his field person would probably have been happy with that also. They both would have been blissfully ignorant of the massive opportunity that they would have missed out on if it hadn’t been for that one question:

“Why do you need this?”

Try it – it works!

Not long after we founded Delaine Consulting, I made a sales call on the CEO of a mid-sized company based just outside of Montreal. To get to the meeting, I flew into Dorval airport and then took a 45-minute cab ride to the prospective client’s office. When I say a cab ride, it was actually one of the most terrifying journeys of my life. Montreal drivers have something of a, shall we say, reckless reputation, but this cab driver was something else! Speeding, changing lanes at whim, it was as if he didn’t care if we got there safely or not – he just wanted to get there as quickly as possible. I braced myself in the seat, and hung on for dear life. I was traumatized by the time we arrived.

After the CEO and I introduced ourselves and were settled in his office, he asked me how the journey was. I started to regale him with the story of my cab ride. After a few minutes, I noticed that his eyes had started to glaze over and he was shifting in his chair. He may have been genuinely interested in my journey when he asked the question, but 10 minutes into the story, his interest was definitely on the wane! Realizing this, and hoping I hadn’t blown the opportunity, I transitioned quickly into my prepared opening statement in order to focus us on business. His attention back on me, the call went well from there, and he became a client.

I’ll never know if I would have blown the sale if I had continued blathering, but I do know this incident taught me a couple of valuable lessons. I already knew the importance of empathy in selling, and how really understanding the customer and their needs helps me provide truly appropriate solutions. What I learned that day though, was that when I am talking, I’m not listening. Zig Ziglar once said that selling is not telling, selling is asking the right questions. I’ll modify that by saying that selling is not telling, selling is asking the right questions, and then listening to the answers. And since listening is one of the cornerstones of empathy, if you’re not listening with all your mental acuity, you cannot effectively be building empathy, and that is going to hurt your selling success.

The other lesson I learned that day was to forget about myself completely, and focus my attention entirely on the customer. It is quite natural, of course, to provide an answer when someone asks you a question. And we do like talking about ourselves – it is our favourite subject. However, in a sales situation, when we focus on ourselves and not on the prospect, we run a real risk of leaving the prospect feeling like we really don’t have their best interests at heart. After all, the purpose of qualifying in sales is to gain as much of an understanding of them and their situation as possible. In other words, the customer should be the focus of the dialogue, not the salesperson.

When you focus on the customer, it allows you to build a complete understanding of their situation. You will empathize so deeply with their concerns and problems that you will be able to provide solutions that far outweigh the competition in terms of their value. It may not win you every sale (I don’t know anything that works 100% of the time), but forgetting about yourself completely will certainly make it harder for customers to buy from your competition, and easier to buy from you.

Look for more ways that you can use empathy to help you sell on purpose instead of by accident in future blogs.

Part 1 – Pre-call research

In 1977, I applied for a job as a salesperson with a company supplying equipment and chemicals to researchers in the health sciences field. I had some trepidation about being in sales, but in one of my interviews with my prospective manager, I’d asked him what kind of training I would receive. “Oh – don’t worry, you’ll get full training,” he told me. So I accepted the job.

On the first day my manager sat me down at a desk in the warehouse, gave me a copy of the company catalogue, and told me to read it from cover to cover. Two days later, I told him that I’d finished reading it, and he said, “Read it again.” This scenario repeated itself a number of times over the next two weeks. Finally, I asked when the next phase of my training would start. “How about now?” came the cheerful reply, and with that he grabbed his car keys, and enthusiastically told me to get in his car. We spent the next two hours cruising around with him pointing out the locations of our major customers in the city. Back at the office, I thanked him for the tour, and enquired as to when the rest of my training would begin. “That was it – that was your training. You’ve studied the catalogue, you know where the customers are, now go sell something!”

Needless to say, without any guidance as to what to do, my first sales calls did not go well. In fact, as a defence mechanism against my embarrassment for not knowing what the heck I was doing, I started telling customers I was the new technical support person for the company, and I would ask if there were any problems I could solve for them. That was my whole sales approach for the first few months. It did help in starting some dialogues, and actually led to some sales (though I have to admit I wasn’t setting the world on fire with my spectacular sales numbers!). I was merely “lucking” into sales simply by virtue of being in the right place, at the right time. In other words, I was selling by accident, and not with any plan or purpose.

How do you ensure you’re selling on purpose instead of by accident? I’ve identified a number of ways to do that, and empathy plays a major role in all of them.

They say that if you want to know a person, walk a mile in their shoes. That’s what empathy is all about – understanding why and how other people do the things they do. The dictionary definition is: To mentally identify with another person, thereby understanding their side of a situation. So put yourself in your prospect’s or customer’s shoes for a few minutes, and imagine how it feels to be them. What’s going through their minds when you try to interact with them.

Picture this: you’re the customer, and you’re in your office, fifteen things to do in the next ten minutes, a deadline looming for a meeting with the boss, seven things you’re thinking about all at once, and you’re expecting a call from your spouse. Just then your phone rings. Thinking it’s your spouse, you reach out and take the call without thinking to check the caller I.D.

So – you pick up the phone, and lo and behold, it’s a salesperson on the other end. Here’s what the salesperson actually says: “Hi there – this is Derrick Pick calling from Solutions R’ Us. I’m the new Account Executive for your territory, so I’m just calling to introduce myself and let you know all the great things that Solutions R’ Us has to offer, and to see if there’s anything I can help you with today…”

As the harried prospect, here’s what your brain actually hears:  “Hi there, I’m Blankety-blank from some company or other, and I’m just calling to waste some of your time and make you late for your meeting, and blah, blah, blah……”

How can you avoid this scenario?  Well, one of the rules of selling on purpose instead of by accident is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Use empathy to gain an understanding of what would be of value to them in their situation, and give them a reason to engage with you.

Prior to contacting the customer:

Research the customer’s organization. Visit their website to develop an understanding of their situation, and identify some of the challenges the organization may be facing, and how you might be able help them meet and overcome those challenges.

Research the individual. Gain some insight into their background and current role – LinkedIn and Google are excellent for this. Anticipate what issues that would be uppermost in this customer’s mind. Talk with other people in your company or industry about dealing with people in similar circumstances. Conduct a quick search of the internet for blogs, articles, tweets, etc. for tips on possible ways you could help.

Use this knowledge to gain a preliminary understanding of the customer, and to anticipate how your product or service could help them.  Then you can develop a customized strategy for your approach. What will you say to gain their attention and interest? What questions will you ask to gain a deeper understanding of their issues, goals, and challenges? What benefits of your solution will you present to help them understand the value you bring to the table, and what would motivate them to take action?

Using empathy to put yourself in the customer’s shoes will better prepare you for your interactions with them, and position you for more successful outcome to your sales calls.

Look for more ways that you can use empathy to help you sell on purpose instead of by accident in future blogs.