Revenue Journal®

John Smith is a typical customer in the market for a fairly high-end product, one that requires a salesperson to finalize the deal. He has done his research on the Web - he's spent hours, in fact, researching. Now he has a couple of questions for the salesperson to answer. Otherwise, he is ready to buy. He decides that the best way to get the answers he needs is to go to an industry tradeshow.

I've been interviewing "John Smiths" for a client, and one of them described what happened next, using these words:

"I had to defend my wallet and my family against The Pitch."

He was there with his wife, and as he was trying to get answers to his questions, the salesperson kept trying to close the sale.

From the customer's perspective, this is irritating. Sleazy. Totally inappropriate. You're just asking someone questions, and the whole time, they keep trying to sneak around to the side of you and grab your wallet out of your back pocket.

The salesperson is actually doing what he was taught to do - by all the sales consultants in the world. Plus, of course, he's motivated to close the sale because that's how he gets a commission. So while the customer is just trying to get his questions answered so he can buy, the salesperson is trying to get the question-and-answer thing out of the way as quickly as possible and move right for the "kill."

Teaching salespeople "go for the kill" is part of a big con job, perpetrated by sales training consultants. Another one is the claim that the salesperson should always be "in control" of the sales conversation - I get releases from sales training consultants making that claim almost every day. And the third con job is the "conversion" con, represented these days by "the funnel," which has gotten sexy again because it is being applied to Web marketing. Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and managers are being convinced that they can turn "eyeballs" into "clicks" into "conversions," if they just manipulate the customer the right way.

These sales consultants are wrong. The advice they're selling does line their own pockets, but it alienates the customer - and leaves business owners and managers sadder, poorer, and seldom much wiser. It's a classic case of telling the customer (owners, mangers, marketers, and salespeople) what they want to hear, while ignoring the reality of the real driver of the "sales" process: the buyer.

Now let's look at this from the buyer's perspective, and we'll see what is really going on.

Con Job #1: You're in control of the customer's buying process.

Who has decided that he wants to buy? Who is standing there with a few final questions, and, if those questions are answered satisfactorily, will buy the product? Who has researched the subject on the Web, looking at your site, your competitors' sites, discussion groups, customer reviews, and more? Who has talked to his friends about it, and gotten very specific, emotionally charged recommendations? Who has talked it over with his mate, or whoever else is involved in the buying process?

Who has already talked to other salespeople - and heard how they answer the question? Who has been to the websites, read the description and the specs, and dug down for obscure details?

The buyer, of course.

By the time today's buyer reaches the salesperson, he's not some clueless idiot. He's not going to follow your script; he has his own. It's a movie he's written, produced, and is directing. You are a bit player, not the director. You either follow his lead, or you lose. It's pretty simple.

You're only in control of one thing: How you perform in the buyer's movie. When he comes along, do you help him? Are you honest? Do you pretend to be answering his questions while trying to sneak around and pick his back pocket? Do you avoid telling him certain things because you're trying to "let him be stupid," at his expense, and for your gain? (Hint: This often backfires, because the customer already knows the answer and is just asking to see if the salesperson will tell the truth - or lie.)

When I listen to salespeople taking incoming sales calls, I'm often dismayed by how difficult the salesperson makes it for the customer to spend money. The customer usually has only a couple of questions, and once he has good answers, he will be ready to buy. The salesperson is on another track, one he has been using for years. He even forces the customer to wait while he does his thing - looking up data that the customer didn't really ask for, putting the customer on hold while he "consults" with an "expert," making the client wait while he gets the client's information on his screen, and so on. As the call progresses, the customer loses interest and decides it's time to terminate the call. The salesperson goes on to the next call, unaware - or unwilling to admit - that he has just prevented a sale because he stubbornly insisted on making the customer an actor in his movie, rather than the other way around.

When someone calls you or your salesperson, forget closing. The job is to figure out what the customer needs from you, as quickly and courteously as possible, and then figure out how to give it to him. Even if you don't make that sale, that customer will remember how you tried to help him, and he will either come back himself to buy from you another day, or send others to you. And if you do make the sale, he will remember how nicely he was treated and look for more opportunities to do business with you.

Con Job #2: Conversion = manipulation

These con jobs are obviously related. If you think you're in control of the selling (buying) process, you will think you can manipulate people.

I see this most frequently in website design, where website designers convince clients to cleverly make the client "work for it" and "get involved" - with the use of mouseovers, for example, instead of a simple list of choices.

I clicked on a map recently for a child's book, which had 8 red dots on it, each one representing one of the cities that were featured in the story. Each dot, when you moused over it, had a pop-up city name.

But only half the dots, when clicked, sent you to a description of the city. The rest of the dots, when you clicked on them, caused the page to refresh - and you were right back on the same page, the one with the dot-filled map. Turns out the entrepreneur selling this book was convinced by the website designer that the children buying the book wanted to "hunt" for the live cities. Ugh.

There are two big flaws in this logic. One, a lot of the people visiting the site will be parents buying the book for their children - and they are not about to go "hunting." Two, those city pages are the only place on the site where you get to see "inside" the book, and appreciate the high quality of the content. So the very thing that would sell the book was hidden behind mouseovers and dead links. Stupid.

Yes, of course there is a funnel in marketing. Yes, of course, you must attract eyeballs before you can get clicks before you can "convert" the customer. But as long as you think of yourself as the master converter, you are going to make all the wrong decisions.

The reality is, your job is to get the heck out of the way.

• Make it easy for that customer to find you (know what they are looking for and what their questions are; let these two things drive your campaigns and pages).

• Make it easy for the customer to understand what you are selling (give them the information in a number of ways - detailed pictures, diagrams, demos, articles, and detailed descriptions).

• Make it easy for them to buy - "two clicks to the payoff" has always been my mantra, since the Web came into being, and I'm still designing sites that way today. They click on the item, and go to the product page. They learn all they need to about the product, then click to add it to their shopping cart. They can then keep shopping or check out. Seems so obvious, and yet is amazingly uncommon.
  

Have you ever been stuck watching a one-joke movie, and gotten bored after the second scene? When it becomes obvious that the whole movie is going to be a repetition of this one joke, there's really no more reason to keep watching - unless you have nothing better to do.

Guess what? Your customer always has something better to do. As soon as it becomes obvious that, no matter what the customer says, your salesperson is going to keep trying to close, the customer shifts from "maybe this person can help me buy this" to "OK, I've had enough of this, it's time to get off this phone call."

The more obvious the closing, the faster the customer will try to get off the call. People have learned to resort to all sorts of methods when called by those terrible telemarketers, to get the caller off the phone as quickly as possible.

"No habla Ingles," they'll say, after they have already said "Hello."

"Whacha say? Wacha selling? 'Scuse me, while I pour myself another drink. There - thas better. Now, let me put my feet up. What? You say you're not selling me anything? Wow. That's cool! Ya coulda fooled me!"

And, of course, there's always the old standby, which doesn't work with the most aggressive ones: "Please take me off your list." As the telemarketer protests, the customer just hangs up.

High school daze

Frankly, it's not pleasant to have someone keep reaching around for your wallet. It's creepy and rude. And no matter how much a salesperson tries to disguise it, by the time the hundredth salesperson has tried to reach around for his wallet, the customer recognizes the signs. I don't care what the salespeople have been trained to say. The customer knows what is happening. He also knows that his own attempt to complete his buying process will be sabotaged by the salesperson who has been trained to close.

Sales training reminds me of the pick-up lines guys used to try in high school. Those of us on the receiving end knew that they had been trained by some admired buddy to say things a certain way. "Works every time," they were told. It doesn't take more than a couple of these lame lines, and the average teenage girl has gotten the gist of things and is completely bored and uninterested within the first two seconds of the "works every time" line.

What should be going on between the buyer and the seller is a conversation - between two courteous adults.

I interviewed the attendees of a business conference recently, and they said it best: "Vendors know so much about the market. They work with a lot of customers. Why can't they share that knowledge with us? Instead of just pushing their product onto us and doing another boring demo, we could learn from what they've learned."

Your customers have questions. You have answers. Why not simply engage in the conversation, treat the customer like a normal human being, stop trying to close, and answer their questions?

This method works - in person and on your website. Give them what they need and get out of the way.

They want to buy from someone, why not you?