Do You Secretly Believe You Are Smarter Than Your Customer?

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I took a book called Mastering the Complex Sale on a recent flight. In it, the author says that the complex sale consists of three main components: Determine, Design, and Deploy. No argument there. Nice way of thinking about it.

But then he goes on to say that most customers of the complex sale are not equipped to make a good buying decision - that the salesperson selling to them must guide them through the process. This is a basic premise of the book. The word that sprung to my mind when I read this was: Bunk!

This concept promotes one of the most dangerous myths in business: That you are smarter than your customers.

I do a lot of work for companies who sell very complex software programs; I have for years. I've also personally sold complex products and services, trained others how to sell them, and have bought them for large corporations.

Here is one truth about the complex sale that you can absolutely, positively bank on: Your customer definitely knows more about his problem, and probably even more about his options for solving it, than your salespeople know.

Why do salespeople think they are smarter than the customer? Partly because they talk to customers all day long, and think they've heard it all. Partly because salespeople love to be right, and are always eager to prove that they know more about something than the other guy.

Why are they wrong? Why is the customer always smarter than the salesperson? Because:

• The customer never tells the salesperson what he is really thinking while he's being sold to. There are many advantages, in the customer's mind, to letting the salesperson think he is smarter. In a sense, the customer is inviting the salesperson to lie, to see if he will take the opportunity, or will instead be honest.

  If the salesperson thinks the customer is not too smart, he will not be on his guard. He will say many things that he would not say if he thought the customer was up to date about the competition, or really knowledgeable about the technology. He will also tend to brag about what he knows, and say things about the technology and the competition that the customer knows are false. He will, in fact, be revealing his own ignorance.

  The customer will be able to quickly size up what the salesperson knows - and doesn’t know - and how much the salesperson can be relied on for facts about the product.

  In the first call with a salesperson, the "stupid" customer will know exactly how much the salesperson has bothered to learn about his own product, and how many of the customer's questions will have to be answered by the technical people. In this first-call, salesperson-thinks-he's-smarter scenario, the advantage definitely goes to the customer.

• Most salespeople are not patient (or perspicacious, or well-trained) enough to listen to the customer describe his problem all the way through. They hear just enough to think they know what the guy is going to say, then they butt in and launch the "matching pitch module." Instead, the salesperson should let the customer tell his whole story, and then, if he hasn't heard the answers to these questions already, he should ask:
  • What the customer has done to solve his problem so far
  • What he thinks would do the best job of solving his problem
  • What his perfect solution would look like
  • Who else is going to be involved in approving the sale
  • What he knows already about the salesperson's product and services (and the other options he has available)

  Once he has fully determined where the customer is coming from, he and the customer can have a conversation about how they can help him. This is far more effective than any canned pitch could be.

• When the salesperson launches prematurely into his pitch module, he will definitely say things that will bore, irritate, frustrate, or drive away the customer. At the very least, the salesperson will be suggesting approaches and solutions without a full understanding of the "whole" problem, while the customer knows perfectly well what his problem is. Again, advantage customer.
• The customer has probably already talked to others who have similar offerings, and knows what the competitors say about the salesperson's company, products, and services. The salesperson may or may not know what his competitors are saying. The competitor may have even said, "If you talk to Bob Smith, ask him X question. Watch him start dancing. You'll see what I mean when I say that they pretend to have a good solution in that area." Again, advantage customer.
• The customer won't buy unless his questions are answered, and if he doesn’t get them answered by the salesperson, he will either go elsewhere if there are other viable options (and there usually are) or he will try one more time to get the question answered by a technical person. Of course, he's already been on the web and didn't find the answer there. Because the customer knows what his questions are, knows when they are truly answered to his satisfaction, and can walk away at any time, once again he has the advantage.

Going back to using complex software as my example: Yes, some buyers are smarter than others. Yes, the CEO may have appointed someone to gather the facts who really doesn't understand the subject matter (although, in my experience, this is fairly rare, when the solution being evaluated is complex and revenue-critical). Yes, there are people involved in the buying process who are only interested in "their" part - such as the IT guy who only cares about how secure the software is going to be. Or the CFO who only cares about the money the software is going to save him. Or the CEO who is very concerned about replacing something that "is old but not broken" with something that is "new and untested."

Usually, though, when it comes to a complex sale, there is a "champion" - someone who does get it, who is very knowledgeable about the options open to him, and who is trying to convince others in the company that the company needs to buy the software.

This person is not stupid. This person doesn't need "guiding," like a 5-year-old crossing a busy street. What this person does need, and seldom gets, is useful help from the company selling the software. What is useful help?

• He needs to be asked what he needs. When I coach salespeople, I listen to their conversations with customers. Quite often, I hear the customer drop hints - usually quite a few of them - during the course of the conversation. The customer is soliciting help from the salesperson by dropping these hints. This is especially true in the follow-up calls, where the "champion" is trying to get buy-in from others in the company. For example, he may be telling the salesperson that he is trying to convince the IT manager that moving to this software is a good idea. Over and over, I hear salespeople completely ignore these hints. They behave as if no hint was given, and respond with a lackluster, "uh-huh," then ask something such as, "Well, when do you think I should call you back?" Or, "Well I guess I need to give you a few weeks to talk to that IT guy?"

  The customer is trying to make it easy for the salesperson, but the salesperson doesn't bite. One of the most important things a salesperson can do is LISTEN for these hints. These are Golden Opportunities to move the sale to the next step. "Yes, of course the IT guy will have to be comfortable with the software. What are his issues? And what can I do to help you address those issues? What do you need?" This is exactly what the customer wants to hear - and the rest of the conversation will actually move the sale to the next step.

• Case studies - recent and relevant. Well-written, factual case studies that describe the problem that a company was having, what they considered as they looked for a solution, why they chose the solution they chose, and what happened when they bought, installed, and started using that solution.
• Conceptual pieces - that make the case for C-Level executives. Quite often, the "champion" is a technical or operations person, whose main job skill is not "convincing others." The selling company has to produce documents - again, well-written, factual, and compelling - that look at the decision from the C-Level executive's perspective, and make the case for its approach and software.

  These pieces can be sent to the CEO via plain old postal mail, using a simple letter with the article attached. The mailing should be copied to the champion. The letter can even come from the selling company's CEO: "I understand that our salesperson, Joe Jones, is talking to your IT director, Bob Smith, about our [product]. I thought you might be interested in this article, which shows you how others in your industry have used our solution to save 50% on their [whatever] over a 12-month period." Or, "…I thought you might be interested in this article that looks at the options open to companies like yours, and how they solved this problem." Or, "…I thought you might want to know why we designed our solution the way we did. It was based on several years of research we conducted with companies like yours. The findings are attached."

• Fact-based comparison tables and reports. Buyers like to look at comparison tables, even when they suspect that the table is biased. They want to see how you think you compare to your competition. Is your software easier to deploy? Does it take fewer steps to accomplish a given task? Are there more people using it in a given industry than any other program?

  Have you interviewed customers in a given industry lately about their biggest challenges and how they're solving them, and couldn't you then turn that into a report that any high-level executive would be interested in reading?

One reason that CEOs believe the myth that their customers are stupid is because they only hear about their customers from salespeople. CEOs who spend personal time with customers come away with a very different point of view, especially if they talk C-Level to C-Level.

Your customer isn't stupid. He's just rightfully cautious about revealing his hand, especially since his very career might depend on making the right decision. What he needs, in order to make a purchase, is a salesperson who is smart and humble enough to listen thoroughly, who is able to answer questions, who doesn't lie when he doesn't know, and who has a variety of marketing and sales tools at his disposal to help the customer - and his influencers - make an informed decision.

That's smart selling.