No Sale Unless You Get To The DM (Part 1)

Although many sales reps have anxiety about getting to the decision maker (DM), reaching the DM is important because:
1. In order to make a sale, you must talk to the person who makes purchasing decisions to show that you can help them.
2. Prompt identification of the ultimate DM and influencers prevents wasting time speaking to someone who either cannot make the ultimate decision or cannot influence the person who does not make the ultimate decision.
3. You can have a textbook conversation with a non-DM and sell nothing. You can make mistakes with a DM and still make the sale.

How To Identify & Contact The DM & Influencers
In today's collaborative business environment, sometimes there are multiple people in the DM loop. If this is the case, you must reach the ultimate DM and all their influencers to understand what's important to them. What do they need to see in order to purchase your product or service?

Here are some tips on doing that:
1. Schedule separate conversations
2. Develop separate action plans
3. ID different Value Opportunities
4. ID if there is an upline influencer and contact them
5. Keep everyone in the DM loop informed when appropriate.

If your discussions are out in the open, recap discussions of accepted value and "cc" the entire DM loop as a follow-up to your conversations. If you cannot reach everyone in the DM loop, then ensure you keep the influencers informed of all the discussions you have with the ultimate DM you do talk with.

Because "Getting To The DM" is a make-or-break subject in sales, the Erie Sales Club will devote several entries to this subject. This article is Part 1 of our series on "Getting To The DM."

The Erie Sales Club is a joint effort of three leading local businesses: Jameson Publishing, Marsha Marsh Real Estate Services, and VertMarkets.

Don't Just Listen -- Be An Active Listener

Everyone knows how to listen. But top-of-the-line sales reps are Active Listeners. Active Listening refers to being engaged in the conversation and paying attention to what the contact is directly and indirectly telling you. You need to understand not only what they say, but their tone, their change in responsiveness, and what they don't say.

If done well, Active Listening can:
1. Help you accomplish your Business Outcomes and Emotional Outcomes for your call.
2. Help you identify as many Value Opportunities as possible to probe deeper to gain more information.
3. Reveal cues about how a contact is feeling. Often the cues are subtle. They contact may not state their thoughts and feelings explicitly about how they feel about you, your products/services, your company, and their own company.
4. Help you understand their personality type.
5. Help you identify potential issues with the customer before the issue is stated.
6. Shorten the sales cycle.
7. Help you know where to go next on the sales call.

Understand there are direct answers and indirect answers. A direct answer is a response that absolutely answers your question. An indirect answer answers your question but also includes important information to things outside of the question asked. The additional information may be important to advancing the account. For example, you ask a prospect if they will be available for a longer call next week. They say they will be out of town at their biggest trade show of the year. If you are actively listening, you should probe to understand details around that trade show and how it impacts their business. An indirect answer also includes their attitude or tone plus repeated phrases/words.

How You Actively Listen
1. Keep an open mind during the conversation -- don't assume what they are going to say next or what they're thinking. Don't anticipate an answer. Pay attention to what they're actually saying.

2. Be aware of what the contact wants to discuss. Don't simply follow your own set of questions. To get the outcomes, you'll have to steer the conversation; but don't hijack it.

3. Don't assume anything. Ask follow-up questions to gain a full understanding. If you believe you know the answer, say, "I think I know the answer to this but I'd like to clarify to be sure ..."

4. Sometimes, you have to let the contact talk for an extended period without interrupting them. In this case, Live Note Taking is critical. You must have a method for capturing and recalling the useful information the contact gives you.

5. Comment on what the contact is saying throughout the call -- that's the only way they know you're Actively Listening and engaged in the call. Your comment can simply be a reiteration of your understanding, or you can deliver value that is specific to the contact. Example: "So you're saying that you're outsourcing those responsibilities but you're not happy with their timeliness, and you're interested in us because we have an on-time guarantee. Is that right?" This confirms that what you heard is what the contact actually said and meant.

The Erie Sales Club is a joint effort of three leading local businesses: Jameson Publishing, Marsha Marsh Real Estate Services, and VertMarkets.

No Value Opportunity, No Sale

A Value Opportunity (VO) is a need, want, or desire that is important to the person or company that would cause them to buy from you. There's no reason for a person to buy anything without that thing satisfying a need, want, or desire. Once you identify and fully understand what's important to the customer, you can show them exactly how your services/products will meet their need, want, or desire, thus prompting them to buy. If you don't identify the VO, then you're just throwing mud against a wall to see what sticks.

In order to identify VOs, you must actively listen to the contact and take notes during your conversation. Usually, as you are probing to identify a Value Opportunity, other VOs present themselves. Ideally, you want to fully understand the current VO before moving to another VO. However, if the contact wants to discuss a different VO, follow the contact's lead. Probe to fully understand the VO the contact wants to discuss. After you've exhausted that VO, be sure to go back to the original VO to finish probing to fully understand.

Some VOs are surface level. If you dig deeper to understand WHAT they are trying to accomplish in these areas and WHY, you'll uncover a core VO that you might be able to address with a greater number of services/products. That's key to generating additional sales from one customer.

A few other thoughts on VOs:
1. If you identify and fully understand a potential customer's VOs before making a proposal, your consultative approach will separate you from your competition.
2. VOs will vary among the decision makers and influencers. So, it's important to ask probing questions to everyone in the decision-making loop so you get a complete picture of the opportunity.
3. You may have to use multiple lines of questioning to fully understand each VO. You can segue between topics as much as necessary to fully understand a VO, as long as the dialogue remains conversational with the customer.

The Erie Sales Club is a joint effort of three leading local businesses: Jameson Publishing, Marsha Marsh Real Estate Services, and VertMarkets.

Recognize The DM's Personality, Then Adapt

Understanding, recognizing, and responding to the decision maker's personality is important for a variety of reasons:
1. It allows the conversation to continue. You can stay on phone with the contact or keep the face-to-face meeting alive.
2. You can appropriately establish rapport with your contact at the beginning of your sales call. How well you establish rapport depends on how well you recognize and respond to the contact's personality.
3. It leads you to establishing a relationship with the contact. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. A contact won't give you any business information until you establish a personal and/or professional relationship with them.
4. You can effectively identify and influence decision makers or those in the decision-making loop to advance a sale.
5. You can effectively steer the conversation toward a sale.

During a sales call with a contact, you can recognize their personality by:
* How did they greet you?
* How did they answer your first few questions?
* How did they interact with you or others?
* Were they responsive?
* How well do they progress the conversation? Do they stay on business topics or stray to personal topics?
* Do they have high drive or low drive?
* What questions do they ask?

How To Respond
Mirroring is the act of tailoring your response to a contact and presenting in a way that does not offend them. Your initial goal is to recognize how the contact is behaving so that you can mirror your response and have an effective conversation. Your longer-term goal is to have an idea of their personality tendencies to that you can influence them appropriately.

To work effectively with a dominant personality, you should be direct and succinct, deliver value as soon in the sales call as you can, don't waste their time on non-business topics, and stress their agenda and how you can help them.

For a more influential personality (high drive and highly responsive), you should be direct with your questions and be sure to speak to their agenda. Let them drive the conversation as long as they stay on the path towards a sale.

For a personality with more social tendencies, you may need to keep pulling the contact back to the business topic, but you'll need to do it without being pushy. Let them talk about what's important to them, but don't let them get too far off the path. You may need to spend more time in the warm-up.

For more compliant personalities, such as an engineer or accountant, you will likely need to emphasize detailed, specific data points, using statistics where possible. You should be more to the point, be specific and detail-oriented, and be prepared to give them time to consider the data you supply them.

The Erie Sales Club is a joint effort of three leading local businesses: Jameson Publishing, Marsha Marsh Real Estate Services, and VertMarkets.