3 reasons to pratice Active Listening

Why listen to people you think are wrong?

1. Empathy
2. more, better info
3. you might have misunderstood

http://www.trainingmag.com/article/last-word-hear-ye-hear-ye

Mmmm. That's interesting

Leverage your successes, knowledge & expertise. Get your prospect wanting to learn more.

In this video, Jill Konrath talk about getting your clients to say ""Mmmm. That's interesting. I need to learn more."
 
This is similar to the "Ben Duffy" technique, where you anticipate a customers concerns or questions and handle them up front. Without waiting for them to bring them up. What Jill asks you to do is:

1. think about your success,
2. find customers who have similar problems that were solved by your solution,
3. open the sales call with  a question that will not only raise the curiosity of your clients, but also qualify the opportunity.

What would someone say in response to Jill's questions? There are three alternatives;

1. "Yes, that is interesting. Tell me more",
2. "No, I've not thought about that because we do it differently."
3. "No, I've never thought about that and do not think it is relevant"

Notice each answer above gives you more information than you had before. Each answer above has a follow-up question begging to be asked:

1. "Sure, Can I ask a few questions about your business first?"
2. "Really? That is interesting. What do you do that makes you successful?"
3. "OK. Tell me more about your situation."

List your business initiatives and identify your successes with customers. Create a one-sentence question that describes the problems you solved and create curiosity about how you do it. Use this sentence in your next sales call.

As sales coach and trainer, I see that what gets in the way of getting agreement for many sales people is their own mouth.

Josiane Feigon writes about the importance and discounting of introverts in sales. She makes the great point that in consultative sales, and in today's "Sales 2.0", sales reps talk less and listen more.

But what I consistently see are sales reps sticking to their own agenda, failing to acknowledge what their customer is saying, and working really hard to get in all their key points. It is a self-centric perspective that uses the customer to validate the sales rep. That is an extrovert perspective. Extroverts seek stimulation from outside themselves about themselves.

Introverts seek stimulation from within themselves, about others. They seek to understand, not be understood.

I highly recommend this TED talk by Susan Cain (also in Josiane's post above) about the power of introverts to gather ideas, reflect, and be self-directed. They are good listeners and thinkers who can help a customer define their problem. They let the customer lead , and follow and guide using their expertise. Introverts will likely work behind the scenes to get things done with collaboration and compromise.

These important skills are often discounted in favor of sales people who can "push for results", "be persistent", and "stay focused": all code words for driver, extroverted behaviors. That these are good sales behaviors is a value judgement. I suggest they get in the way more often than they help.

Let's recognize the value introverts can bring to a sales interaction with their ability to listen, clarify and reflect upon a customer's challenges.

How to say No

If you do not find a need, get out! Leave. Move on to the next customer. However, I never had a good way to do this. How do you leave a sales call when there is no need you can help with?

Sam Parker at www.justsell.com gives some good ideas. I restate his work and suggest:

"Not Now, Not ever, Never"

Not now: If your assessment is that now is not the time for a sale, but soon may be, use Sam's exit: “That sounds like an exciting project. We may be a little early in our discussions given all of your priorities. May I give you a call in two months?” Pend this client for a return call. The current status is something you may be able to help with, so keep in touch.

Not ever: I'm not being literal here, but sometimes the client has lots going on, and there is nothing in their priorities we can help with now. They need to put out current fires or begin current projects before we can help them. Sam suggests, “Wow, you really have your hands full at the moment. Perhaps we should talk again in a few months while you focus on these other priorities..."

Never: This is when the client is not a fit for your product or strategy. But never say never. Things change. People retire; companies buy, sell, or merge. Competitors leave. Sam uses a maintain strategy: “At the moment, I’m not sure we can provide enough value to you but I’d like to keep in touch should things change. May I keep in touch periodically?”

However, consider this can be a chance to build credibility in new relationships, and enhance existing relationships.

Unless you sell a purely transactional product or service, and no one really does, see this situation for the opportunity it can be. You may not be able to sell your product now, but can you sell yourself? Can you offer resources or expertise that helps the client now - not related to your product?

Before they can use your product, do they need to make a hire? You can help with sharing how similar businesses have found good people. Do they need to create a marketing plan? Share your expertise about markets, and offer ideas that may not have thought of, based on your own company research. Use the skills and expertise you have from your life, interests and experiences.

Do you lack expertise, knowledge or resources to offer? Then offer empathy. "I understand your goals, and I see you have some ambitious and achievable plans. You are concerned about time and budget, but you have a plan to keep you on track. This is great time for you, and I'd like to check back to see how it progresses."

When you are thinking about leaving a sales call - ask yourself "Do I do it Now, Not ever? Or Never?" Because you will always have something to offer.

Don't Confuse Comfort with Competence

Scott Anthony, in Don't Confuse Passion with Competence,  reminds me of another basic confusion. I often hear people saying "I don't need training. I am comfortable with this".

Yes, you nay be comfortable doing something. Doesn't mean you are any good at it.

Often this is said about public speaking and presenting. Many managers will send their staff to a presentation skills class, but not attend themselves. Ever. Because these managers feel they are "Comfortable getting up in front of people."

Unfortunately, if you were to see some of these managers "getting up in front of people", you would see misplaced confidence.

Comfort and Competence are two different things. Trainer talk about learners being conscious and competent: aware of what they are doing, and if it works; versus unconscious: lacking the awareness to match their actions to their results.

Unconscious Incompetents don't know what they are doing and are not getting results. So they insist the problem is something besides them. In training these are the people who say "Yes, but with a real customer I would not have done that..."

Conscious is the best place to be to improve your performance. A conscious learner knows there are things they do not know, and so have a desire to learn. They recognize that they could be doing things differently and better.

Unconscious learners? Not so much. They have to be led to a place of self awareness where they connect their lack of results to their own performance. If they are getting successful results, they need help understanding what they did to achieve success. This is the challenge of coaching.

Where are you? Getting results but not sure why? Or having trouble duplicating your success in different situations?

Don't confuse your comfort with competence.

What does the competiton say?

We hear when competitor sales reps spread rumor and inuendo. But what are they doing and saying the rest of the time?

Dave Stein gives a great discovery strategy to learn what your competiton is doing. Review these questions and pick the ones that are relevant for you, the ones you are not asking now. He calls this your "competitor IQ". While Dave focuses on understanding broad competitor strategy, the point applies to the questions you ask to understand the competiton in your sales calls. How smart do you compete?

You may be wondering what's the benefit of talking about the competiton when you could be spending time discovering needs for your own product features and benefits. I can think of two ways to use this information:

• Understanding the context of your product features and benefits and how they compare to your competitors will help you understand your SWOT. You cannot know your strengths if you do not know your competiton's weaknesses.
• Know how your competition is presenting their product features and benefits. If competitors mainly sell against your price, or your service, you can counter directly with correct information, or offer additional product features and benefits to overcome these competitor-raised objections.

Know your competitors strategy as well as your own. What questions will you ask in your next sales calls?

Not just how you sound, but how you look

In face-to-face sales, we all know dress sends a signal to customers. It can help or hurt your credibility. Inside sales has been immune to this, till now. Josiane Feigon says start looking good from the waist up! With the purchase of Skype by Microsoft, we may see the beginning of new corporate sales applications that will  help you or hurt you.

Inside Sales people are aware that they must catch and hold their customer's attention. They know that is hard to do when you cannot see them and they cannot see you. Without visual presence, customers feel they can multi-task while on the phone. And they do. We all do. How many times did you check email during your last web meeting?

Adding visual contact to inside sales adds a new way to catch and hold attention. Imagine what you can do with gestures and props to improve communication. It's a whole new world.

If you could see your customer while on a phone sales call, what would you do?

Watching the Dectective

Dave Stein compares the questioning skills of a Detective to a Sales person. He calls it "Great Question!" I call it a great idea.

Dave says asking a great question can improve your credibility with a customer, increase the quality of the information you get, and cut the time spent asking questions. All true. But why is this so? How do you do it?

Knowing how to ask different types of questions is important. This includes the difference between closed and open questions, fact-finding questions and feeling-finding questions, questions about current situation and desired outcomes. These sales skills are needed to be effective.

But Dave's point in his story was the need for market and product knowledge. Having good knowledge of a customer's market and products will lead to asking better questions and recognizing the value of the answers you get.

This is what the detective was doing in their quick and effective questioning of the victim. They know that in the majority of these cases, the victim knows his attacker, and the motive for the attack is always something of personal value to the attacker, in this case his ex-girlfriend. They knew to ask if the girlfriend ever talked about an ex-boyfriend (if yes, there must still be something going on between them). Sure enough, a lead was uncovered.

The detective did this in ten questions!

Routine for them, but a learning for us.

How many times do we complain that if we only had more time for longer sales calls, we could get more done? Find out more?

Check your questions, the problem is there. Do research before a call and have an idea of what you are looking for. Have a strategy to your discovery.

Customers are impressed when you have the knowledge to ask better questions. It means they do not have to work as hard to be understood.

With this confidence in you, they give you more and better answers. Your efforts are rewarded by their effort to be accurate and helpful. You both win.

• Do your research.
• Ask questions and watch those with experience.
• Review the questions you use now.
• Use what you already know to understand their situation better.

 Ask questions based on what you know, not what you do not know. There is always an ex-boyfriend lurking around.

Empathy, a lesson in Juggling

I previously posted about empathy, and its importance in social and sales interactions.

The bigger truth is that empathy is important in every aspect of our lives. In fact we are wired for empathy - it is the human network's "wi-fi". I just read about this analogy, and about "Gandhi's neurons", in this post by Bruna Martinuzzi . I had to capture and share what she says.

Two key points:

1. As we juggle the balls of what is important in life: work, family, health, and spirit; remember this, the work ball is rubber and will bounce if dropped. The others are crystal.
2. Empathy connects with the balls other people are juggling.

 So the contemporary version of empathy is "understand what others juggle in their lives"

After credibility and empathy, Persuasion is last.

After the audience and client believe you know enough to help them, and that you also care enough to help them with their problems, you have to persuade them to take action.

For each point you want to make, have at least one convincing element. This is a data point or set, a story, a testimonial, or example; whatever proof source makes sense that will show why your key point is important. Don't just say it - prove, illustrate or explain it. Make the connections between what you are advocating and your client's problem. To see your value, don't make them work any harder than they have to.

When choosing proof sources, unless you are dealing with a single person you know well, mix them up. More likely, your audience will be made up of different people who look for different kinds of proof.

Some people like facts and figures. Have some ready.

Some people like testimonials, analogies, success stories about others who have used your product or service. Have these ready too.

This way, everyone listening will have something to hang their hat on that makes your persuasive argument.

Finally, ask them to do something. Buy your product, agree to a next meeting, and make a recommendation . Give a direction that will bring them closer to solving their problem. It is good also if they disagree. You can discover what next step they want to make.

The three steps in persuasion are creating credibility, demonstrating empathy and being persuasive

Empathy next

There is more to credibility than knowing enough. You have to care enough.

Remember “There’s Something About Mary”? Matt Dillon shows empathy and wins the attention of Cameron Diaz by sharing how he loves working with mentally disabled kids ("Those goofy bastards are about the best thing I've got going.") proving he understands her situation with her own disabled brother. That he is lying makes the whole thing fated to fail and funny.

In addition to knowing enough to help with your customers business problems, you need the perception that you care enough about your customer to help them with their problems. And what else? You really do need to really care. You have to be sincere.

I had a customer who was asked by my competitor's sales rep to cover for lies on the rep’s expense report. Do you think that rep was ever trusted by that customer?

I doubt it.

Empathy understands how the customer feels. It is giving up your judgments, your answers and interruptions. It is putting on their shoes and imagining “what if this were me…”

Show this by listening, sharing and clarifying.

Listen without interruption.

Share your feelings, and clarify by repeating, in your own words, what you understand about their situation.

These things prove you care and understand.

Repeating what you heard and understand is probably the easiest and most beneficial thing you can do to prove your empathy. But using your own words is important. Avoid being a parrot.

When I give my children instructions, to confirm I sometimes ask “now, what will you do?” If they just repeat my words back to me, I suspect they really do not understand, do not care, nor plan to do what I asked. But, if they tell me in their own words how they will do what I ask, then I know they understand.

Yes, do this consciously, and be sincere. You will win the customer’s trust. If not, like Matt Dillon, you lose the girl.

Credibility First

Without credibility, no one cares.

Credibility is the customer’s perception that you have the knowledge and experience to help them with their business problems.

Create credibility for yourself by sharing your experience and past success with customers or your presentation audience. This is not boasting, it is demonstrating you know what you are talking about. Even if you do not have experience in their specific industry, talk about how you successfully solved problems similar to theirs. For example, all small businesses have challenges in marketing themselves, or finding and keeping good talent. These problems are the same whether they are caterers or insurance agents.

Share common experiences you have with your audience. If you have worked with people in their industry, tell them. If you like the local food, history or the weather, tell them. This builds connections with your audience. Share with them who you are, so they have a reason to listen and believe you.

Dress and behave as the audience expects. Aim to be a bit better dressed than your audience, but not so much that you stand out as “the suit”. When I was making sales calls throughout New Mexico as a company representative, some customers wore business suits, many more were casual. I wore a suit and tie. But the suit jacket stayed in the car during summer visits to rural and “Mom & Pop” business customers. I kept the suit but removed the tie in cooler months. When my company endorsed a casual business dress code, I would wear a golf shirt, but made sure it was branded with my company logo, and I wore dress slacks, not chinos. How else would they tell me apart from their customers!? Some speakers and facilitators create a “brand” by wearing only black. This also makes it easier to pack for travel.

Don’t know what your audience might be like?

Do your preparation work and ask someone. Talk to someone who will be in your audience, or someone who knows your audience. Find a person of influence with your audience and ask them what you should expect to see and hear, and what you need to do to be seen as credible. Use such a decision-maker to create credibility for yourself by asking them to introduce you and give the reasons why they chose to work with you.

Lisa B Marshall does a great concise job of describing this audience discovery process in detail. Check it out for examples of specific questions to ask.

The danger in doing this is looking like an arrogant bastard. Nobody likes to tell you their challenges only to be matched by your even greater accomplishments. If I tell you how I broke my leg, don’t tell me about how you broke two legs and still out-swam a shark.

To prevent this maintain empathy and a focus on the customer. Keep their concerns the topic, not yours. Your stories should always serve to highlight your customers concerns, never out shine them.

It Is All About You

Chris Atherton talks about the single rule to follow when giving a presentation - manage audience attention. Audience attention should follow you.

Once you have audience attention, you can then delegate it to a slide, a prop, or someone else in the audience. Have the audience pay attention to whatever it is you want them to look at and listen to so that you make your point.

I say “you” because, when you are a presenter, it truly is “all about you”. This is the time to be needy and controlling, about your audience’s attention.

We are still biological beings, and we watch things that move because they might be food or make us food. For the same reasons we still watch shiny objects, like a TV screen or projected slide. We watch  shiny things at the exclusion of things less important at the time, like the presenter, maybe?

So it is no wonder then that an audience will look at a slide left up on the screen long after you have finished talking about it. It is there - we cannot help but look at it! The result of this habit is to deflect audience attention away from us. Which means they do not recieve our full message.

While presenting, follow this rule: manage audience attention!

Use the B button or remote to black out a screen after you have used the slide to make your point. Thus audience attention is directed back to you so they hear your key point.

When showing a slide, stand with the screen to stage left, (Your left while facing the audience. Not being an actor, I got stage left or stage right confused. Not anymore. I looked it up.)

After you show the slide and explain its contents, move forward towards the audience and blackout the slide. This directs attention back to you, not the slide behind you.

When using a gesture like “raise your hands if you like chocolate chip cookies”, make the gesture big enough for everyone to see and understand that they too should raise their hands for chocolate chip cookies. Extend your arm straight up over your head. It gets attention and is more credible too.

Move purposefully, not aimlessly. Stand grounded to make one point, then move across the stage and become grounded to make your second point. Grounded means both feet on the floor with your weight even over them.

When presenting, the only rule to follow is: make sure the audience follows you.

Make Every Bullet Count

Bullet points are things that we take for granted, and they blot our presentations. I had debates with a co-worker about whether my presentation bullet points should have periods. He said they should, I said they were not sentences, so they should not. I realize now that I had bullets that were sentences and some that were not. I shot myself with my own bullets.

The PowerPoint Ninja Blog has a useful how-to series on creating and using effective Bullet Points. It is a practical guide to these small but important phrases we all use. They give many ideas to think about, and use, in your presentations.

In tactical presentations where you are advocating a solution based upon data, examples and evidence, bullets may be hard to avoid, and really, it is ok to use them. Just avoid the issues described in the Ninja’s blog. It would be hard to do an”image-only” PowerPoint in this context. Think “business review”.

I advocate the use of images along with a bullet point, one per slide.

I like to “build” my slides if I have several points that, when put together, explain a concept. Do a build by animating the bullet points using animations so that they appear on a click. as you speak. This way the audience is not confused by a busy unexplained slide, allowing you to introduce each idea one at a time.

I do not use a bullet graphic, the little symbol, dot or dash in front of the bullet. Avoid them when you can. You can use numbers if the bullet points are steps in a process, or part of a to-do list. If you keep to a minimalist 4x4 or less rule (no more than 4 bullet points and no more than 4 words each line) you really do not need to illustrate each line.

Finally, avoid “carriage returns” (some may not know what this phrase from typewriter days means), or continuing a bullet point on a second line. If that is happening, you need to edit and keep key words (Ninja covers this too) or make more room on your slide. Do not, in any case, let Power point automatically reduce the font size so the bullet point fits in the text box.

Don’t shoot yourself, or your audience, with machine-gun bullets. Make every bullet count.

Jump In!

I am often asked by participants in my "UPFRONT" presentations skills class, "how do you want me to start?" I answer "just jump right into it!"

A good compelling open should be without any preface - just start telling the story! Do not lose the advantage of surprise and interest you hold at the beginning of any presentation.

Avoid happy-to-be-here, i-am-not-sure-why-I-was-asked-to-speak, I-just-found-out-about-this-yesterday, boy-am-i-nervous, ok-let's-get-started...ok-lets-get-started...ok-hello-my-name-is....

You know what I mean - drop all that stuff.

Jump right into the story like a good first line of a novel: "It was a dark and stormy night..." well, how about "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." or just: "I was talking to Bill, here in the audience, just now, and he said...."

Everybody will want to know what he said and what it has to do with you. Now you got'em.

Peter Jeff writes pointedly about your opening being a "a splash of cold water" for your audience. While that sounds uncomfortable, it is accurate. Your open should be compelling, grabbing the audience's attention from the get-go, getting them to quiet down, end conversations, put away PDA's, look and listen to you. Shock them into attentive submission.

I am asked if we should start with a joke, a story, a graph? The answer is whatever makes a clear benefit statement to your audience, that is also connected to your content. The goal is to raise the audience's curiosity, their desire to hear more from you. A joke that has nothing to do with your topic may be funny, but does not take advantage of the high attention you have in the first 15 seconds. Use that time to grab their attention, hold it, and preview the value of your topic.

Jump right in! The water is great!

What will the audience want to know?

Becky Blanton, in Six Minutes says so many right things about presentations,and about sales, I am not sure where to begin. So I will begin where she began when preparing for her talk. It is the question every presenter and salesperson should ask themselves:

If I were in the audience, what would I want to know about me?

This is the classic "Ben Duffy" technique.

Put yourself in the customer's shoes and anticipate their questions, concerns and wondering. Then prepare answers to those questions, and present back to your audience with the phrase "I am sure you are wondering... how I can help you if I am new to your business...."

If you do this in a sales call, wait for them to confirm that, yes indeed, they were wondering about that. Then give them your answer.

For both sales calls and presentations, my advice is to do this only when you are reasonably sure that the question or concern exists. You do not want to create concerns that did not exist before you spoke!

If you are new to the customer or audience, do this by speaking to someone who knows them before your meeting or talk. Identify an influential member of your audience and interview them to discover their concerns. Do your preparation.

Read Becky's blog - she is right on about how she started and so much more.

Don't confuse "comfort" with "competence"

Don't confuse "comfort" with "competence". Just because you are comfortable doing something does not mean you are good at it.

I was asked recently to review and edit a PowerPoint presentation that was going to be presented to our customers by an executive in charge of P&L. My advice was basic - get rid of the bullet points, condense the content to Key Points, and move much of the text in the slides to the speaker notes. I voluntarily spent a few hours making sample revisions.

The presenter, while admitting to like the edits, said they would not work, since " I like to move around, and as I do not use notes, I depend on the slides to keep me on track and remind me where I am..." I paraphrase, but you get the point. The slides were for him, not the audience. I was tempted to say "just give them the slides and go get a cup of coffee.... they can read, can't they?"

Seth Gordin does a great job talking about the dependence on bullets in executive presentations. I would add their dependence upon dense graphs too.

Seth,in his blog above, gives good advice on how to avoid this. But the real problem is something he admits - most executive presenters do not create their own presentations. Those that do, probably shouldn't be. So the slides take precedence,and the question asked by the presenter is "Do we have everything in the presentation?" not "Are we making our Key Points in a Clear, Concise and Compelling way?"

To change this behavior will take more than a few pointers in a blog. It is a sale to be made to the potential presenters. They need to be shown, and then experience, the benefits of a different way of presenting. They then must have (or be given) the courage to try it themselves. Once they experience success, it can be repeated.

I advocate a "manager-executive only" training on presentation skills. Because they don't know what they don't know, they see no need for new skills.

Most of us will avoid a situation where our incompetency will be exposed. A safe environment is needed where learners can admit to the need for new skills and have the security to experiment. Any managers reading this ready to try?

All Italians talk with their hands

I'm Italian. I talk with my hands. I can say this.

This recent blog by Jonathan Farrington covers Social Style concepts in detail. They did a good job describing each style. Until they starting describing styles as equivalent to roles and results.

Does the blogger commit the sin of assigning business roles to certain social styles? Are all successful salespeople Expressive? Are all high achievers Drivers?

My experience in facilitating says no.

The statistics say no, too.

What do you think?

Rule of Thirds

As a photographer, I appreciated the "Rule of Thirds" when I began creating presentation slides. I learned from my photo experience (as a hobby ... ), to place the "center" of a slide in the upper third of the space - not smack in the center of the slide. When using images of human faces, for example, put the eyes in this upper third. It make for a more interesting image, giving the viewers eyes a "path" through the image.

Another tip I recently learned is to have human images facing towards the center of the image, not towards the edges.

Here is an example of both ideas. Note how the positions implied by these faces are facing towards the center, and I put eyes in "third" positions.

I encourage everyone to consider these ideas when cropping images, and when creating a slide with images and text. Even text only slides (shudder!!!) can benefit from composition. Andrew Dlugan gives a great review of the Rule of Thirds at his blog "Six Minutes ..."

“Who are you to tell us what to do?”

I just learned about “Jante Law”. The Nordic origins of Jante Law is expressed by the saying “Don't think you're anyone special or that you're better than us.” I describe it as a social leveling method, where exceptional individuals are kept humble, and it exists in all cultures. The American version might be “He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.” What other ways do we maintain social stability?

Jante keeps people from flaunting their success. It is a way for the rest of us to remember the humanity of those people who experience success and attain authority. It makes the rest of us simply feel better to knock down someone else who is more successful.

In sales and presentations, being subjected to Jante law is the opposite of achieving credibility. Credibility is being perceived by customers to have the knowledge and experience that can help them.

Without credibility, a salesperson is unable to exert influence.

With credibility, a presenter is seen as believable and trustworthy. If you are perceived as if you’re special or better than us, you exceed the limits of credibility and are unable to exert influence.

With too little credibility, “there is no such thing as a good idea until the right person thinks of it.” Or, as they say in Jante, “Don’t think that you know more than us.” Unless you hold enough credibility with decision makers, your ideas, even the good ones, will fall flat.

To avoid being subjected to Jante Law, create credibility first and present solutions second.