Don't Judge a Book... Actually, Just Don't Judge

A young colleague and I were in a ride-share, heading into New York, and we began discussing the deal we were working on.

Tyler was asking questions about sales strategy (he’d only joined the firm three months before). I was explaining the importance of building trusted relationships with clients to be more effective in helping them solve their problems.

I couldn’t help but notice that the driver, an older African-American man, with dreadlocks piled high on his head, was frequently glancing in his rear-view mirror. He was obviously listening to the conversation. At one point, I noticed a wrinkling around his eyes. I couldn’t see his mouth, but I assumed he was smiling.

This was a multi-stop journey, so we dropped Tyler at his apartment, and then continued on to my hotel.

After Tyler got out, the driver said, “I hope that young man appreciates the fact that he has access to someone like you. You just gave him a wealth of information for nothing.” I mistook his accent as Jamaican. He corrected me. He was originally from Congo. His name was Maswamba.

I said, “Well, thank you, but that was just me babbling on as I often do with younger people. I like to coach them to be better in their roles.”

“But what you were saying to him was correct,” Maswamba said. “You don’t sell product, you sell yourself.”

I said, “That is absolutely true. You seem to have some background in sales.”

Maswamba laughed, “I was a salesman for 40 years at Unisys.”

“Really?” I said. “You sold for Unisys?” I tried to imagine if he had sported those dreadlocks when he was selling Unisys equipment in corporate America.

“Oh, yes, I sold a lot of big boxes. A lot. And the only reason I drive this car is because my son got sick of me being home all the time. This is only my third week.”

“And it gets you out to meet new people!” I joked.

Maswamba laughed again. We talked about sales, raising children and social issues until we got to my hotel. (We were so caught up in conversation, in fact, that he missed the turn instructions coming from his phone twice.)

I left the car, energized by the wonderful discussion we had. His initial appearance had set my perception of him in one direction. Once engaged, his easy manner and style confirmed what he said: he must have been a great salesman in his day.

I made a mental note, for the umpteenth time: don’t judge a book…

Actually, I thought, just don’t judge anyone. First impressions can be misleading, and it takes time to really understand what people are truly about. But take the time. It’s worth it.

"Golf" is a Four-Letter Word

There is an old joke that asks: Why did they name the game “golf”?

Because all of the other four letter words were taken.

If you listen to a frustrated golfer, there are other words they use to express their emotions that could have been used as the game’s name. Rarely does a golfer miss a putt and yell, “Golf!”

Similarly, while called “sales people,” the reality is that the best of us don’t actually think of what we do as “selling.” The concept of “selling” has with it a connotation of convincing someone to buy something they don’t really need. Yes, someone may be successful at that, once, but the purchaser will soon realize they don’t need it and won’t work with that salesperson again.

For me, the goal is not to “sell” to a client, but to turn the client into a “buyer” of my firm’s services once they recognize the value of the solution we are proposing. That requires more than “selling.” I have to ask questions, listen, understand the nuances of the client’s challenges (maybe even more than they do themselves), make suggestions and listen some more. When I suggest a potential path forward, I want the client to trust me that I will do all I can to make them successful in this engagement so they ask for my help. They become a buyer.

Though “sales” may not be the ideal word for what so many of us do, I guess, like golf, we’re stuck with the word. It would be difficult and confusing, instead of telling people I am in “sales,” to say I am in “buys.”

Open the Black Boxes

I once negotiated for two weeks on the word “capital.” Not because people were being difficult. It’s because we were not explaining ourselves well.

When trying to close a sale, it is important to remain open, flexible, and maybe a little stupid (see, “How Stupid Can You Be?” http://dealwhisperers.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-stupid-can-you-be.html).

The stupid part can be especially useful because it allows you to ask clarifying questions: Why is that important to you? What do you mean when you say that? How does that affect your business? Asking open questions such as those may lead you to what should not be a surprising conclusion: your client doesn’t see the world the way you do.

People are complex animals: highly cognitive, reasoned, self-interested and emotionally contoured. When trying to come to agreement with another, it’s the contours of emotions that usually create the conflicts. We all have been shaped differently, by nature, nurturing or experience, so we all react or perceive what we see in the world differently. Words are black boxes. Sometimes you don’t know what’s inside until you open up a dialogue.

In my case, I was negotiating with a large pharmaceutical client over a termination clause. The client wanted the right to terminate our multi-year services agreement for convenience. I said we would do that, subject to a fee of several million dollars. When the head of procurement asked what the fee covered, I said “our invested capital.” He said no.

We went back and forth, neither one giving in on the issue, until he finally asked me the clarifying question: what buildings do you have that you are investing in?

Buildings? I said, this is not about buildings. It’s about money. The cash we invest in launching this deal and transitioning the services. If you terminate before we recover that investment through our fees, we need to be made whole for that capital.

He smiled and explained he had a different view of what “capital” was. He had been pushing back on this provision for two weeks because he thought our need to recover “capital” was related to infrastructure. Being a pharmaceutical company, he said, we run factories that manufacture drugs and the word “capital” is tied to hard, tangible assets.

Once we understood the source of the miscommunication, we closed the issue. As a result, I now know when there is a challenging issue to resolve, it’s time to open the black boxes.

Make An Offer They Can’t Refuse

I began my professional career as newspaper reporter, so I have always seen words as powerful tools of influence. The adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” may have more relevance in today’s political environment than when it was first uttered in 1839, but it has always been true in developing sales strategies. After all, how many successful business deals are closed by threat of “the sword” or brute force (other than contracts negotiated by Vito Corleone and Luca Brasi)? The successful signing of a long-term deal requires trust and respect as a foundation, not violence.

That’s why I always bristle when a deal team sets up a central working location and refers to it as the “war room.”

What war? Who are we fighting with? The client? The client is not our enemy!

Our goal should be to engage with the client, build a relationship that recognizes the value we will bring, and move through issues collaboratively to get to a result that maximizes the outcome for both parties.

I always rename that central location, “The Deal Room.”

To some this may seem like a fussy point, but getting this right sets the foundation in how your people think about selling. Using references to fighting and winning creates a frame of reference for the deal team that this will be a “battle” and we have to “beat the client.” We don’t want to beat the client, we want to help the client.

Framing the opportunity to solve the client’s problems and help grow its business as an adversarial relationship will cause people to focus on the challenging aspects of the dialogue with the client. The team will not be tuned to listen for the clues from the client about what will resolve the issue, i.e., what’s really driving the client’s ask?

For example, if the client says, “I need you to cut the price by 20 percent,” the adversarial frame of reference says, “Here we go! They’re trying to screw us on price!” The collaborative frame of reference analyzes the request and thinks: “For the last six months, they have talked about quality and using our best people and have never talked about price. Why this and why now?” It may turn out, as has often happened to me, that the client’s budget was cut and they can no longer afford the solution as modeled. They are asking for a price reduction, but what they are really saying is “I have an issue! I can’t afford what we have agreed on so we need to change the solution on the table.”

Once you understand the client’s challenges, you can work on options that solve for their issues and still meet your interests and needs. Put together a proposal so creative and insightful that you can make an offer they can’t refuse. But not in the Vito Corleone sense! It should be that they can’t refuse the offer because it is so good they’d be foolish to miss the opportunity to work with you.

Cheap and Fast, But Not Very Good

There are several ways to join two pieces of wood together.

A hammer and a nail is one way. A screw and a screwdriver is another. You can also use adhesive. And sometimes a clamp works best.

If you’re building a house and framing the walls, you’d use a nail gun. You want to work quickly and you don’t care what the wood looks like when you’re done.

If you’re making a china cabinet out of mahogany, adhesives and small screws in pre-drilled holes to join the pieces would likely produce a better aesthetic.

Likewise, there are multiple ways to negotiate a deal, and which one you choose depends on the situation. In the end, it all depends on the answer to a simple question: what do you want?

If you are at a stop sign or getting on an elevator, you want to move along. Who goes first is not going to be a lengthy discussion and there will be no “so tell me about yourself” conversations. If we follow the rules, the negotiation will be quick and we will all get on our way. Goal: expediency.

When you and a significant other are discussing where to go for a vacation (and, yes, that is a negotiation) the idea, usually, is to go on vacation… together! If you get what you want and your other gets what they want, you may end up in different places! Goal: relationship.

When buying a new car, you try to get the best deal you can. So does the dealership. This is a “positional” negotiation. You use data to work down the price. The dealership tries to see how long it can resist. You probably don’t care about the “relationship” (and the dealer may or may not care). Goal: lowest price.

But when we negotiate for large business agreements that involve collaboration and multiple years of services, we have to combine the substance and the relationship in order to achieve the optimal outcome for both parties. If one side is focused on trying to squeeze every concession out of the other side for the sake of “winning,” the outcome is both sides lose. Usually, in a multi-year services deal, the goal is “success”: get the system installed; improve the quality of services; drive cost out of operations.

If the engagement is a failure, no one ever asks, “But did you get a good price?”

You can make a china cabinet from pine boards with a nail gun. Just don’t expect anyone to slap you on the back and say, “That's a beautiful piece of work! I'm proud to showcase it in my dining room!" Like a complex business engagement, no one is satisfied when it's cheap and fast, but not very good.        

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Beyonce and Me!

I was in Times Square last week and, while walking down 42^nd Street, I passed a young man hawking discount tickets to one of the area’s tourist sites. In a voice feigning enthusiasm, he recited, over and over, “Madame Tussauds wax museum. Get a $6 discount. Madame Tussauds wax museum. Get a $6 discount.”

From the few minutes as I approached, and then passed him, I didn’t see anyone stopping to buy a ticket. I turned around and walked over to him and asked, “Are you compensated on the basis of how many of these tickets you sell?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m paid hourly and on commission.”

“Why would I want to go to Madame Tussauds?” 

“We have over 150 celebrity figures!” he said.

“Do people know that’s what’s in the wax museum?”

He shrugged.

“I’ll bet a lot of people don’t even know what Madame Tussauds is,” I said. “There are a lot of international tourists in Times Square. You need to tell them why they should go to Madame Tussauds. Get them excited about what the experience will be all about! Try yelling out, ‘Get your picture with Beyonce! Get your picture with the Avengers!’ Your customers need more information so they believe that this is something they shouldn’t miss! Get them thinking, ‘Wow! A picture! Beyonce and me!’”

He laughed and shook my hand. “Thanks for the tip.”

It’s the most important question to answer in sales and the easiest to overlook: “Why?”

Why should a client buy from you? And why you instead of your competitor? Why is your company different? Why is your offering different? Why will they get better service/innovation/value from you as opposed to someone else?

The client needs to fix a problem, meet an interest or improve its environment. In order for the client’s mind to reach the conclusion: “I choose you!” there has to be a foundation of why “you” are the best choice. If the client doesn’t know why to choose you, then it will be obvious why they don’t!

On my way back to the office, I tried to ask the ticket vendor how the new technique was working, but he was in the middle of a sale. He gave me a smile and a wave.

The Strong Don't Survive

“We’re glad you’re here. We need a tough negotiator.”

I have heard that opening line a few times in my career and, frankly, I don’t know what it means to be “tough” as a negotiator. People mistakenly believe that when dealing with a difficult party the answer is to be “tough” in response. I have always found the right strategy for dealing with challenging business people is to be inquisitive, understanding and grounded. Build a shared goal and develop a sense of trust. Trust gets deals done, not muscle.

The key is being able to assess a situation and develop a strategy to build that trusted relationship. Every deal is different because the people, personalities and problems are different. This is how I learned that old, often-quoted saying is wrong: The strong don’t survive. At least, not without the ability to change the direction and allocation of strength.

In my experience, the adaptable survive. In fact, if you’re highly adaptable you don’t just survive, you thrive. A lot of “strong” companies are being upended or going out of business because of the technical innovations of the last 25 years. The ones that can adapt to change are still thriving.

Adaptability in sales and negotiation means being able to adjust your attitude and communication style for the right balance of relationship and substance, depending the deal.

When I am negotiating to buy or sell a house or a car, I am positional. My goal is to sell for as much as I can or buy for as little as I can. Relationship is not as important as I don’t expect to have an ongoing relationship with someone once I buy their house and they move.

When I am negotiating for vacation, I am personable. If my wife and I are trying to agree on where to go for a holiday, I don’t approach it with a need to “win” in the negotiation. I need to focus on relationship, be amenable to her ideas and mutually agree on where we will go. If I negotiate “tough” and get my way, I likely will be on vacation by myself!

When negotiating for a large, complex technology deal with a client, I am collaborative. The goal is to solve the client’s problem, meet its operational needs or maybe deliver a new system. I can’t treat it like selling a house because the relationship does matter. A lot. We are going to be working together for a few years so we need to build our relationship. I can’t treat it as if the issues are non-material, like a vacation. The client has legitimate needs and concerns and so do I. 

In the end, the deal has to meet the client’s interests or else the effort is wasted; and I need to push for my interests so the deal is successful for me, my team and my firm. Being “strong” or “tough” won’t get me to a mutually beneficial outcome. The ability to assess, adjust and execute enables us to succeed.

No Cinderellas in Sales

This weekend the men’s NCAA basketball championships semi-finals will feature an improbably entry, much to the delight of millions of fans: a Cinderella story. For the first time in history, a team initially seeded at 11, Loyola University of Chicago, has made it to the Final Four.

What I enjoy most about March Madness are the upsets. Seeing “underdogs” with passion and drive upset the established seeding and throw everyone’s brackets out of whack. The concepts of teaming, practice, focus and achieving a singular goal (closing the deal) are all relatable to sales people.

But there are no Cinderellas in sales.

Despite how badly a sales team may want the business, how passionate they are about bringing their service or product to the client to solve a problem, big deals are won by the top seeds.

I have been the “bottom seed” a few times and if desire was the winning element, I’d get the deal every time. Here are three lessons I learned from being at the bottom:

• Clients buy risk reduction. Unlike other disciplines, the technology services industry is not a place where businesses say, “Hey, let’s take a chance on these new guys” when the deal involves heavy lifting. No one wants to get fired for making a bad choice.
• Get famous somewhere else. If you don’t have the credentials for this deal, figure out how to get them. Either focus on a vertical (retail) and make your name there, or focus on the sweet spot of your business (data analytics) and build market awareness of your expertise. Those become your springboard to other verticals, other services and bigger deals.
• Focus on service. In the end it’s references that can swing a decision in your favor. Even if you have had a few hiccups on delivery, good customer service (integrity and communication) will save the reference. In fact, having a reference acknowledge to a potential client that there were problems (and there are always problems) but you made everything right is a powerful reputation to have. You’ll become known as the top seed.

That said, I am cheering for Loyola, the Cinderella, even though I have Kansas to win. Maybe it’s my Jesuit education; maybe it’s the charm of Sr. Jean, their 98-year-old chaplain. I really think it’s wanting to be further inspired by a group of young men who have worked so hard to accomplish something they were never expected to do.

A Bad Marriage

I can’t remember the first time I heard someone say it, but I have heard it dozens of times since then: a bad deal is like a bad marriage.

The comparison is a convenient though imprecise one. Given this is Valentine’s Day, I thought an article that connects sales and romance would be appropriate.

How is a deal like a marriage?

·         Emotion plays a large role in the decision to make a commitment.

·         Once the deal is done, there is a “honeymoon” period.

·         The relationship can last for years if each party is willing to work at it.

·         A fruitful relationship will produce offspring/follow-on deals.

·         Money is often the most difficult topic to address.

·         Good listening skills will always improve the relationship.

·         Termination of the relationship can be expensive and emotionally draining.

How is a deal not like a marriage?

·         A successful deal has multiple relationships of executives on both sides. Multiple relationships are generally not a good thing in a marriage!

·         The balance of “power” is not the same. In a deal, one side is typically “serving” the other’s needs. A marriage should strive to be a relationship of “equals” who treat each other with love.

·         In a successful deal, each party understands its “responsibilities” and service levels are clearly defined. In a marriage, roles and performance are often a topic of discussion!

·         A successful deal is typically negotiated with an end or outcome in mind. A successful marriage is “'til death do us part.”

·         In a deal, the service provider is always aware that the competition is “just outside the door.” In a marriage, that is called a “stalker.”

So, though not exactly alike, what are some of the shared characteristics of a bad deal and a bad marriage and what can we do to improve both?

·         Frustration with the other party’s behavior: Communicate. In a deal this is called “good governance.”

·         Failure to meet expectations, whether realistic or not: Be flexible and understanding. Maybe the other side oversold, but it doesn’t mean the relationship won’t flourish.

·         Seemingly “irrational” reactions: Ask and listen. Often one party’s reactions are driven by our own behavior and we don’t recognize or can’t admit we are the source of the issue.

·         A desire to terminate the relationship: Seek help and problem solve. If the parties believe there is merit in the relationship, bring an objective party into the conversation to offer options on how to improve it.

Happy Valentine’s Day and good luck with all your relationships!

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I'm Allergic to Nuts!

One of the advantages of owning an Italian restaurant is that just about everyone who comes in wants Italian food. It would be an odd thing for a customer to sit down in an Italian restaurant, look at the menu and say, “I don’t like anything I see. Can you make General Tso’s Chicken?” Customers choose the type of restaurant they want to go to, so it’s much easier to sell to them.

Sales people don’t have that advantage. When talking with a potential client, the first task is to understand what the client wants and what the client needs. (Those two things are not always the same, by the way.)

Before I start selling innovation, I need to understand if the goal is to bring technology advancements into business operations. Maybe the goal is to drive efficiency. Maybe to improve performance.

Many salespeople will guess what the client wants most, and they conclude (often mistakenly) that it is price. So they lead with a discussion on price, sometimes offering discounts right out of the box! Why would anyone begin by discounting price without even knowing if price is the key buyer value? It’s like throwing a plate of pistachio-encrusted tuna at the customer and say, “Eat this! This is delicious!” You may get an angry response, such as: “You idiot, I’m allergic to nuts!”

Here’s a simple way to test if you understand what is driving your client’s appetite: ask questions. And then ask more questions. And listen. A good opening question that can generate a lot of valuable insights if you listen to the answer is: “If this were to go exactly as you want it to, what would success look like?” The client might say:

·         Success would be all of our legacy data is successfully migrated to the new platform. We’ve tried twice and failed.

·         Success would be greater efficiency in our operations so we can sunset applications.

·         Success would be ease of scalability and flexibility in the solution because we anticipate rapid growth in the next five years.

Sure, they want it at the best price possible. No one wants to overpay. But once you dig in more to these goals of dependability, efficiency and flexibility, price becomes secondary. To lead with a pricing discussion without understanding the buyer values would be… nuts.