How to Sell to Your Customers' Brain

POST AN ARTICLE

Featured Sales Blogs

In Partnership Wth:

DiversityJobs.com

JustJobs.com

MAIN MENU

How to Sell to Your Customers' Brain

Written by Stu Schlackman

More Gravy
Today Selling is Tougher Than Ever! Become Customer Centric

Many sales training programs miss the mark since it’s all about the company, their products and services and cookie cutter sales methodologies are taught without considering the specific sales environment. Is it a long sales cycle or short? Multiple decision makers or one? Complex solutions that span across the entire company or point solutions? How does this impact what our approach should be?

Many sales professionals start their sales career at new companies with training. Training is typically a mix of both skills development and product/services training. While this is not all that bad, it does set up the mindset for the sales person to lead with products and services when they call on customers and prospects. And why not? That’s what their comfortable with!

Today selling is tougher than ever.
There’s more supply than demand, more competition, longer sales cycles and most importantly customers are more knowledgeable than ever before thanks to the internet and the abundance of information. As Michael Bosworth says in Customer Centric Selling - “The traditional view of selling lays the foundation for confrontation, rather than collaboration when buyers and sellers interact.” I couldn’t agree more. We both believe that traditional sales training reinforces the sellers approach to manipulate buyers. The old mantra for sales professionals is “the selling begins when the buyer says no” and “every buyer objection is a selling opportunity.” Is this really true?

Many sales training programs miss the mark since it’s all about the company, their products and services and cookie cutter sales methodologies are taught without considering the specific sales environment. Is it a long sales cycle or short? Multiple decision makers or one? Complex solutions that span across the entire company or point solutions? How does this impact what our approach should be?

You can’t convey your value until you understand the real needs of the customer. When sales people lead with their solution all they can convey is product features. Features will lead to the same customer response every time “how much does it cost”? When opportunities are lost from the sales person’s pipeline, they’ll repeatedly hear the same reason - either wrong product or wrong price. Or as Michael Bosworth says, “Warning! Objects in the forecast may be further away and smaller than they appear.” This is what’s called being product or solution focused. Leading from our perspective and what the company has trained us to do. The close dates in the forecast have nothing to do with the buyers’ agenda, but correspond to the sellers’ agenda. There is a better way- being customer centric.

Let’s look at 3 key points that will help you be customer centric.

The first is to understand the customer from their point of view. We all get excited about how unique our solutions are in the industry and we immediately want to get into presentation mode. Hold off! It should be the last thing we do. First ask the customer to share their goals and objectives. Once you understand those you can eventually ask what challenges they have. It’s easier for the customer to share their goals than to admit their problems. Now you can better understand if there’s a fit (our solutions that can meet their goals) so that you can convey what they value.

The second point is to ask relevant questions. Qualifying is the easy stuff, but getting to the heart of the matter takes great listening skills and going deep instead of wide. Good questions will even help the customer discover their own reasons for not being able to achieve their goals. If you want better answers from the customer, ask better questions. The goal of the sales person is to guide the customer to what they think the solution should be - hopefully yours!

The third point is to meet the decision maker(s). You cannot sell anything to someone who can’t buy. Many years ago I was building a relationship with the Chief Technology Officer of a large firm. We met each week and when it was time to present our proposal, he said he would not be the one making the decision. Shame on me! I’m supposed to be the sales professional. I guess you can say I was more of a “professional visitor.” Being customer-centric means understanding who will make the decision to buy. The higher up in the chain of command that you call; the chances are your sales cycle will be shorter than starting at the bottom of the totem pole.

Remember that being customer centric defines the buyer’s cycle, while being solution centric defines the sales cycle. Customers don’t follow the sales person’s cycle!

Good selling!

Customers buy when they feel good about the relationship they’ve established with the sales person - people trumps process. It is our natural tendency to buy based on emotion and then to justify our decision with left brain logic. Therefore, we need to engage the customer’s right side in order to connect with them in a way that causes them to desire our solution.

One of the more popular topics of discussion these days is the impact of emotional intelligence on teambuilding, customer relationships and the art of selling. Another important way to improve your emotional intelligence in the area of selling is by identifying and understanding the four primary personality styles. Competitive Excellence uses a color coded system by Insight Learning which categorizes your personality as Blue, Gold, Green or Orange. The question we’d like to ask is, how do we better engage the brain during the selling process?

Which side of the brain are you selling to?
Most of you know that the brain is divided it two hemisphere’s which, the left and the right. People are dominant on only one. The left side of the brain is all about information, text, logic and rationale. The right side of the brain is about feeling, emotions, images, patterns and perceptions. Basically, the left brain is about task and the right is about relationships. Based on this it would make more sense to sell to the right side of the brain, right? Yet we don’t.

The Customer's Brain
Customers buy when they feel good about the relationship they’ve established with the sales person - people trumps process. It is our natural tendency to buy based on emotion and then to justify our decision with left brain logic. Therefore, we need to engage the customer’s right side in order to connect with them in a way that causes them to desire our solution.

So how can we better engage the right side of the brain? It’s been said that the right side of the brain buys and the left side returns. We’ve been taught as sales professionals to focus on the benefits of our products and services. Stating the benefits and features of products and services engages the left side of your brain. The left side wants the details. The left side is also where your short term memory resides. Since the right side of your brain is where long term memory resides, wouldn’t it make more sense to engage your long term memory when it comes to selling? The way to engage the right side of the brain is by reaching its emotions, feelings and imagination and making the entire selling process memorable. When we use words like imagine or discover it engages our right brain to envision what results we would like from someone’s products or services. A great example of this is the commercial by George Zimmer, CEO of The Men’s Warehouse where he says in his ad “you’re going to love the way you look, I guarantee it!” That hits the right brain and attracts us to take him at his word.

Customers are attracted to uniqueness in your offerings and how it can impact their future. Imagine, discover, experience, enjoy are all words that engage us to think of the result of buying from you. We can connect with customers by taking them where they want to be and that means more than conveying features and benefits. It’s about trust and building long term relationships.

Another important phase of the selling process is identifying your customer’s personality style and anticipating their behavior during the sales process. Who will ask the tough questions, who will buy mainly on trust, and who buys impulsively? A colleague of mine, Kevin Daum is the author of ROAR (an acronym for working with customers) which can be found in Barnes & Noble. Kevin has a unique approach to selling to the four different buyers by relating them to the four sons from the Passover Seder - with a slight modification. They are the Wise buyer, the Cynical, the Simple and the Disinterested. His book is a story told by a friend sitting in one of the best Delicatessens of New York City. Kevin also shares how to build a powerful value proposition for your business. I highly recommend Kevin’s book – it has strong correlations to the “Four People You Should Know” process that I use.

The next time you’re in a selling situation, consider your prospect – which side of the brain are they using and how can you better serve it.

Good selling!

For more on building relationships and solidifying connections, click here.

Stu Schlackman
		About the author:
		Stu has spent over 25 years in sales management, sales and sales training with world class companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, Cap Gemini and EDS. His focus is on “the application” of the skills and techniques he shares. He is the author of Don't Just Stand There, Sell Something and Four People You Should Know. .