In the
Media
The Path
to Persuasion
Appeared in Selling Power, October, 2003
How to sell to each one of
the five distinct types of buyers
BY ROBERT McGARVEY
JUST WHAT PERSUADES AN executive to buy your product from you may
seem like a mystery when you’re out there pounding your head against wall
after wall. But take heart, Robert Miller and Gary Williams, who run San
Diego-based customer research firm Miller-Williams, have extensively
researched the buying behaviors of executives. Their new book offers
strategies based on real intelligence gathered in the field. But before
letting you in on the secrets of selling to the top brass, Miller and
Williams want you to be aware that times have changed.
If any sales professional out there has not heard that manipulative
selling techniques have gone the way of the dodo, please raise your hand.
Now leave the room. The rest of you, probably 100 percent of the sales
profession, have probably also heard that prospects and customers come in
a variety of personality types. As do the sales pros selling to them. But
often salespeople forget to think about the customer as a person with
likes and dislikes, habits and character traits. Now, if you’ve been
missing some of the sales you thought you had nailed, perhaps you’re not
tuned in to the different personalities of the prospects and customers you
call on. Perhaps you’re simply thinking of their offices as places to dump
off tons of information while you go for the close.
Businesspeople are much more sophisticated today. They know all the
canned sales techniques,” says Margaret Anderson, who teaches persuasion
at Rice University and also consults to business. Variations on, “Do you
want the red tie or the blue?” are a fast track to turning off buyers
today. A big reason for this: No matter a person’s job title, he or she
may do a little selling and probably has been exposed to sales trainings,
says Anderson. The era of the gullible buyer is over. Buyers see through
the packaged techniques as easily as you see through a freshly cleaned
windshield.
“We’re overloaded with information
today,” says Maura Schreier-Fleming, a Dallas-based sales trainer and
author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results. That is
bad news for salespeople — and there are millions — who stalk their quarry
with PowerPoint shows, PDF files, glossy brochures and Excel spreadsheets.
Too many salespeople — who know that manipulation is out of fashion — have
turned to data dumps, but hear this: Nobody body in a position to buy
wants yet an-other ream of information. “We don’t get persuaded by
information. We just get bored,” says Kevin Daley, chairman of
Communispond, a New York-based communications training firm.
“Buyers are more cautious. They are focused on risks,” says Skip
Miller, president of M3 Learning, a Los Gatos, CA,
sales-training firm. Face this scary fact: there’s dramatically less risk
for a prospect to tell you no than there is in saying yes — at
least in today’s marketplace, where corporate bean counters are
scrutinizing every outlay — and pity the manager who okays substantial
purchases that fizzle. When buyers are scared — primed to scream
“no” at the first moment — salespeople come into the
persuasive dynamic facing odds stacked high against them. “You are going
to need a lot more sales tools today than you needed three years ago,”
says Miller, who adds that in the late 90s many successful sales
executives confused asking for the order with persuading the customer to
buy. Five years ago asking often was all it took to get a signature. Now
asking is just one step on a lengthy trail that is best walked by the
highly skilled.
Skepticism is rampant, and in selling that means “Persuasion must
be rooted in relationships, in trust,” warns Andy Birol, a Solon, OH,
sales trainer. Why? “Over the last five years we’ve learned we weren’t
persuaded, that in fact we had been fooled,” says Birol, and an upshot of
the avalanche of scandals — involving major corporations, financial
analysts, religious leaders — is that our default position is disbelief. A
“respectable” corporate name no longer is enough to persuade buyers that
an offering is legit.
“Buyers have much less time,”
says Paul Hennessey, an executive vice
president with Larkspur, California-head quartered BayGroup International,
a global training organization. It’s a by-product of the reorganizations
and mergers of the 1990s: fewer hands are on deck to do the work.
That means every executive is doing more, with fewer helpers, and you
better believe this translates into a mushrooming unwillingness to meet
with you. When an exec does put you on his or her calendar, “you
have to go into the meeting knowing you have much less time to make your
case, to persuade this executive you come bearing value.” Speed,
says Hennessey nowadays is the essence of selling. But he ominously
adds, “Many salespeople just don’t have a mind-set that allows them to
cope with 21st century changes.”
And then what? If these new realities add up to a wholesale
rejection of the 1990s selling approaches, just what is left for a
salesperson to do? Scary thought, but into exactly that vacuum
stepped Robert Miller and Gary Williams, who authored Paths to
Persuasion, a new book that’s rooted in extensive research into buying
behaviors of executives.
But first, Robert Miller – co-author of several sales classics
including Strategic Selling – wants to hammer home the frightening
reality that, in selling, everything is different today: “in the
past it often was good enough to be well-versed in your product, to
understand a client’s business, and to show the map between the two.
Somebody who tries to sell that way today digs himself into the
ground. No longer are salespeople hunters who go out, bag game,
throw it over the wall and let others clean and dress it. That does
not work anymore. There has been a huge paradigm shift.”
A
second reality in the Miller-Williams world: One-size-fits-all selling is
a goner. It’s a sure path to blown opportunities. Why? People buy
differently, and the techniques that would persuade a Bill Gates will be
blown off by a Jack Welch or a Ross Perot. Isn’t that obvious? Maybe — but
how many salespeople include this reality in their pitching? Say almost
none and you are on the mark, but that is what
Miller and Williams
are out to change. The basis of their theory: detailed research over
two and one-half years with more than 1,700 executives. The question
Miller and Williams put to these people: How do you like to
buy?
For Miller and Williams a light bulb went off when that question
occurred to them. Too often sales theories have been based on the other
side of the coin, they say. Top salespeople are quizzed about what works,
and that becomes the foundation of training.
“We approached this from the reverse side,” says Williams. “We
decided, let’s go to the people who are actually making the buying
decisions, and let’s figure out what they want and need from a sales
presentation in order to make a decision.” The upshot: Miller and Williams
generated five distinct decision-making styles common among executives —
and each needs to be sold to differently.
But their message about current practices — what salespeople who
don’t know about this executive typing currently are doing — will rock
you. “More than 50 percent of sales presentations are done in a way that
is opposite to how the person wants to be presented to.” says Gary
Williams, who serves as CEO of Miller-Williams. That means many sales
executives are hurting themselves by how they go into a meeting. Says
Williams, “Go to a Jack Welch with a 97-slide PowerPoint presentation, and
he will walk out after about slide number six.”
Cut off the show after six slides with Bill Gates, however, and he
will leave the room hungry for more information and nowhere near ready to
buy.
Different executives decide differently, but, say Miller and
Williams, close analysis has let them divide up buyers into five distinct
types — each of which requires its own special selling style. They offer
thick documentation in their book, but here there is room only for a taste
— check out the sketches and descriptions of the five types on pages 92
and 93.
Getting the picture that indeed executives reach conclusions in
wildly different ways? Mull on the Miller-Williams types and, from there,
it’s a quick leap to recognizing that successful pitches genuinely must be
tailored to fit. What about the canned, centrally scripted presentations
that many large companies favor? They are starting points — but no more.
Every prefab talk needs extensive customization before you pound on a
customer’s door.
All that said, here’s the big question: just how can you gain
advance insight into a company and executive’s decision-making style? That
may be the secret to selling, but the surprising reality — according to
Miller-Williams — is that answers are nearer than you imagine. “It’s
astounding how much information you can get by surfing the 'Net these
days,” says Miller. “It’s there to be had, but many salespeople aren’t
willing to glue their rear to a chair for 30 minutes to find out about
this person. They are still worried about perfecting their pitch, but
don’t see that understanding who will be hearing it is critical to
perfecting it.” One cure Miller suggests is hunting the Web for case
studies involving your targets. Almost always such material details both
decisions that were taken and how they got made. In the hands of a
savvy salesperson that raw data can become gold.
Another tactic: Ask the exec what kind of information he wants you
to bring to a presentation. And listen closely to the answers, because in
telling you what he values, that executive also is revealing how to
persuade him,
A
last, closely related bit of Miller-Williams advice for honing 21st
century persuasion techniques: Forget the 30-second elevator spiel: focus
on the 30-second dialog, A stark reality is that just maybe all you will
get of top CEOs’ attention is 30 seconds, and if they aren’t hooked in
that time, they are gone. Kick off with a statement of what your company
and product do, but be terse. Then “ask a question that will let you
better understand this person,” says Williams. Ask more questions so “you
can find out where that person is coming from. It’s that
simple.”
Visit our Web address above and click under
“The Path to Persuasion” for these Bonus Articles:
1. Four Basic Categories of Prospects
2. More and Better Prospects
3. Sale to the Chief (Available through 1-1-04)
The Tried and
True
For more than half a century the handbook for successful sales
persuasion has been Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence
People, which first hit print in 1936 and has sold well over 15 million
copies. But is there still value to be found in this classic by sales
executives hungry for more closes? You bet, insists Maureen Morris, CEO of
Larchmont, NY, career-counseling firm Success Image Career Center and a
longtime Carnegie trainer. “Carnegie’s techniques still work today,” says
Morris. “Make the other person feel important. Ask questions. Listen.
People are dying to be listened to, and if you do listen — a key Carnegie
teaching — you’ll also learn a lot,” says Morris.
Distill Carnegie’s teachings and they amount to this: Learn to see
the situation from the other person’s point of view. Do that and you will
indeed be liked, listened to and, absolutely, that translates into
influence.
Enough influence to close sales in the 21st century? A first,
primal reality is that people remain unchanged after 2,500 years. Maybe
longer. What would have sold the ancient Greeks will work today. But a
second reality is that everything nowadays is unfolding at double-time
speeds, as twice-burned buyers seek to cover their rears, avoid mistakes
and hold onto their jobs. Big question: Will Carnegie’s writings really,
absolutely apply today? You bet — if, in fact, you take his admonition to
heart to always see the other person’s point of view, vividly and sharply.
Doing that is most certainly the fast track to more sales — even if the
script is over 65 years old!
Allies Make
Sales
More high-level purchasing decisions are being made by “C-level”
executives (CEOs, CTOs, CFOs), who oftentimes aren’t even present for the
sales presentations, certainly not the initial ones. That raises a tough
question for Miller-Williams’ adherents: How do you concoct a presentation
for best results with executives you have never met and may never meet?
“You’ve got to get a coach,” says Robert Miller. “You need a vice
president who will coach you on the senior executive’s decision style.”
You bet the veep knows — he or she has plenty of experience persuading C
execs, so this entry-level exec knows the score. It’s also very much in
his interest to help you concoct a winning presentation because, odds are,
the veep will be the one who has to present it to the top bosses. And he
wants to exit that meeting with a win. Bottom line: Explain how knowing
decision-making types boosts successes, and any smart veep will gladly
work with you to make sure his bosses are understood.
This article first appeared in Selling Power in the October 2003
issue.
Reprinted with permission from Selling Power magazine.
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