Preface to Everybody Sells
| 13 | Apr |
| 2013 |
Relational sellers, always looking for opportunities to create value,
use the currency pyramid to determine the value of the currencies they can
employ with the relationships most critical to your success. The model describes
the various forms of relational currency, from the most accessible and least
value form, Universal currency, to the harder to access and most valuable form,
Personal currency.
At some point during my talks and training sessions, an attendee will honestly share his or her misgivings about making the move from Universal to Personal currency, assuming the process is both time-consuming and inappropriate in sales situations. Not so! Moving from the lowest value small talk about the weather or any identified common interests or passions to engaging with targets about the issues that matter most to them — health, spiritual and financial wealth and family — is often accomplished in a single meeting.
Ask the Right Questions. The secret? Relationship sellers are not afraid to ask questions and are careful to ask the right questions in the right way.
One technique for rapidly developing higher levels of intimacy on the fly is asking ‘why’ questions instead of ‘what’ questions. You should feel equally as comfortable asking either type of question but the results are typically far different. When developing a new relationship most people seek common ground. This is a great instinct. Elsewhere in the book we discuss the tribal nature of being human. We seek others like ourselves; strangers mean dangers. Thus, operating on instinct, most of us pick topics from which we can establish common ground. I’m like you. I like what you like. We are alike in many ways. I’m not a stranger.
Maybe you are interested in cooking, gardening, working out or watching sports. People instinctively look for ways to uncover areas of common interest as a safe and effective way to establish rapport with someone new. Probing for commonalities involves a series of increasingly specific conformational questions. I like sports, do you? What sports do you like? What teams? What players?
While effective and safe, conformational questions do not typically support a broadening or deepening of conversations. Everybody Sells professionals know that each person is unique, everyone has a personal story to tell. The reasons behind what people like and don’t like are fast-track entry points to what matters most. Simply changing the form of your question from a conforming ‘what’ question to an open-ended ‘why’ question can rapidly accelerate the development of relational intimacy. Asking someone why they developed a given interest or passion is an open-ended invitation for your contact to tell you part of his or her personal story. Let me give you a couple of examples.
The Story of the Helmet. Many years ago, I’d scheduled a first call with the senior vice-president of a global organizational based in Philadelphia. I’d done my relational homework, warming the cold call by engaging a mutual friend in advance of the meeting. However, this was in the days before the nearly universal availability of online profiles of key executives and I really didn’t know much about my contact as a person.
As I entered his office, I relied on a few of the old tricks my father had taught me. He said, “You have to always check the credenza and know how to read upside down.” “Checking the credenza” was a reminder to look around your prospect’s office to gauge his or her interests. Reading upside down? Well, that was an old school tactic that advised salespeople to scan the prospect’s desk to determine what he or she was working on (and you can’t obtain much information on the guest’s side of the desk unless you can read upside down). Relying on my dad’s credenza advice and taking a pass on invading my client’s privacy, I took a look around his office and sure enough, right there on his credenza was the answer: a miniature Houston Texans football helmet.
It’s important to remember, I was meeting this executive in Philadelphia! Anybody who's lived in or been exposed to Philly knows that it’s one of America’s greatest sports towns. The Flyers, Phillies, the Eagles, you name it. The town loves their sports teams, and that love runs deep.
Take Jeff Gittomer, one of the world’s foremost sales experts, an author who has sold more than 3 million books. A Florida native, Jeff attended suburban Philadelphia’s Temple University, and once called Philadelphia his home. I had the privilege of working with Jeff in offices and visiting with him in his North Carolina home. Just because he doesn’t have a Philadelphia address any more, he proved to me that you couldn’t take the Philadelphia sport out of Philadelphia sports fans. His passion is collecting Philadelphia sports memorabilia and he has a lot of great stuff. He still coordinates his extensive speaking schedule to avoid conflicts with all the big games.
Jeff validates the statement that people may move away but no one ever leaves Philadelphia.
From what I knew of the market, if you are not a Philadelphia fan in Philadelphia it's best to keep your mouth shut. That is why it was so surprising to walk into the office of a major executive of a company based in Philadelphia and see a miniature Houston Texans football helmet proudly displayed on his desk. At this point, I could have gone for the cheap Universal Currency and said, “You like football? I like football,” with an implicit guy-to-guy chest pump. But instead, my relational sales training took over, and I tried to go deeper.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting down, “but you have to tell me WHY, here in Philadelphia, working for one of the biggest employers in town, in the middle of a city that’s home to some of most zealous sports fans in the world, you would display a Houston Texans helmet?”
What he said changed our relationship forever.
"Jeff, it's amazing that you ask that because there really is a story behind it. I've been with this organization going on 30 years. To become an executive here, you must first complete a series of five-year rotations. Every five years, you are assigned to a different region, and you do a different thing and along the way you get a real sense of the entire organization. With enough success and a little bit of luck, you are eventually called to serve at corporate headquarters".
"So, I've lived all over the country, had some great experiences. But something changed when I was in Houston. That's where we lived before I was promoted to corporate. That change was significant. I don't know if you're a dad or not, Jeff, but when I moved to Houston my kid was seven. When we left, my kid was 12.
“When we got there, I would go out in the front yard, I would play catch with my son. At seven years old that meant that I threw the ball and it bounded off of some part of his body or another. I'd take him to games and he’d fall asleep halfway through the game, or want to go home because he wasn't interested.
“But, by the time we left Houston, he was 12 years old and football held all the wonder of the world for him. When we played catch, he’d chalk out plays, run tight routes and make the great catch. He could out-throw me and name every player on the team. We went to every game together — we got there early to tailgate and stayed until they closed the parking lot. It was just an amazing time."
I was listening intently because my older son had just turned seven and as a father, I was always on the lookout for any help, advice or direction. I said, "Oh, so that helmet reminds you of your son?"
"No, no, not all”, he continued. “You see, I got the news about my promotion and couldn’t have been more excited. Philadelphia is a great city and the promotion meant I’d be able to provide a better life and more opportunity for my son. We packed up the house as we’d done so many times before and as the door to the moving van shut, my wife comes running out on the front lawn with a box in her hand. I thought the moving guys had missed the box so I yell, hey guys, wait a second, you've got one more box to put in the van.”
But my wife says, “No, no… it’s okay, let them go! It’s for you.” I’ll never forget this, she reached into that box and took out this little helmet. “Honey,?” she said, “I got this for you. We’ve been a lot of places together these last 30 years, we've lived in six different towns, but Houston was our first home. We saw our son grow from a child to a young man – right here. We have roots here. Now, we are about to follow you and your career to yet another city and we're so proud of you and all that you’ve accomplished.
“But I'm going to ask you a favor. I want you to take this helmet and I want you to put it on your desk. I want it to be a reminder of all that we’ve been through together and all that our family has sacrificed for your career.
“I want it to be a reminder that if you take another promotion, you're going by yourself, because this is the last move for us."
An Amazing "What to Why" Transformation. What a story. Changing the form of one simple question from ‘what’ to ‘why’ transformed our conversation and our relationship from a low-risk, low-value exploration of shared interests into deep personal understanding. After he told me his story, I shared the fact that I, too, was the father of a young boy about five years younger than his own. I asked him questions about his parenting experiences and he became my informal mentor, listened and shared advice. That’s the power of personal relationships.
It was that conversation that led our firm to explore the power of ‘why’ and the stories behind people’s interests and passions. We found deeply held passions and interests typically originate from sources far removed from the passion or interest itself. Interestingly enough, I'm a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan, which is weird because I grew up in LA.
As were conducting the research, I asked myself why I had started following the Miami Dolphins. And just as our research was showing us, I realized my passion had deep personal origins.
I was a Miami Dolphin fan because my grandma once let me out of Sunday school. In fact, it was the only time she ever let me out of Sunday school. My grandmother, who was also my Sunday school teacher, let me skip out and go into a little room with an even littler TV set, so I could watch the first Super Bowl that I had ever seen.
Miami was to play the Washington Redskins and, if the Dolphins won, they’d be the first undefeated team in the history of the sport. Miami did win the game and as I loved that team the way that only a 9-year old boy could and I didn’t miss a game for decades!
It’s been many years since my grandmother lost a long battle with cancer.
It was not until we started researching the sources of individual’s strongly-held interests and passions that I put the pieces together. I hadn’t missed a game in decades. American football matches are traditionally held on Sundays, the same day as Sunday school.
With this realization, I stopped asking myself, "Why do I like this team that doesn't win, and hasn't won in a generation?" And I realized that it wasn’t about football anymore. It was about the human connection, it was about reconnecting with someone who gave me a very special day. Every Sunday, at one point or another during the game, I think about my grandmother and how she let me play hooky from Sunday School so long ago.
The opportunity to connect with others by connecting with the stories and experiences that helped define them is a valuable tool for relational sellers. These stories provide us with a reason to care, and a reason to care is crucial to establishing the authenticity required to develop deep meaningful relationships.
On the day of that customer call in Philadelphia, it was clear that I was there to sell my services. That was a given, but that didn’t stop the development of a real human connection between two fathers.
Connections Aren't Measured in Transactions. That kind of connection doesn’t, however, guarantee you’ll get the business, but it's worth doing anyway. It's a powerful insight that came into sharp focus when we were working with a group of financial service sellers in New York.
One of the sellers was particularly enthusiastic about the Everybody Sells approach and over several meetings we laid out an ambitious plan of relationship outreach focused on CEOs she had as prospects.
Typically, we work with sales teams for months (sometimes years) following our initial training session. A few months after we’d completed her Relationship Action Plan, I held a team follow-up call to gauge progress and share best practices.
I was ecstatic when she announced the progress she had made with one of her top five top targets. She’d done her research and deepened her relationship with the CEO at an amazingly fast rate. The research our team had provided her indicated that one of her target’s hobbies was gardening, a passion she shared. They met regularly to discuss business and talk about their gardening experiences. During our call, she told the group that the last time she’d gone to lunch with the CEO he said he had a special gift for her. He reached into his pocket and produced a small old cloth bag and handed it to her, explaining that he was giving her enough heirloom tomato seeds to keep her garden going for many years.
“That’s great!” I said.
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, worried. “These seeds have been in his family for generations—his great-grandfather brought them with him from Europe. He had them in his one suit case as he came through Ellis Island!”
“Even better,” I exclaimed.
She wasn’t so sure. “What happens if the plant dies? I can’t replace it. He’ll want to see pictures, he’s an expert. I can’t take a picture of a store bought tomato and pass it off as part of his family heritage. He’ll know!” Interestingly, it was clear that her concern was genuine. She didn’t want to hurt her new friend, because he’d become like a second father to her.
I assured her not to worry, do her best to grow the tomatoes, ask for help and report back at our next quarterly meeting.
When I talked to her a month later on a group call, her voice on the phone was clearly angry. “Everybody Sells doesn’t work!”
I was stunned. From the start, she had been one of my most enthusiastic students, and I knew she had already seen phenomenal success. So, I asked her to share her experience with the team.
“He decided to not to book the business with me,” she said. “He rejected me”
Immediately, I realized that even though she had brilliantly executed some of the tactics of our approach, she had failed to adopt its most basic mindset. The CEO hadn’t rejected her. He deeply cared for her. He invited her into his home, spent precious non-work hours with her and, most importantly, gave her a tangible piece of his family history. Her evaluation of the process was still rooted in the transactional mindset, so when the CEO rejected the current transaction, she felt like he was rejecting her.
Who knows why the CEO’s company decided not to go with the deal? And although this will drive sales executives crazy, who cares?
Seriously, in the long run, she still created a great friendship with the CEO of a major public corporation and it’s never over when you are an Everybody Sells pro.
I asked her, “Doesn’t that CEO know other CEOs who are in the market just like him? Isn’t there a possibility that the CEO will do the next deal with you? Aren’t there innumerable ways that being his friend can still help you, personally and professionally?”
I told her that she needed to adopt a “win-win-win” mentality, and that she would make a terrible mistake if she let this one failed transaction, this minor bump in the road, ruin a lifetime of mutual support for mutual success.
In the end, the CEO became a great ambassador for her, brought her numerous leads, made introductions, and best of all, remained a trusted friend.
Move It On Up. Moving up the currency pyramid doesn’t take a lot of time; it takes a lot of knowledge, creativity and belief. The knowledge required is knowledge of what makes your targets tick. The creativity is creativity in asking the right questions at the right times. The belief is the belief that a great relationship is a value in itself and that real friends will be there in the long run is a key mindset.
And that knowledge, creativity and belief has value even if you don’t get the deal on the table today.
At some point during my talks and training sessions, an attendee will honestly share his or her misgivings about making the move from Universal to Personal currency, assuming the process is both time-consuming and inappropriate in sales situations. Not so! Moving from the lowest value small talk about the weather or any identified common interests or passions to engaging with targets about the issues that matter most to them — health, spiritual and financial wealth and family — is often accomplished in a single meeting.
Ask the Right Questions. The secret? Relationship sellers are not afraid to ask questions and are careful to ask the right questions in the right way.
One technique for rapidly developing higher levels of intimacy on the fly is asking ‘why’ questions instead of ‘what’ questions. You should feel equally as comfortable asking either type of question but the results are typically far different. When developing a new relationship most people seek common ground. This is a great instinct. Elsewhere in the book we discuss the tribal nature of being human. We seek others like ourselves; strangers mean dangers. Thus, operating on instinct, most of us pick topics from which we can establish common ground. I’m like you. I like what you like. We are alike in many ways. I’m not a stranger.
Maybe you are interested in cooking, gardening, working out or watching sports. People instinctively look for ways to uncover areas of common interest as a safe and effective way to establish rapport with someone new. Probing for commonalities involves a series of increasingly specific conformational questions. I like sports, do you? What sports do you like? What teams? What players?
While effective and safe, conformational questions do not typically support a broadening or deepening of conversations. Everybody Sells professionals know that each person is unique, everyone has a personal story to tell. The reasons behind what people like and don’t like are fast-track entry points to what matters most. Simply changing the form of your question from a conforming ‘what’ question to an open-ended ‘why’ question can rapidly accelerate the development of relational intimacy. Asking someone why they developed a given interest or passion is an open-ended invitation for your contact to tell you part of his or her personal story. Let me give you a couple of examples.
The Story of the Helmet. Many years ago, I’d scheduled a first call with the senior vice-president of a global organizational based in Philadelphia. I’d done my relational homework, warming the cold call by engaging a mutual friend in advance of the meeting. However, this was in the days before the nearly universal availability of online profiles of key executives and I really didn’t know much about my contact as a person.
As I entered his office, I relied on a few of the old tricks my father had taught me. He said, “You have to always check the credenza and know how to read upside down.” “Checking the credenza” was a reminder to look around your prospect’s office to gauge his or her interests. Reading upside down? Well, that was an old school tactic that advised salespeople to scan the prospect’s desk to determine what he or she was working on (and you can’t obtain much information on the guest’s side of the desk unless you can read upside down). Relying on my dad’s credenza advice and taking a pass on invading my client’s privacy, I took a look around his office and sure enough, right there on his credenza was the answer: a miniature Houston Texans football helmet.
It’s important to remember, I was meeting this executive in Philadelphia! Anybody who's lived in or been exposed to Philly knows that it’s one of America’s greatest sports towns. The Flyers, Phillies, the Eagles, you name it. The town loves their sports teams, and that love runs deep.
Take Jeff Gittomer, one of the world’s foremost sales experts, an author who has sold more than 3 million books. A Florida native, Jeff attended suburban Philadelphia’s Temple University, and once called Philadelphia his home. I had the privilege of working with Jeff in offices and visiting with him in his North Carolina home. Just because he doesn’t have a Philadelphia address any more, he proved to me that you couldn’t take the Philadelphia sport out of Philadelphia sports fans. His passion is collecting Philadelphia sports memorabilia and he has a lot of great stuff. He still coordinates his extensive speaking schedule to avoid conflicts with all the big games.
Jeff validates the statement that people may move away but no one ever leaves Philadelphia.
From what I knew of the market, if you are not a Philadelphia fan in Philadelphia it's best to keep your mouth shut. That is why it was so surprising to walk into the office of a major executive of a company based in Philadelphia and see a miniature Houston Texans football helmet proudly displayed on his desk. At this point, I could have gone for the cheap Universal Currency and said, “You like football? I like football,” with an implicit guy-to-guy chest pump. But instead, my relational sales training took over, and I tried to go deeper.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting down, “but you have to tell me WHY, here in Philadelphia, working for one of the biggest employers in town, in the middle of a city that’s home to some of most zealous sports fans in the world, you would display a Houston Texans helmet?”
What he said changed our relationship forever.
"Jeff, it's amazing that you ask that because there really is a story behind it. I've been with this organization going on 30 years. To become an executive here, you must first complete a series of five-year rotations. Every five years, you are assigned to a different region, and you do a different thing and along the way you get a real sense of the entire organization. With enough success and a little bit of luck, you are eventually called to serve at corporate headquarters".
"So, I've lived all over the country, had some great experiences. But something changed when I was in Houston. That's where we lived before I was promoted to corporate. That change was significant. I don't know if you're a dad or not, Jeff, but when I moved to Houston my kid was seven. When we left, my kid was 12.
“When we got there, I would go out in the front yard, I would play catch with my son. At seven years old that meant that I threw the ball and it bounded off of some part of his body or another. I'd take him to games and he’d fall asleep halfway through the game, or want to go home because he wasn't interested.
“But, by the time we left Houston, he was 12 years old and football held all the wonder of the world for him. When we played catch, he’d chalk out plays, run tight routes and make the great catch. He could out-throw me and name every player on the team. We went to every game together — we got there early to tailgate and stayed until they closed the parking lot. It was just an amazing time."
I was listening intently because my older son had just turned seven and as a father, I was always on the lookout for any help, advice or direction. I said, "Oh, so that helmet reminds you of your son?"
"No, no, not all”, he continued. “You see, I got the news about my promotion and couldn’t have been more excited. Philadelphia is a great city and the promotion meant I’d be able to provide a better life and more opportunity for my son. We packed up the house as we’d done so many times before and as the door to the moving van shut, my wife comes running out on the front lawn with a box in her hand. I thought the moving guys had missed the box so I yell, hey guys, wait a second, you've got one more box to put in the van.”
But my wife says, “No, no… it’s okay, let them go! It’s for you.” I’ll never forget this, she reached into that box and took out this little helmet. “Honey,?” she said, “I got this for you. We’ve been a lot of places together these last 30 years, we've lived in six different towns, but Houston was our first home. We saw our son grow from a child to a young man – right here. We have roots here. Now, we are about to follow you and your career to yet another city and we're so proud of you and all that you’ve accomplished.
“But I'm going to ask you a favor. I want you to take this helmet and I want you to put it on your desk. I want it to be a reminder of all that we’ve been through together and all that our family has sacrificed for your career.
“I want it to be a reminder that if you take another promotion, you're going by yourself, because this is the last move for us."
An Amazing "What to Why" Transformation. What a story. Changing the form of one simple question from ‘what’ to ‘why’ transformed our conversation and our relationship from a low-risk, low-value exploration of shared interests into deep personal understanding. After he told me his story, I shared the fact that I, too, was the father of a young boy about five years younger than his own. I asked him questions about his parenting experiences and he became my informal mentor, listened and shared advice. That’s the power of personal relationships.
It was that conversation that led our firm to explore the power of ‘why’ and the stories behind people’s interests and passions. We found deeply held passions and interests typically originate from sources far removed from the passion or interest itself. Interestingly enough, I'm a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan, which is weird because I grew up in LA.
As were conducting the research, I asked myself why I had started following the Miami Dolphins. And just as our research was showing us, I realized my passion had deep personal origins.
I was a Miami Dolphin fan because my grandma once let me out of Sunday school. In fact, it was the only time she ever let me out of Sunday school. My grandmother, who was also my Sunday school teacher, let me skip out and go into a little room with an even littler TV set, so I could watch the first Super Bowl that I had ever seen.
Miami was to play the Washington Redskins and, if the Dolphins won, they’d be the first undefeated team in the history of the sport. Miami did win the game and as I loved that team the way that only a 9-year old boy could and I didn’t miss a game for decades!
It’s been many years since my grandmother lost a long battle with cancer.
It was not until we started researching the sources of individual’s strongly-held interests and passions that I put the pieces together. I hadn’t missed a game in decades. American football matches are traditionally held on Sundays, the same day as Sunday school.
With this realization, I stopped asking myself, "Why do I like this team that doesn't win, and hasn't won in a generation?" And I realized that it wasn’t about football anymore. It was about the human connection, it was about reconnecting with someone who gave me a very special day. Every Sunday, at one point or another during the game, I think about my grandmother and how she let me play hooky from Sunday School so long ago.
The opportunity to connect with others by connecting with the stories and experiences that helped define them is a valuable tool for relational sellers. These stories provide us with a reason to care, and a reason to care is crucial to establishing the authenticity required to develop deep meaningful relationships.
On the day of that customer call in Philadelphia, it was clear that I was there to sell my services. That was a given, but that didn’t stop the development of a real human connection between two fathers.
Connections Aren't Measured in Transactions. That kind of connection doesn’t, however, guarantee you’ll get the business, but it's worth doing anyway. It's a powerful insight that came into sharp focus when we were working with a group of financial service sellers in New York.
One of the sellers was particularly enthusiastic about the Everybody Sells approach and over several meetings we laid out an ambitious plan of relationship outreach focused on CEOs she had as prospects.
Typically, we work with sales teams for months (sometimes years) following our initial training session. A few months after we’d completed her Relationship Action Plan, I held a team follow-up call to gauge progress and share best practices.
I was ecstatic when she announced the progress she had made with one of her top five top targets. She’d done her research and deepened her relationship with the CEO at an amazingly fast rate. The research our team had provided her indicated that one of her target’s hobbies was gardening, a passion she shared. They met regularly to discuss business and talk about their gardening experiences. During our call, she told the group that the last time she’d gone to lunch with the CEO he said he had a special gift for her. He reached into his pocket and produced a small old cloth bag and handed it to her, explaining that he was giving her enough heirloom tomato seeds to keep her garden going for many years.
“That’s great!” I said.
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, worried. “These seeds have been in his family for generations—his great-grandfather brought them with him from Europe. He had them in his one suit case as he came through Ellis Island!”
“Even better,” I exclaimed.
She wasn’t so sure. “What happens if the plant dies? I can’t replace it. He’ll want to see pictures, he’s an expert. I can’t take a picture of a store bought tomato and pass it off as part of his family heritage. He’ll know!” Interestingly, it was clear that her concern was genuine. She didn’t want to hurt her new friend, because he’d become like a second father to her.
I assured her not to worry, do her best to grow the tomatoes, ask for help and report back at our next quarterly meeting.
When I talked to her a month later on a group call, her voice on the phone was clearly angry. “Everybody Sells doesn’t work!”
I was stunned. From the start, she had been one of my most enthusiastic students, and I knew she had already seen phenomenal success. So, I asked her to share her experience with the team.
“He decided to not to book the business with me,” she said. “He rejected me”
Immediately, I realized that even though she had brilliantly executed some of the tactics of our approach, she had failed to adopt its most basic mindset. The CEO hadn’t rejected her. He deeply cared for her. He invited her into his home, spent precious non-work hours with her and, most importantly, gave her a tangible piece of his family history. Her evaluation of the process was still rooted in the transactional mindset, so when the CEO rejected the current transaction, she felt like he was rejecting her.
Who knows why the CEO’s company decided not to go with the deal? And although this will drive sales executives crazy, who cares?
Seriously, in the long run, she still created a great friendship with the CEO of a major public corporation and it’s never over when you are an Everybody Sells pro.
I asked her, “Doesn’t that CEO know other CEOs who are in the market just like him? Isn’t there a possibility that the CEO will do the next deal with you? Aren’t there innumerable ways that being his friend can still help you, personally and professionally?”
I told her that she needed to adopt a “win-win-win” mentality, and that she would make a terrible mistake if she let this one failed transaction, this minor bump in the road, ruin a lifetime of mutual support for mutual success.
In the end, the CEO became a great ambassador for her, brought her numerous leads, made introductions, and best of all, remained a trusted friend.
Move It On Up. Moving up the currency pyramid doesn’t take a lot of time; it takes a lot of knowledge, creativity and belief. The knowledge required is knowledge of what makes your targets tick. The creativity is creativity in asking the right questions at the right times. The belief is the belief that a great relationship is a value in itself and that real friends will be there in the long run is a key mindset.
And that knowledge, creativity and belief has value even if you don’t get the deal on the table today.
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