Intent | Renbor Sales Solutions Inc.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Sales people are constantly working at communicating value to their buyers, especially in the early stages of the cycle, lead gen to prospecting and engaging the buyer to where they could complete an effective Discovery process. After sellers have done all the work involved in getting to the point where they can engage with a buyer, I am always surprised at how easily they are willing to undermine it, and risk their opportunity by saying something completely unnecessary, and serves only to sooth their nerves.

The expression that does this most is “I just need 15 minutes of your time” or “A quick 15 minutes”. Both are stupid and useless, the second is one I never did get, how is a “quick 15 minutes” different than 15 minutes, don’t all minutes have 60 seconds, it is just the quality of the content that seems to make some minutes last a lifetime.

I know why it is used, generally comes down to two things, both can be dealt with more intelligently and effectively. First is the popular notion that if you can get 15 minutes, and do well, they’ll give you an encore and you can stretch it out; I guess we all think we can do a good job. On the other hand I used to work for a VP of Sales who managed his calendar down to the minute, busy guy. He would ask you how long you needed, and would book you in for that time, if you said 15 minutes, he would end the meeting right at 15 minutes. He wasn’t rude, he had to get to his next scheduled meeting, if you couldn’t live up to the expectation I set, it was your issue, not his, you had to deal with it, not him.

Which brings us to the first contradiction, most decision makers have more than what to do in a day, how realistic is that they don’t have other meetings behind your, or other things that require their time and attention. Yes, no doubt we have all had instances where we were able to extend 15 minutes in to 45 or even 60 minutes, but an occasional anomaly does not make for a sound strategy.

The other issue with this approach is that you are in fact misleading the prospect before you have even met them. Think about it, do you really want to start things off by lying to the prospective buyer? Any way you rationalize it, that is exactly what you are doing, not a good foundation for a trust based relationship.

The second reason sales people do this is linked to the first, and just as weak. Specifically they are trying to minimize the apparent impact on the buyer, trying to make it “easy” on them, “Your time will not be wasted”, is the implication. But unless you are selling a coffee service or window cleaning, how much real or tangible value can you effectively communicate. More so, when you are selling what you would call a “solution”, where information has to be exchanged, 15 minutes is not going to get you there, you can pretend all you want, you are going to pitch, worse, you are going to ‘speed pitch’.

Some will tell me, “I can at least get things started”, sure then comeback and continue, with a bit of recapping, you are costing you and the buyer more time. By asking for 15 minutes you are undermining your so called “value proposition”. What the prospect hears is that this is so basic and unimportant, what they are asking themselves is as follows: “we’re going to make real progress in 15, can’t be that important or unique, maybe it can wait, or I can delegate it to someone who deals with unimportant things.”

Think about it, assuming things get started, small talk, while you assume they checked out your web site, you have to validate; if they did, you still need to create context, if they didn’t you have to do a bit more than that. From here, you need to at least go through the motions of gather information or executing a Discovery of facts and objective. Ah, look at that time is up! I remember someone trying to sell me an ad in local board of trade directory, they said they just need 15 minutes, I pointed out to him that he will need to ask me some questions, I will certainly have some for him, so let’s get real, how much time will we really need, he was honest enough to come across with a real time frame.

What’s worse, it is usually the seller who brings time in to the equation, not the prospect, again communicating a lack of confidence in their offering, or their ability to sell, or both. Just stop this juvenile practice, and sell.

Now I know that there times when you will be asked by a prospect how much time you need; in my case I gear my first meetings to about an hour, I am the one that gets antsy after 50 minutes. But rather than saying “one hour”, I pause, and ask, “how long can you give me?” They usually come back and say “is an hour enough?” Touch down!

But assuming they ask again, I just say “I usually need about 30 minutes for Discovery, I assume you’ll have some questions, so 40 minutes is safe.” If I feel they have a sense of humor, I add “any longer than that I take as interest on your part.”

I do have people who say “I can give you 30 minutes.” Great I can work with that; if they offer 15 minutes, I say no, I know what is going to happen, it is not a good use of my time, my most important resource. Either we can find a mutually better time, or on to the next one. If you have lots of prospects, this is not an issue, if you only have one or two, you may have to settle for the scraps that a quick 15 minutes represent.

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Tibor Shanto

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By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

We are all aware of the importance of “First Impressions”, not only in sales, job hunting, life, when meeting your girl friends dad, etc. There are plenty of experts that will teach us all manner of things to achieve the best first impression, from dress to languages both verbal and body, and any number of outward things you can do capitalize on that non-repeatable First.

But for sellers, there is something that can instantly undermine effort put into the best impression, and the fact that it is not external, limits the effect and or impact of the factors mentioned above or others. In fact if you do not master this one thing, it will not only undermine efforts, but scare buyers away no matter how well you do other things. If you do master it, it can more than make up for a bad hair day, encountering a herd of wildebeests on the way to the meeting or other things that may ruin a first impression. Further, unlike other factors, it is not a skill, and as such you can’t practice, train, or hire coaches; you need to master it on your own.

I am of course speaking about your intent or intentions.

Your intentions is where it all starts; they guide your planning, decisions, actions, attitude, execution and results. More than any other thing you bring to the game it is the key differentiator. Often when you are one of two equals from a product point of view, you intent will be what tips things your way. While buyers may not be able to see your intent like a snazzy Harvey Specter suit or hair cut, they are fully aware and in tune with your intent and will respond to it directly.

Truly having the intent of winning revenue by helping the buyer or client, helps you avoid the trap of cognitive dissonance , where you are saying one thing but feeling another. Buyers can sense this, don’t believe, just ask yourself how many times you did not believe what you were hearing from someone selling you something at a store or car dealership. In fact the if you look at the way better car sales people avoid the stigma of the stereo type is through their intention.

It can often be a challenge for sellers, they are wound up to go out there and “win” the revenue. People like me talk to them about hunting, and driving deals, play to win. The untrained assumption is that first impressions and everything we do after that is to win the deal. But in fact it is to win long lasting customers, and the best way to do that is to help them achieve their objectives, to deliver value throughout your work together. If you do that you will get the revenue that goes with it, if not, no revenue.

It may seem like a fine distinction, but if you set out to help your client overcome challenges between where they are and where they want or need to get to, not only do you approach the sale differently, but you are very much perceived differently by buyers and clients. When you set out to win the deal, you at times do, and at times you don’t. And I’ll bet that when you don’t win a deal, and you don’t understand why, it came down to what the buyer saw as your intent vs. the intent of the seller he awarded the deal to.

Intent even trumps skills. When working with outbound telesales people, They often want the secret words, the hooks that will get the prospect to say yes. Some practice their vocal delivery, trying to sound like the perfect radio voice in an effort to gain an edge. While intonation is important, it only goes so far, the intent you project and communicate goes further and deeper. While I am advocate of scripts, I define script not as a set of words delivered in a specific order, like the dinner interrupting window installers, but as a series of facts you want to communicate in a call, and bases you want to touch with them, thus demonstrating your intent. The problem with the old style scripts, is that as good as they are, they betray your intent, demonstrating to the buyer that you have a specific agenda, not the goal of helping them.

When you centre your sale around the proper intent of helping the buyer, you are able to engage with both near term and long term prospects, there by having an active and vibrant pipeline at all times. In planning, it allows you to draft better questions, which further demonstrate your intent, making the buyer more comfortable and confident in opening up more, building more trust, paving the way to more information, more trust, more information, etc. It creates greater alignment between buyer and seller, which in turn accelerates the velocity of the sales and shortens the cycle.

During the discovery stage, it drives you to come up with better questions, because you are not just going for the close. The right intentions allow you to fully explore buyers’ situation, needs, and requirements.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to win deal, drive revenue, but that is not my intent, it is the dividend.