Alan: So, Ralph. We went over a lot of details about increasing capacity to 2,500 units per hour (goal and SOE). You want to be up and running by October (completion date), and not spend more than $50,000 (funding). This productivity gain would produce $20 more per hour, or about $100,000 annually (measurable benefit). Is there anything else?
Ralph: We also want at least an eighteen-month payback.
Alan: In addition to the other requirements you stated, with an eighteen-month payback, would you feel you achieved your goal of increasing capacity by 25 percent?
Ralph: Absolutely!
Alan: I’ll review your situation with my engineering group and we’ll see what we can come up with.
Ralph and Mark now both know what it will take to achieve Ralph’s goal of increasing capacity by 25 percent. You will also use attainment measurements to know what your products need to do to earn the sale.
Note Often, attainment measurements surface when you make customers’ goals measurable. For instance, in the previous example, you could find out much of the attainment measurement details by simply asking Ralph, “How would you know if you increased productivity by 25 percent?” Again, you need to start with customers’ goals.
Attainment measurements eliminate the “I hope this solves our problems or achieves our objectives” concerns for customers. They also eliminate the “I hope my products meet their requirements” concerns for you. The risk of being disappointed or not meeting each other’s expectations are gone. When you satisfy a customer’s attainment measurements, you never have to say you are sorry. They earn you repeat business and long-term, loyal customers.
Attainment measurements resemble “trial closes” that customers do on themselves. A major difference exists between a customer’s trial closes and a salesperson’s. Customers are not agreeing to buy specific products if certain conditions are met. They are agreeing that specific goals are worth achieving if they can satisfy the conditions of their attainment measurements. Chapter 6 covers this topic.
Why Guess?
Whether they are prerequisites or influencers, filters are as important as goals. You cannot have one without the other. They allow you and customers to determine whether they can achieve their goals—and if you can help them in their pursuits. With filters, like goals, the devil is in the details.
Chapter 5 explains how active listening and questioning motivate customers to supply the details. It will become apparent to customers how these details serve their self-interests.
Summary
You want customers to qualify themselves first on whether they chose the right goals and have the ability to achieve them.
You qualify your own products on their ability to achieve customers’ goals before you mention any specific ones to customers.
If you find yourself disqualifying customers more than qualifying them, you should review how you defined market segments.
Starting sales calls with a focus on making customers’ goals measurable puts them in control and motivates them to share information with you.
Filters allow both customers and you to perform a test of reasonableness on whether you both achieve their goals.
Filters fall into two categories: prerequisites and influencers. The four prerequisites must be satisfied for sales to occur. The five influencers can sway customers’ purchasing decisions and the goals they seek to achieve.
The filters are as follows:
Goal motivation (I)
Current situation (I)
Plans (I)
Alternatives (I)
Decision makers (P)
Complete, start, budget, and decision dates (P)
Funding (P)
Past keys (I)
Attainment measurement (P)
A customer’s positive, neutral, or negative status determines its willingness to share information about filters—unless you make goals measurable.
Use the create-and-wait strategy to win over satisfied negative customers.
Locate the FDM by looking at the contact positions in similar-size organizations and market segments in which you have successes and failures. Adjust your contact level according to whether they are positive, neutral, or negative customers.
Moving funding from a capital investment to an operating budget expense lowers the decision-making level and shortens the sales cycle.
Attainment measurement is the most-important filter for both customers and you because it determines whether they can achieve goals via your products.
A person qualifies as the FDM if he or she determines the specifics of the four prerequisites and releases or allocates funds.
Make sure you focus on the goals customers want to achieve, not on how they are using features of competitors’ products.
Notes
1. Martin G. Groder, Business Games: How to Recognize the Players and Deal with Them (New York: Boardroom Classics, 1980).
Chapter 5: Every Question Counts
Overview
The devil is in the details. You and customers both need to know the specifics of their Goals, Filters, Measurable benefits, and Systems of evaluations (SOEs). The mnemonics (memory aids used to help you remember these four items) for them: Go For Measurable Specifics (GFMS). When you quantify their details, you know exactly what customers are trying to achieve. You also know whether your products achieve those goals.
You use your listening and questioning skills to accomplish this task. Your mastery of these skills is vital because the difference between a successful and a wasted sales call is extremely subtle. Forgetting to ask only one or two questions to quantify a customer’s comments can make a large difference. You know you missed a question when you say, “If I had known that, I would have … (fill in your own blank)” after you lost the sale or disappointed a customer.
Yet, questions are like limited natural resources. You can only ask so many questions before you exceed a customer’s grilling threshold. Grilled customers fight back with curt answers such as “Yeah,” “Nope,” and “Okay.” Therefore, make every question count. This chapter shows how to make every one count by explaining:
How to get customers to consider you an expert because of the questions you ask
How your active listening and active questioning skills motivate customers to provide measurable answers
How your customers use three types of answers to share information—and how only one of them counts
How the four key questioning techniques work to transform vague responses into crystal-clear statements
Business Questions, Not Product Statements, Demonstrate Expertise
You let customers know how well you understand their business by the questions you ask. When you recite large amounts of technical facts about your products, you reflect only how well you understand your products. Nevertheless, a common myth prevails among salespeople that product experts are customer experts.
It is easy to understand the roots of this myth. If your sales training was typical, it mainly involved learning features and benefits. There is one slight problem: Your customers do not have features and benefits; they only have goals and filters. Conflict and inefficiency result when salespeople focus only on their products. When you do as you were trained, it is easy to understand why your customers justifiably feel that their interests sometimes come second.
Your product expertise is a given; how you use this knowledge as a building block to be a customer expert is not. You need to know your products inside and out so that you no longer think about them. This frees you up to concentrate on the customers. The appropriate time for you to discuss products will arrive; however, it is not immediately after you introduce yourself.
Example
Barry Olsen, head of purchasing, contacts two competing salespeople to find out who can best help him reduce inventory costs. Barry starts the meeting with the first salesperson, Joan Harkins, by asking her to explain how her products reduce inventory costs. “What an excellent opportunity,” Joan thinks. She responds with a ten-minute-long scripted pitch monologue. On automatic pilot, Joan describes how her products will accomplish the goal through one high-tech feature after another. When she finally asks some questions, they all focus on whether Barry sees how her products would be able to reduce inventory costs (whatever that means). Barry tells Joan that he needs time to absorb all the information. He politely omits that he needs time to recover from boredom.
The second salesperson, Lynn Smyth, starts the meeting much differently. Before explaining how her products reduce inventory costs, she asks one of those questions that makes the difference between success and failure. Lynn asks Barry how he calculates inventory costs. Barry either (1) explains his methods or (2) asks Lynn what she means. Either response produces a desirable outcome.
With the first response, Barry explains his cost calculations. Lynn then determines which of her products (if any) would achieve his goals beyond any doubt. She also asks Barry whether he feels his current calculations capture all relevant costs. Lynn wants to make sure she fully understands how Barry measures inventory costs.
With the second response, Lynn responds to Barry’s question about what she means by “calculating inventory costs.” This question allows Lynn to explain new methods—that is, systems of evaluation—Barry’s peers in the industry use to calculate inventory costs. She then details them and asks Barry if these methods are relevant to his inventory-reduction goals.
Of course, it would be purely coincidental if these SOEs accurately reflected the attainment of Barry’s goals and matched up to the unique strengths of Lynn’s products. Again, nothing prepares Lynn better than having a Market Profile sheet specific to Barry’s industry that she can review before meeting with him. This preparation ensures that you, like Lynn, will not ask a question that you cannot answer.