They cannot make the purchasing decision.
They cannot get the funding.
They have already committed to one of your competitors.
They do not feel your products are justifiable or beneficial.
Typically, neutral or negative customers bring up hidden hinges faster than positive customers do. They usually like to reaffirm and challenge you on why they do not conduct business with your company. They feel you justify their decisions when you cannot change their minds in ten seconds. Here is where it is essential to have a Spark Interest statement or references with documented and measurable savings at one’s fingertips.
Positive customers are usually more reluctant to discuss negative issues with you. They feel it might jeopardize your friendship. Instead, they use smokescreens to conceal their hidden hinges.
Smokescreens
Smokescreens are business issues that customers claim are beyond their control that prevent sales from occurring. It is ironic (and unfortunate) how sometimes your personal relationships work against you. The customers make unilateral decisions to spare your personal feelings. They do not disclose the professional reasons why they do not want to conduct business (which is another reason why you want professional bonds to be as strong as personal ones).
Note Qualifying customers first on their ability to achieve their goals, not buy your products, encourages them to share information. The more information customers share, the less reason they have to create smokescreens. Constantly reinforce to customers that you seek disclosure about their ability and authority to achieve their goals, regardless of the outcome on you.
You usually sense a hidden hinge when customers:
React adversely to a clarifying question that seeks a better understanding of their smokescreens
Dismiss without consideration your handling of the smokescreen
Keep bringing up one smokescreen after another, regardless of how they are handled (like a hurdle race that never ends; as you clear one hurdle, another pops up)
Will not make goals, benefits, or filters measurable or discuss SOEs
Example
Steven asks Olivia if she can increase her budget. She says no. She does not want to admit to Steven that any project over $50,000 needs corporate approval. Olivia feels embarrassed that she will no longer be the final decision maker.
Again, the “Handling Hinges” section explains how to address hidden hinges. Hint: Using yes-or-no questions does not work very well.
The Four Types of Hinges
Whether they are leveraged, natural, or hidden, hinges fall into one of four types. This additional classification makes them easier to handle. Each hinge has its own nuances, which you handle some-what differently. Their number designation signifies in which MP the hinge occurs. For example: Type I, occurs in MP 1: Spark Interest, Type II, in MP 2: Measure Potential, and so forth. (Use the hinge charts and examples on Exhibits 8-7, 8-9, 8-11, and 8-13 to look up the details of each hinge and the strategies and tactics to remedy them.)
Type I: Pulse Check
Customers show no interest in your suggested goals and potential benefits—you wonder if they are even alive. This hinge occurs in MP 1: Spark Interest. It is the most difficult one to handle because it occurs so early in the sales call. Not a lot of information exists to help determine your next step.
Type II: Iceberg Ahead
Look out; this hinge could spell disaster for your “Titanic” sales opportunities. It occurs when filters impede your or your customers’ ability to achieve their goals. It also arises when customers view your products as commodities. When customers cannot distinguish between products, the filters of funding (price) or dates (delivery) become their goals. The bid system (described in Chapter 1) is a key catalyst in these two filters becoming goals. This hinge can surface either in MP 2: Measure Potential or MP 3: Cement Solution. If you conduct MP 2 thoroughly, the hinge surfaces as the preferred natural type. Otherwise, it becomes a leveraged one in MP 3 after you disclose your product selections.
Type III: Gutter Ball
Your products do not completely fulfill the requirements of the conditional commitments. Instead of rolling a strike, you let loose a gutter ball. It is leveraged and occurs during the disclosure of your product selections in MP 3: Cement Solution. Avoid this hinge at all costs. It can end up with the sale, like the bowling pins, waiting to be knocked down by customers and competitors.
Type IV: Rip-Off
Its name says it all: Customers perceive the price of your products as being excessive. They feel you are counting on this one sale to send your kids through college. It occurs during MP 4: Implement Agreement and is leveraged against product or service selections. Three factors influence what customers expect of price: (1) Perceived manufacturing costs multiplied by a reasonable markup, (2) the value of perceived and measurable benefits, and (3) pricing of similar products (measurable benefits make them different).
Handling Hinges
The Safety Zone and How’s Zat? questioning strategies from Chapter 5 form the foundation for handling hinges. They help you and customers understand how and why they assign a negative perception to a goal or filter, or how they connect a filter to a goal. You take customers’ responses and reference them to “how does that” affect:
Their ability to achieve their goals or conditional commitments
Your product selections or calls for action
Your decision to invest more time and efforts in the sales opportunities
Any time you respond to a hinge with a statement and not a question, you are trying to explain away something you cannot fully understand. Make “How’s Zat?” the first two words to start a question concerning a hinge and you are well on your way to handling it. Use these two words to clarify how customers view the measurable effects of their hinges. More than likely, they have not considered their measurable ramifications, only perceived ones. Use these two words to quantify their perceptions.
How’s Zat? Prevents Responses on Automatic Pilot
Do not try to explain away a hinge before you understand the measurable (and motivating) reasons behind it. While it is good to think about how you might handle hinges that arise before you go on sales calls, this preparation can work against you too.
Planning your replies assumes you know the reasons why customers bring up the hinges. Therefore, when customers bring up hinges, it is natural for you to go on automatic pilot with your well-thought-out responses. However, you might bring up concerns that did not exist until you brought them up. Knowing your reasons for why there is a hinge is not the same as knowing their reasons. Contain your urge to blurt out canned responses by remembering the following two sayings:
“Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.”
“What part of ‘no’ didn’t you understand?” Treat the word no as a knee-jerk reaction to your comments, not as a steadfast position. Customers usually mean no in the following context:
“No, I need more time to think through my goal, measurable benefits, filters, SOEs, and your product selections.”
“No, I need more information about your products or my goals.”
“No, I didn’t understand how you help me achieve my goals.”
Your handling of hinges involves clarifying what part of no you must address: time, information, or comprehension.
How’s Zat Tactics
While How’s Zat? is the overall strategy for handling hinges, the following are its ministrategies and tactics. They make the Safety Zone and How’s Zat? strategies work better.
The Silence Is Golden Tactic
This tactic helps you handle a hinge initially by doing nothing, nada, zilch … silence! Use the fact that most people in a conversation dread the sound of silence. Four to five seconds of quiet seems like an eternity.
The following benefits result from this time-out:
It allows you to collect your thoughts and ask yourself, “Wow, I wonder how I am going to handle this one?”
It prevents an automatic response that otherwise sounds canned or defensive.
It gives you the opportunity to remind yourself that customers are not attacking you personally. They are just reacting to MPCs or calls for action they feel are unwarranted or unjustifiable. Take hinges personally and you become subjective, rather than objective, in handling them.
You can use the pause to let customers know you are giving their comments proper consideration.
You can give customers the opportunity to clarify or even answer their own hinges. They might skip over this one to bring up hinges that are more important.
The Pat from Saturday Night Live Tactic
This tactic treats hinges like the androgynous character Pat from the television show Saturday Night Live whom no one could identify as either man or woman. With hinges, you often face situations where you cannot tell what you have. Is it a hinge or a request for more information, a better explanation, or more documentation?
Therefore, when clarifying and verifying customers’ responses, do not assume they are hinges until you gather more information. In addition, do not sound like you agree it is a hinge by validating their comments.