Sales and Sales Management Blog

January 23, 2012

Dealing with Uncomfortable Questions from Prospects and Clients

Filed under: Client Relationships,Communication,politics — Paul McCord @ 12:20 pm
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Once again we are in the middle of the presidential political season.  For the next few months the Republicans will have center stage as candidates wrestle with one another to gain the Republican nomination to run for President.  Once that contest has been decided the focus will shift to a tussle between the Republican nominee and President Obama.

Whether we tend to be politically active or not, we will all have opinions about the candidates and issues involved in political combat this year.

We’ll also have some—hopefully just a very few–prospects and clients make comments about these people and issues or, worse, ask us directly about our opinions regarding them.

When these uncomfortable topics come up what should our response be?

As salespeople we spend a great deal of time trying to develop relationships built upon trust, honesty, and openness with our prospects and clients. We claim that we want to build relationships with our clients; we want to get to know them as people and not just as potential purchasers, and that we want to create friends, not just accounts.

Many of us go to great lengths to learn how to read body language, to communicate in a manner that caters to the prospect’s personality type, to read the unspoken signals the client sends through how they dress, how they decorate their office, what they drive, and what they do for recreation and relaxation. Our goal we say is to treat the prospect as a whole person.

Nevertheless, our holistic approach to sales is one sided. Most of us have been taught to avoid the social and political issues that could offend a prospect or client.  Let the conversation get close to the area of political or social opinion and all the sudden we’re no longer too anxious to build the relationship on honesty and openness. Rather than being open and honest when these subjects come up we try mightily to obfuscate or avoid.  The last thing we want is for our prospect or client to know where we actually stand on a candidate or issue.

Consequently we’ll spend the next few months doing a delicate dance of avoidance, trying to offend no one while insisting that we are open, honest, trustworthy individuals, intent only on meeting the prospect’s needs and becoming trusted advisors. We’ll try to build relationships based on getting to know our client while allowing them to get to know only what we have determined is safe for public consumption and that will allow them to get to know us only superficially. We’ll try to balance on the head of a pin, afraid that if we reveal ourselves as a politically or socially aware person we’ll offend, we’ll step on toes, we’ll lose a sale.

In my opinion–and experience–not only is this behavior disingenuous, but it is itself destructive. Prospects and clients expect each of us to have opinions and they are quite aware that those opinions may be counter to their own.

What are we communicating to prospects and clients when we try to sidestep discussion of the issues or candidates? Some will immediately assume we’re avoiding the issue because we hold opinions we believe are counter to theirs—so whether their assumption is correct or not, by avoiding the discussion we risk offending the prospect by unintentionally communicating a contrary opinion to theirs. A few may assume that we’re not informed well enough or care enough to have an opinion. Most will assume that we’re simply trying to play the game, trying to be ‘real’ as long as that reality doesn’t involve anything of substance in our personal lives.

Conventional wisdom has been to avoid political discussion at all costs. Conventional wisdom comes from a time when the emphasis wasn’t on building long-term, trust based relationships with prospects and clients.

I’m not advocating you initiate political and social discussion, but avoiding it isn’t going to advance the relationship either.

Seldom have I found discussing these issues to be, well, an issue. I have lost a few sales that I can trace to these types of discussions, but I can identify many more sales I’ve made where the sale had its roots in a willingness to answer questions—especially uncomfortable questions–honestly. 

As long as you are respectful of the prospects point of view, have reasoned arguments for your stance, and don’t engage in inflammatory or degrading language, there is no reason to fear alienating a prospect or client. In fact, if you can intelligently discuss the issues in light of how they may impact your prospect’s business, you may find that your discussion instead of being a potential minefield may be one of the most compelling reasons to do business with you.

Prospects and clients not only respect honesty, they also respect salespeople who understand their business and the future prospects for their business. By demonstrating an understanding of how political, economic and social issues may affect your prospect’s future, you demonstrate an intimate knowledge of their business—and prospects love to do business with people they trust and who really understand their problems, issues, and opportunities.

Follow Paul on Twitter: @paul_mccord

August 29, 2008

Book Review: Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear, by Dr. Frank Luntz

Filed under: Book Recommendations,business,Communication,marketing,politics,sales,sales psychology,selling — Paul McCord @ 6:29 am
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Imagine knowing the words, ideas, and concepts that influences people to buy, to make a choice, to solve a problem, to commit to your solution. Imagine being able to write or say something that immediately strikes a nerve; that people will remember and act upon. Imagine having the power that moves prospects, coworkers, employees, better yet your spouse, to your point of view.

Few of us in sales and marketing are writers–that is true wordsmiths. Few of us think we have the talent to be. Most of us really don’t aspire to be. But all of us yearn to–we must–influence those around us. We must be able to persuade, to move men and women to make choices, to pick up the phone, to exert more effort, to sign the contract, to buy the product, to commit to our goals, our vision, our solution. And most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, are simply tossing darts, hoping that eventually we will hit on a phrase or a sentence that hits the mark.

Although we may never become a Faulkner or Hemingway, we can learn to use words in ways–or at least we can learn the words–that impact our audience. Instead of writing our typical drivel that hangs together loosely, which we vaguely hope will strike a nerve with someone, we can learn to tighten up our communication by learning what people really react to–and why.

Dr. Frank Luntz has given us a good gulp of these gems. His New York Times best-selling book, Words That Work (Hyperion, 2007), lays out his findings about words, ideas, concepts. Luntz is a linguist that gets it–who can take research and translate it into a format that we simpletons can not only grasp but actually use in our everyday lives.

Certainly, if you’re a political junkie as I am, you’ll love the book for its insights into how politicians influence the electorate. Luntz gives example after example of both the words that have worked and the words that have flopped. But don’t think of Words That Work as just a political book. It is, of course. But it is also a sales book, a marketing book, an everyday life book.

Some have been put off by the fact Luntz is a Republican pollster. If you don’t like his politics, don’t let that stand in your way. He gives positive and negative examples from all political points of view, but more importantly, if you view it as a political book as many have, you will miss the message of the book.

If you really want to improve your ability to communicate–whether in marketing, sales, or changing your kid’s mind, you’ll find a great deal of meat in Words That Work. From “The Ten Rules of Effective Language” to corporate and political case studies to understanding what people really care about, Luntz lays out the words, phrases and concepts that influence and change minds and backs them up from his studies with thousands of everyday men and women from across the country.

August 23, 2008

Great Strategy–But Was It Too Much?

Filed under: business,Communication,marketing,Personal Marketing,politics,sales,sales psychology,selling — Paul McCord @ 8:23 am
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No doubt the Obama campaign had a great strategy in building interest in his VP selection. Not only did he manage to get hundreds of thousands of cell phone numbers and email addresses he can now use to generate additional donations, but he dominated the news programs for almost the entire week. It put John McCain on the news sidelines and gave him an opportunity to put the Saddleback event behind him.

Hype works, no doubt. But timing in building excitement and interest in any announcement is critical, whether you’re dealing with a VP selection or a new product. Trying to maintain the interest and the excitement is one thing, but the end goal is to punctuate that interest and excitement with an announcement that not only lives up to the hype, but builds on it. Start building too early or drag it out too long and it doesn’t burst on the scene with a bang as intended.

But did he try to milk it too much? By Thursday morning almost all the commentators and pundits had come to the conclusion that Joe Biden was the selection, so when the announcement came instead of, “Wow! What a great (or lousy, depending on your view of Biden) choice,” a common reaction was, “OK, big deal, I figured he was it.”

For maximum impact, Obama waited too long. Certainly he was prepared to spice up the speculation by having someone leak out the information that Chet Edwards was on the short list, although no one seems to have taken that bait too seriously.

On the plus side he got the news all to himself for several days. On the downside, ultimately the announcement was something of a letdown for many since they figured the announcement was just a conformation of what they already ‘knew.’

Obama’s announcement garnered much of what he wanted, and he only missed the peak by hours, but with a just a little better timing it could have had the full impact he was hoping for.

June 19, 2008

The Chavezization of Business

Filed under: business,Economy,marketing,Personal Marketing,politics,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 9:02 am
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American politicians, like politicians around the world, have always used current events as leverage to try to gain power. In our two party system, each party has sought to blame the other side for anything and everything they possibly could that they thought would anger the electorate. Honesty, integrity, and truthfulness have never been at the forefront of these blame game battles.

Nevertheless, most of us have assumed that the ultimate goal was more than just power. We assumed that each party sought power for the sake of moving the country in the direction the party believed was best for the country. We assumed that each party, whether we agreed with them or not, was seeking ways to make the country stronger, to enhance the lives of the country’s citizens, to advance each citizen’s ability to succeed and prosper.

Although we knew that the parties would distort, twist and outright lie to smear the other party in order to gain advantage, we assumed that even during election cycles the parties would not actively work against the citizenry.

It looks like those naive days are gone. We are now facing an election cycle where the higher the Democrat Party can force energy prices, the more pain they can inflict on the country, the more people they can nudge toward impoverishment, the better for them.

The Democrat Party has determined that driving more and more middle-class families toward poverty is in their best interests and has decided to seek to drive petroleum and natural gas prices as high as they possibly can in the interests of ‘conservation’ and to force the development of alternative energy sources. Advocating the failed policies of the past such as the disastrous windfall profits tax of the Carter years, preventing the development of clean coal, nuclear energy, or further exploration and drilling, and preventing the building of new refineries guarantees energy prices will continue to rise and our continued and expanded reliance on foreign energy. New policies such as the rationing of energy through carbon credits will simply add to the misery of the middle and lower classes.

Democrats have proposed a number of policies that would change the business world we live in, including serious discussion of the nationalization or semi-nationalization of the healthcare industry, the energy industry, and the banking industry. Chavez’s Venezuela in red, white and blue may become a reality.

Having government which has managed to bankrupt social security, drive the educational system into chaos, has little understanding of how technology is developed or how long it takes to develop commercially viable solutions to our energy needs, and seems to think it has the power to create solutions by fiat not only regulate but run one of the industries critical to the country’s health and wellbeing is the worst possible solution to the current energy crisis.

The Democrats argue that the energy industry is run by greedy, power hungry companies bent on creating the largest possible profit. They will get no argument from me. However, those greedy companies realize they create their biggest possible profit by developing and providing the goods and services the public wants at the best possible price.

I would much rather have a greedy company who understands how the market works and seeks to create its profit through production and development than to have the industry run by an incompetent, greedy, power hungry government bent on using its power and resources to control what I do, how I do it, and when I do it.

This election isn’t so much about the presidential candidates as it is about the control of Congress. Obama and McCain are close to one another on many issues and the President has limited powers. If the Democrat Party gains enough seats to enact their agenda without serious opposition, the only difference between Obama and McCain will be in judicial nominations and the use of the veto. If the Democrats have enough seats to override vetoes, the presidential election is about judicial nominations only.

The real power struggle in this election is for dominate control of both houses of Congress. If the Democrat Party racks up enough seats in both houses to pass any legislation they desire, veto or not, business and salespeople are going to have a very rough four years ahead. The only real hope business has should the Democrats prevail in the numbers projected is that the damage they wreck can be reversed.

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