ACTION 2: INCLUDE OTHERS IN THE PRESENTATION AND ASK FOR FEEDBACK
Although the topic of discussion is now your product or service, it’s still not all about you; it’s about you and Them. A focus on this “we” dynamic continues to engage your buyer in the conversation and differentiates you from your competition. They remain engaged when you include Them as you facilitate the presentation of your solution. A solution presentation is not necessarily a stand-up presentation, it’s however you first communicate the information about your solution.
Put yourself in the mode of buyer and suppose you decide to purchase a new sofa. The furniture showroom seller does a great job of investigating your POWNs and points to your sofa options. She then leads you to the service counter and asks “Which sofa do you think will best suit you?”
How would you feel? Would you be ready to select your sofa and make the purchase? Probably not.
You weren’t involved in the review of your options, allowed to sit on the sofas to determine how they fit you, or to compare different sofas. You were robbed of the opportunity to select the right one for you or to start mentally picturing one in your home.
What if, instead, the seller followed their investigation with:
“From what you told me, comfort and color are the two most important considerations for you. What else is important to you? (Pause for response.) Let’s look at your options, give you time to sit and recline in different sofas, and when you find the sofa that feels right, we’ll look at color options. Most of our pieces can be custom ordered in dozens of fabrics. Let’s start over here.”
Then you spend time sitting on sofas, reviewing the different options, and selecting a fabric while continuing your conversation with the seller about what you like and don’t like about the sofas you’ve been shown.
The seller says: “It looks like we have found the right fit for comfort and the color that is right for your room. What questions or concerns do you have about that sofa?”
How would you feel now? Would you be ready to continue the conversation and explore whether this is the right sofa for you?
The chances are much higher that you would continue, aren’t they?
It’s the same with your buyers. They don’t want to be passive subjects when reviewing your solution and its fit to their POWNs—they want to get their hands (and minds) on it!
When buyers are passive, they can flip into the mode of the discriminating buyer: “I tell you what I want, and then sit back and judge or dismiss your suggestions or solution.” When they are not a part of the solution, it is easier for them to be a detached judge and jury.
Collaboratively Involve Your Buyer
How then do we involve our buyers when presenting information about our solution? We engage Them collaboratively with healthy doses of inclusion.
First, invite Them to participate in this part of the conversation. “Let’s explore how our solution addresses what we just discussed.” With this setup of inclusion, you set the expectation that they are involved in the presentation and discussion of your solution. Involve them mentally and physically whether your conversation is face-to-face, on the telephone, or in a group selling situation.
You can engage their minds with:
• Stories. Explain how your solution addresses their POWNs or how it has solved POWNs for other people. These stories are helpful if you provide a service or a physical product. Give them background, action, and outcome. Stories work in two ways. Current customers are recognized for their wise decision in how they addressed their POWNs and new buyers hear about real situations and begin to picture themselves enjoying the same outcome.
• Best practices. Buyers want to know what others are doing that works well. Explain how-to’s and specifics of not only your solution’s results, but how other buyers have implemented the solution and other best practices around it.
You can engage their hands and senses with:
• Hands-on items. Put something in their hands—paper, the mouse, or the product whenever possible. If you don’t have a physical product, involve their hands by having them click on Web pages or holding a document.
• Prototypes and samples. In some industries, a prototype can be made to show what it would look, sound, or work like. Add their company logo or name in printed materials or to slides to begin their thoughts of ownership. Getting people to touch and try works!
• Visual aids. PowerPoints, written materials, screen sharing, and webinars are all powerful tools to help the buyer see your solution and the WiifT. Use diagrams and metaphoric imagery to make a point, draw a correlation, and show the potential benefits. The key is to turn these aids into tools that help make it about Them and less about you; use them to demonstrate capabilities of what you have and what it can do for Them.
Determine the viable inclusion ideas for your solution and consistently ask feedback questions throughout the presentation—one of the easiest ways to keep Them involved.
Ask Feedback Questions
As you share Whats to WiifTs about your solution, regularly seek the buyer’s viewpoint, opinions, and feelings about the fit of the solution to their POWNs or their expectations with feedback questions.
Tap into their experiences and expertise to discover and discuss the benefits and challenges of your solution, explore their opinion, and collaborate on how to implement what you offer. Educated buyers want to be acknowledged for their knowledge.
Responses to feedback questions often reward you with additional information about the buyer’s intent, sense of urgency, and POWNs. This information provides you additional insight into their motivators and the impact of emotional influences.
Of course it’s possible that asking for feedback could produce negative information or unrealistic expectations. That’s okay though, because you can use this as an opportunity to circle back in WIIFT to further explore or clarify their POWNs.
Feedback questions keep Them engaged, save time, identify objections and concerns early, and redirect the conversation back to the Investigate step if the solution is not a fit.
The following examples of feedback questions encourage your buyer to share useful information:
• “How does this match up with what you were considering?”
• “How do you see this moving you toward where you want to be?”
• “What is the best part of what we have discussed?”
• “Where do you see this fitting in with your priorities?”
Listen to their initial feedback and then clarify, if necessary, with additional follow-up questions:
• “That’s interesting. Tell me more.”
• “You make a good point. How else can you see this working?”
• “What other ideas do you have?”
• “What do you think the reaction of others will be?”
• “Tell me what you think about _______.”
Buyers begin to sell themselves as they collaboratively discuss possibilities and their feedback. Your final solution, implementation, delivery schedule, and terms are often better when developed collaboratively.
Tap into Team Expertise
Many sales are not closed with just one seller and one buyer. Involve your team or buyer’s teams when necessary to speed up the sales process. Include your team members whenever possible to:
- Bring additional expertise to the discussion.
- Demonstrate the strength or depth of expertise within your company.
- Match Tribal Type needs more strongly.
- Give more opportunity for individual engagement if you are with a group of buyers.
Include the buyer’s team early in the conversation or sales process when possible to secure buy-in more quickly, clarify POWNs, and provide a different viewpoint.
Involving the buyer and engaging Them throughout the conversation produces high dividends. They pay closer attention, participate at higher levels, identify a higher perceived value, and will be more inclined to make a buying decision. It keeps Them from sitting back and judging you and your solution.