Managing Interaction and Engagement with Prospective Customers
A salesman is not the one who talks more, a salesman is the one who listens to customers’ needs.
—Victor Kanán, Bosques Residential Property Development, Pachuca, Mexico
The preceding chapter provided an overview of the sales process; this one delves deeper into the form and substance of meaningful engagement with your prospective consumer. While engagement takes various forms, face-to-face interaction is widely considered the best because it offers more opportunities to receive both verbal and nonverbal feedback. It also increases the chances of the entrepreneur meeting with other key members of the organization while on site.
The next best mode of communication is by phone (with or without video), followed by e-mail, which is the least effective. It is certainly the least secure, as you never know where the e-mail will end up. You want to air your idea without losing control over it.
Whatever your preferred method of engagement, it is important to create a well-thought-out, professional demonstration. Remember, this is your chance to show your prospects the qualities you would bring to a business relationship—physically (if this meeting is in person or over Skype); intellectually (with regard to specific and pertinent contextual knowledge), and psychologically (i.e., energy, passion, and empathy). As the saying goes, there is no second chance to make a first impression. Even if you do not leave this meeting with a “yes,” you still want to leave your prospect with a favorable idea of who you are as an entrepreneur and as a person. While there may not be interest today, there may be an opportunity tomorrow.
Asking the Right Questions
Questioning Prospects
“So tell me, what do you do?”
This question, which is quite commonplace when making polite conversation, is incredibly annoying when asked by a salesperson. Why? Because he or she should have enough information about their prospects to answer that question before calling on them.
“First of all, study the business of your customer,” says Busola Oyebadejo, “Know what they want.”
John Grayson of Genuine Interactive sees meetings as an exploratory opportunity:
“We ask them what the company’s goals are and what their personal objectives are for the year; because generally, if it’s a well-run company, you know the person you’re dealing with—their year-end goals and objectives will tie up to the CEOs, and you know the overall organization’s goals and objectives. We talk to them about how they win business and we talk to them about how they lose business, and we talk about their key centers of growth or focus them for the upcoming year.”
While meeting with prospects, entrepreneurs should not only be able to provide information, but also elicit it. To do so, they must ask high-value questions (HVQs) that provoke reflection and thoughtful responses. Answers to such questions are not found in written documents or archives; they are also usually not close-ended, but those that force respondents out of their comfort zones and encourage them to venture into areas they have not explored until that point. Since they task the cognitive capacity of the respondent, HVQs can be difficult to answer, yet they have the potential to reveal possibilities, blind spots, and the motivation to take action.
Such questions include:
What factors have perpetuated the challenge/problem?
If you had no financial limitations, what would be an ideal solution to the problem?
What do other members of your organizations think of the problem?
How does your staff feel about the problem?
In what ways is the problem impacting the value you deliver to your customers?
What factors might be decreasing the drive for a solution?
What are your growth objectives for the next six, twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months and what factors might undermine your achievement of these goals?
Have you assessed what trend “X” could mean for your business model?
Asking HVQs like these are beneficial to both parties: on the one hand, the entrepreneur gets information and insights that could be leveraged to show the relevance of a proposed idea or at least motivate the prospect to commit to exploratory collaborations. It also provides the entrepreneur with information to shape an idea in the nascent stages, including:
How the target prospect creates value for its customers?
Whether your idea impacts this value creation and delivery capability of your target, as well as how and when it does so.
What keeps your target prospect awake at night and why?
Whether the challenge varies with company size, location, time of the day, or year.
How the target prospect is currently addressing or coping with the challenges, and whether such methods are effective, appropriate, or adequate.
Whether the challenge would disappear if they modified their business model.
Whether the challenge is particular to one industry or is present in other industries as well.
Other ventures, if any, that supplies your target prospect.
The extent to which the actions/activities of third parties enhance or undermine the “value” of your idea, in the short term, medium term, or long term.
The reason the challenge has not been addressed before now.
Raul and Mikaela of Internet marketing company Click Catalysts utilize pitch meetings to glean information about the potential prospect.
[We] try to get them on a demo call where we can demonstrate what we do and explain it to them; the goal is not really only to explain what we do, because we can explain that really quickly and it’s more so in that—while giving the illusion of explaining what we’re doing, we’re really trying and extracting information about their business and how we can actually help their business. Things like, Are they the decision maker? What kind of timeline? What kind of online marketing services have their done before? We could get a sense of budget and what their goals and expectations are.
Another benefit of HVQ is that the prospect acquires a new or expanded awareness of his or her business needs. Regardless of the immediate outcome, meetings in which HVQs are asked are almost always productive; in fact, it’s not uncommon to hear the following comments from prospects:
“Oh, I never thought those trends impact our business model.”
“I didn’t imagine those two issues could be related.”
“We have not really explored other alternatives.”
“That possibility has never crossed our minds.”
“We thought it would be more costly.”
“We thought our situation was too unique to warrant borrowing solutions from other sectors.”
Of course, you may also learn that it is a case of: “It’s no big deal”; “We can live with it”; “Some entrenched interests are benefiting from and seeking to maintain the status quo”; “The issue is not troubling enough to warrant management attention”; “We have not had the time to look at it closely”; “We are not aware we’re bleeding so much cash/resources”; “It’s outside our control”; or “The current situation is the lesser of two evils.”
While some answers are clearly preferable to others, keep in mind that the information you come away with will be invaluable. You can now use that information to start asking yourself the tough questions.
For Peter M. Dennis of PMD Training, a sales training and recruitment company, these initial meetings have always been an excellent learning experience.
[I’ve gotten] Who the heck are you? Why are you bothering me? That kind of philosophy. If you don’t have something powerful and impactful to say, don’t waste my time. Through the e-mail interactions and follow-up phone calls, I was not looking to make a sale; I was looking to get the opportunity to meet with the decision maker. And so the early sale was on convincing him and his assistant that by spending a few minutes with me, I potentially could have some impact on their business. And so it was to drive to that logic of, Okay, give me ten minutes and you’ll see what I can potentially bring to the table to you, and that’s all I’m asking for. And within that—the philosophy of that ten minutes, I of course had to convey that I understood their business, I understood what drove people to buy from them, I understood the competitive situation they were in, and I had to show that I had something a little bit different to offer.
Questioning Yourself (The Five “Light Bulb” Moments)
Before they even set the meeting with prospects, entrepreneurs must ask some questions of themselves. These seemingly simple questions as follows are designed to elicit so-called light bulb moments regarding the potential of an entrepreneurial venture. While the entrepreneur will not be able to answer all the questions satisfactorily, the exercise will put him/her in the right frame of mind to explore the opportunity presented. As the questions are centered on the end user, they force entrepreneurs out of their comfort zones and in search for answers in the “real” world.
Who might see value in the idea? This question encourages a market-centric perspective on a budding idea. It encourages the entrepreneur to search and draw up a list of potential clients that could provide feedback on the idea.
Why would they see value in the idea? In other words, how would the prospect define value with respect to the entrepreneurial idea? In principle, prospects will adopt an idea if it enables them to create more value for their own clients, thereby improving client acquisition and retention. This means the entrepreneur must find a link between an entrepreneurial idea and the prospect’s value creation process, and there is no better place to start than with the prospect’s business model. Ultimately, this question enables entrepreneurs to envision the net effect of a novel idea upon their prospects (i.e., price, switching cost, psychological, total cost of ownership, etc.). Of course, while an entrepreneur might come up with hypothetical reasons as to why a person or organization would perceive value in an idea, it would remain conjecture until actual conversations with prospects take place.
How important is this value to the target audience? This question will help establish the position of the issue/problems on prospects’ priority list and assess the relevance of the entrepreneurial idea to address those issues; in other words, how will it fix the problems that keep prospects awake at night? This is a test of whether the problem is worth solving relative to other issues competing for a prospect’s attention and resources. It also relates to the prospect’s assessment of relevant opportunity costs.
Is there an urgency to acquire this value? That is, is there a pressing need to solve the problem the idea addresses? This question focuses on the timing of your first exchange and the speed of product adoption by prospects. It could also yield insights about price, payment plan, and prospects’ readiness and willingness to pay.
What factors might accentuate or diminish the value derivable from the idea? The answer to this question often depends on a prospect’s business model (i.e., whether aspects of their value chain are dynamic and dependent on the value delivered by suppliers and strategic). As knowledge of potential value contingencies is useful in assessing the reach and sustainability of an idea, it is incumbent upon entrepreneurs to educate themselves on the content and context of prospects’/clients’ business models. Become knowledgeable about the regulations impacting your prospect’s business, as this will increase your preparedness, confidence, and credibility when meeting with prospects. According to Darrell DeVeaux of HealthDetail:
First, it’s just being prepared with the subject matter information; so I mentioned that there was a new regulation—being very familiar with [it] … I could talk to them … about what is needed to be done and how we can get that done for them. As we moved up the chain, I think it was still the same. Mostly the meetings were in person … I’d sometimes in the office be practicing what I was going to say and how I was going to say it, and when this came up what I might respond with.
As you can see, these five questions can help entrepreneurs reach a greater level of understanding before valuable resources are wasted.
Listening
“I was trained by my parents to ‘put yourself in the other guy’s shoes,’” says serial entrepreneur Tom Alexander, “If you want to be a successful entrepreneur … you should always keep your ears and eyes open.”
As illustrated in the previous section, the ability to ask HVQs is a critical piece of the legwork for any entrepreneur pitching to target prospects. HVQs are of little use, however, if one does not actively listen to the answer. Entrepreneurs are by definition passionate about their ideas, so they must be careful not to turn a deaf ear to the valuable information and insight they are getting.
One of the best guides on listening disposition is the traditional Chinese character for “listen,” depicted in Figure 5.1. The character is made up of six parts, namely ear (
), king (
), ten (
), eye (
), one (
), and heart (
).
Figure 5.1 The components of the traditional Chinese symbol for “Listen”
Listening with ears () means to employ all parts of the listening process, such as concentrating, understanding, and reacting. The “king” () means to pay very close attention as if the other person were a king. The “ten” () and “eye” () indicate that it is very crucial to observe and heed every aspect of the other person’s nonverbal communication, such as mannerisms and facial expressions, as if you had ten eyes. The “one” () means to listen with undivided attention. Finally, listening with the “heart” () means to listen empathically from the other person’s perspective in order to deeply and fully understand the person emotionally and intellectually (Huaxin Liu, 2015 Babson).
Listening well does not require a script, just the willingness to be open-minded, although it can be a helpful aide. That said, if you do have a script, you should be flexible and allow the conversation to flow naturally. Focusing too strongly on scripts can distract you from the nuances of your prospects’ verbal and nonverbal communication. Instead, allow the prospect to complete their sentences before thinking of a response, keeping in mind that the most valuable information may come not be at the beginning of a sentence but rather in the middle or at the end. It is easier to respond effectively and efficiently when the above listening guide is followed. Another useful tactic for enhancing listening is to take notes whenever the prospect makes important points or gives cues. This simple yet powerful action signals to prospects that you are truly listening to what they say; it also empowers and encourages them to speak more and perhaps offer information they would otherwise have kept confidential. These notes could also facilitate effective responses, debriefs, and follow-ups. Most importantly, the effective listening techniques described before makes for balanced dialogues between entrepreneurs and prospects in reaching agreements and building long-term business relationships.
Be realistic when gauging expectations. While it is possible to hear things like “We’re very much interested in this idea,” “We would like to hire you,” “We would like to invest in your idea,” “We would like to partner with you to develop this idea,” etc., such responses are rare, certainly after the first meeting. You are much more likely to hear something like, “this idea is interesting.” While it is easy to get excited by this apparent compliment, don’t jump the gun.
Okey Akpa of Avro Pharmaceutical learned this lesson early on.
There is this thing in Africa—I don’t have a right word for it—but let’s just say it’s the “gratituditional” response. It’s when an African finds it difficult to tell you no. So, if you pitch your idea you know the answer will be Yes, this will work. But the real moment of truth comes when you want them to part with their money. We had so many people looking forward to receiving us, and when we did come out they applauded the product but then they wanted it going before they paid. Glory to God that has all changed now—the company is doing well to the extent that people are willing to pay us upfront to produce.
Guillermo Oropeza of Doc Solutions had a thought about this.
If your sale is [providing] savings, an operative efficiency or greater security and people say “yes” but they do not [agree] to a contract, then you aren’t talking to the right people. You’re not talking to people for whom security, access to information, and operative license are meaningful. There is somebody in organizations to whom these things are necessary and relevant, otherwise the institution will not survive. There is somebody who cares about the future of his enterprise—that is, the owner of CEO, operations manager, managing director, or systems manager. It can even be a lower level [person], depending on the size of the organization, but somebody must care. I mean, when you are really selling to impact meaningfully—with regard to any of the potential benefits you are going to generate—you must be in touch with the level that cares; otherwise you are only going to receive excuses.
So while it is always wonderful to hear positive comments about your idea or product, it is important to keep in mind that there are several possible reasons—other than a definitive yes—that a prospective client may say them. These include:
The prospect needs to politely end a conversation.
Arguments presented have merits but further information is needed.
Certain aspects of the idea need to be thought out in greater detail.
Some doubts exist in spite of the many potential benefits.
The prospect wants other people in their organization to have a chance to assess the idea.
Some third-party certifications are required, for example, by law or per industry standards before a definitive show of interest can be made.
Prospects are not yet in a position to fully envision all the potential benefits and costs associated with the idea.
The timing of the conversation is not right; the prospect needs more time to digest and process the idea, or some more important and perhaps urgent needs must be taken care of first.
The prospect needs to share the idea with some stakeholders (e.g., suppliers, customers, and channels) in order to assess their reactions.
Of course, “this idea is interesting” may indicate genuine interest on the part of the prospect to move forward. Even if this is the case, you probably still have a long way to go before you sign the contract, purchase order, etc. Asking them for the following information will help you ascertain what they meant.
What else they would like to see before considering adoption of the product born out of the idea.
Who else in their organization might be worth talking to for feedback.
Anyone else in the organization they feel might show interest in the idea.
Permission to use their names to make referred or “warm” calls on subsequent prospects.
Nature of the decision-making process around purchases.
When might a good time be for a follow-up meeting, perhaps to provide updates and demonstrate a prototype.
As for prospects who either did not indicate interest or said they are not interested, you should thank them for their time and politely ask them why your idea is “not for them.” Depending on their disposition, you could also ask if they know of any individuals or organizations that might be worth talking to. Again, regardless of their answer, thank them for their time and candidness. The responses you obtain to these “exit” questions can be valuable in planning your next steps with respect to, for example, new lead generation, type of prospects to visit next, questions to ask subsequent prospects, modifications that may make the idea appealing to such prospects, and a general refocusing of the idea and effort.
Serial entrepreneur Tom Alexander offered this analogy:
If I were to take you to a Nigerian hospital, into a maternity ward, and I put your daughter along with the other babies—they all look the same. But to you, it’s the best baby in the world. When you’re an entrepreneur, you develop a product you’re very passionate about. You don’t want to hear all the negative things … the same thing with entrepreneurs. You believe in your technology so much that you’re willing to overlook … you’re blind.
Regardless of the outcome of that first meeting, your time has not been wasted. Those who search for answers to the light bulb questions will inevitably leave the meeting in a better position than when they went in. The knowledge acquired throughout the process may be leveraged to seek other opportunities or to improve the current idea and take it to the prototyping phase. Above all, do not be discouraged. As Jared M. Bazzy of Horizon House Publications said,
… if I were to let the opinion of somebody who expressed doubt about a goal stop me from continuing on that path, then I couldn’t succeed at all. You have to have that goal, intention, the drive to get there. Be willing to work against the grain, do not let people’s apathy or the legacy of conservatives prevent you from seeing the opportunity.