Check In

In face-to-face sales calls, we have the ability to read the nonverbal cues, to see what benefits have hit home. Over the phone, it is impossible to know what the customer is really thinking, unless you use a method of regularly checking in for customer reaction. Since not all reactions are audible comments, you are challenged with monitoring where the customer is by asking questions during the presentation portion of your call; you are “checking in” to determine the customer’s acceptance level. Another advantage of this check-in technique is that as you are keeping your customer involved, he or she is far less likely to be drifting away from your conversation by multitasking during the call.

If door-to-door delivery (feature) is supposed to improve productivity (benefit), the customer could be thinking, “I don’t care about delivery right to my door. I want delivery to our remote warehouse.” So, not every benefit plays as an advantage to the customer unless you have specifically tied the benefit to the customer’s business. Customers won’t tell us if we’ve missed, rather they will just tune out.

The check-in allows us to find out where we stand.

Think of it this way. If you go to dentist for a filling, he gives you a shot. Then, he asks you if it still hurts; if it does, he’ll give you another shot. If you don’t tell the dentist that the pain is still there, he won’t give you another shot to reduce pain. The check-in technique lets you find out how your customer feels about the benefit you have just offered.

Let’s go back to the feature of door-to-door delivery with the benefits, for example, of saving time and improving productivity. Your check-in might include asking one of the following questions:

• “Harry, how do you feel about that?”

• “Lenore, when can you use this to your advantage?”

• “William, on a scale of one to ten, how important is that to you?”

If the customer’s response is positive on that benefit, you have now added value and can often close the sale on the customer’s response. The result of your check-in tells you what to focus on in your presentation. When you frame your presentation in this way, you set yourself up for success by eliminating objections. Throughout your entire presentation, you are gaining interaction and buy-in. This is far superior to the feature-dump or benefit-dump approach, especially over the phone when you don’t know if your customer is even listening.

If the customer’s answer is negative, obviously the feature and benefit aren’t important to this particular customer. Then, you’ll go to the next important feature and define it as a benefit related to your customer’s needs. Work harder at uncovering matches, not at dogging the issue to try to convince the customer that the feature you just suggested is important. Even if it is important to all other customers in your experience, move on. Even if you think the customer is an idiot for not seeing the obvious value of the feature, move on. You can make the situation adversarial by hanging on, resulting in a lost sale.

It doesn’t matter if all your other customers value a specific feature, the only concern that you should have is this customer in this call.

Remember F-B-C, or feature → benefit → check-in. If you get all positives, you can go to a close at any time, often without any objections. Also, don’t rely on the benefits list the marketing team or your sales manager has given you. A benefit is what it means to your customer, not to a generic customer.