Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Want to increase sales? Then learn your prospect’s business.

  

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I've long been a believer that the better you understand your prospect's business, the better solution you can provide. In doing so, you'll proactively deal with sales objections earlier in the sales process, understand important elements in the ROI sales process, and provide more effective and timely solutions. In terms of extrinsic value, you'll increase sales. Just as important, intrinsically you'll have more fun on the job by learning more about the world in which you live. I'm going to tell you two short stories that underscore this. In the first one, I didn't make a lot of extra money, but learned an important lesson. In the second, I made a bundle. They're both worth telling.

Story One: The headstone carver and the copier salesperson. I once sold photocopiers, a tough job, because all brands were pretty similar. The Royal brand copiers I sold were identical to those branded by Mita, Pitney-Bowes, and one or two the companies. They were all made by Konishiroku, so the only differentiators were the great customer service my company offered and the salesmanship of the rep. I was an indefatigable salesperson, working both the telephone and walking the beat by going door to door, business to business. Which is how I one day wandered into the California Monument Company, where owner Mike Brunetti carved headstones. As luck would have it, Mike needed a copier the day I walked in the door, and bought one pretty much on the spot, the latest model with advanced enlargement and reduction features. In those days, I never asked much about my customer's business, as copiers were copiers. Or so I thought. I always made it a point to do an onsite visit after installation to ensure my customers were happy. On my post-sale visit to Mike, I learned a lot about why it's important to ask about the customer's business. Mike insisted on showing me how he was using the copier, so I followed him into his office. There, he had a large collection of art books with beautiful designs of angels. "Before I had your copier, I had to hand draw everything, and prepare a stencil which I used for carving. With your copier, here's how I do it now," he said, and proceeded to put a piece of transparency in the copier. He used the enlargement feature to copy a small design from a book. He then removed the transparency and punched a number of small holes along the dark lines of the transparency. Then he laid the transparency on an uncarved headstone, sprinkled some black powder on the transparency, banged it two or three times with a rubber hammer, lifted the transparency off the stone, and voila, he had a perfect stencil right on the headstone. He then took a hammer and chisel, and began carving along the lines. My copier had become a unique tool in the headstone carving process. Mike was the only monument carver in my territory, so I couldn't do much vertical marketing, but I learned two things that day that I've never forgotten: Don't make assumptions about how the prospect will use your solution, and every prospect's business is interesting, has different challenges, and is well worth asking about.

Story Two: Making petroleum out of hamburgers. Fast-forwarding a few years, I was selling debuggers, software development tools that allowed software programmers to write better code. A large fast-food chain (I'll call them FFC, and I'll bet you've eaten there) was one of my prospects, and in my first call to them, I determined that their team needed 5 debuggers. By now, I always made a habit of asking about my prospect's business, so I asked what kind of code they were developing. My prospect told me that they were going to turn their finished code over to a large petroleum company, and I asked why. It turns out that they were working on a joint venture to locate FFCs on the premises of gas stations, and customers would pay at the pump for both food and gas. After filling up, they'd go to the drive-through lane at FFC, pick up their food, and be on their way. Fascinating! I asked my FFC prospect about the debuggers the petroleum company used. He didn't know, but gave me a contact name when I asked. Right away I called the petroleum company. It turns out that they were looking for debuggers, too! And I soon sold dozens to the petroleum company for use throughout the enterprise, in all of their lines of business, many more than I sold to FFC. If I hadn't asked my original FFC contact about his business, I might never have known about the petroleum company. My competitor might have gotten there before I did, and I would have lost the business before I ever knew it existed.

The moral of the story is what I teach in every one of my inside sales training courses. You always have to ask about your prospect's business, because you'll leave business on the table if you don't. You will also position yourself as a consultant with your prospect, and will build important rapport that your competitor may not. In doing so, you will build a knowledge base of how your customers use your product in the real world to improve their businesses, expand your vertical marketing capability, and increase sales, too. Add this to your Best Practices playbook.