We all prepare for sales calls by researching our customer’s business – At least I hope we do. How many of us take the time to research the personal history of the people making decisions? From what I have seen, most do not spend enough time on this key part of selling. The best sales people do.
No matter how high-level the decision maker, they can only act on what they know. A small part of what they know comes from what we teach them about our company, our product and, most importantly, ourselves. The larger part of what they know comes from their personal journey on the way to becoming a high-level decision maker.
Every executive starts his/her career in individual contributor roles. They all worked their way into a position of influence by generating better results than that of their peers. There may have been politics involved to boost their career, but mostly we find people who have a wealth of great results in their wake. Learning their history will help us predict how they will make decisions in the future.
Success – What are the common threads throughout all of their successful results? What are their noteworthy accomplishments that have brought them celebrated status within their company and industry? Even though we have Google and LinkedIn, the best way to learn about our customers is simply to ask. We can search the jobs people have done but we only learn what really makes them successful by asking the decision maker and the people around them.
Mistakes – Important people have made important mistakes. It is part of their learning process. In Microsoft, it is common to hear veterans talk about the times they got dressed down by either Bill or Steve. This “right-of-passage” is something from which leaders learn how they improve. Show me a person who cannot recall the things they learned from mistakes, and I will show you someone who has never taken a risk or made an impact.
Barriers – What significant challenges have decision-makers faced, both in business and in personal life? I had to deal with racism while growing up. I was bullied at least once a week between kindergarten and second grade simply because I was Chinese. That continued until I learned how to fight back. While I am not proud of all of the fighting I did in school, a lot of my confidence comes from when I learned how to fight well enough that the bullies no longer wanted to pick on me. When I have told people that part of my history, the common response has been, “That explains a lot.”
Helpers – Everybody in highly influential positions has received help along the way, regardless of how smart they are. We want to know who helped our customers and what aid they needed along the way. It gives us a picture of whom our customers like to work with and the kinds of assistance they look for and appreciate.
Luck – While most successful people never bet on luck, they will readily talk about times when things just went their way. They will talk about how lucky they are to have learned from great people. They will rave about how lucky they are to be part of great teams. They will laugh about the hunches that turned out to be right. Listen to how they describe their luck and you will hear people describing how they put themselves in the position to take advantage of good circumstances. You will also hear about how they did not let bad circumstances halt their progress.
Learning our customer’s history of success, mistakes, barriers, helpers and luck, is a foundation from which we can infer how they will make decisions in the future.
©2014 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC
