I played running back on my high school football team and severed my left ACL during a routine practice. I was tackled; my leg was on top of the player who tackled me and one of our linebackers fell on my leg. Nobody’s fault, it’s just football.
Today you see NFL and college players sustaining this same injury and coming back full strength sometimes in less than a season, but in the 1970’s this was a crippling injury. One year and two surgeries following that tackle, I was just learning to run again. Not only was football over but I couldn’t play sports at all for the rest of my high school days.
In college, physical education class was still a required course, so I joined the cycling club to rehabilitate my knee. We had an inspiring coach named Midge Cramer, who celebrated his 50th birthday by riding his bike across the US. He taught me how to really ride a bike, I learned I was good at it, and I became thoroughly addicted to anything involving cycling. I couldn’t get enough of riding, watching, fixing and reading about cycling.
As luck would have it, my interest was incredibly timely because just as I became enamored with cycling, the sport became huge. Suddenly the Tour de France was invented. Amazingly, every store had magazines and books about bicycling. Everywhere I drove I saw speedy cyclists riding in a perfect pace line.
Isn’t it amazing that cycling just happened to become popular when I became insatiably addicted? Or was it there and I wasn’t ready to see it?
The Tour de France started in 1903, slightly before I was born. It’s been THE event for cyclists around the world since then. Oregon, where I grew up, was and still is known as a cycling haven – why didn’t I see all of this before I joined the cycling club in college?
I simply wasn’t ready.
The customer mind-set is the same. When decision-makers aren’t ready to see something no matter how amazing your features and benefits are, they will go unseen. When faced with this reality you must create VISABILITY by giving the customer a reason to be curious. You create value propositions that create a suspicion of value with the goal of the customer wanting to learn more from you.
Incredibly successful sales people always have an extensive repertoire of curiosity-creating tactics. Some that I’ve seen or used are:
- Inform the customer about successes their peers and competitors are having with your product. Never share confidential information and always focus on the areas of results.
- Generate interest among their circle of advisors and influencers which, for senior executives, always includes business managers and assistants.
- Blogs are used by individuals and companies to generate curiosity. Including a blog link in an introduction email can create more curiosity than generic selling points.
- People make business decisions for personal reasons. Help them in personal ways. Great sales people naturally find joy in helping others, and doing so creates curiosity about us. I learned that a bank president was having difficulty choosing a guitar for his 12-year-old daughter. I sent an introduction letter that was mostly about guitar options. I got a meeting, he bought a guitar I had recommended and he decided to buy checks from us.
- A last resort is to relay information that you know the customer will disagree with or even get angry about. This is seriously a last resort since it could alienate the customer enough that you shut off all possibility of getting in the door. I can count the times I’ve used this on one hand and it’s always been a case where three things existed: (1) The customer had a very close relationship with my competitor, (2) the sale was a once in a decade opportunity, and (3) they weren’t considering us at all. In each case I won some or all of the business.
VISABILITY is about being seen in the right way, by the right people, at the right time. If the customer is not ready to see, you have to create a suspicion of value so they become curious about learning more about you and from you. A curious person is ready to see and hear how you can help them.
©2014 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC
How are you creating VISABILITY with future customers?
