Before I started my business career, I wrote music and played guitar in many bands. My goal was to become either a staff writer for a record company or a recording artist. This is truly a career where less than one percent of participants end up making a living, let alone making it big. Thus, most musicians had day jobs to pay the rent.
Our keyboardist, Dave, had a day job selling pianos. He did well enough that he was made manager of one of their stores. After being promoted, he had to assess the performance of his team and was surprised to learn that they were all selling less than half of his totals. He was shocked because all of his co-workers were incredible pianists, which made their demonstrations much more impressive than his – while Dave was a great keyboardist for our rock/pop band, he wasn’t a classically trained pianist like the others.
Now that Dave was the manager he needed to find out why these great pianists weren’t selling pianos. In addition to observation he also asked non-buying patrons what made them decide no.
The most common reasons people gave were:
- They intended to buy for their kids to learn but, by listening to the salesperson play and talk, they realized it would be many years (if ever) before their kids could play like that. They decided not to buy or to look for used pianos.
- They played a bit, but after hearing the salesperson and learning how long it took them to become so good, they were discouraged and no longer wanted to spend the money. They too either decided not to buy or to buy used.
- Many never intended to play but wanted a nice showpiece for their living room. After hearing the expert play and say why these were the best pianos, they learned that good-looking pianos weren’t necessarily the best or most expensive.
The difference in how Dave engaged customers is that within a minute of meeting them, they were sitting at the piano. If he found out they played, he’d encourage them to play more. If they couldn’t play he would teach them something really simple and then walk them through the store testing other pianos for feel, sound and comfort of the bench. He helped them obtain relevant knowledge.
Dave didn’t demonstrate how he would use the piano but instead he would have the customers experience the relevant knowledge that applied to them. The trained concert pianists wanted nothing more than to perform for people, and they’d push people to the very expensive Steinway pianos even when they were just casual players. One salesperson even said, “Steinway is the only real piano.”
In this case, and in all cases that don’t involve selling pianos, helping the customer get relevant knowledge wins us more business than demonstrating superior knowledge. We need to always remember that people make business decisions for personal reasons, and our job is to help them get the information that addresses those personal reasons.
What do we see when customers get too much information? – They get confused. The number of variables becomes large and unmanageable. They have to think about it.
Why does this happen? – This generally happens because the seller is very proud of their offering and the things they consider to be huge benefits aren’t relevant knowledge to the customer’s personal decisions.
What are the best next actions to address the Why?
- Observe – Most studies show that visual cues account for most of what is communicated by human beings. If the pianists had looked up while playing Mozart they would have seen people who were discouraged rather than excited about buying the piano.
- Listen – Another important part of communication is what people say between the lines. What people really say isn’t always in the words they use. The customer might say, “We’re looking for a piano that’s good for beginners.” But what they mean is, “We don’t need the best piano you have.”
- Invite their participation – I call this same-side-of-the-table When Dave had the customers sit down to play the piano and then try other ones, he was inviting them to participate in selling to themselves. Dave would tell you that he didn’t really do any selling. He was just on the same side of the piano helping customers get the information they needed.
As Lisa Earle McLeod touts in her book, “Selling with a Noble Purpose”, we are much more successful sellers when our actions are grounded in a noble purpose. When we remember that our job is to help people make business decisions for personal reasons, we consistently execute on the best next actions. It just works out that, in sales, when we do well at helping people, the fallout is that we tend to win more sales and make more money.
©2014 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities, LLC
