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Want more credibility? Do these three things.

May 8, 2025

Businesses don’t make decisions people do, and people make business decisions for personal reasons. Personal and professional credibility is at the core of addressing the personal reasons that drive decision-makers to choose you over your competition. Do three things to earn personal and professional credibility and lifelong customers.

Demonstrate – Basic credibility is earned by showing your customer how your offering will work for them. Even better, let them show themselves. Nothing communicates product credibility more than letting the customer do it themselves. Equally important, if not more so, is how you demonstrate yourself. Answer questions honestly even if not in full agreement with your customer and you demonstrate integrity. Take notes when your customer is lamenting about their internal challenges and you demonstrate empathy. Ask clarifying questions in the face of heated objections and you demonstrate maturity. How you demonstrate your credibility is more memorable than a product demo.
Educate – Everyone benefits from working with people who bring new, relevant information to the table. Credibility is earned by sharing expert knowledge of your product/service, your industry and that of your customer’s. Advanced education comes when you can help customers, especially in enterprises, to understand the workings of their own company. Suppliers are often privy to information that doesn’t get through the complex communication barriers inside a company. When Boeing was making the transition from proprietary computing to open systems, many end-users didn’t know why applications were changed. Our salespeople educated business executives about the benefits of open systems. We were helping ourselves at the same time we were helping our Boeing IT partners who didn’t have enough hours in the day to educate end-users.
Advocate – Trusted advisor is an over-used phrase but it’s still meaningful. People buy from people they trust and with today’s speed of business the difference between your offering and that of your competitor’s, is typically small. The differences that interest decision-makers are indicators of whom with they’d rather work—you or them? Certainly, you want to advocate for your offering and you want other customers to advocate for you. However, the way you deepen your credibility is to advocate for others who can help the customer when you cannot. Some consider this a loss of control but, in truth, it’s a huge gain in credibility because the customer sees you as someone truly looking out for them.

I keep in touch with former executives at Boeing who I first met as prospective customers. After we had all moved on to different roles they told us over dinner one night that, “In the end, we chose you guys because we preferred working with you.” The project they referred to resulted in HP becoming the preferred server supplier to The Boeing Company. Not small business.

Companies don’t make decisions—people do, and people make business decisions for personal reasons.

Customer Relationships: Being Dressed Down Can Dress You Up

May 8, 2025

No matter the strength of customer relationships, there will always be times when decision-makers are uncomfortable or unhappy about how things are going. Their unhappiness can be specific or just general discomfort. Sometimes, they just need to vent.

That venting can come in the form of complaints, or angry rants. Oftentimes the critique is unfiltered and can seem very personal. You might hear problems attributed to you—appropriate or not. No matter what you hear, the best you can do is to listen. The worst you can do is to be defensive and/or make excuses.

(Note: There will be time for calm discussion but not when the customer is too angry to hear you.)

Remember that decision-makers count on you to make them right. They choose you to help them succeed and when the unexpected happens, their peers hold them accountable. When challenged, even the strongest customer relationships can devolve into anger which uncovers more personal motivations. When you listen, you learn about those motivations and you communicate that you’re standing with them.

Experience

I had cold-called Montana State Credit Union four times, asking for their president. I got no, both polite and angry. On my fifth attempt with the president’s assistant I heard a man yelling, “Is that the @#$%*@ check guy again? Put that @#$%*@ through!”

The president railed about how I was wasting their time and how nobody in Montana wanted our checks. That I needed to find a real job, if that was possible. He said I had no value and no clue about his challenges. He said, “I need members to get more loans and credit cards. Unless you can do that, stop calling. Got it?” In seconds, my twenty-three-year-old naïve voice said, “If I can help your people get more loans and credit card accounts, would you buy our checks?”

He went silent and then angrily said, “I should let you try to prove how ridiculous you are.” I offered views on why people are uncomfortable with selling and how our training addressed that. Long story short—the president agreed to one training.

(Another note: We were trained to conduct day-long trainings in person. I wasn’t budgeted for travel so I had to do the training on a con-call and they gave me 90 minutes on a Saturday.)

Nobody in Montana was happy to be at work on Saturday but a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts agreed to deliver to the credit union if I bought six dozen donuts and coffee. That calmed emotions, slightly.

I conducted an abbreviated session and their supervisor agreed to a follow-up call in two weeks. Surprisingly, the next Friday the president called saying his people were already selling more services. He asked for another training. He also mentioned our training to his peers in the Montana credit union community.

In less than a year, Montana went from no business to our checks being available at almost half the credit unions in the state. I did Saturday morning trainings about twice a month. They weren’t buying checks; they were buying more new loans and credit card accounts, as vented by the credit union president. The checks were simply how they paid us.

I eventually met that president at a convention in Valdez, Alaska. I was managing our booth and he introduced himself saying, “I wanted to shake the hand of the pest who helped us sell more services.”

Customer Relationships: Being dressed down can dress you up.

Treat Everyone Like A Customer

May 8, 2025

“Treat everyone like a customer because you may need their help someday and everyone wins when they want to help you.” Lew Platt, former CEO, Hewlett-Packard

This was a key cultural component of The HP Way created by founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Platt often conveyed it, in his words. This culture was applied both internally and externally. Whether the person was a cafeteria worker, a customer engineer, or the CEO, we were taught to treat them like a customer. The same was true with external colleagues, whether they did business with us or not. This culture promoted relationships that would allow us to help and be helped when needed.

Do you treat everyone like a customer? Do you create relationships where people want to help you? Are you developing connections where people count on you and where you count on them? Here are four self-checks:

Are you unreasonably accountable?

When something goes wrong and the customer asks for help, the best salespeople try to help even if the problem wasn’t caused by them. They don’t blame or shame. Instead, incredibly successful salespeople are driven by the opportunity to help.

Are you predictable?

Many people prefer predictability over wild creativity. Certainly, they want the best ideas and solutions but predictability is what allows a customer to delegate actions with high confidence that they’ll get what they expected. The best salespeople deliver as expected or will predictably communicate why and how another option is better.

Are you anticipating challenges?

Experienced sellers anticipate hurdles and communicate them to the customer well in advance to avoid surprises. Even good surprises can be troublesome if not anticipated. I worked a project for a manufacturing company where the deployment of our hardware and software was completed a week early. We were on the critical path and the customer team that was dependent on us wasn’t ready. What we thought was a benefit ended up embarrassing that customer team which resulted in a disruptive trust issue.

Are you communicating good and bad news equally?

Good news is easy—bad news is hard. Customers see higher value when you proactively deliver bad news before they learn of it from others. During the same project referenced above, another critical path item was for us to train factory workers on the new applications. We underestimated how much the workers were attached to their old system resulting in unexpected time helping them understand why their management made the change. To avoid surprising management, we used a project team meeting to update everyone about the challenges, well in advance of the due date. We were rewarded by an accountable executive who personally helped us sell the solution to her employees.

Use these four simple self-checks to help you always treat everyone like a customer.

Top 50 must-read blogs on Consultative Selling – The Five Abilities(R) in for the third straight year

May 8, 2025

The Five Abilities® makes the list of Top 50 must-read blogs on Consultative Selling for the third consecutive year.

http://www.docurated.com/all-things-productivity/top-50-must-read-blogs-consultative-selli ng

The Five Abilities is #19. The blogs are not in order of “quality or importance” as explained by Docurated.com below. It’s an honor to be included. Thanks Docurated.com

Top 50 Must-Read Blogs on Consultative Selling

Last updated 04:41h 15 Apr, 2016 in All Things Productivity by Cóbhan Phillipson

Consultative sales is a pretty niche topic in the blogging world – surprisingly so, given that it’s a popular sales framework that’s widely utilized by small businesses and enterprises today. Still, you won’t find many blogs dedicated solely to consultative sales. So we thought we’d investigate the far-reaching corners of the web to round up some of the top blogs with robust resources on consultative selling to help you build your reading list, we think you’ll like what we found.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE STATE OF SALES PRODUCTIVITY REPORT

The following 50 blogs cover practically every spectrum of the field of sales, from blogs focused on the technology niche offering resources for high-tech sales consultants, to CRM tools with blogs chock-full of tips for sales professionals to fill and work their pipelines, to blogs from some of the world’s most recognized sales thought leaders – including some who have developed their own sales frameworks, some of which share many similarities to the consultative sales process, and much more.

Note: The following 50 blogs aren’t listed in order of quality or importance. In other words, we’re not trying to say that #1 is better than #50, but that these 50 blogs are the best blogs on consultative sales among the thousands of sales blogs in existence. But we used a numbering system so it’s easy for you to reference a specific blog later, or to point out a blog if you send this list to a friend or co-worker. If you’re looking to brush up your consultative selling skills, these 50 blogs are must-reads

Business Development vs Sales: Don’t Get Caught in the Trap

May 8, 2025

There are many jobs posted for business development managers but when you read the job description it’s clear that the employer intends to hire salespeople. We see titles like Life Advisor, Personal Banker, and Global Accounts Manager, but the job descriptions call out objectives for increased insurance policies, loan applications, and revenue. Why does this happen?

1. Management doesn’t distinguish between business development and sales

2. Many great business people don’t want to be labeled as sales professionals

The problem is that whether you’re leading an entrepreneurial venture or an established enterprise, business development and sales are different roles, and you need both done well. Let’s define them.

Business development – With any business you must have an environment in which you can do said business. When launching new products or services, you need business development to create an environment that allows you to sell. Tesla is a good example. While the automotive industry existed, selling luxury electric cars that are as much computer as car, did not. Elon Musk had to create an environment in which this new phenomenon could be sold.

One of the many business development goals was to create an infrastructure such that electric cars could be more than short-range, commuter vehicles. He developed business relationships with utilities to enable home charging. He built a channel of retailers, restaurants, etc., that saw the benefit in funding “destination chargers” for use by their patrons. Now, Tesla owners can easily find charging stations along most major highways in the United States. Musk created the business environment in which he could do business. The Motley Fool – Elon Musk: Tesla Charging Stations Will Be “Virtually Everywhere”

Sales – Once you have the environment in which to do business, you can then identify the right people to whom you must sell. In Tesla’s case, they aren’t called salespeople, but they connect with the people who make decisions to be the most visible, credible, viable, capable, and reliable provider of electric cars. After creating an attractive product, and the necessary infrastructure, they used modern marketing methods to increase visibility thus enabling their people to connect with qualified buyers.

Tesla showrooms and social teams are staffed with highly trained people to demonstrate and educate on Tesla features. They help people see the benefits of being a Tesla owner such that want becomes need, making Tesla a viable option. They are capable of appealing to people’s personal motivations for buying whether its safety, simplicity, rewards, recognition, or revolution. Lastly, their customer support culture emphasizes transparent communication with both existing and prospective customers. USA Today – Why Tesla Has the Most Loyal Customers

Don’t get caught by the business development vs sales trap. Hire great business development people and great salespeople who want to sell. Clearly distinguish your expectations for each and you’ll have focused employees getting great results.

©Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC

3 Key Players in Any B2B Sale

May 8, 2025

Making B2B sales can be challenging because you’re not just selling to one person, you’re selling to several people – and all of them must be convinced that you have the right product and the right value.

In B2B selling, especially in large organizations, the team of decision-makers, influencers, and key influencers may involve dozens of people. The more strategic the problem, the bigger the team.

This is why your “VISABILITY” is so important. Simply put, VISABILITY means being seen in the right way, at the right time, by the right people.

In B2B selling, it’s critical that you first understand who the right people are:

The decision-maker. You know you’re talking to a decision-maker by asking a simple question: “If we get a ‘yes’ today, what will we be doing tomorrow?” When you hear detailed buying actions (e.g. contracts, pricing, project plans, etc.) you likely have a decision-maker. In most sales situations, there will be only one, maybe two people who have the authority to commit the company to a decision with a yes. There are many who can say no.
The influencer. Influencers present themselves as decision-makers because that’s their job. But if you ask them what happens next, you’re more likely to learn of even more influencers to meet before you get a “yes.” Influencers have expertise in one or more areas that are seen as vital to the decision. The decision-maker needs these people to accept the offering in order to make a good decision and, more important, to successfully launch it.
The key influencer. These people have more clout than other influencers, and have easy access to the decision-maker. As part of the inner circle, they can get you to the decision-maker. They have expertise in various areas, but also take a big-picture view as they often are being groomed for the top spot or are decision-makers in other areas.

At the Boeing company, there are about 150,000 employees with many thousands serving as decision-makers and influencers. I helped to sell to more than 200 influencers and key influencers multiple times and each had their own criteria and personal motivations. These were definitely complex sales!

But with The Five Abilities®, you can learn to quickly identify best next actions to address all the people and motivations driving each buying decision.

I’m interested in your thoughts. Gatekeepers and influencers—one in the same or different? How does it work in your industry?

Want to be successfully visible? Great salespeople do three things.

May 8, 2025

VISABILITY – Being seen in the right way, by the right people, at the right time.

I was fortunate to work with many very visible and successful salespeople. None were better at earning VISABILITY than Jennifer and Ann with whom I worked during my Microsoft years. Their customer was a large device manufacturer that had a large phone salesforce. Their job was two-fold: (1) Convince customer executives to design products that featured Microsoft products and (2) to motivate the customer’s salespeople to focus their selling on products that featured Microsoft software.

Right Way – Jennifer and Ann made regular visits to the phone sales center to train and motivate salespeople on Microsoft’s products. They took time, on each visit, to talk with key decision-makers thus learning the personal motivations that drove each of them. This helped to shape their presentations ensuring they were not only correctly educating salespeople but also emphasizing things important to their managers. They were seen in the right way by those sales managers.
Right People – Beyond the managers there were always top salespeople who earned informal leadership roles by being the best performers. They became key influencers who Jennifer and Ann quickly identified allowing them to get advice on how to excite the whole team. They started by doing lunchtime training, in the cafeteria, but found that the key influencers never attended. A check-in with a few key influencers taught them that people only attended to get the free lunch and that the top performers didn’t take the full break because it took away from their selling time.Jennifer and Ann adapted their actions to expand their relationships with both managers and key influencers. They focused more on the phone salespeople by opening a help station, serving snacks, and distributed prizes for achieving sales milestones. With their adapted actions, the right people were now excited about selling Microsoft products and, not surprisingly, they sold more.
Right Time – The right time to be seen was not in the cafeteria. The right time to be seen was while the salespeople were selling. Jennifer and Ann adjusted to the customer’s time rather than taking them out of their element for training. Salespeople generally learn best by doing and the new actions accommodated that. Being seen at the right time garnered better results for the customer and Microsoft.

VISABILITY – Being seen in the right way, by the right people, at the right time

©Rick Wong, The Five Abilities® LLC

The Buzz: Creator, Contributor or Consumer – Sell no matter what

May 8, 2025

Company leaders strive to create positive noise about their offering. They strive to be the topic of positive conversations. They want to create “buzz” for their company and offerings, resulting in heightened visibility and credibility. It’s a bonus when we get to sell for the buzz creators but the best salespeople also know how to sell when we aren’t the hot topic. There are three stages of what I call the “buzz spectrum” and salespeople must be able to execute The Five Abilities® (VISABILITY, CREDABILITY, VIABILITY, CAPABILITY, & RELIABILITY) in all stages.

Stage 1: Creator – It’s beneficial to sell for a company that is creating positive buzz. (I’ll save the problem of negative buzz for another article.) With this fortunate circumstance we have to be ready to use this added visibility to see more customers and win more business. Customers will want in-depth information on our innovations that created the buzz and we have to be credible representatives so that we avoid turning buzz into doubt.

In the late 1980s, HP ran a set of “What if…” commercials. The message was that HP sales and service people were consultative problem-solvers. It was great visibility for those selling for HP but if we didn’t engage with a consultative approach, we lost the benefit of the buzz. If our focus was pitching versus problem-solving the customers would think, ‘Where’s the person in the commercial?’

Stage 2: Contributor – In the real world, we most often sell without the benefit of buzz created by our company and products. Many salespeople have never had the fortune of working for a buzz creator. Fortunately, creators need contributors. They need others, often channel partners, to amplify the buzz. When in the contributor role we must demonstrate our credibility with direct knowledge of the buzz and we must present ourselves as capable and reliable deliverers of products creating the buzz.

Windows 95 was one of the most anticipated product launches in the PC industry. Microsoft was creating so much buzz you couldn’t find a trade publication without an article on “Chicago” – the product’s code name. It was critical that our channel partners were credible experts on the product, that they were seen as viable Microsoft partners such that they had access to information not publicly available and that they were capable of helping customers succeed with the new product. Microsoft had to ensure that channel partners had access to information but it was ultimately up to the partner to become credible and viable experts so they could contribute to the buzz.

Stage 3: Consumer – Veteran salespeople know that there are many times when we aren’t creating or contributing to the buzz – we are simply consumers of information. Importantly, this doesn’t mean we’re irrelevant to our customers but we must help them understand how this new buzz will advance their business. We must learn enough to know how to help or we’ll be behind and become a hindrance.

When I sold checks for American Bank Stationery, in the early 1980s, the banking industry was just introducing the Automated Teller Machine (ATM). ATMs and credit cards, were creating buzz as the future of how people would get cash and how they’d make purchases. Part of that buzz was that people wouldn’t need checks anymore. No need for a checkbook, simply use a little plastic card. Certainly, we had to tout the continued benefits of checks but we also had to acknowledge where the industry was moving. When we did sales training for new accounts representatives, we helped them develop benefit statements for the bank’s ATMs and credit cards. We still represented checks as necessary in certain cases but we changed our approach to adapt to the industry and to ensure we were helping – not hindering. We remained consultative and kept selling checks even though we weren’t creating any buzz.

Know where you are on the buzz spectrum (creator, contributor or consumer) and adjust your sales approach to ensure you remain consultative and beneficial to your customers.

Three questions that earn you trusted advisor status

May 8, 2025

Advancing from seller to trusted advisor wins you lifelong customers resulting in years of repeat business and referrals. As an advisor you become part of the value that customers pay for. Advisors solve problems in a logical fashion that coalesces stakeholders and promotes collaboration. This helps decision-makers select and implement the right solution.

This simple problem solving approach keeps you focused on what the customer needs most – lasting solutions to problems. Three questions that earn you trusted advisor status:

WHAT do you see, hear and/or know that is problematic?

Early in my career I worked for an SVP who asked, “Does the patient have a fever?” She wanted to know that we were seeing, hearing or knowing things that ensured the customer had relevant problems that were acknowledged by their decision-makers. Sometimes sales and marketing people see problems and answers that may not be real resulting in chasing false leads. My SVP forced us to prove it was real by clearly identifying what we saw, heard or knew that was problematic.

WHY are these things causing problems?

Successful problem solving requires that everyone sees and attacks the same problem. The lack of collaborative thought and action, by all stakeholders, leads to failure even with the right solution. The process of discovering and deciding WHY the problem exists versus just reacting to WHAT you see, hear and/or know, constructs a collaborative foundation. Acting without that collaborative foundation relies on luck to find success. My dad would say, “It’s great to be lucky but it’s hard to repeat.”

Continuing with the medical metaphor is relevant because your doctor wouldn’t treat you without first knowing what’s causing the fever. If you had an infection you wouldn’t want to be treated for flu. The diagnosis must be right as it must for business problems.

Companies selling intellectual property offer a useful example. Product piracy allows customers to get products almost free. In emerging markets it was assumed that price was the issue but reductions had temporary or no effect. Research determined that people wouldn’t pay for something they could get for free because they’d be considered stupid. The WHY wasn’t about high price but instead about ego especially given the pirated product was perceived equal to the genuine product.

WHAT best next things you can do to address WHY the problem is happening?

With a proper diagnosis the doctor can choose the right treatment because WHY the fever happened is known. Industry is continually working on the intellectual property issue but the focus is more on delivering unique value to customers and resellers because they now know that simple price reductions don’t address the ego problem.

WHAT-WHY-WHAT is a simple problem solving discipline that focuses your creativity on WHY the problem exists. You’ll create lasting solutions and you’ll earn trusted advisor status, resulting in lifelong customers.

You earn credibility in three simple ways

May 8, 2025

Decision-makers want to talk with people who are credible information sources. Whether a salesperson or CEO, if you are credible and have valuable information decision-makers want to talk with you. If you have not yet earned personal credibility you will not get a meeting with anyone influential.

You earn credibility in three simple ways:

Demonstrate your product/service. If your product lends itself to physical demonstration do it. Product demonstrations are the most common display of what people consider to be selling. For established products that are easy to transport, live demonstrations are the norm like with PCs, tractors and other hard goods. For larger or newer products, videos have become more the norm like with industrial cranes, electric cars or commercial airliners.

Service demonstrations show how an engagement works along with results you have created for other clients, if possible. Workflows, videos, and ROI calculations are also good tools to show the benefits of your services.

Educate your customers to help them be better, whether or not they are yet customers. By educating prospective customers you show yourself as a subject matter expert (SME). Decision-makers and key influencers see SMEs as advisors rather than just sellers and they always want to see advisors.

One of my managers at Microsoft, Steve, had a wealth of experience and knowledge from years of working in various product management roles. He had a lot of market knowledge and customers considered him a SME in many areas of the IT industry. His status as a SME put him in demand by our customers which made him part of the benefit of buying from Microsoft.

Advocate for partners and peers who can offer help to your prospective customers and clients. Helping your customers, by introducing them to providers other than you, shows you as a SME interested in the customer’s success. You show that a long-term relationship is important to you even if you do not make a sale today. Advocating for others also shows that you are collaborative and confident enough to bring someone else to the party.

After winning significant business at Boeing we had the opportunity to win more revenue by including our software development tools. This was in the early days of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and it was clear that Boeing would be better off buying versus building a solution. The group with whom we worked didn’t have the expertise to know all of their options and they lacked the expertise to build software. It was an easy call that earned us lasting credibility leading to years of repeat business.

When you demonstrate, educate and advocate, you earn unshakable CREDABILITY in the minds of your customers leading to more wins and more lifelong customers.

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