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Personal motivations for buying – found in customer history

May 8, 2025

Last weekend, my wife and I had a great time seeing Harry Connick Jr. in concert at Chateau Ste Michelle Winery – a wonderful outdoor venue. We couldn’t get side-by-side seating so we had seats one in front of the other. The couple to my right, without being asked, offered to move their chairs so we could sit together. There are wonderful people everywhere you go.

The people to my left arrived after most had been seated. A father, mother and twenty-something daughter worked their way across the row with the daughter ending up next to me. Before sitting she glanced at me with a look of fear and frantically asked her father to, “Switch with me.” The father said, “You’ll be fine.” The mother responded, “You know she’s afraid of Asian guys. Don’t make her sit there.” The father switched. Obviously the young woman had experience that made her afraid of Asian males. Her face displayed real fear when she looked at me.

Because their conversation was far from a whisper I heard everything. I could have had a negative response. But having been in similar situations, I know we all have experiences that are the foundation of our perceptions so I chose to say nothing. Throughout the concert, the father and I had friendly exchanges, so much so that when they went to get food he asked if I could please watch their things. We continued to talk throughout the evening, even though the mother and daughter were visibly uneasy. However, by the end of the evening, the daughter seemed more relaxed and the frown that started the evening changed to a smile as they were leaving.

I don’t know what her experience was but I hope she ended that evening having lost a bit of her fear of Asian males. I’ll never know but I will know that I was respectful to and that’s really all I could do.

In business, we sell to people who have many experiences that serve as the foundation of their perceptions – their personal motivations for buying. My services were recommended to a start-up CEO who agreed to meet with me. 45 minutes into the meeting he said, “I’m having a hard time believing you were at Microsoft for 18 years and a VP no less.” I asked why and he said, “I thought you guys were all overly aggressive jerks. I may have to rethink that.”

Since people make business decisions for personal reasons it’s important that we understand their personal motivations for buying so that we can sell to them effectively. Have they had bad experiences with our company before? Have they had bad experiences from implementing innovative products? Have they had salespeople who misrepresented the facts, making them untrusting of salespeople? Is their company culture highly political causing them to assume that everyone is that way?

There’s no better way to understand the customer’s personal motivation for buying than to understand their history. It wasn’t appropriate for me to ask that young woman why she feared Asian men, especially during the concert, but it’s always appropriate to learn how decision-makers earned their position of leadership. Knowing the experiences that got them to where they are is the only way to understand the foundation of their perceptions – their personal motivation for buying.

If they got to their leadership post by catalyzing paradigm shifts, they will be attracted to innovative change. If, on the other hand, they’ve arrived at their position by avoiding risk, they will be motivated by safe choices. The permutations are endless but the lesson is the same – we must understand our customers’ personal motivations for buying by understanding their history.

People make business decisions for personal reasons. Understanding the customer’s personal motivations for buying is an important part of what you learn from The Five Abilities® sales framework. My article “Five things people buy that aren’t on the invoice” tells you more if you’re interested.

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.

Feed homeless children by buying children’s music

May 8, 2025

This is a departure from The Five Abilities® but it’s very important to all of us. You can help homeless families have a warm holiday by buying children’s music.

We’re selling the album, The Little Things by Friends of the Family, through CD Baby and iTunes. All proceeds go to Vision House—a ministry that provides transitional housing and rapid rehousing to homeless families with kids. CDs cost $12.97—downloads cost $9.99. Retailers give us $9.00 for each album sold, all of which goes to Vision House on whose board I’m privileged to serve.

(Note: USA Today wrote, “Friends of the Family are just the people you want to have on a long car trip. They travel well.”)

How it helps. $20 provides a night of safety, support services, and care for one child. $60 provides for a whole family. Three album downloads provides a safe, warm night for a child with money left over. Seven downloads and you provide a night of safety and warmth for an entire family. They make great holiday gifts.

The Homeless Plight

Seattle has the third largest homeless population in the country and many are families with children. The only US cities that have larger homeless populations are Los Angeles and New York City. It’s unbelievable that cities such as these have thousands of kids living on the streets but it’s happening.

Who are these people? In Seattle, homeless people have full-time jobs, they pay taxes, and many serve us in restaurants, hospitals and other places that would surprise you. Unfortunately, these people encounter challenges that could hit any of us.

One day they’re your neighbor—the next they become ill or injured and are wiped out by medical bills. They are laid off engineers and manufacturers. They’re full-time workers who can no longer afford the soaring cost of housing and childcare. They end up living in cars, on friend’s couches, or on the street. They’re just like you and me but with unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances.

Friends of the Family

For those who follow my blog you know that I worked as a professional musician to pay for college and I continued after graduation. I quickly learned that I didn’t have the talent to run with the incredible musicians I met in Los Angeles. But it wasn’t totally out of my blood because in 1994 I wrote and recorded a children’s music album so my kids could remember what I sang to them at night.

I entered the studio intending to record just me and my guitar but instead hired 22 musicians (Friends of the Family) and a producer to create a radio-ready album. I had a great job with Hewlett-Packard so the purpose of selling the album was purely to raise money for children’s causes such as Seattle Children’s Hospital whose surgeons saved our son’s life by repairing his defective heart.

We were blessed because as we recorded there was a brewing trend by well-known artists who were producing what Kenny Loggins called, “children’s music that’s for parents too.” Popular artists like Loggins, Nicolette Larson, Carly Simon, and others, were releasing so much material that it created a new music genre highlighted in publications such as Billboard, USA Today, and Family Fun Magazine. It spawned national radio stations like Radio AAHS and Disney Radio. It created new opportunities for unknown composers like me, to get national radio play, do shows at Disneyland, and to sell music. Right time—right place—a blessing that we’re passing on.

Feed homeless children by buying children’s music. 100% of the proceeds go to Vision House (http://vision-house.org/otherwaystohelp/). Please pass this on. Thank you for your generosity. Happy Holidays.

Be sales-ready – Use these five checkpoints

May 8, 2025

In late January, I will be launching a book called Winning Lifelong Customers using The Five Abilities®. The book launch coincides with a demand generation push for The Five Abilities LLC. We’ll be updating our website, social media, consulting materials, and we’ll use The Five Abilities as our checkpoints to ensure we’re sales-ready on day one.

VISABILITY – We’ll start with 100 prospective clients all of whom I’ve done business with in previous corporate roles. Most are in the tech sector but they range from venture capitalists and start-up principles, all the way to Fortune 100 executives. Each outreach will include personalized value propositions intended to spark their own personal suspicion-of-value such that they want to learn more about The Five Abilities in regards to their business challenges. We’ll be sales-ready to earn VISABILITY.

CREDABILITY – We’re ready to demonstrate how The Five Abilities works, and how I benefited from it as a corporate salesperson, manager, and executive. Most importantly I can show how it’s helped clients and customers. I have knowledge, tools, blogs, and the book, to educate people about The Five Abilities framework. I have endorsements and I’m prepared to advocate for others should prospective clients need help beyond what we provide. We’ll be sales-ready to earn CREDABILITY.

VIABILITY – I have questions and criteria to confirm that prospective clients have need for what we offer along with the sense of urgency that accelerates decisions. I have qualifying questions to determine if clients have the experience necessary to assess our work and provide guidance on how we best help them. I’m approaching companies and people with demonstrated success and I’m prepared to help clients understand the time necessary for joint success. We’ll be sales-ready to establish VIABILITY.

CAPABILITY – Once I’ve connected with people who represent potential engagements we’ll look for signs that uncover the personal reasons people make business decisions. Does their business climate dictate need for safety in their decisions? Is their workload such that simplicity is their greatest need? Is personal and/or team reward driving the decision-maker? Are prospective clients mainly looking for recognition of great results? Will I encounter change-agents—people motivated by catalyzing an innovative revolution? We’ll be sales-ready to deliver CAPABILITY that addresses the personal reasons people make business decisions.

RELIABILITY – We’ll be unreasonably accountable so that we earn each client’s confidence. We’ll engage in a predictable manner so that people know what they’re getting before we do business. My experience along with The Five Abilities framework gives me the means to anticipate challenges that affect our clients and us. I have a solid communication framework to engage with a no surprises culture that ensures clients get important information—good and bad—from us first. We’ll be sales-ready so that we exceed the mark of RELIABILITY that clients demand.

The Five Abilities checkpoints get me sales-ready. After 30+ years this framework still helps to ensure that I’m not just ready to generate leads but that I’m sales-ready when prospective clients choose to engage. Are you sales-ready?

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

Creating a sense of urgency

May 8, 2025

You’ve successfully delivered your 30-second value proposition. Your customer has a suspicion of value and they’ve asked to know more. It didn’t happen in a formal meeting – of course. It happened at a tradeshow, a social event, a meeting on another topic, or a chance meeting. It’s not an appropriate or adequate opportunity to make a fact filled, helpful, presentation. This is a common reality for all business people and certainly salespeople.

When a prospective customer asks for more information, we have the opportunity to create a sense of urgency needed to advance the sale faster. By articulating opportunity costs and/or benefits that compel decision-makers to feel like they’re losing ground by not taking action, we create a sense of urgency. When we learn to do it with a three minute conversation we make tradeshows and social events into real opportunities to help customers. Some of the best practices I’ve seen, in creating a sense of urgency in three minutes, comes from sales professionals at Boeing and those who sell smartphone components.

At Boeing, their salespeople have tools to quickly show the average fuel cost savings and payback periods that airlines can achieve by replacing airplanes with outdated technologies. In the early days of the 757 and 767 airplanes, Boeing salespeople could show cost savings from having two people in the cockpit versus the three that were required in early generation airplanes. In each case there was an opportunity cost for not learning enough to make an informed decision.

On the benefit side, Boeing salespeople were educated enough to advise airline executives on new routes they could add with estimates on the additional profit that could be realized by the airline. They had the depth of information to offer advice on the best locations for hubs and where to store spare parts. Boeing salespeople are among the best examples of trusted advisors.

In the smartphone industry, there are a few key innovations that dramatically affect the usability of the device. One of the most impactful is innovations in glass and sensor technologies. These components contribute greatly to user satisfaction. With each successive innovation we benefit when touch, typing and scrolling gets better – glass gets thinner, lighter and more durable – the phones get easier to use.

Glass manufacturers like Corning, Samsung and LGE, employ salespeople who can quickly describe the benefits of new generation glass and the opportunity cost of not making a decision to go. In minutes they can forecast reduction in phone sales without the new technology. They forecast lower customer satisfaction and translate that into lower sales. They calculate increased support calls when users see their phones not working as well as others. They talk about manufacturing capacity for building the new generation glass creating a sense of urgency to reserve that limited supply.

Regarding benefits, salespeople for glass manufacturers have estimates on how fast users will move to the new generation phones and share the benefits of being an early adopter. They have examples of the kinds of new designs that are possible with lighter and more durable glass. They’ll give advice on the additional services mobile carriers can offer with the new devices.

In both cases, salespeople use three minute conversations to introduce the potential opportunity costs and benefits in a way that presents them as helpful advisors and not simply salespeople looking for an order. When we use the three minute conversation to create a sense of urgency, we open minds, get meetings, close business and take steps to winning lifelong customers.

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

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?

Tag Archive for: sales management

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