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A useful resource of articles on better business relationships.

How much more does a trusted relationship brings me?

The first thing you notice when you start to build

Trusted relationships have multiple benefits

The first thing you notice when you start to build trust is that people tell you more. Not just more in quantity, but qualitatively more too. Information that was previously deemed too sensitive to share, is now passed on. Initially with a caveat of “just between you and me” and later without caveat as they trust your sense of discretion.

As you learn more, you find ways to help more. If you’re selling, you get to introduce other products or services. More broadly, you see opportunities to spread work across your own business network, introducing other providers to your customer or client. These other providers then want to help you in return, leading to more new opportunities. And your trusted client or customer is happy to act as a reference, helping you realize these new opportunities.

There are financial benefits too. You’re are less likely to be challenged on price and more likely to be paid on time. You will also get more support in any dealings with procurement.

You’ll spend less time chasing work through time consuming and costly proposal processes. And, where work is put out to tender, your trusted partners will make sure that you have the information you need to make a compelling bid.

As your relationship develops, you will start to feel that your customers and clients respect you, and that they are ‘on your side’. This can show itself in many ways:

they will forgive the occasional mistake, and where these occur they may even shield you from the consequences, perhaps even from your own organization.
if they see any threat, they will alert you, so as to preserve the beneficial business partnership they have with you.
they are also likely to recommend you to others, both inside their organization and beyond.

Any disadvantages?

There are no real disadvantages to a trusted relationship other than requiring you to invest time and energy, and to look after your client’s interests. This isn’t always easy. As Daniel Goleman notes in his book Social Intelligence:

“Stars in these fields do not approach a customer or client with the determination to make a sale; rather they see themselves as consultants of sorts, whose task is first to learn and understand the client’s needs – and only then match what they have to those needs.

Should they not have what’s best, they’ll say so – or even take a client’s side in making a justified complaint about their own company. They would rather cultivate a relationship where their advice is trusted than torpedo their reliability just to make a sale”.

Choose carefully

While rapport and a basic level of trust can be established in a single conversation, building deeper trust takes time and effort. Not every business partner is looking for a trusted relationship so choosing the right relationships to nurture is critical. Building trust demands investment and you want to invest wisely.

Three questions it pays to ask yourself before investing:

Do you like the other person? It is odd how in our personal lives we recognise that another person knows when we do not like them, but in business we tell ourselves that we can fool people. FACT: If you do not like the person you’re dealing with, you are leaving business on the table.
Is the other value-focused or do they focus wholly on price? In the second scenario it can be an uphill struggle to change their perspective to one that focuses on value.
Does the potential value of the relationship justify the time and effort involved? Where the other person sees your product or service as low value and a commodity, consider investing in a relationship with more long-term potential.

Trust is a precious

We all value trust, and trusted relationships should be treasured for the benefits they bring to both you and your clients. For real trust, you must commit to knowing your clients intimately, and ensure that you put their interests first. That takes effort, but is worth it – your clients will feel the extra value created, and you will reap the rewards.

engage-universe.com delivers business relationship and sales skills training to executives, professionals and sales teams around the world, helping build business trust.

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The 80/20 Rule (also known as the Pareto Principle) states that 80% of the output comes from 20% of the input. The Rule has been found to apply to many areas of life, and business is one. Look at your own business and you will likely find that 80% or more of your business comes from 20% of your customers or clients.

In view of the 80:20 Rule we must clearly focus on maintaining or improving our relationships with key accounts, while also looking to add to their number. Too many focus too much on attracting new accounts, sometimes at the cost of existing accounts’ loyalty. The Trusted Advisor (Maister et al) argues that “the cost of developing new-client business is 4 to 7 times higher than the cost of developing the same amount of business from an existing client”.

Many companies continue to focus on tried (or is it tired?) and trusted measures for managing key accounts and estimating future business. These include account size; account growth; account profitability; payment record; repeat business. The problem with such measures is that they are typically backward looking. They tell us what has happened, and as we all know from the mandatory warnings of investment advisors, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. In the same way we ignore these warnings, we ignore other useful performance measures available to us.

One such measure is the Meeting Assessment evaluation tool derived from Smarter Selling (Dugdale and Lambert). The tool assesses the degree to which your behaviour in meetings and conversations with people at your key accounts, is indicative of particular types of relationship. The type of relationship indicated is a good determinant not only of your current business performance but also the future.

So what are the four types?

Social relationships

You may have some customers you enjoy spending time with. You meet outside work, chat over many non-business topics and have quite a close relationship. You may think this type of relationship is easier to turn into business. However, if you don’t handle with care, the business result may not be very satisfactory and can bleed personal time and money. The most common social relationships are with senior executives who are wined, dined and entertained by you, and by your competitors. You may think they like you, but is it really you that they like? How easily could someone else tempt them away?

Ad-hoc relationships

You know the people involved, but see them rarely. Sometimes you get unexpected urgent orders. They see you as an expert provider of a specific product or service and they call you only when they need you. You have no visibility of their future business direction and they feel no loyalty to you. Sales are treated as a bonus, but because of their unpredictability and urgent nature, requests can put a strain on you, your team and your organisation. The customer or client is very focused on price and you may be easily displaced by competitors who can offer similar products or services at a more competitive price.

Technical relationships

Customers buy from you regularly because they value your product or expertise, but they do not buy as much as you would like. You know how they use your product or service, but you do not understand their broader business. They like your product or service but they do not connect with you on a personal level. Conversations tend to be narrowly focused and do not offer up new opportunities. They may even find your knowledge and expertise intimidating. Your “share of wallet” is not as high as it could be as opportunities are being left on the table.

engage-universe.com delivers business relationship and sales skills training to executives, professionals and sales teams around the world, helping build business trust.

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The impression you make in your first meeting is a crucial factor in the client’s decision to have any further relationship with you, so making a good impression in this meeting is critical to winning future business. That’s why it is important to understand the way in which people make simple mistakes in first meetings, which result in no further meetings.

Too many questions focused on the client’s situation and problems

Asking questions to gather information that clarify the client’s current situation and issues is obviously important at a first meeting. However, if the discussion focuses too much on these areas, it may not be very insightful for the client. They may feel that they are just providing you with facts which they already know, and they may see this as a waste of their time. This is because, despite the fact that you may have learned a lot, you failed to bring them any value or fresh insight. As one executive remarked “There is limited value to me in educating a salesperson about things that I already know.”

Too much focus on ‘painful’ issues

Many people like to target the discussion on areas where the client’s business may be struggling, without realising that this can be painful and demotivating. This has even been called “pushing the bruise” – when the bruise (issue) is pushed, the client replies, and may in time come to appreciate that there needs to be some sort of a solution to it. They may even consider that you are that solution. However, this may not necessarily build a long-term relationship between the two of you. What happens when you call next time? Do they remember the pain, the cure or something else? Will they want to engage in another conversation that makes them feel more pain?

Too narrow and focused on a single solution

Often salespeople and advisors focus questions around their area of knowledge, or their own services and products. This has many drawbacks. Opportunities to help more broadly are often missed; they are seen to offer only a few limited options; and all too often, the client feels manoeuvred down a narrow path to an unwanted end – often for the benefit of the advisor, not themselves.

Too linear and prescriptive. Not flexible enough

Business people don’t appreciate meeting with pushy, self-orientated advisors and salespeople. This is particularly true when faced with less experienced salespeople who ask questions using a pre-programmed ‘linear’ approach. Something along the lines of…determine the situation…identify problems….understand their likely implications…and then push to a close with an agreed solution or sale. This may have worked in the past. It no longer works in today’s dynamic, complex commercial environment.

As long ago as 2006, Neil Rackham, acknowledged originator of consultative selling and author of the book SPIN Selling wrote:

“For some years I’ve felt that classic selling skills models, including many that I have created, rely too heavily on selling solutions to problems.

Today, the most dynamic growth opportunities come from divergent offerings. Salespeople following problem-based models often fail to uncover opportunities until very late in the call – if at all.

What is needed is an approach that encourages discussion of opportunities much earlier in the sales process.”

The world is not linear; our thoughts bounce around; questions need to bounce too – especially if they are to diverge instead of converge.

So what kind of questioning approach is more suitable for today’s complex market?

Advisors and salespeople should aim to engage clients in discussions that, from the start, add insight and value – for the client. Conversations should address not only the current situation and issues, but increasingly focus on future opportunities. Through discussing broader topics, advisors uncover value previously hidden from the client, who then sees a real benefit in continuing the dialogue. This ultimately builds trust between the client and advisor and a stronger long-term relationship.

This approach is covered extensively in Smarter Selling (2007) by David Lambert and Keith Dugdale, which introduced a new questioning framework called SHAPE. As the name implies, SHAPE is not about narrowing a conversation towards a specific solution; it is about helping clients shape their future. Where do they want to get to, and how will they get there?

The aim of the advisor is to ask the client questions which help them think through their situation and identify opportunities and hidden value, while assisting them in achieving their longer term goals. The client enjoys the experience and looks to the advisor for further guidance; trust and loyalty grows; the cost and time to win work reduces; revenue and profits increase; and job satisfaction rockets! Not surprisingly, SHAPE has been adopted by many leading companies around the world.

To find out more about SHAPE or Smarter Selling techniques designed to build trust and longer term business relationships with your clients, subscribe now to receive the latest insights and updates.

engage-universe.com delivers business relationship and sales skills training to executives, professionals and sales teams around the world, helping build business trust.

Subscribe now to receive insights and updates to help you improve your business.
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Are competitive proposals a significant part of your business? What does your win ratio look like? In our experience, too many people spend too much of their time losing. In one case, a client proudly told us that their win ratio was 18%. In a competitive market, they thought this was a good result – at least until we got into a discussion about how 82% of their time and effort was spent losing.

How often you win can depend on many variables. Most of the time you’ll be told that you didn’t win because of price. Don’t believe it.

The “price lie”

Buyers tell you this because it may be uncomfortable for them to say they do not like your service or product, your company or your people – all of which would be painful for you to hear and may impact your future relationship. And for you, you do not want to feel that you did a bad proposal or pitch, but if someone else just undercut you, it doesn’t feel like your fault. The “price lie” works for all parties and it is easy to see why it is so common!
So, while price is an important factor, it is rarely the single factor, and often not the key factor in the buying decision.

People buy based on feelings

Organizations like to think that buying decisions are objective and pragmatic. They build bidding systems and processes to ensure objectivity. And larger organizations set up procurement functions to manage these processes. However, despite all this, people ultimately buy from people. As Ford Harding famously wrote in his best-selling book “Rainmaking”:
“People buy [based] on feelings and use facts to justify the way that they feel.”
I’ve sat on bid assessment teams where we have used score sheets; notionally allocated 70% of the decision to technical factors and 30% to price competitiveness; then, at the end of a day of “beauty parade” presentations, the chair of the selection committee has opened with the question “Who did we like?”.
On one memorable occasion we all agreed that the person who presented to us at 11am was our preferred choice, but at 5pm we could not remember their name, nor the company they represented!
Consider your own behavior when you make certain decisions. When your car needs servicing, a technically demanding procedure, do you check the equipment the garage will use? Do you question the mechanics qualifications? Or like me, do you make the decision based upon the telephone response or face-to-face interaction with the receptionist?

Be different, be human

The key to improving your win rate is to be different. Many people forget that if every bidder in a pitch is the same, the decision is harder for the buyer. How can they choose when everyone appears to be the same? In the absence of other differentiating factors, price becomes the dominant selection criteria!
Happily, despite advances in “robo-selling” and the vast choice available via the internet, the human element remains a powerful differentiator. As Dov Siedman noted in How:
“There is one area where tremendous variety still exists, however, one place that we have not yet analyzed and commoditized, and which, in fact, cannot be commoditized: the realm of human behavior – How we do WHAT we do.
The tapestry of human behavior is so varied, so rich, and so global that it presents a rare opportunity, the opportunity to outbehave the competition.”
So, the next time you are invited to pitch, refocus your attention on the human side of the process.

Do:
• Press for a face-to-face meeting. If you aren’t granted a meeting, consider withdrawing and re-investing your time in a process that gives you a better chance of success.
• Listen patiently to your prospect. Really listen. Ask questions that demonstrate interest and understanding. Avoid questions and statements that display capability – that comes later.
• Share examples and insights – of things you’ve seen; not things you think. People do not really care what you think – what they care about is what others do; the things you’ve seen.

Don’t:
• Waste valuable time talking about yourself. They can always hear or read about you and your organization later, if you grab their interest.
• Offer brochures and other marketing materials – that puts the focus on you, not your prospect. Instead, wait and see if they ask for information. If they do, you’re on the right track. If they don’t, maybe you did not make the right impact.
• Offer to send a proposal. This is the biggest mistake made by poor salespeople and consultants. The other person will say yes to a proposal because it entails no commitment on their part and stops you eating more of their time. Then they can say “no” at a distance – typically by telling you that your price is too high!

For more thoughts and tips on next generation consultative sales approaches, sign up for our regular posts.

David Lambert is co-author of Smarter Selling, the best-selling book published by Financial Times, available in seven languages.

engage-universe.com delivers business relationship and sales skills training to executives, professionals and sales teams around the world, helping build business trust.

Subscribe now to receive insights and updates to help you improve your business.
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Trust – a firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.

Trusted relationships have multiple benefits

As you learn more, you find ways to help more. You get to introduce other products or services. More broadly, you see opportunities to spread work across your own business network, introducing other providers to your client. These other providers then want to help you in return, leading to more new opportunities. And your trusted client is happy to act as a reference, helping you realize these new opportunities.

There are financial benefits too. Your clients are less likely to challenge your prices and more likely to pay on time. You will also get more support in any dealings with procurement.

You’ll spend less time chasing work through time consuming and arbitrary proposal processes, which will greatly reduce your costs of winning business. And, where work is put out to tender, your clients will make sure that you have the information you need to make a compelling bid.

As your relationship develops, you will start to feel that they respect you, and that they are ‘on your side’. This can show itself in many ways:

they will forgive the occasional mistake, and where these occur they may even shield you from the consequences, perhaps even from your own organization.
if they see any threat, they will alert you, so as to preserve the beneficial business partnership they have with you.
they are also likely to recommend you to others, both inside their organization and beyond.

Any disadvantages?

Choose carefully

Three questions it pays to ask yourself before investing:

Do you like the other person? It is odd how in our personal lives we recognise that another person knows when we do not like them, but in business we tell ourselves that we can fool people. FACT: If you do not like the person you’re dealing with, you are leaving business on the table.
Is the other value-focused or do they focus wholly on price? In the second scenario it can be an uphill struggle to change their perspective to one that focuses on value.
Does the potential value of the relationship justify the time and effort involved? Where the other person sees your product or service as low value and a commodity, consider investing in a relationship with more long-term potential.

Answer yes to all 3 and you’re good to go. Answer no to all 3 and you’re better to stop. In between and you have a more difficult decision to make!

Trust is a precious

engage-universe.com delivers business relationship and sales skills training to executives, professionals and sales teams around the world, helping build business trust.

Subscribe now to receive insights and updates to help you improve your business.
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How did I lose!

At engage universe, we often hear stories where people have missed out on business, which they were convinced they would win.

These tales tend to go something like this:

The consultant or salesperson works in a market-leading organization, whose targets are facing important and common challenges, where they are likely to need outside help. Their services and solutions successfully address these issues.

They had a useful initial discussion with senior executives focusing on these problems; followed a week later by a well-rehearsed presentation, supplemented by a detailed proposal document outlining the situation, and the major benefits of working with their firm. They felt that they had more than demonstrated their professional expertise.

A few days later, they received a short call from a director telling them that unfortunately they not been chosen. The unsuccessful team was taken aback. They later found out that a competitor had won the work, no doubt for a lower fee!

Your biases cloud your judgement

The stories we tell ourselves, especially when we lose, prevent us learning from our mistakes. Recognizing the biased stories we tell ourselves is the first step to managing our biases and learning from our mistakes. These cognitive biases result from systematic errors in the way people process information about themselves, others, and the outside world. Cognitive biases have become influential in finance and behavioral economics over the past couple of decades and of the leading theorists researching their impact, psychologist Dr Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 2002, for his work on for how these biases affect judgment and decision-making.

Useful in the past

Cognitive bias is the result of the mental shortcuts that our brain favors in order to make fast, focused decisions and conserve energy. Imagine walking through waist-high scrubland to be then suddenly faced by a snarling tiger. You would act very quickly, and run as fast you could, with little thought of anything else; and in doing hopefully would survive for another day.

Survival aside, our bodies are also driven to be energy efficient. Deep thinking takes energy. Our brains prefer, when the option exists, to follow a familiar mental path because that involves less energy than creating new mental pathways.

A simple example. As you read the numbers that follow here, calculate 3 x 2 + 4 = ?
The answer is easy and required minimal mental energy to compute.
Now calculate 7 x 8 – 16 x 5 = ?

How was the second calculation? As easy as the first or more difficult? Did your brain engage willingly, or did you feel some resistance?

Three common biases

In our opening scenario above, the team members have likely fallen prey to at least three common biases:

Confirmation bias
Curse of knowledge bias
Self-serving bias

The narrow path – confirmation bias

When going to see the client, the team was aware of the challenges facing the industry. This may have sub-consciously impacted the way they approached their conversations – focusing on these issues, as opposed to broader areas of interest and/or future opportunities – conversations which the prospective clients may have valued more. This is an example of confirmation bias, which is the tendency to select or add extra weight to information that conforms to our beliefs or experience, and to play-down or ignore information that runs contrary to our beliefs and experience. Focusing on these pre-identified challenges would lead the team down a narrow path, failing to gather a more complete picture of the client’s situation. Despite being invited back to present at the next meeting, senior management may have felt that this presentation offered little longer of value.
“What the human being is best at doing, is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”
Warren Buffet

Arrogant and incomprehensible – your knowledge is a curse

The advisors were convinced that they had presented effectively, and were surprised when they lost. A second bias came into play – the ‘Curse of knowledge’. This is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with others, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. We know how our services solve their problems…and struggle to appreciate that they don’t have anything like our level of knowledge. Often specialists use their own jargon, which they have picked up over the years, or make assumptions about the understanding of others. This can leave people disengaged, and even confused. While listening politely, these executives’ minds may have been focused elsewhere.
“Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listener’s state of mind.”
Chip Heath, Made to STick: why some ideas survive and others die

It wasn’t me – self-service bias

When the team was told that they had lost the work, they blamed the fact that their price was too high. However, while value for money is clearly important to people when deciding who to work with, price is seldom the deciding factor. The reason advisors often blame price, ‘the great price lie’, could be that they are exhibiting a self-serving bias. People use this bias to maintain their self-esteem: attributing positive outcomes and events, such as winning a proposal, to their own character, efforts and behavior; while attributing negative events to external factors, such as a competitor underbidding them, or more generally adverse business conditions. This can prevent important lessons being learnt. By undertaking a more honest and fuller review, you identify the real reasons and learning points that can be applied to this client and others.

Finally

Do you recognize any of these biases in the people you have worked with?
How about in yourself?

Well, one final bias to watch out for is the Bias Blind Spot. This is the tendency to see the impact of biases on the judgement of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one’s own judgment. Most people appear to exhibit the Bias Blind Spot. In one study of 600 people in the United States, over 85% believed they were less biased than the average American, with only one person believing that they were more biased than the average American.

So perhaps, next time you miss out on an opportunity, consider carefully if your biases had any influence on the result.

Coming up

In our next article, we will look at the benefits of understanding your biases, as well as providing some practical advice on overcoming them to develop more rewarding relationships with your clients.

engage-universe.com delivers business relationship and sales skills training to executives, professionals and sales teams around the world, helping build business trust.

Subscribe now to receive insights and updates to help you improve your business.
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Introduction to Paul Neale

Hello,

I am looking forward to working with you on engage universe, and in particular in supporting you in developing your engage business.

How did I get involved?

I first became aware of IoweU approaches when I was looking for ways to improve the business development skills of professionals at KPMG in China, where I was head of Market Services and Learning and Development. We had been trying to improve the mindset and ability of our partners and managers for some time, running a variety of workshops with the ‘usual suspects’ sales training organisations – Huthwaite, Richardson, and a few others. Although our efforts did change peoples’ approach slightly, we needed something with more bite…something more practical. I knew of David from his time at PwC, so we brought him in to train up our people through a fairly intensive program spread over three months.

The feedback we received was terrific, and we could see tangible results within a few weeks, with stronger and deeper relationships built, and new work starting to be won. It pleases me greatly that KPMG still consider David one of their trusted partners.

So when I left KPMG a few years ago, David and I spoke, and we started to look at how we could further develop the IoweU product, especially how we could help people through the use of technology and other tools, as well as creating more integrated ways to develop skills.

What I am focused on

I have concentrated recently on building the engage universe online presence, including the new website, the Affiliate Support Centre, and e-learning, where we now have 19 modules. As you can imagine, creating these has taken quite a bit of time, and we are constantly looking at ways to improve them. We are now aiming to have an integrated micro-learning program on questioning skills released in the coming months.

My past

Well, my background is as a bean-counter. After completing university in Manchester, I trained to be a Chartered Accountant in the early 1990s in northern England. After qualifying, I decided that auditing wasn’t really for me, so moved over to Hong Kong in 1994 as an accounting training manager, originally for only two years. I was lucky to work in a growing and vibrant firm, as KPMG expanded into mainland China increasing in size from under 1,500 people to over 8,000 people in just over a decade. Although initially focused on L&D, I was asked to do other things, including heading up areas such as Communications, Knowledge Management, Marketing, and helping lead the development of the global organisation’s core values. I was fortunate enough to be made a Partner in 2003, and thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

I left five years ago, and since then have provided learning and development consultancy services, as well as pursuing other business interests in England, including owning a children’s day nursery, and undertaking some small scale property development in Yorkshire.

On a personal note

I am a keen football fan, and have supported Manchester United since the early 1980s – watching them when they didn’t win too much in the years before Ferguson arrived! I still retain my Season Ticket at Old Trafford, despite living 6,000 miles away, though do manage to see a few games every year. Although they are not the team they were a decade ago, it still pleases me that they have won the Premier League more recently that David’s middle-table Arsenal.

I am married to Claire, who is an English teacher. We actually came out to Hong Kong together – getting married only three days before our flight here, and with only two suitcases between us. We planned to stay for two years – but have now built a life in Asia, and all our children have grown up here and love the city. I have two boys (well men now), Matthew and Rob, who are at university in England; and a teenage daughter Lizzie.

Looking to the future

I am really excited by the opportunities that engage presents for people trying to build their business relationships and sales. I feel strongly that with the robust nature of the IoweU approach, coupled with the great tools and learning we are developing, we can make a real difference – just as David did for people at my old firm.

Key to seizing these opportunities is a strong network of affiliates, fully supported through ongoing two-way communication with engage universe, and I am keen to make this happen.

I look forward to working with you.

Paul Neale

B2C approaches do not work in B2B

Asking a series questions to converge on a solution may work in B2C, but are less likely to work in B2B markets where buyers have more complex needs and their buying decisions involve higher risk – for them. Buyers see many salespeople, they make comparisons and more readily sense when they are being led or manipulated.

Pitch first, ask questions later

Too many salespeople pitch a product or solution without first building a solid understanding of their customer. Then they wonder why the customer does not buy. Today’s buyers demand more. If you do not take an interest in their world and their goals, they can easily find someone who does.

There is a saying that goes something like “We have two ears and one mouth. We should use them in the same proportion.” This is expressed more eloquently in another saying “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Facts, facts and more facts

Ford Harding in his book, RainMaking noted that, “People buy [based] on feelings and use facts to justify the way that they feel.” People may buy based on feelings, but many salespeople sell based on assumption and cognitive ease. This is understandable as our brains are pre-disposed to take the easiest mental path since deeper thought demands more energy. We feed this cognitive ease by asking fact-based questions that support our interpretation of situations that we’ve seen before. Then we pitch our solution based on assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the whole situation.

Outdated questioning leads to missed opportunities

Legions of salespeople and consultants have learned to ask open, closed and probing questions. Others follow structured techniques such as SPIN, described in Neil Rackham’s 1988 book SPIN Selling. Rackham’s book was revolutionary in its time, but by 2006, even he realised the SPIN approach was past its sell-by date. He wrote:

“For some years I’ve felt that classic selling skills models, including many that I have created, rely too heavily on selling solutions to problems.

Today, the most dynamic growth opportunities come from divergent offerings. Salespeople following problem-based models often fail to uncover opportunities until very late in the call – if at all.

What is needed is an approach that encourages discussion of opportunities much earlier in the sales process.”

A better questioning approach

The approach that Rackham said was needed first appeared in 2007, in my book, Smarter Selling. SHAPE questioning powers conversations that are more insightful and enjoyable for all concerned; trust and loyalty grows; the cost and time to win work reduces; sales and revenue increase; and job satisfaction rockets.

SHAPE is a flexible questioning approach designed for today’s rapidly changing world. It helps the salesperson develop a comprehensive picture of their buyer’s background, challenges, personal and business goals, action plans, and more.

SHAPE is not about narrowing a conversation to a specific solution; it is about helping clients shape their future. Where do they want to get to, and how will they get there? The job of the salesperson is to ask the client questions that help them think through their situation. The salesperson, through association with the discussion then becomes a natural preferred provider in areas where they can help.

In the 2^nd edition of Smarter Selling, Neil Rackham was kind enough to write:

“Success in the consultative sale is all about creating customer value from every meeting, but few salespeople know how to do this. Smarter Selling has many useful and practical ideas to help salespeople improve their value-creating capabilities.”

David Lambert, co-author of Smarter Selling – July 2017.

Grow your business; learn SHAPE now

Adopted by leading multinationals in industries across the globe this proven questioning approach was, until recently, only available in two ways:

Read the book Smarter Selling and teach yourself.
Attend corporate training workshops delivered by the co-authors of Smarter Selling or a certified instructor.

Now there is a third way; online learning that makes SHAPE available to everyone.

You can be one of the first to benefit.

The first 50 people to send their email address to info@collaborate-universe.com will get FREE access to the SHAPE learning program.

Take this opportunity NOW to learn the SHAPE questioning method; build client loyalty and move your selling skills to the next level!

What’s changed in sales methods over the past 30 years and what it means for modern sales-based organisations.

How does a sales-based organisation know which sales methodology is best?

Solution selling, SPIN selling, Insight Selling, Smarter Selling, RAIN Selling, Consultative Selling, Challenger Selling….and the

list goes on. Over the last 30 years, sales ‘experts’ and authors the world over (us included) have devised, formulated and promoted a range of different selling methods that have all spelt the demise of the traditional ‘push’ sales approach.

And it seems that with every new method, the authors claim to be introducing a revolutionary new approach. But are they really?

David Lambert, my co-author on Smarter Selling, and I weren’t so sure. We suspected that each new method was really just putting new labels on existing approaches, or making a small evolutionary change to existing sales methods. More than anything, we thought the influx of so many sales methods into the market is likely to be quite confusing to most sales based organisations, who will be left wondering who’s right, who’s wrong, and what’s actually different between the different methods?

So, we decided to take matters into our own hands and review what’s actually changed in sales methods over the past 30 years – and has it been an evolution or a revolution?

Download the paper here.

The Death of Formulaic Questioning – Conversations, not interrogations (RogenSi)

If you have been “sold to” in the past, you will remember being subjected to inauthentic salespeople operating from a prescribed list of questions. They were not really listening, just waiting to pounce on anything you said that opened the door to a sale.

Those days are over.

Sophisticated, informed Buyers are looking for authentic, knowledgeable Sales Professionals
who can conduct a meaningful conversation.

This paper by RogenSi can be downloaded here.

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