In my roles in sales and business development leadership, I’ve been observing one recurring pattern. After a business conversation with representatives of a company I hear colleagues and sometimes myself saying things like “I spoke to them and they want […]”. Or “The company doesn’t like our offer. They want us to do more.”
But why do we use “them” and “their” so frequently? Why do we personify “the company” all the time?
We tend to generalize what individual people say and believe that this represents the strategic opinion of a whole company. According to the findings in behavioral psychology (see e.g. Kahneman et al.) this comes from the way how our brain is wired. We’re programmed to take mental shortcuts wherever we can to save our brain energy. It’s far less effortful fo us to attribute everything a person says to the group that they belong to and ignore individuality.
In my opinion, it is really important to be aware of that bias. Even in a business call, we speak to human individuals. Humans to humans. Yes, “they” are working for a company (and in their mission). But “they” are living people with different emotions, goals & different capabilities. It’s a mistake to believe that you can convince every person with the same message. It’s also a mistake to believe that spokespersons of a company are some “humanoid interfaces” of the company’s will. We must separate the agent from the organization it represents.
So how could you increase the chances of your business calls becoming more successful?
Here are some suggested steps:
- Know 100% what you want to achieve in the call.
Before jumping on a call have a prepared list of things you want to see as an outcome. It can even be just to get to know the other person or clarify one question. But make it explicit. It sometimes helped me to share my expectations from the call at the beginning. This mostly invites the other person to do the same. Ideally, you save a lot of time as both side’s expectations are clear.
- Know your offer and know how your solution works. Learn to describe it from different points of view.
It’s common sense but I’ve seen this gone wrong many times. Before selling anything know what you sell. Come up with a suggestion for how a solution could work in an individual situation and what the benefits are for your spokesperson. The key is to be able to explain it in very simple terms. Save any technical details for later. You can practice your pitch alone in your room – to imaginary doormen, secretaries, assistants, product managers, CEOs, board members, etc.
- Who is this person you are speaking to? What’s their agenda?
Get to know your spokesperson as well as you can before your call and of course later in every conversation. Use any public information you can find (e.g. Linkedin, Twitter, personal blog) and create a profile that ideally even includes character traits.
Individual characteristics could be for instance:
- What motivates the person? How are they incentivized?
- How much does the person know about the company business and about the problem you want to solve?
- How inspiring and/or creative?
- Attitude towards risk
- many more…
Every person has a unique agenda. Their agenda is rarely aligned with that of the company. Some want to get a promotion, some want a higher yearly bonus or more budget, etc. Some even fight for a greater cause or want to get more visibility in the industry.
Use public information as a conversation starter to find out more about the person and ask follow-up questions. There are so many better topics than just the weather! You could for instance refer to a recent social media post or event attendance.
Even if you’re not able to create a complete profile of the person you at least showed some respect and appreciation. I’d feel valued if somebody would have recognized one of my blog articles before a conversation. This would set up a positive atmosphere right from the start, a fruitful ground for any later conversation.
- What is the company’s agenda?
You’ve researched the company before picking up the phone. You know what they do, in which business they are, and also read the latest 3-5 Google news entries. You’ve checked their LinkedIn page and know the names of their top executives. But the most important of it all is probably to have a good understanding of their main objectives. What is, strategically speaking their most important initiative? What’s their agenda to drive their growth? You can learn this from CEO interviews, recent investor reports (if public), social media, press releases, or some friends from within the company.
- How do both agendas fit what you have to offer?
Now you know more about the person’s agenda, their character and you also know what the company is aiming for.
Let’s work with a simple example here:
Your company sells IT cloud integration services to bigger companies. Now let’s say the company you want to win over is in the textile machine manufacturing business. The company’s main initiative is to become more software-driven and be less dependent on providing hardware only. Let’s say there is an internal name for this initiative called “garment I/O 2.0” (You read this in their investor report).
Your spokesperson is a young product manager willing to take some risks (you’ve learned that from his recent Twitter post about parachute jumping). He is still young in the company and wants to move on his career path towards a higher-level leadership position (visible in his LinkedIn profile).
The agenda match between your agenda, the spokesperson, and the company could be:
The company needs to grow its cloud integration (what you have to offer) to speed up its digitalization process as a prerequisite for a more software-driven product line. The product manager is a digital native and wants to foster his career. Leading a new project for cloud integration (what you have to offer) would give him advances towards his career goal.
Now you build your storyline and the essence of your call around that sweet spot where all three agendas are overlapping:
In the above example, your pitch could sound like this: “I’d love to help your company in its mission to become more software-driven by leveraging our cloud infrastructure. But to make this fully work I’d need somebody from the product management department who is willing to try something new.”
As spokespersons and agendas can vary in each case there are obviously trillions of variants. The most important thing is to look independently from those three different angles and prepare your notes before blindly running into a call and mumbling your standard pitch. The best salespeople know that every situation needs a slightly different storyline.
I’d be happy to hear your feedback after trying this method. You might have different experiences and I’d be happy to learn. Just shoot me a message to chrisdommers (at) gmail.com.