When you’re new to selling, it’s easy to feel like your job is to rush towards “making your pitch.” After all, that’s what you’re here to do: tell them what you have to offer, and see if they want it.
But maybe the answer is to understand their needs first. Yes, that’s surely more important: if we don’t understand their needs, we cannot possibly know if our product or solution addresses an important problem for them.
This tension is easy to describe and difficult to manage.
No salesperson worth their salt thinks that barreling in with a solution first is a good way to make a sale. And yet, it can feel uncomfortable to listen, because you know SO MUCH about your solution, you’re on this call because you’ve already figured out that this will be a good fit…and, and, and. Plus, let’s be honest: it can feel uncomfortable to keep on asking questions.
The catch is, even if we were mostly right—we do have a solution to an important problem they have—we don’t know how the client describes their problem, we don’t know the hierarchy of needs that they want to address, we don’t know if they are the decision-maker or if they need approval from seven other people.
(Aside: a reminder to you nonprofit fundraisers out there. Don’t get fooled by the vocabulary. Everything here applies to all stripes of philanthropy too. It’s just that the word ‘needs’ requires heaps of nuance and sophistication. Philanthropists have needs too. We all do.)
It is remarkably easy to finish a sales call, even one that felt very successful, and not know the answers to all of these important questions.
So that’s the most important thing, right? Asking questions.
Well, actually, no.
The most important thing is the unwritten thing, the thing that AI (and all the emails you’re dying to have it write for you) cannot communicate:
I am a trustworthy person.
I care about adding value to you.
More than anything, I want to be useful to you.
I am committed to demonstrating that through my behavior.
All of those things come first.
No amount of speed, technology or technique will alter the first question the person you’re selling to is asking themselves:
Is this a person I trust, someone who I believe is looking out for what I believe is most important?
