Four Lessons Learned to Close Deals #3
Lesson #3: Ask the Next Question
Whether you are working with existing customers or new opportunities, many ‘polite human traits’ can interfere with you accomplishing your objectives of providing a solution to their business needs.?Many technical people are not comfortable asking “why”, for fear that the client might feel they are inexperienced because they do not understand what is obvious to the client.?Digging into the problem and understanding how it was addressed prior to your involvement is key to issue resolution.??
Likewise, I found many salespeople neglect, hesitate, or avoid the commercial “next question” discussions all together.?Even though I’m focused on the technical sale, the commercials should follow a very similar process. The sales focus should help to identify the commercial value of the business issue.?How much does it cost to not do this??Once that is identified and clearly articulated, you then transition to value where it relates to the commercials.?
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Here is a very good example of what is possible when you ask the next question.?While an Account Executive and I were visiting a long-time client during our regular Quarterly Business Review, we asked the Operations manager the same question we always do, “how is everything going?”?His response was what he always said, “Normal”.?I even wrote that down on my notepad, “all is normal”.?Since they recently establish a new implementation of the product, the Account Executive innocently inquired as the status of the new install.?The response from the Operations Manager was, “Oh! That’s working great right now”.?I thought that was an odd response based on the previous “normal” statement, so I just had to asked him, “what’s normal?”.?That is when he explained their “normal” environment, which, to me, was far from what normal should be.?
Over the course of the next several weeks, I worked with this client and many of the different groups within their organization.?It was during the technical requirements discussion around the cause of their ‘normal’ status is where I found out that the product was being stopped every night during the busiest time.?This caused a delay, and once restarted, took most of the business day to catch up.?Unfortunately, this was the time they would shut down the product again for the evening activities.?
Taking lessons 1 and 2 into account, I did not presume I knew the solution until the actual problem was identified.?To identify the actual problem, I asked lots of “next questions” and listen to understand the actual issue.?Once I understood, I was able to help them understand.?They believed the ‘product’ consumed resources that they needed to complete their tasks.?They also believed a second task was a dictated regulatory requirement that conflicted with the first task and the product.??By asking the next question and listening ‘we’ determined that some minor changes to their application would significantly optimize resource usage by their first task.?In addition, the regulations sited were outdated and new regulations allowed for modern options, which eliminated the task conflicts altogether.?
By helping them design a solution to resolve their business issues, I was able to improve the overall design that extended my products use, in turn, kicking off a multi-year multimillion of dollars relationship with that client.
?The fourth lesson, which I cover next, was an enabler in this solution design.