A frame to explain everything in Sales call

I did not invent this, I just discovered this. And thanks to Miller Heiman, AchieveGlobal and Huthwaite.

For decades, we are keep talking about customer centric, but what is really in the customer's brain?

Miller Heiman used a term "customer concept" to describe this, but they just describe the element in it such as, "trying to fix sth, avoid sth and achieve sth". They do not go deep in it for some reason, and the element in the concept is not organized.

I think AchieveGlobal (former as Learning internationl and BSI in 1963, founded by several behavioral psychologists and professors from Columbia university) is the first company who research sales behaviors and comes out Professional Selling Skills using data collected from Pfizer's thousands of sales reps. They use the term "Needs, which is customer's willingness to change current situation" and "Needs behind the needs, to describe why this needs is that important and usually needs behind the needs refer to 3 things, financial, performance or image"

Then 1974, a new research started by Neil Rackham and then SPIN comes out, SPIN is to find out why much of the time, the customer have needs, and they know pretty about your solution and agree that your solution can help them on the needs, but they just do not take actions.

These 3 methodology Conceptual Selling, Professional Selling Skills and SPIN Selling are all proven my billions of sales, sales managers and senior leaders. Today, I am trying to combine them together.This seems can explain everything now.

To help you understand quickly, I just give you an example.

The Dreaming house. And you are a sales rep selling houses

Facts of current circumstances are:

40 square meters, 900 meters to the subway station, do not have car park nearly, it is a basement and do not have natural light.

Different people will have different feeling of these facts. If a college student living here and always transport from subway, this might have some inconvenience but just "Aware", he will do nothing. when you sell house to him at this moment, he will indifferent.

When he got a girl friend, it might became "Dissatisfaction", for example, girls might like plants to decor the room but plants need sunlight. But just some dissatisfaction, so they began to find some way to improve this, so called "Internal Development". When you sell house to them at this stage, they will also indifferent.

When they get married, this comes to a "Real Problem", but they might still do not want to buy a new house, because for young couples, there are a lot of areas that have much higher priority than buying a new house. Such as self development, find a new job, a new car or short term investment. But when you trying to sell a new house to them at this stage, they might indifferent, but they also might be convinced by you to take actions, and this is where and how SPIN selling works. Many sales use a term as "create customer's needs" are talking about this stage. I am not saying that it is impossible to "create customer's needs" at the stage "Aware" and "Dissatisfaction" , good sales always "cherry picking". Time is everything.

Then they have a baby, this makes them "Desire to act". No matter you are selling or not, the customer will actively looking for venders. But before that, they will have a family meeting and discuss what is the results they want to get from a new house and if that can meet the both husband's and wife's personal needs.

I quote MillerHeiman's definition of Business Results and Personal Win:

Business results is what the customer really buy, for example, the customer is buying the hole, not the driller; they buy better image, not the watch; they buy knowledge, not the books;

Personal Win is why the people make this decision this time, for example, a company want to have a new office location, after 3 month comparison, the CEO chose the one which is nearest to his house. A director only approve if everyone had approved, for safety reason. A VP choose the second score bid vender because he need to balance all the 3 venders in their purchasing list.

So here comes the key of selling, when a customer comes to you and say,"I want to buy a new house." You must keep in mind that the customer might have been through a great journey from aware the problem to really take actions. It is the duty for the sales people to listen to the customer's story and guide the journey to a happy end. And if the customers are not ready yet, listen to them and help them to understand where they are. And this is really customer-centric all about.

In human brain, all results is in the word of benefits, when people began to think about a new house, they think about benefits, closer to subway, big car park, big house, fresh air, beautiful sunshine. Why all the good sales are state both feature and benefit to the customer? This is human, because all needs in the customer's brain is words of benefit, saved in his/her brain's nerve cells (or synapses）, some of the people can link feature like 200m to short and 900m to long, 2 rooms to small and 10 rooms to large. But when processing complex situation, human brain might can not link that, such as AMD Ryzen 7 1700 link to fast? or I7 7700k link to fast? or Apple A10 chip link to fast? Usually customer can not make the linkage because above 3 chips use different design and production, they can not be compared apple to apple.

In all, I think all the selling skills training related to sales calls can be fit in to this framework, if can not, please contact me. I might need to add dealing concerns to this frame, I will figure it out in the future.