How to Be One-Up in a One-Down Sales World

The nature of being One-Up means seeing, recognizing, perceiving and understanding something invisible or unknown to others. As applied to professional sales, it is something like, "I know something you don't know. May I share it with you."

There is no reason for anyone charged with making an important decision to rely on the advice of a person who is One-Down, the position of knowing less about the decision than the person who needs help making it. The person who needs a better results needs someone who is One-Up to provide them with good counsel, someone with knowledge and experience they are missing. The decision-maker isn't looking for a salesperson to help them; they're looking for a Jedi Master, Yoda, or Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Too Transactional to Be One-Up

For a long time, I've noticed most salespeople treat sales--and the relationship with their prospective client--in a way that is far too transactional. They've sought to identify a problem as a way to sell their "solution." This experience resembles walking into CVS because you have run out of razors (your problem) and buying a four-pack of whatever cartridge has the maximum number of blades (the solution). The clerk with the scruffy beard and the man bun doesn't use razors but he can take you to the right aisle, and from there you're on your own.

Our scruffy clerk has the advantage of being able to offer you many different types of razors, but the salesperson has only one solution to sell: their own. This makes their primary advice and recommendation something like, "Buy my solution from me and my company." If the only reason you ask your client questions is to identify a problem so you can sell your solution, there is strong evidence that your approach is too transactional to find you One-Up.

On Being Released from One-Down

The first time I experienced being One-Down, I was scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef with the Columbus Zoo. I had hundreds of dives by that time. When the leader of this expedition disclosed that each group would have to be accompanied by a marine biologist, I groaned at the thought of having a chaperone. Once in the water, the marine biologist showed our group life we would have missed. Once on the boat, I told my group there is no reason to ever dive without a marine biologist. The marine biologist could see things I could not see until he showed them to me.?

Because your client needs you to help them improve their results, you have to help them see the things they might swim right past without you slowing them down and pointing to their attention towards something important.

Good Counsel is Hard to Find

The primary challenge that keeps salespeople in the One-Down position is the approach they use to sell their "solution," one that avoids most of the conversations that would create value for the client by helping them to see what is invisible to them, but perfectly clear to you. Being One-Up means you are leading the client in understanding how they should make the decisions that would improve their results.

What makes you One-Up is your ability to provide your prospective clients with a deeper understanding of why they are experiencing poor results, the different ways they might address the poor results, what factors they should consider when choosing how to improve their results, as well as how best to pursue better results, including the conversations they need to have and who needs to participate.

The Wrong Side of the Table

If you want to change the very nature of a sales call, when you find yourself in a conference room with your contact, sit next to them instead of across from them. It will shift both of your perspectives. You can say, "I want to make sure you can see the same data I am looking at." A lot of senior leaders have a table in their office so they can meet with people. Suggest moving to the table, the One-Up move of offering advice outside of "buy my stuff."

The reason to sit on the same side of the table is because you are there to enable your prospective client to make the best decision for their company, one that improves their results. While it is true that your client is going to be the one to make a decision about how they are going to improve their results, but if you taught them how to understand the root cause of their poor results, what they might consider, how best to evaluate the different factors, and the best choice available to them, you made the decision for them.

Obligations of a Truly Consultative Salesperson

Without being One-Up, you cannot be a truly consultative salesperson. When you remove the "truly consultative" you are left with only "salesperson," something that suggests a transactional experience of buying and one that creates too little value for the complex B2B sale. ?

The starting point of being consultative is the ability to see something invisible to others and helping your clients by providing them with a higher resolution lens. Once they can see clearly, being consultative means providing your client advice about how to improve their business.

The word "consultative" doesn't mean "sell your client your solution," even though that is an outcome you make possible--if not certain--depending on whether or not you are One-Up enough to move your client from One-Down to One-Up as it pertains to the decision they need to make.

You want to be One-Up and a world that is increasingly One-Down sales environment. You want to be the person that can see things that are invisible to others, including the ability to see around corners, predicting the future and helping your clients change before events and external forces require them to change on a timeline not of their making.?

You can learn the nine strategies that make you One-Up in?Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative . The book will be published on April 19, 2022, and you can order now on Amazon.com.

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