Weed Out Bad Customers

This is Chapter 2 in my book The Slow Sale: How Slowing Down Wins More Deals available on Amazon.

A New Metric 

For many businesses, revenue is the primary metric. While important (it does keep the lights on, after all), this number reflects what happened in the past, not what will happen in the future. 

It is a trailing metric, a result that gives after-the-fact information. It cannot help you change course mid-process and it does little to establish a sustainable foundation for your business. 

So, what should you measure? Numbers and revenue are easy answers, 

but the wrong ones. 

Instead of looking at profit, look at people. 

Rushed Sales Attract Bad Customers

If revenue is the engine driving business, then sales are the only goal – quality of customers is eclipsed by quantity of closings. Chasing numbers does little to drive sustainable sales going forward. 

Which would you prefer: consistent growth month after month but with high turnover and bad customers, or a strong base of customers with repeat business?

(Fingers crossed you chose the latter.)

When you are rushing to “always be closing,” there is no opportunity to reflect. Practices that you think are keeping you afloat may actually be boring a small hole into the stern.

What keeps you alive now is ultimately going to drown you. Figuratively, of course. 

Going fast is an attractive trait...to the wrong types of customers. These bad customers, the ones who are also addicted to the thrill of speed, share a similar lack of thoughtfulness. They made quick decisions to buy and just as quickly will leave and move on to the next shiny thing. They didn’t plan for a long-term relationship, they are not interested in a partnership. Impulsive and afraid of commitment, that’s how they roll. 

It is common business knowledge that gaining new customers is exponentially more expensive and time consuming than working to retain existing customers. Bad customers come fast and go just as fast. So how can you steer clear of these bad eggs? I have two pieces of advice: 

Stop it!

In a classic MADtv sketch, Bob Newhart plays a psychotherapist whose entire therapeutic repertoire is to yell “Stop it!” at his clients. One woman is terrified of being buried alive, and so he just yells “STOP IT!” While it is bad therapy to apply the “STOP IT!” method to counseling, applying it to sales is a stroke of genius. 

Simply put, if you’re doing something fast as part of your sales cycle, “STOP IT!” 

Perhaps you find yourself rushing through sales calls because the list is long and only getting longer. You want to finish, so you hurry. Yet when you are rushed, you inherently rush the customer, and all of this thoughtless frenzy is a formula to attract bad customers. 

Speed is a dangerous addiction that produces bad results.

I’m not telling you to stop doing sales or sales calls altogether, but rather to analyze your sales methods and stop doing the fast and unhelpful things. Fast sales and rushed methods are either not going to be effective, or when they are effective, they might just be an easy onramp for the wrong customers. 

What if You Can’t Stop? 

Let’s go back to the long list of sales calls from earlier. It might be the case that they are too critical to eliminate. You’ve tried stopping and it backfired, so now what?

If eliminating the activity is impossible, the next question you must ask is, “How can I take intentional steps to slow it down?” How can you transform a negative process into something that is efficient, and more importantly, effective—both in terms of revenue growth and good customer attraction? 

When you become more effective, you become more profitable. 

You gain the freedom to add staff and outsource stress. This expansion, in turn, promotes the desired efficiency—making more calls while still preserving the level of thoughtfulness and effectiveness that earned you that right in the first place. 

Some bad customers are unavoidable. Even if you slow down your sales processes with intentionality, you may still end up with bad customers, but hopefully fewer of them. For every bad customer you drop, you open up time and mindspace to pursue and close a good customer.

Knowledge, Skills, and Discipline

When we eliminate fast and slow down the overall process, the role of salespeople gains critical importance. These people must become experts of the craft, valuing both intentionality and efficiency.

Three key areas that help develop sales super ninjas: knowledge, skills and discipline.

“You have to walk before you can run.” These frustrating words have been proclaimed to every person discouraged while learning a new skill. While annoyingly pithy, and often unhelpful to the situation at hand, the underlying idea is sound.

Hijacking the sentiment for the purpose of the Slow Sale, we say, “You can’t go slowly unless you have sufficient knowledge.”

Process Knowledge 

What are you trying to sell, and to whom are you trying to sell it? If this leaves you with a blank stare, go back to class. 

The answers to these questions are as critical as they are basic. The intersection, the sweet spot, is where need meets fulfillment of need, and enables you to best serve your customer. 

Product Knowledge 

If you’ve advanced to this step, it’s safe to say you know the product you’re selling. But do you really know it? I mean, really know it—inside and out, backwards and forwards, on the script and off the script? 

Knowledge enables you to become an expert, and experts transcend the title of “salesperson.” They rise to the trusted ranks of “consultants,” a duality that lends credibility not only to the business, but to the thing being sold.

Customer Knowledge

A good salesperson can sell an Eskimo the proverbial ice, wowing with enough razzle dazzle to win a sale that isn’t entirely merited or understood. And this is often how bad customers come on board.

A great salesperson sees beyond the sale, pacing herself and getting to know a potential customer enough to gauge a good fit. 

She can present a product and articulate how it can help solve a unique problem, address a specific pain point, and advance a customer’s personal goals.

Self-Knowledge

By taking the time to know yourself, you can transform from mediocre to exceptional. You can work from your strengths instead of compensating for weaknesses, employing your experiences toward better and better results. 

When you know yourself, you can relate honestly with prospects, and honesty is attractive. People like being with secure people who are not caught up in proving themselves with a sale. Your knowledge and confidence will enable you sell differently. Slowly.

Skills

Natural and learned skills provide stability in a tumultuous process. Many salespeople rely on speed or product knowledge to hit sales goals, but these are moving targets that deliver uncertain results. Even supreme customer knowledge is not enough to launch a successful sales career. 

Those adept at employing their inherent skills engage with customers and close deals. Savvy sales professionals know that the cycle is long and different things will be demanded at different times. They need a full tool belt from which to draw resources, and they need to be patient. Good, efficient sales are Slow Sales. A skillful salesperson has learned to make peace with the moments of lull and apparent inactivity.

In contrast, unskilled salespeople jump around with frenetic energy. They get sidetracked, go down rabbit holes, and unthinkingly take the path of least resistance. They get distracted and discouraged. They don’t know what it takes to commit to the long, slow, winning process.

Discipline

Just because you can run, doesn’t mean you should. 

Discipline in sales requires immense self-control, and doing something because you can is different than doing something because you should. Slow is hard. 

It demands that you don’t cut corners or add artificial speed to a long process. 

By going slowly you resist the temptation to impose artificial deadlines or arbitrary sales goals. You can give prospective customers space because there is not a contrived frenzy driving decision timelines. Moving a customer faster than he or she wants to move might mean losing them. It may also be the shift that turns a good customer into a bad customer simply because you started off on the wrong foot.  

Undisciplined rushing is also a classic prescription for bad customer onboarding.

Walk, even though you could run. Take thoughtful, deliberate steps instead of rushing toward visible results. It may not be as exciting, but it is a whole lot more sustainable. Heed the wise words of Carl Honore from his book In Praise of Slowness:

“Speed is not always the best policy. Evolution works on the principle of survival of the fittest, not the fastest. Remember who won the race between the tortoise and the hare.”

All Together Now

The overall goal of sales is turning potential customers into long-term customers.

In these mutually beneficial relationships, cultivating depth and longevity requires time and persistent effort. Rushing is not an option. 

In business, these relationships take two forms: sales and non-sales. The “sale” example is easy and feels good. You do the work, establish the relationship, pursue the Slow Sale, and the product fits. Sale closed. Relationship proven. 

The “non-sale” example is harder. What do you do when the product isn’t a fit? Many salespeople simply move on, believing that “no” is “never.” But this is abandoning a potentially good relationship. Instead of simply moving on, ask how you can add value by positioning yourself as a trusted advisor.

Work to maintain the relationship so that when the time or need is right, that customer will come to you. Sometimes that means waiting until another iteration of the product is released or until the customer has a budget. What you thought was “the end” might just have been a time to slow down and wait. 

Slow Sales in the Attention and Interface Economies 

In recent years, commentators have described the economy as the “attention economy.” 

Marketers jockey for position against other products for space on the shelves and space in the minds of buyers. 

In the deluge of constant advertising, memorable and meaningful is an elusive goal.

It’s the same for those of us working in sales.

Fast is Forgettable

Distraction is everywhere. There is always something new to watch, flashy to see, or urgent that requires our response. Social media beckons, screens entice, apps ding with notifications, phones ring, emails arrive, and the list goes on and on. 

Amidst this density of sight and sound, what can marketers and salespeople do to stand out? How can they capture attention?

Rather than be louder or shinier, what about going slow?

When everything is moving faster and getting louder, the thing that grabs 

and holds attention is the outlier, the fish that stays still as the river rushes by.

The Slow Sale is novel because it is a different buying experience. It attracts buyers because it conveys patience, persistence, and long-term presence. It is not fleeting or trendy; it doesn’t lose interest. 

Slow is sustainable. 

Going Slow in the Interface Economy 

Just as this new economy demands attention, it also clamors for the best interface and interaction. There is increasing priority given to clean instead of cluttered, simple instead of complex, functional instead of fancy. 

Today’s customers demand swipes and taps over instruction manuals, all within an easily navigable interface. In the tech world, more and more products and operating systems get judged primarily on design and ease of use over other capabilities. This design addiction is moving into other areas of the marketplace as well.

Look at AirBnB. They transformed the formerly clunky process of finding a room or condo and streamlined it with functionality and personality. The design of the interface, as well as the person-to-person interface built into their model, revolutionized the short-term rental market.

Uber did the same for ridesharing and transportation. You pull up an app on your phone, set your pickup location and destination. In response, you see the driver’s name, car type, reviews, and estimated pick-up time. 

You’re in the car, out of the car, and no money has changed hands because the app has taken care of that for you. It’s safer, more secure, and far more streamlined than standing on a street corner hailing a taxi.

By removing the frenzy and slowing down the process, Uber actually saves you time. 

Our economy is changing because of consumer preferences and technological capabilities. Sales must follow suit. Adopting the Slow Sale as your mantra avoids knee-jerk reactions to swirling change. It enables you to adapt patiently to meet the evolving needs of customers. 

Sales as Storytelling

Humans are by nature storytelling creatures. It’s how we make sense of our life, our family history, and our place in the world. Stories engage our hearts and our minds, they draw us in. 

Stories sell. 

Getting Customers to Hear the Story

Good stories take time. The listener must be allowed to get caught in the drama, wrapped up in the details, and assimilated with the characters. This process cannot be rushed without truncating importance and meaning.

When we engage customers in the story of the sale, we want the same thing – to stop, pause, and grab their attention. We want them to focus on us and be moved in a way that drives them to action. 

Stories that capture the audience produce great sales. 

Going fast prevents the kind of context you need to tell a great story. It rushes the audience to the final page and refuses to let them bask in the details. Speed might close a deal, but it is a deal with no context and no buy-in. 

By slowing down, you create the space and opportunity for them to hear the story and make it their own. 

Listening to Customer Stories

I recently attended a big conference and found myself watching all the people walking around. The thought struck me that each of those people had personal goals and organizational vision. Yet at the same time, they each had problems standing in their way.

People go to conferences and read books because they recognize a pain 

point. They have a problem and want a solution. They seek the help of experts or the fix-all product to solve it. Although each problem is unique, every person walking around that event was the same.

Unearthing these root problems is the key to good sales, and these problems are usually buried in the context of a story. 

Listening to stories takes time. It’s slow. You can’t rush a solid venting session or a good complaint. No one wants to just quickly offload it and then act as though it’s over and done. People need to really unpack these problems and issues to get to the point where they can take a deep breath and feel like it’s really been a cathartic moment.

That’s what we want as salespeople; we want to hear the full story and 

understand the weight of the problem. We want it to be emotional and 

personal for the teller of that story so that when we respond and present 

a possible solution to the problem, it will provide relief. 

It’s a much slower process, but it’s a more human one.

This is Chapter 2 in my book The Slow Sale: How Slowing Down Wins More Deals available on Amazon.