This is a picture of one of my dogs, Luke. Unfortunately, he passed away far too young for such an active and handsome fella.
As you can see, Luke loved to play fetch with the ball. He would do it for hours…if only my arm had been up to it.
In many ways, Luke’s behaviour is like that of many salespeople who rely on ‘likeability’ and ‘building relationships’ to win sales (don’t get me wrong, these are important, just not enough these days).
With every question and request from a potential customer, they either:
Seek to answer the question straight away (fetch the ball) – without thought as to why the question was being asked in the first place (what’s the real question behind the question?)
Immediately respond to the customer’s request for a: sample, quote, demo, setting up a reference call, sending a proposal, complete the RFP, etc (fetching over and over)
These behaviours have been hard-wired into many, if not most salespeople, since childhood.
“Answer the question.”
“Do as I ask.”
…teachers and parents have said.
And kids do…to avoid getting in trouble.
The challenge is, the strategies that kids use to stay out of trouble and conform in childhood, don’t serve them well in adulthood, especially if they want to be top sales performers.
In fact, they sabotage the buyer/customer too because, unconsciously, they’re often asking the salespeople low value input (vs. output) questions (cliché: “We are interested in buying X, what’s your best price?”), or getting them to play fetch (or jump through hoops) on activities that may be too early in the sales/buying process, or that aren’t really necessary at all (e.g. setting up 3 reference calls with people of your choosing who will only say good things about you…?).
Question: What’s one of the fastest ways to get rid of a salesperson?
Answer x 2: Ask them a direct question. Ask them to do something for you.
What transactional behaviours do your salespeople do that might lead you to suspect that they play fetch more than they should? Here are a few candidate requests that create a lot of activity…that just don’t seem to convert into concrete next steps, decisions, commitments or sales.*
Sending a sample
Sending a quote
Doing a demo
Setting up a reference call(s)
Sending testimonials
Sending a proposal
Completing the RFP
Insert your own here
If you sense and feel that your sales team responds immediately to customer questions and requests without clarifying the question or asking for/guiding next steps as a result of actioning that request - and haven’t got a good handle of how many of these activities lead or convert to business, you have a tremendous opportunity to tighten your sales process and behaviours (inputs).
The outputs will be more sales and growth in less time for less effort – larger deals with less pressure on price. Oh, and delighted customers too.
If you’ve identified that your salespeople play fetch too often, and you feel that they could do with some training or coaching on how to ‘unlearn’ these sub-par behaviours, ask more effective questions and handle ‘play fetch’ requests more effectively, give me a call.
*Customers often want to be liked too. They don’t want to say “no” to the salesperson. Giving the salesperson hope by doing these activities is their misguided attempt to letting the salesperson down gently.