Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Maybe We Had It All Wrong

It was early 2008, I’m teaching a CustomerCentric Selling class to a long time client. On day three of this four-day workshop, one of the students asked if I’d like to sit in on a sales call he had scheduled for the afternoon on the last day. I had a couple extra hours before my flight home and it was in the same building – perfect.

I had worked with this client for a while by this point and I had trained almost everyone in the company: all their salespeople, engineers, marketing, services, everyone except one person: their CEO, John.

It's Friday afternoon, I'm done with the workshop, feeling good; my student, Jason and I walk over to a conference room down the hall to meet the prospect. There were 4 people already in the room: the CIO from the prospective client, with two of his I.T. Directors, and an unexpected fourth person: John, my client’s CEO.

At first, I didn’t think much of him being there, but quickly realized it would be a great opportunity to showcase my stuff.

So, the sales call began with Jason, fresh out of my workshop, using everything I had just taught him: a consultative selling model based on asking effective questions in order to learn about a prospect’s situation, then building a solution that matches their needs. Jason starts by probing the CIO with a series of diagnostic questions. The prospect, however, wasn’t responding the way that he was supposed to. Although Jason’s questions were perfectly reasonable, the CIO’s answers became increasingly abrupt. Worse, his body language – arms crossed, sitting stiff, brow creased, zero eye contact -- was registering what could only be described as total irritation.

So, a few minutes into it, I get nervous - my guy was doing everything ‘right’, yet the sales call was unraveling. My anxiety became a queue to rescue Jason. I jumped in and I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I do remember the CIO cutting me short and saying: “Guys, stop! You're not getting me; stop asking me questions and tell me what you do.” Ten seconds in, I had crashed and burned.

Just then, I glanced over at John, the CEO, and thought, “S_ _ t, now what?!” I could only imagine what he was thinking: “This is what we’re training our salespeople to do?”

The feeling in the room became more and more uncomfortable. So, John leans forward and with a calming voice, says, “Hey guys, that reminds me of a time when I was at MCI...” And he tells a story about a time when he used to work for MCI and what had happened after a merger. He described how he and his management team made a series of mistakes that led to a series of problems. As John began to share this personal experience, you could see an immediate change in the room: the CIO's posture completely changed: he relaxed, he uncrosses his arms, he set aside his Blackberry, which had been consuming his attention, and he leaned forward towards John and started to really focus in on what he was saying. I don’t know how to describe it other than he looked mesmerized by John's words. John ends with, “What I learned from that experience was….”. The story lasted no more than 3 minutes, and when he was done, silence. John didn’t ask anyone in the room any questions, just silence. I had no any idea what to do at this point. I had nothing to offer. Neither did Jason. There was zero dot zero chance that I was going to jump in at this point.

After a few seconds of silence, the once tense CIO calmly says, “You know John, I was a client of MCI at the time and here is what I went through…”. And then he launched into a relevant story about a similar experience. And, John listened; not just listened - but really LISTENED. I didn't totally get what John was doing at the time, but it was like he was helping the CIO build his story in real-time.

The room is quiet again. A few seconds later, John added another story, but this one was more personal. It was a marginally relevant experience, but this one included his kids. Then, the CIO topped that one with a story about his kids and progressed to his in-laws. This went on for probably another 30 minutes, bouncing between personal and business stories. About 45 minutes into the meeting, the CIO stops and said, “But John, here is the deal; we’re on 3 continents: can you guys scale?” It got serious all of a sudden. After a few seconds of silence, John looked at him and said, “I have no idea, we’ve never done this before.” I looked over to Jason and I could tell he wanted to reach over and strangle John; his mouth was literally wide open. Then, John added, “but we will do this together.”

After a few seconds, the CIO looked over to his 2 I.T. Directors and said, “OK, what do we need to do to get started?”

John and the CIO stood and shook hands, and the meeting was effectively over, details to be worked out later, deal closed. The CEO and the customers left the room.

I’m sitting there with my guy Jason and the only thing that’s going through my mind is: “WTF just happened?” Once John stepped in, the meeting went from interrogation and defense, to a mutual sharing of ideas; almost like two people letting each other in, one at a time.

Anyways, I left to catch my flight home, but felt completely out of my league because of what just happened in front of me. I had just witnessed the perfect sales call, but I wasn’t able to make sense of it. So, I get to the airport, went straight to the lounge, had a drink, and I wrote down everything that I thought John did:

  • He told stories; some professional, some personal. But these were different than the normal business dialogue stories.
  • He was vulnerable; it was weird that all his stories included some form of admission of his own mistakes.
  • Although I didn’t know this at the time, he had a point to everything he shared.

  • He didn’t come across as ‘Superman’; he just seemed ‘human’.

  • He was patient and demonstrated an unbelievable intent to listen - real listening beyond anything I knew was possible.

  • Lastly, and I didn’t recognize this while it was happening, he got the CIO to reveal everything a salesperson would want to get out of a prospect on a sales call: his issues, his goals, his personal experiences, his beliefs.

Here is the kicker, it’s what John didn’t do: He never asked a single question – not one. He got a once guarded, arm-crossed CIO to completely open up and reveal himself without asking any questions. John didn't do any of the things that were being taught in any of our sales trainings and did things that weren't being taught.

This experience began a whole new journey for me. I had to figure out exactly what John did, how he did it and how I could learn to do it myself. Nobody was teaching the 'John' method, but everything he did just seemed to work like magic. This was the good stuff.

The most frightening part of this experience was that I had to question everything I knew to be true. I had just realized that there was a better way...

- Ben Zoldan


3 comments:

  1. I have always thought I was a better "intuitive" salesman; then the sales training began...Art

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ben - thanks for sharing this story. I feel that this is a foundation event in the history of StoryLeaders - I am glad that you memorialized it here. I expect to enjoy telling this story to quite a few people.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting, but I found myself thinking "yeah maybe." I certainly believe personal connection works in selling, consulting, and relationships, but the story seemed a little contrived.

    ReplyDelete