When you think you are selling, you are actually building a relationship with another person. If you shift the focus from the current transaction and try to strengthen the relationship, the transactions will come naturally. You should always try to build the relationship, not push the sale.
This is my own interpretation of the wonderful book Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships.
There is a lot of things that really resonates well with me from this book. I’m trying more and more to use this thinking when interacting with clients and would-be-clients. I wanted to share how this has changed how I work.
We’re talking to a would-be-client, let’s call them Purple. They have very little experience with agile practices, but they are curious and open. They sent their project manager on a CSM course last year, but very little has changed since – they feel as if they’re under a lot of pressure, and haven’t had time to implement the ideas. Their CTO, Jack, has read a little about agile software development, but has some difficulty understanding all the practices by just reading about them.
We are fortunate enough that we have another client close by, let’s call them Green, that we’ve worked with on and off for the last three years. They use most if not all the practices we think are important. Since the two clients are not competitors, we asked Green if we could bring Purple along and do a little show and tell. Green accepted.
Jack, the CTO of Purple, came to the stand up, and we showed him how the tracking board works, how Green uses CruiseControl, and talked a little about the ideas that were behind this way of working.
Finally, we introduced Jack to Greens tech lead, Carl. We started a conversation, me and Chris from Blueplane, Jack and Carl. After a short while, me and Chris decided that we where only hindering the talk, and excused us. Jack and Carl chatted away, about what the way Green works, and what we had done for them, for well over half an hour.
It was pretty scary – if Jack liked what he saw and heard, it could mean a big job for us. Part of me wanted to jump in and control the discussion, but I realised that this way, we where strengthening our bonds with Jack, and with Carl. Since we had consciously tried to be very honest about our shortcomings and problems, I was pretty sure that Carl would not say anything negative about us that we had tried to hide.
It’s difficult and awkward for me to change the way I think about clients. I try my hardest not to push any sale with them. Instead, my very explicit goal for every meeting I have is to listen to what they say, and try to find something that is a problem for them. If I can, I try to share some experience or knowledge with the person, that might help them with whatever they are having a problem with.
This shifts the focus from me and what Blueplane does, to the person in front of me, and his situation.
This is the first blog post I’ve ever written about selling. Since selling is a big part of starting my own business, it’s something that takes up a lot of my attention lately. I’m very curious to find out what you thought about this post. Please, comment here or send me an email.