Right Topic, Right Moment, Right Person

It is probably now over two decades since I read the following statement from a Swiss sales trainer: “I do not sell anything to people. I just talk to them until they want to buy”

At that time he had already understood that selling is not about closing techniques and objection handling but about holding “value-adding conversations” with potential clients. What has changed since is that today sellers have to hold these conversations with crazy-busy people who have no time.

When is a conversation value adding?

For a seller to add value to a sales conversation he/she should talk:

a) about the right subject,

b) at the right moment,

c) to the right person.

This powerful combination will lead to an informed decision being made.

The conundrum though is how to figure out who the right person to talk to is, what the right subject to talk about is and when it is the right moment to talk. The short answer is that relationship intelligence among other things is an important method helping you solve this conundrum. Yet relationship intelligence is not just desk research, it is to a great extent gained through interactions (conversations) with people. So we use the same vehicle (the conversation) for a dual purpose: to gather relationship intelligence and also to get a person to make an informed decision. While the value of conversation is usually more obvious for sellers it is less so the crazy-busy prospect. For conversations geared towards relationship intelligence gathering, the problem is even more acute.

Solving the conundrum: create value-adding conversations

A clear understanding of the intended purpose of a conversation is paramount. Is it primarily focused to get decisions directly advancing the sales campaign? Or is it more about relationship intelligence gathering? While we might go into a conversation with a particular purpose in mind, we also have to be prepared that this purpose might shift during the conversation.

Let’s assume a seller has found out about an event which is triggering an urgent need within a prospective customer organization. This increases the likelihood that the moment is right to talk about the subject of the trigger event. From the seller’s knowledge of the customer’s organization, he/she also can infer which person is most likely to be concerned about this event.  The seller might be confident enough to expect, that the conversation held with this person will directly advance the sales campaign. However, early in a campaign, with a customer organization we do not know very well, there is also a high chance that our assumption will not be correct. Then the purpose of the conversation has to shift from advancing the sales campaign to gathering relationship intelligence. During the conversation, the seller might conclude that although it is the right moment and the right subject for the organization, he/she is not talking to the right person. The objective is now to get the prospect to make a decision to come forward with the name of the person in the customer organization who might be more concerned by the subject. By being agile, the seller can still get value out of the conversation. Yet there is an equally important question:

Where is the added value for anyone helping us gather relationship intelligence?

If we stay with our scenario, here are at least two thoughts why the conversation might also be valuable for the person the seller is talking to.

–      Getting the right for first refusal to tackle the subject

–      Fostering ones own image in the organization by referring a potential solution provider to someone more concerned about the subject

A prerequisite for these possible outcomes is obviously that the seller was able to build trust with the conversation partner. These are the social skills that oil the wheels of a good sales conversation.

How to profit from this discussion?

You can have more productive conversations with your customers if you

–      Enter conversations with the right mindset,

–      Have always a primary and a secondary objective for the conversation

–      Are agile to switch objectives according how the conversation develops

Christian Maurer

Why having a list of contacts is not enough

Have a look on LinkedIn or trawl through your company's CRM and you'll see there are a lot of people who feature on your list of contacts.  .  There are rumours of people who have over 30 000 LinkedIn contacts.  135 million users in the world (at least the last time I looked).  Does knowing a lot of people automatically mean you have a large network?  How best then to clarify the soup of contacts and relationships you have, online and offline?

5 signs you have a useful contact

Ask yourself these simple questions to identify your really useful contacts

1.       Do I know my contacts job title and what he/she really does?

This is a minimum.  Being vague at this point is an indication that your contact probably doesn't know what you do either.  Score 2 if you know both job title and responsibilities.  Score 1 for knowing only 1.  Score 0 for being vague.

2.       Does my contact appreciate the work I do or did for her/him.

Be honest.  If you think you did a bad job, this is obviously not the right person to use for networking.  If you are proud of what you did and you think your contact is happy, make a note.  Score 2 for a good job, and minus 2 for a bad job.

3.       As well as a professional contact, is this person a friend?

A friend in high places is a friend indeed.  However, if this friendship is public knowledge you may get stuck with the label of nepotism.  Crossing the professional contact – friendship line has rewards (a new friend) and risks (loss of face when using that contact for professional purposes).  Score 2 for friends and minus 1 for very close friends that might get you labeled as engaging in nepotism.

4.       How many contacts from our own networks do we share?

Sharing contacts is positive, as it means you are more likely to be helped and to help each other because you both belong to a common group.  However, if you share a lot of contacts (more than 50% overlap) then you won't bring extra networking help to each other.  You are more likely to increase the exclusivity of the group you both belong to.  It's a good time to look for fresh air outside the group.  Score 2 for between 20 and 30% network overlap.  Score minus 1 for over 50% overlap and minus 2 for over 80% overlap.

5.       When did I last see my contact?

I have a contact who only ever gets in touch because he needs something doing.  Although I am usually happy and able to help, the relationship is definitely a one-way street.  Bit by bit, I have taken the power to decide what happens next in our relationship.  Skewed or unbalanced relationships are not reliable.  Score 2 for regular meetings and a balanced relationship.  Score 0 for once a year contact and minus 2 for imbalanced relationships.

4 steps to improve my relationships

1.       Total up your points.  High scorers are your really useful contacts.  These people will help you to connect to new people. 

2.       Take a look at the low scoring contacts.  Within this group you'll find the people you could easily work with more efficiently. 

3.       Choose one high scoring contact and pick a date next week to go out for lunch to celebrate.

4.       Choose a low scoring contact, for whom you consider it worthwhile to improve the relationship and pick a date next week to get together and kick-start the relationship.

Cate Farrall

Challenger vs. Relationship Builder

When Cate Farrall invited me to be a co-author of this new blog, I asked myself the question: Why should I invest time and energy into the subject of Relationship Management just when Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in their book “Challenger Sale” make a convincing case that Relationship Builders are not top performers particular in complex sales, my primary focus of interest? The answer is: Because I have read the book and this is what I took from it:

How Challengers Use Relationship Management

There are numerous hints throughout the text that Challengers need to build and maintain relationships to be the top performers they are. They actually need better understanding how networks operate than Relationship Builders. Challengers are not satisfied with having relationships. They actively use knowledge about their contacts to hold the right conversations to eventually get purchasing decisions from their customers.

Challengers’ consider knowledge about their contacts as working capital. They know that they continuously need to invest time and effort in order to learn more about their existing contacts. They are motivated to get to know the right things about new contacts to keep this relationship capital productive.

How to build and keep relationship capital productive

In a nutshell, this is what Mastering Relationship Management means to me. I hope this blog will help us to enrich our understanding about

–      Relationship Intelligence which is answering questions such as:

o   What we need to understand about contacts

o   What new relationships we need to build

And

–       Influence Management which is to know

o   Who can help us build the necess         ary new relations

o   Who can help us to convey the right message to the right person

I am looking forward to rich discussions about these topics which I consider essential for success not only in Sales, my primary focus, but also other domains Cate mentioned in her inaugural post.

Christian Maurer

Master your Relationships = Master your Management

The role of networks in making decisions

People are linked together in networks.  Networks are held together by relationships, sometimes the links are strong and other times the links are weak, non-existent or detrimental.  Relationships act as pipelines for information, fact, opinion, beliefs, and judgements.  The quality of any information passed along is less important than the fact the information gets passed along in the first place and believed.  Our networks are instrumental in the decisions that we make both on a personal level and on a professional level.  And because networks play such an important role in decision making, so do our relationships.  Understanding what relationships are and how they work will help us to better understand decisions that have been made or are going to be made.

Understand the complicated

This blog sets out to be of interest to those people who have to work in environments where complicated decisions are taken: complex sales, international account and project management, journalists, people interested in politics, jobseekers, etc.  It’s also, we hope, going to satisfy the curious who’d just like to know a bit more about how their own relationships work, without a particular goal in mind.

Broadly speaking we will look at relationships using the following lenses:

·         Relationships as the glue for networking

·         Analyzing relationships to understand large groups of people

·         How relationships drive (or hinder) decision making

·         The difference between the person, their relationships and the roles they play

·         The role of social networks in relationship management

·         How, as human beings, we keep track of this information

·         How, as technology users, we can be assisted in keeping track of this information

·         And no doubt other topics will present themselves or get introduced along the way

If you’d like to have one of your articles referenced or posted here, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.


Cate Farrall