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[Music] now an interesting thing that happens here we talk to customers is that their mindset actually shifts in a very fundamental way during that blue arrow until to the point of the blue arrow at that 60% point 57% point what happens is the customer shifts from who's best - who's cheapest because anybody they put on the shortlist in their mind they're willing to hire to do the job they sell a solution that would fit the bill now what they care about is who can they put the screws to around pricing terms and conditions the most that's all they care about at that point so it's a really tough place to be as a salesperson and the question is what do we do about that what do the best sellers do to escape this kind of death spiral of this conundrum I recognize it's a narrow another spiral but nevertheless okay that will conclude the depressing portion of this presentation let's go on to the good news in that same survey we actually asked customers to think about the supplier they hired the supplier that won the deal and to compare them against the supplier who came in second and as we all know in sales second is the worst place to finish in a complex pursuit right all the blood sweat tears and energy that goes into it I mean you much bralet you you walk away empty-handed you'd much rather lose early than lose late your salespeople would tell you this but we ask those customers we said compared this the supplier who won with the supplier who came in second and compared them across a range of attributes brand and reputation product and service quality value to price ratio customer support and a lot of questions about the sales experience what was it like to engage with the sellers from those different suppliers from a commercial perspective and at the end of that survey we actually asked customers to come to evaluate the supplier who won the deal from a loyalty perspective we didn't ask them how loyal are you to them because don't care from a touchy-feely perspective what we wanted to know was how likely would you be to repurchase from that supplier to buy more from them over time and to say good things about them advocacy or Net Promoter when we regress to all the data we ended up with this graphic and this is the one graphic from the Challenger Salem from this presentation I'll share with you today that is the most eye-opening I think and it's the one that's ended up in a lot of boardroom level presentations because it answers a really basic question which is what do customers want from suppliers but it answers in a pretty surprising way to think if we had just brainstorm if I asked I want to get out a pad of paper and to write down you know what are the reasons that your customers buy from you I think you'd come up with lots of great reasons but arguably all those reasons would be on the left hand side unprompted I think most of reasons we come up with would be on the left hand side this graphic what we would say is our customers buy from us because we've got a great brand and reputation in this market because we make a product that outperforms our competitors or because we offer it all at a very compelling price relative to who else offers a similar solution but what you find is when you regress the data more than half of what drives customer loyalty is a function not of what you sell the stuff on the left hand side it's a function of how you sell the big bar on the right the 53% it's a function of the sales experience now when I present this to sales audiences I used to do this like a builds right so I'd show that bar and I'd get to 53% and the salespeople go nuts right they break out their lighters it's like a Bruce Springsteen concert they're very very excited but the problem is a sales conversation a sales interaction can be a force for evil as much as it's a force for good I'm gonna talk about that here in a second and you probably already looking at that call-out on the right those are the factors are the variables that factor together to drive that 53% bar so it's not any kind of sales experience it's a specific kind of sales experience if you look at the right hand side it's the kind of sales experience where a sales person walks in and gives the customer a unique or valuable perspective on a business problem or an opportunity they teach the customer something new they help them navigate through alternatives avoid issues and outcomes that they want to that they want to avoid help them look around corners to put very simply what this is is the kind of sales experience where a salesperson walks in with new ideas new ideas for saving money for making money for engaging customers for grabbing market share for getting into new markets geographies you name it whatever the objective is that you help your customers accomplish that's the new idea that your sales person comes in with and it's often an idea that the customer themselves hadn't even thought of before irrespective of how long they've been their industry or their business it's something that hadn't occurred to them before it's a surprising insightful sales conversation now when you look at that you might be thinking well that's not the kind of sales conversation our folks are having with our customers right now and so we'll get to that in a moment which is what kind of sell you need to deliver that kind of insight based sales conversation and then secondly what kind of conversation does that does that what does that conversation look and feel like and what kind of content do we need to put in their hands so they can have that kind of insight based conversation before I go there though let me tell you about sales as a force for evil because this was kind of interesting um you know as we talk to customers and we tried to unpack this data what we heard was pretty surprising from c-level decision makers from influential customers across the customer landscape who participate in the survey over and over and over again what they told us is that on all this stuff on the left they don't see a whole lot of difference one supplier to the next at least not when it comes down to the people who make the shortlist I'll give you a quick example there was a head of manufacturing I was interviewing about this data and about this insight who had just procured a major power generation system for a new factory in China and she was talking about how they went with GE and you know and I'm thinking oh of course you did there the even I know they're the world leader in terms of power generation and I stopped her I said you know you're kind of you know it seems like you really just did go the market leader here which is the the world renowned brand in the space she said well hold on a second the company that came in second in the pursuit was Siemens so I don't know you tell me who's better they're both world leading brands and truthfully the GE system is great but this Siemens system did some things with the G system doesn't and we knew we were choosing and we were doing some puts and takes there they were kind of the same at the end of the day so what these customers were telling us was that over and over again on those things on the Left brand and reputation product quality value to price ratio customers post sales customer support all these things that we think make us different customers actually think make us the same as our competitors they don't see a lot of daylight one competitor one competitor to the next on any of those dimensions what they see is a lot of sameness now I want to be very clear if you make a bad product that doesn't do what you say it's gonna do that's overpriced and you don't have very good post sales support you should probably skip skiing this afternoon and go home and fix those things because that'll actually you know that will get you on the shortlist but what the data says very clearly is it won't we knew the Deedle what wins you the deal is over on the right hand side but these customers it was quite interesting to hear them talk about sales interactions unprompted they would say you know look really the reason we went with supplier a our supplier B is that the supplier who won the deal you know when their guys walked in my office they delivered a sales experience that you know stole hours of my life I'll never get back they were kind of like time vampires you know the walk in deliver there's just horrible presentation was just a brutal that have to deal with these folks but the supplier who won the deal when those folks walked into my office they delivered a sales experience that I would have paid for irrespective of whether we did business with that company or not they delivered insight and value in the conversation that in and of itself was valuable and it was something worth paying for as a customer what those customers also told us was that there were effectively two kinds of sales conversations that they that drive them crazy and that really do destroy value the first one is not going to be a surprise I think to anybody in the room but it's the show up and throw up sales technique the talking brochure the corporate parrot this is where the salesperson goes in and basically regurgitates everything that's on your website like your mission and values and how old you are and how many offices you have and the features and benefits of your solution and who else trust you with their business all these kinds of things and we know that doesn't deliver a lot of value because customers can learn that stuff on their own the other kind of sales experience that customers railed against this was pretty surprising to us it was the open-ended questioning approach to sales I heard more customers than you can imagine tell me I hate when these salespeople walk in and they lead with these open-ended questions like what's keeping me up at night you know what's keeping me up at night the thought of the next salesperson coming in who's gonna ask me what's keeping me up at night or what's keep me up at night is how did you get past my assistant to come in and eat up my time asking me that terrible question you know I heard this over and over again there was a CIO I finally had heard it enough times as a CIO from a global 500 company I stopped her kind of right after she said this and I was like look you're railing about this questioning approach but just so you know we work with heads of sales and right now all of them think that that's a good approach to be taking as a salesperson in fact they've got all their sellers in question asking school or training learning how to ask better questions second-order questions incisive questions designed to elicit a need from the customer that we can attach our value proposition to so what's wrong with that and the customer told me something that I thought was pretty profound really stuck with me the CIO said you know it's not the questions that I don't value it's the way in which they're used I understand that I'm not do business with any supplier who doesn't ask me lots of questions and really get to know my organization but when you come in and you ask me what's keeping me up at night I'm a CIO and what you're failing to appreciate as a seller is that you will meet with more people who have my job at companies like mine in a week then I'll meet with in a year so instead of asking me what's keeping me up at night tell me what should be keeping me up at night but start the conversation there then I'll answer your questions all day long teach me something I don't know if we're gonna put together this this finding with the last one what it really tells you is that in a world where customers can learn on their own we're arguably your biggest competitor today is your customers ability to learn on their own and to disintermediate you from that learning journey in that world what customers are really looking for is the thing they couldn't learn on their own the thing that you know that they need to know [Music]