by Nick Miller of Clarity Advantage

In which we are reminded to focus first on relationship and value demonstration, then on the commissionable task.

On a spring afternoon long decades ago, we sat almost knee to knee in a hotel lobby after a sales and marketing conference we’d both attended. She, leaning back, almost lounging, on a hotel lobby couch. I, sitting on the edge of an arm chair, facing her, leaning forward. She reached into her purse, fished around, and pulled out a pencil.

“Sell me this.” Her eyes barely moved.

I looked at the pencil. It was a standard yellow wood #2 pencil that, in her hand, looked as big as a shovel.

“Come on,” she purred, extending her pencil-bearing hand toward me. “Sell me this pencil. It can be anything you want.”

by Nick Miller of Clarity Advantage

In which we are reminded to follow our “broad” questions with very specific questions that tease out the detailed facts we need to propose value-based solutions.

With apologies to y’all in Texas and other states who haven’t had rain or grass for a couple of years:

I mowed our  lawn on Saturday. Beautiful day for mowing, just a little bit of cool fall air with brilliant September sunshine.   Thanks to recent rains and the fall dose of lime and fertilizer, our lawn is thickly green, punctuated with early fall leaves.

One small hitch in the giddy-up.  The ride-on lawn mower we use for grass and leaves at this time of year features wide front and rear tires that matt down the grass so that the mower blades ride over the matted grass which can get pretty long, even when we’re mowing weekly. So, after we mow, we rake portions of the grass, teasing up the matted down long bits so that we can clip them with hand-clippers or mow them with the standard rotary mower.

by Nick Miller of Clarity Advantage

In which we are encouraged to ask others to help us identify and correct old habits that hold us back.

From the “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this story and you probably won’t either and there won’t be many secrets left after I tell you this one” department: for several decades, I have had a problem eating. Actually, I haven’t had a problem “eating,” as in chewing, swallowing, and enjoying the multiple benefits of a balanced diet. I had a problem getting food into my mouth reliably. (I can see my spouse and children rolling their eyes now.)

by Nick Miller of Clarity Advantage

In which we are reminded that the value we create in our sales conversations is proportional to the quality of the questions we ask and whose interests we are attempting to serve by asking them.

This is a story about a sales call. A  very experienced, productive (among the top 25% of his sales force) commercial banker took me on a call to one of his customers.  Since rates are low and many banks are urgently seeking to lend money, the lender wanted to refinance the company’s building which, today, is financed by another bank.  The objective of the call was to gain the company’s agreement to consider a proposal for refinancing the building.

The lender opened the call by indicating he wanted to discuss refinancing the building,  then worked through a series of “fact” questions (how much is outstanding on the existing loan, when is the maturity date of the current loan, how big is the balloon payment at the end, what’s your current interest rate, who’s your attorney, when  do you want to close), then led the conversation as follows:

by Nick Miller of Clarity Advantage

In which we are reminded about the subtle cues we use to control conversation and how they affect what we learn from clients. 

“It’s in how you ask the question, the eye contact, your body language. Are you really wanting to hear the answer or do you want to move on?”

My wife and I had just returned from a neighborhood pre-Christmas party. 25 people, folks that we see every year at this party plus new neighbors who had moved in during the year. Each of the families contributes food to the table and hors d’oeuvres. It’s a magnificent spread. People are happy, glad to see each other, catching up on up to a year’s worth of news.

I consider myself fairly sociable and conversational in these settings. However, when we came home, my wife returned with all kinds of information about the neighbors’ mothers, sisters, jobs, husbands, former husbands, kids, and on and on. “I got nothing” would be too harsh an assessment of my own learning during the evening and there was a dramatic difference between what I had learned and what my wife had learned.

In which we are reminded to understand our client’s purpose in a discussion.

Someone asked me this week, ‘Do you have a favorite question that you use in sales calls?’

 After overcoming the urge to reply, ‘Yes,’  and listing a dozen wonderful questions, I replied, ‘Tell me a little about what’s happening in your calls.”

The asker’s reply: ‘Well, you know, a question that gets your clients to open up and tell you what you need to know so you know what to talk about or what to sell.’

I found myself wondering about this guy’s social life. Like, has he spent his life searching for the one favorite question or line that would lead otherwise perfectly sensible prospective mates to sigh, swoon, and run off with him to live happily ever after? Has he been searching for THAT one favorite question, too?

‘Well, how do you typically manage your calls?’ I asked. I won’t bore you with his answer, ‘blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,’ and I discovered, as I listened to his meanderings, that I do, in fact, have a favorite question.

This is such a powerful question that I should be charging you hundreds or thousands of dollars just simply to be reading this column, so convinced I am that your regular use of this question will increase your sales. I run the risk of giving up half my income for the rest of my life by sharing this incredible secret with you. A secret that took me years of research and experience with thousands of sales people to discover.