It's Not Luck - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [77]
I don’t get it. “What’s wrong with that? Isn’t it what they are supposed to do?”
“If they want to ruin their chances of getting the sale, yes. Otherwise, no.”
“Don, will you please stop with your riddles and start to explain.”
“I am. Look, Alex. Put yourself in the shoes of a buyer. Here is a salesperson praising his offer. What is your natural reaction?”
“If I’m a typical buyer, I’ll try to play it down,” I say.
“Exactly,” Don concurs. “You will start to object. You’ll object to his claims about how unique his offer is, to his claims about how badly you need it. And if some of his claims seem to be exaggerated, as is the case with our unconventional offer, you will probably express your skepticism.”
“Yes, that’s probably what I’d do,” I agree.
“And the more objections the buyer raises, the less likely the salesperson is to make a sale. This correlation is established by broad-scale studies.”
“You don’t need studies to prove it, every salesperson knows it from experience. So, what are you telling me? That a salesperson should not start by presenting his product? Especially when his offer is non-conventional?”
Instead of answering, he goes to my white board and starts to write a cloud. As he writes, I read it out loud. “The objective is, ‘Bring the buyer to see your product as the best value for his money.’ I hope that you didn’t have any problem convincing Pete’s salespeople that that should be their objective.”
“No, not at all. They’re professionals.”
“Fine,” I say, and continue to read. “In order to ‘Bring the buyer to see your product as the best value for his money,’ you must ‘Show value to the buyer.’ That’s obvious. At the same time you must be careful to ‘Not cause the buyer to object.’ I agree to that also. Now, let’s see the conflict.
“In order to ‘Show value to the buyer,’ you must ‘Present your product.’ Of course. But in order to ‘Not cause the buyer to object,’ you must ‘Not present your product.’ ”
“Remember,” Don hurries to explain, “what we just discussed. You start by presenting your product and instinctively the buyer starts to object.”
“Yes, lovely conflict,” I agree. “No wonder salespeople are dancing between the drops, trying somehow to build rapport with the client, before they go to the real business. So, how did you break this conflict? What are they supposed to do?”
“Pete and I built a detailed Transition Tree for it. Want to see?”
“Sure.”
Don goes to his office to get it. I look at the cloud again. It is generic. Nothing in this cloud is unique to Pete’s case. Maybe Don’s solution is also generic? I hope it is, because this cloud shows to what extent we will face difficulties selling our breakthrough solutions. Since they are, by definition, going to be unconventional, they are bound to cause the prospects to raise many objections.
Where is Don? What is taking him so long?
“I thought it would be better if you had your own copy,” he says as he returns.
I look at the two pages he hands me. A typical Transition Tree: the “how to” tree; the detailed logic of how to transfer from the present into the desired future. At the bottom there are statements that describe the present state of mind of a buyer—that is the starting point. At the top of the second page is the objective, “Congratulations, or in depth analysis of the failure.” How typical of Don to write it like that.
Along the right side of both pages there are several square boxes; these are the recommended actions. Some of them don’t make any sense to me.
“Shall we read it together?” I suggest to Don.
“With pleasure. We started by describing a typical buyer. ‘Many buyers see their job as pretending that they don’t necessarily want to buy.’ ”
I smile. “Yes, there are too many buyers like that. I can’t stand them.”
Don continues to read, “‘Buyers don’t usually have full trust in the salesperson