I just did another training session with a bunch of great sales people in Voss yesterday. One focus during this session was customer commitment, often referred to as 'the advance'. Complex sales typically have longer sales cycles, and what mostly suffers is how the client is not challenged to help advance the sale from visit to visit. If only the sales person is committed, then no real progression is made and a lot of time is wasted. Eventually the case is lost.
Here's a summary on how we help someone commit - be it a client, a colleague, friend or family member:
- Never EVER enter a call without deciding beforehand what you want the person to do (both a maximum and an alternative minimum commitment).
- Make sure the challenge is something that requires specific action.
- Adjust your planned commitment if the conversation indicates you should.
- Always focus the initial effort on nurturing a Born Buying Desire (BBD) through passion.
- Are you convinced yourself?
- Is your message important to the other person? Why? How do you know?
- When positive vibes have become the main carrier of information exchange seek to establish Subjective Linkage (SL) through connection
- Can you get the other person one-on-one, then do so!
- Involve the other person in problem solving through the optimal dialog. Go for the Emotional Commitment (EC) when feelings are mutual.
- Help the other person commit to a deadline.
- Do not leave until you have received a firm commitment. If he or she will not commit, find out why?
The model in one of my previous blog posts illustrates how these steps are linked to our level of energy and sensitivity.
In short, here's a summary: Decide on a commitment, trigger a desire, connect and find out the agenda, make it emotional and end with a challenge. When we do it this way, we're affected positively ourselves also and both parties are happy. It becomes an uplifting experience that inspires action.
The highest level and strongest way in which we tie someone to a promise is Emotional Commitment (EC), the result of energation. Most of the time, people instantly think they understand and therefore perceive this as being "fairly straightforward", and I wish it would be! However, to get this kind of dedicated promise from someone we need to understand energation - the means by which we reach this level of dedication in others.
Emotional Commitment (EC) doesn't just happen by chance - it needs energation as its "engine" to drive it forward. Energation itself hinges on two basic capacities:
- Sensitivity
- Energy
To be specific, this means:
- how sensitive we are a) to self, b) to others and c) to external impressions
- the energy driving a) our behaviour, b) our relationships and c) revealed problem solving
When sensitivity and energy are balanced we move communication in the direction of energation, or rather, we "energate". This means we move the dialog, balancing energy and sensitivity, in a growing degree of mutual dedication through three levels:
The first level of (customer) dedication is the Born Buying Desire (BBD). The second level of (customer) dedication is the Subjective Linkage (SL). The third level of (customer) dedication is the Emotional Commitment (EC).
Today I'd like to share a quick story to illustrate how BBD and SL precede Emotional Commitment (EC), which is the third and crowning fruit of energation:
I was once involved in providing a major ERP solution to an industrial corporation. They had accepted my invitation to come visit and present what we had to offer (a BBD had been triggered). As the meeting progressed we began to discuss and share how several of the key people in the project were heavily affected by weaknesses in the current information systems. They spent way too much time at the office and were unable to put work behind them when they came home. Their family life was suffering and many other personal matters were also put out in the open (SL was beginning to take effect). At this point we moved into a discussion of how the new solutions should be applied to solve these problems. A stack of suggestions triggered new thinking and ideas from the client that even I had never thought about or seen as possible. These discoveries on the client side caused ownership to grow minute by minute. At the end I was asked to fulfill a number of commitments and any action I needed from them was eagerly accepted. It had become their project and in their interest more than mine (EC).
The Emotional Commitment is where follow up is turned around. Before we get to follow up the customer by the specified deadlines, the customer calls us to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to, making sure we stay on a steady course to contract and delivery. This is what we want! It's commitment on an emotional level.
Finally, a warning. Whenever energy and sensitivity is not balanced, i.e. when either energy or sensitivity is too high or too low, negative energy immediately surfaces. The outward expression or evidence of this is some kind of rejection - what I call "malfunctioning dialog". For a visual illustration of this absolutely critical balance see the diagram below, taken from "The 3 Energies Behind Sales Success".
We've now posted a webcast introducing the source of "the 3 Energies" - how dialog (O®O) is linked to energy (3E). This is the result of 7 years of research. Watch it now!
When releasing the 3 Energies on Thursday end of October next year we're finally and officially launching the concept of "energation", too. It's something I've been looking forward to for a very long time.
From a simplified perspective energation is the combination of communication and energy - almost "energetic communication", if you will. But it's so much more than this. Research preceding this new word has suggested the following official definition - and it's taken 4 years to agree on this very "pregnant" summary:
To interact closely through passion, connection and innovation, reaching understanding and commitment beyond natural ability.
Of course it's hard to explain the full meaning of energation in a brief blog post like this, but here's what I'd like to point out as a bare minimum; energation reaches others on a higher level. (In fact, on a "third level", but that's an entirely different discussion). Energation makes it possible "to be sold" in stead of having to sell. How would you like to position yourself by communicating in such a way that your customer is asking for your help? This is the essence of energation. It leverages three specific fruits:
- Born Buying Desire (BBD)
- Subjective Linkage (SL)
- Emotional Commitment (EC)
I'll have to say more about these three elements at a later stage, I guess. The main thing is; in sum energation results in three fruits representing the solution to "all" those typical problems sales people so often struggle with today; finding new prospects, spending time and strength on the right opportunities, too long sales cycles because their unable to close the business, quote and win stretch business*, accurate predictions about pipeline probability and building faithful client relationships, to just name a very few.
Can you see why I'm so excited about finally getting the 3 Energies to market?! There's so much in basic core sales that needs solid clarification. Now it's all coming folks ;-)
* Contracts of significantly bigger size than what has been closed in the past.
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