Conversations That Win the Complex Sale [Book Summary]

Conversations That Win the Complex Sale: Using Power Messaging to Create More Opportunities, Differentiate your Solutions, and Close More Deals by Erik Peterson & Tim Riesterer

10 Key Takeaways from the Book

1. Your sales conversations are becoming the last battleground in competitive differentiation.
2. You need to earn the right to ask questions by sharing insights.
3. Change the conversation away from [your company]and [your] offerings [and your products’ features] to one that focuses on your customers and their critical business needs.
4. Provoking or challenging your customers and prospects is not the same as being a jerk. When this is done right, the value and insight that your customer gets from being challenged will raise her opinion of you.
5. Where most sales pros drop the ball is in explaining what the customer will be able to Do differently with their solution versus anyone else’s.
6. The villain [in your stories] is not the prospect’s systems or its people. The villain is something that’s changed in the environment. [Moreover,] you should never imply that the prospect’s people are anything other than hardworking, high-integrity, conscientious employees
7. Cialdini’s theory of liking was not that people buy from people they like. It was that people buy from people that they think like them.
8. Don’t end with the typical phrase, “Any questions?” Instead, say, “You’ve seen how, only with us, you can do (PowerPosition 1) and (Power Position 2) and (Power Position 3). So, where do we go from here?” Be direct and make it pop.
9. If a prospect isn’t already convinced that she needs what you’re selling, she’s going to challenge all the assumptions in your[ROI calculator] model.
10. Readers judged the authors of the papers written in simple language to be smarter than the authors of the papers written using complex words.

INTRODUCTION Messaging fuels Methodology

• You can put the right structure in place for making a great sales call. But, without the right messages, tools, and coaching, process alone won’t get you the victory.
• Your sales conversations are becoming the last battleground in competitive differentiation.

PART 1 THE POWER OF CHANGE

CHAPTER 1 Intentions and Instincts: Why You Need This Book

(No key notes in this chapter)

CHAPTER 2 Overcoming the Status Quo: Your Biggest Competitor

• You need to earn the right to ask questions by sharing insights.
• A distinct point of view [pitch] is a well-choreographed prospect conversation that is designed to grab the prospect’s attention, challenge his current assumptions, and convince him to consider making a change.
• 5 components of the distinct point of view pitch(in sequence)
• Grabber. Share a key industry fact or finding that is relevant to a core business objective, but that is new and fresh to the prospect.
• Pain. Shock your prospect by telling her of an unknown or underappreciated problem that is threatening her core business objective.
• Impact. Identify the closeness and urgency of the problem.
• Contrast. Present a new way to look at or address the problem that is implicitly tied to your solution, and make sure to contrast it with the way your prospect is doing things today.
• Proof. Rebuild the prospect’s confidence by sharing a quick story that shows a before-and-after situation in which you helped a similar company by implementing your new way of solving the problem.
• ADP didn’t introduce new products or services; it simply changed the conversation away from itself and its offerings to one that focused on the customers and their critical business needs.

CHAPTER 3 Bring a Little Bad News: If You Want Them to Care

• You must be willing to challenge your customers’ current situation if you are going to get them to do something different. The point here is: if you don’t do it, someone else will.
• You must be willing to push your prospect out of her comfort zone.
  • You need to help your prospect see her competitive challenges in a new light.
  • You have to highlight specific painful situations and make them unmistakably urgent.
  • You need the guts to create constructive tension and use it to your advantage.
• Provocation has three components:
  • Identify a critical problem facing your customer.
  • Formulate a provocative view of the problem.
  • Lodge your provocation.
• However, provoking or challenging your customers and prospects is not the same as being a jerk. When this is done right, the value and insight that your customer gets from being challenged will raise her opinion of you.
• Another framework for provocation:
  • Question the status quo.
  • Redefine the situation. Next, get your customers to imagine an alternative that they may not have considered. The key is redefining the situation in a way that offers a clear contrast to the current approach
  • Present an alternative.
  • Align your solution.
• Too many salespeople want to lead with the strengths of their product or service. The problem is that the customer isn’t ready to hear about them.
• Without the threat of unidentified problems andunderappreciated challenges, your products and services, and your features andbenefits statements, sound like the same old generic gobbledygook
• When the conversation was refocused on keycustomer objectives such as productivity and profitability, and highlighted amajor pain point that was threatening customers’ success, such as driverturnover, Volvo was able to elevate its driver satisfaction features andrankings to a strategic necessity,

PART 2 THE POWER OF STORY

CHAPTER 4 Everyone Lives in Stories: Even Your Buyers

• Your field message should be a story about your prospect.

CHAPTER 5 Finding Your Story: The Value Wedge

• The Value Wedge is what you can do for the customer is different from what the competition can do.  It needs to be: (1) unique to you; (2)important to the customer; and (3) defensible.
• Ideally, you want to find three key business objectives that you can address for your prospect.
• Identify the top three pains, threats, or challenges that are keeping your prospect from reaching those business objectives.

CHAPTER 6 Building Your Story: Power Positions

• Triangulation
  • 1. Find a prospect’s pain, threat, or challenge.
  • Match it to a competitor’s weakness or vulnerability.
  • Match that to your differentiator as well (or toa group of differentiators).
  • Create a phrase that captures what your prospect will be able to do differently with this solution
• Message Pyramid
  • Base of pyramid = IS = features & functions= WHAT (ex: Acetaminophen is the Is of Tylenol.)
  • Middle of pyramid = DOES = message uniqueness =HOW (ex: Tylenol relieves your pain without upsetting your stomach.)
  • Top of pyramid = MEANS = value = WHY (ex: You’ll be able to be more productive at work because you don’t have either a headache or a stomachache. It means that you can be more patient with your kids, because you’re pain-free.)
• Where most sales pros drop the ball is in explaining what the customer will be able to Do differently with their solution versus anyone else’s.
• The trick is to use the same words you would use if you were talking to someone you liked.

CHAPTER 7 You Phrasing: Creating Engagement and Ownership

• Good examples of you phrasing
  • “What you’ll see…”
  • “What you’ll be able to do is…”
  • “Next, you’ll be able to…”
  • “You need to be able to…”
  • “What if you could…” (ß especially good)

CHAPTER 8 The Hero Model: Play the Right Part

• [When telling stories,] you need to turn your customers into heroes.
• You put together a message that looked at your customers’ world today — their business objectives and their pains. Then you looked at how they can solve those problems with your solution. In a real-world sales interaction, you should expect the customer to push back at this point.
• The villain is not the prospect’s systems or its people. The villain is something that’s changed in the environment. [Moreover,] you should never imply that the prospect’s people are anything other than hardworking, high-integrity, conscientious employees

PART 3 YOUR POWER MESSAGE

CHAPTER 9 The Hammock: Getting Their Attention

• You want to establish a keen understanding of the customer’s business problems, communicate the power of your solution, and demonstrate your uniqueness. And you need to do that at [in the first 10minutes] of your [preferably in-person] meeting. And then, when you get to the close, you want to do the same thing.

CHAPTER 10 Grabbers: Creating Impact

• Use Grabbers to create your hot openings, hot closes, and spikes in the middle of your message.
• Wow, how, and proof are the three messaging components you’ll need for each of your Power Positions.
• Here are four types of Grabber techniques to create the “wow” in your message:
  • “What-if-you could…” questions (ask 2 or 3 of these in a row)
  • Number plays: The best number plays provoke your prospects to see their world in a new way. The way you accomplish that is by sharing information with your prospects that they didn’t know before.
  • Customer stories with contrast
  • 3D props

CHAPTER 11 Stories with Contrast: Help Them See Value

• When someone is in denial, you can’t win him over with facts.
• You need to tell the story of your customers’ situation before they implemented your solution.
• It’s not enough just to tell the “before” story. You also need to tell the “after” story.
• Stories with contrast, at their most basic level, contain three elements:
• Pain. What was the challenge the customer was facing?
• Gain. What did the customer get by moving to your solution?
• Proof. What was the impact of these changes?
• The customer-story-with-contrast technique takes away the natural defensiveness that your prospect might have. Rather than saying, “Here are the areas where you are falling down,” the technique helps you change the game. It’s as if you are coming over to your prospect’s side of the table and saying, “Let’s take a look at what’s happening at this customer over here.” It puts you in a more consultative position.
• 1. Tell a story. 2. Use telling details. 3. Make the customer the hero.
• Link data with emotion.
• Remember to keep the customer the hero of the story.

CHAPTER 12 3D Props: Are You Serious?

• Use props to make an important point.

CHAPTER 13 Big Pictures: Make the Abstract Concrete and the Complex Simple

• Big Picture means a visual that you can draw, not just words.
• The reason you need to use Big Pictures is that they simplify a complex message and make abstract ideas concrete.
• Big Picture technique is not about using photographs. It’s about creating a visual that you can draw on a napkin, a sheet of paper, a whiteboard, or a flip chart as you’re talking to your customer
• 3 steps:
  • Step 1. Make it about your customer’s pains/obstacles/challenges.
  • Step 2. Contrast with the gains your customer can get from your solution.
  • Step 3. If you can make it work, use a metaphor to make it more memorable.

CHAPTER 14 Personal Stories, Metaphors, and Analogies: The Key to Liking

• Share Stories, not Data
• Cialdini’s theory of liking was not that people buy from people they like. It was that people buy from people that they think like them.
• You can use personal stories to connect with your prospect. You can use metaphors and analogies to make your message more memorable and give it depth, often in a subtle and powerful way.

CHAPTER 15 Old Brain vs. New Brain: Messaging for a Decision

• There are seven key things that have been shown to impress the Old Brain. They are :
  • Emotion
  • Firsts and lasts
  • Contrast
  • Visuals
  • Simplicity
  • Making it personal
  • Concrete
• Don’t end with the typical phrase, “Any questions?” Instead, say, “You’ve seen how, only with us, you can do (Power Position 1) and (Power Position 2) and (Power Position 3). So, where do we go from here?” Be direct and make it pop.
• Use YOU phrasing to keep things personal for your customer and to show that you’re part of his tribe.

CHAPTER 16 Proof: It’s Not Just Numbers

• You need emotion to guide you in making good decisions.
• One of the most common mistakes sales professionals make when selling is that they lead too early with proof.
• Use Grabbers and Big Pictures to create that emotional momentum to change. Then, use proof to help his Old Brain feel safe moving forward with you.
• What can you use for proof? Third-PartyStatistics from a recent credible source.
• Return on Investment Calculators:
  • If a prospect isn’t already convinced that she needs what you’re selling, she’s going to challenge all the assumptions in your model.
  • For an ROI calculator to work as a proof source, it needs to be paired with the next type of proof source = customer stories.
• Customer Stories: Listing the names of two or three customers and the results they produced using your solution can be enough to convince a prospect that you can do what you claim.
• Demos:
  • Always pair demos with two or three customer stories that support the claims that you are trying to prove with the demo.
  • When you have to do a demo, you should do a Cooking Demo. Don’t make the prospect sit through every little step beforeshowing her the magic report or piece of information that she’ll be able to getout of the system. Get her to that end point as quickly as possible.
  • The best demos create an experience.
• Mini-Drama: A Mini-Drama is done by showing aday in the life of your customer without your solution, and then contrastingthat with a day in the life with your solution.

CHAPTER 17 Words, Voice, and Body: Message Delivery Matters

• Both what you say (verbal) and how you say it (body language and voice tone) are important.
• When your level of interest in somethingincreases, your body naturally gets more active
• Readers judged the authors of the papers writtenin simple language to be smarter than the authors of the papers written usingcomplex words.