PPB January 2019

possess the ability to connect with people, to listen to and understand their needs, to care about them and make them feel important, and to be pleasant to be around. These things make it easier to discuss the difficult issues where conflict is present. Being likable is a competitive advantage. Needing to be liked is an enormous disadvantage. Caring Your dreamclient has a choice of working with a self-oriented person who projects that they care more about getting ink on paper than the better results they need, or a person who is bent on helping themdrive better results and will be accountable for doing so. Why would they choose to work with someone who treats them like a transaction? Possessing the attribute of caring makes it easy to prefer to work with you, especially over a complacent provider who long ago gave up caring and believes they have an absolute right to their client’s business. Attitude It’s unlikely that anyone would prefer to work with someone who is pessimistic, cynical, skeptical and unengaged over someone who is the opposite in every way. When you are courting your dream client, they are deciding whether they want you on their team. Who you are matters as much as or more than what you sell. You demonstrate who you are by how you sell. Having a positive, optimistic, future-oriented, can-do, will-do, “I own it” attitude helps to create a preference to work with you. But if you are so unengaged with your work that you have no passion for what you are doing, your prospective client will recognize it. Many others who write about sales are applauding the idea that you no longer need to be the gregarious, outgoing, smile-on- your-face, shine-on-your-shoes salesperson of the past. Let’s correct this mistake. The truth is that if those attributes are phony and being employed as tactics, they are to be avoided. But know for sure that you do need to have an upbeat, engaged and enthusiastic energy. You need to have a positive attitude that is seen and felt to create a preference for you. One last word: your attitude has to be seen and felt in every client interaction. You can have a day off, but you cannot have an off day. Presence I once had a prospective client say to me, “I can’t believe you drove all the way out here to see me. You didn’t need to do that.” In fact, that is why I did it; I knew no one else would drive that far for a meeting. As you might expect, we ended up doing business together. We live in an age when technology is a dominant factor. All of us, without ever making the conscious decision to do so, now live behind three screens. We are almost never without a computer in front of us. If we are away from that screen, we have a tablet close at hand. And we are never, ever more than 36 inches away from our smartphones. Using email for sales conversations is to exchange effectiveness for efficiency—a trade-off you should never make. If you are trying to create a preference to work with you instead of your competitor, having a presence will tip things in your direction. The person who shows up is the person who is committed to the client and their business. The person who takes the time to see the client’s facility, to meet the stakeholders and develop relationships, and to understand their business and their needs is the person who is stacking the deck in their favor. Showing up is an indication that you care, that your prospective client is important to you. Someone once said that a large part of success is merely showing up. Those words have never been truer than they are today. Your Process The process with which you engage your client can be an advantage. I recently received an email from a salesperson who was struggling to win clients. His process consisted of asking the client for the opportunity to give them a quote for his services. His request was continually rejected. This approach is an extreme example of a salesperson in B2B sales transacting as if it were a B2C sale. The process here does not in any way create value for the client. Think about the opportunities you have to create a preference to work with you and your company and to have the client believe that your solution is the one that will serve them best. The first opportunities are sales interactions with the client. What do you do with those interactions? Do you help them understand why they should change, how they should do something different, what their choices are and how they might produce breakthrough results? | JANUARY 2019 | 81 THINK