Yesterday, I met my brother at the gym early in the morning.  After our workout, my brother asked me in helping him pick out the right tie for him to wear to work. (he had brought 4 to the gym with him).  Why?  My brother is colorblind.  Not black and white only, but enough that getting himself dressed can present challenges.

I had forgotten this about my brother.   I shared a VERY small bedroom with my brother for about 14 years before I left for college, and helping my brother with his clothing choices used to be a regular occurrence, but having not lived with him for so long, I forgot about it – and having him ask me about it reminded me of life in his eyes.

As I left the gym, I related the story in my mind to sales.   (My wife will tell you that I relate EVERYTHING in my life to sales).  The question I asked myself was… am I too wrapped up in the way that I see life and the deals that I’m working on that perhaps I’m not looking at the deals in the way that my prospects see them.  Do I really understand and know the way that they see the world – so that I can better create a win-win scenario that will lead to a close?  (It is interesting that this is the second time that a tie has caused me to blog about the prospect’s point of view.)

The good news was that for most deals, I believe that I have taken the customer’s point of view into consideration and framed them correctly.  A few other deals, I rethought them and am trying some new strategies to awaken them.   But, the simple tie question really points out that every prospect and every person within that prospect will see the world in a different way – and the way that they see the world will color (pun intended) their view of the world.  Unless you, as a salesperson, understand that and build your deal around that, it will be difficult to get your deals done.

Imagine someone trying to sell my brother another tie.  They could show him a green tie and a blue tie, and those ties might look identical to my brother.  OR, one with a beautiful hue may actually look hideous to my brother.  And… I guarantee that he won’t know if it matches anything else he owns so he may not make the purchase regardless.  This is a man that thinks demin blue jeans look purple, and thinks Christmas trees have a reddish hue.  A salesperson who understood that my brother was colorblind might do a better job about describing the color, or matching it to his current suit – or other tools in selling items that are color dependent to color-blind people.  Whatever the tactic, if the salesperson never takes the time to understand my brother’s colorblindness, he will never make the sale.

Ask yourself… do you REALLY know your clients challenges?  The way they see the world?  Do you understand how the economy has affected their business?  Is buying your product something that is a great risk for them personally?  Do they even think about how to solve problems in the same way that you do?  If you are a technology guru, using technology to solve problems is a natural.  Perhaps your prospect doesn’t immediately run to technology to solve a problem.  If you are under 30, you may immediately understand the value of social networking, but your 60+ prospect thinks that social networking is a big time-waster.

Whatever the challenge, you need to understand how they see the world, so that you can frame your sale properly.  Going back to the social networking sale: Perhaps you need to spend more time on the basis of why social networking has transformed business and get them on board with that before you start touting your product where for another prospect you can launch right into the benefits of your specific solution.

There are no hard rules here – but just the simple idea that you should always be looking for ways to see the world thru your prospects eyes.  And if they are colorblind, simply ignore the fact that they may be wearing a mismatched tie.

People that read QuotaCrush know that I am always talking about the need for transparency and honesty in the sales process.  As I’ve said, when you do the right thing and when you are honest, sales happen for you.  And the more honest you are, the more good karma comes back and leads to more sales.

A few weeks ago, I took a customer out to lunch since I was in town.  This customer has been up on one of the software services for one my clients for about a month, and this was a great opportunity to get some feedback on the product, and talk about the implementation thus far.

At one point in the conversation, I paused and said to the customer, “So.  how truthful was I in the sales process about what your post sales experience with our software would be?”  He immediately replied, “Actually… very!  You made some pretty bold statements in your sales process about what you guys could accomplish and I admit that I discounted some of what you said, but I’m certainly very pleased that you have come through on everything that you have promised.”

Bold statements – but honest ones.  If you put a value statement out there, and you back it up later on, it works wonders for you in the sales process.

As it happens, this particular customer will be giving a keynote at a prominent trade show in about a month, and I’m fairly certain that he will be giving a raving endorsement for our product and service – and as a reference, he will certainly let people know that we are honest and fair in the sales process.  I believe that by being honest with this customer, we now have a champion – and that means the world in the sales process.

It does happen sometimes, however, that a customers experience is not exactly what they expected, and they may feel that you were not 100% true to your word.  At these times, what you need to make sure is that the customer understands where your process may have failed, or fallen down.  Perhaps you got new information after the sale that you didn’t take into account before the sale, or perhaps external factors affected your ability to deliver.  What must happen at this point, is for you to explain in very truthful statements about what happened, and map it back to those bold statements made in the sales process.  Presuming that the sales process had honest statements, you should be able to easily explain why the experience wasn’t exactly what they thought it might be, and how you plan to get them back on track.   Your open and honest communications here should be the way to maintain the relationship – and eventually get a champion again.

I’ve often found that customers for which you’ve had a failure, been honest about it, and then turn around, become even bigger champions.  These customers know that they can trust your word completely.  Problems happen to everyone and every account.  Its how you deal with them that makes the difference.  At a company I was selling for, we had a MASSIVE mistake for one customer.  It was an IT failure on our part, and a very massive mistake.  I found out about it, and immediately went to the CFO’s office in person, sat down and told him of the problem and what we were going to do about it.  After the smoke stopped pouring out of his ears and his face resumed a normal color, he looked at me and said, “Well.  You could have easily hidden this problem from me, so I have to respect you for being honest and for coming and telling me in person.  That’s probably the only reason I’ll give you a chance to fix this.”  We did fix it, and the trust I gained from that customer was immense.  From that point on, he knew there was no reason for him to doubt my word or think that I wouldn’t be honest with him.  I did quite a bit of additional business with that customer (including selling to him on my next sales gig).

When dealing with a person who makes money from commissions, the natural instinct of most people is to think that the salesperson is saying and doing anything to get the sale.  Therefore, distrust is the natural emotion of the buyer.  When you turn that on its head, you will be amazed at how much it will help in the sales process.