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A young, 34-year-old salesperson I am working with sent me an incredibly enthusiastic text the other day: “Alon!! I’ve been working on this presentation for an upcoming call with a prospect. I’ve worked on it for more than a week now and it is AMAZING!!! I can’t wait to show it to you on our next call”.
Naturally, I responded with the expected equal level of excitement and wrote that I would be super excited to see it two days later on our call.
Then, two days later, she whips out this presentation she prepared and starts taking me through it. Oh my god, did she take me through it. She went through each and every one of the 41 pages of this presentation with so much passion that I simply did not have the heart to stop her. Suffice it to say, when the tornado had passed, I had a couple of questions.
I’ll get to the questions in a moment, but first, I have a question for you, reader. Have you recently received a newsletter from anyone within your organization or from a third-party service you signed up for? Was the newsletter long? Like, really long? I hadn’t seen any studies on this topic (yet) but I am willing to bet that just like me (and likely you reading this now), most people NEVER read the whole damn thing. I mean, COME ON!! Who has the time, who has the stamina, who has the desire to read through those lengthy emails?! At this point, I decided to do my own little study. I picked up the phone and called a friend who runs a company that I am getting these monthly newsletters from.
In the spirit of full transparency, the only reason I haven't unsubscribed from them is because I know the CEO (sounds familiar?). I asked him if by any chance he reads his own company’s newsletters Of course, he does not. “My head of marketing owns it,” he murmured. “But I do know my marketing guy is super proud of these newsletters and he claims they are getting a very high opening rate”.
“Opening rate is awesome” I said, “but do you know if the recipients actually read it? Are they doing anything with it? Is it changing their business for the better in any way? Do you know who the people who are opening it are and what matters to them?” Have you ever asked? (I thought that last part to myself).
“The best way to find out what people want is to ask them”
Richard Branson
Let’s go back to the 34-year-old salesperson.
She looked at me anxiously, adrenalin through the roof after going through that 12 minute marathon of those 41 slides. She was so proud of her work.
“What are the 3 key points you want your prospects to get out of this call?” I asked.
She thought for a minute, started going back through the slides, wrote some stuff on a piece of paper and said enthusiastically: “I have about 8 key points. Is that OK?”
(“NO!!!!! It’s not OK!” – I rage-thought to myself.)
Hmmmmm…..you see, people have a hard time remembering more than 3 key points in one sitting. Especially if it is new information for them, so trim it down to three.
Quizzically staring at me she asked, “How do I do that?” “I think all 8 points are important”.
“Well, this leads me to my next question – have you asked the prospect what matters to THEM?”
Her: …
Me: …
Her: …
Me: …
The prospect, if she doesn’t narrow this down: …
Before ANY interaction with your clients, customers, prospects etc., you simply must communicate with them to discover what they find important.. For that, you need to make sure you know their pain points, challenges, aspirations and more. Reach out, speak with them, present to them what you are thinking before the call, let them help you in prioritizing and cutting that list of 8 down to 3.
Her: “But I don’t know them yet, this is my first live interaction with them.”
Me: “So??”
This made me think of another client of mine. We had an exploratory session, face to face, with a different prospect a few months back. . It was the first time we’d gotten together. Similar scenario. Sales came in with a long deck of slides, as proud of theirs as our subject was of hers.. I challenged them with, “how do we know if all of this matters to them?” They all looked at each other with a look of – well, we’ve always done it this way and we don’t really know them yet so…
Now, my lightbulb goes off. I suggested we send them a set of questions prior to the meeting. We would position it as – we want to really understand what is important to you so we can be as efficient as possible. Since we do not know you well yet, could you please answer the following online questions?
And this is exactly what we did.. We came up with a few strategic questions and received the answers online from all 6 participants. Boom. We felt like we’d just snuck into the teacher’s lounge and stolen the answers to next period’s test! Except in this case, all it took was asking. Not only were we extremely prepared, but this tactic also made us stand-out (if you’ve been following my teachings, you know this is the first pillar of Emotional Relevance), by making them feel they are part of the process. AND we made an impact (the 2nd pillar of Emotional Relevance) as when we did show up to the meeting it felt as if we already knew each other.
Her: “So what do I do with the other 5 points I wanted to deliver?”
Me: “Save them! You could blend them into the follow up during your next interaction or you can utilize them when you get to know their needs better. For now, focus on the three that matter to them.”
She looked at me with a gaze of defeat. “Alon, I was so proud of this document and now I need to completely change it.”
“I understand,” I replied. “I understand how proud you feel. And you should! I promise you that ALL of the information throughout your presentation will be relevant at some point but for this instant, for this interaction, ask yourself, which part matters for them?”
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