Last week, I answered a “Hot Question” about customers who make ‘wrong’ decisions. After considerable thought – and the realization that I am one of those customers who frequently makes ‘wrong’ decisions – I decided that the question deserved a full article.

To refresh your memory, here’s the question, which I edited down a bit for space: “Troy, I have a situation that is a bit unique. I’m an optometrist. Many of my customers come to me with a fairly large amount of spending capability on their health plans, but instead of spending all of it on a quality pair of glasses, they’ll instead buy the cheapest Chinese stuff available to them.  How can I get them to make a good decision with their money?” The questioner further elaborated that the customers would come in with a spending capability of up to $400 – enough to buy a quality pair of glasses from him – but instead would buy the cheap “3 for $99” deals you see on TV, leaving both quality and free money on the table.

On the face of it, that would seem like a very bad decision. Even I would agree with that. However, there’s a lot that we don’t know. To solve this problem, however, you have to understand one key facet of selling in the 21^st Century: Customers don’t make “bad” decisions. They make the decision that is right for them at the time. Let’s talk more about this.

Our optometrist is making one of the most common mistakes in sales: He’s viewing the customer’s decision through his own criteria for a successful purchase, not the customer’s. When you’re selling, the only criteria that matters is the customer’s. That means that we have to understand what the customer’s decision making criteria is, and then sell to that, not our own. Before I break down how to do this, let’s talk about another example of “bad” decision making.

A couple of days ago, I visited one of my favorite retail establishments: Barnes and Noble. I’m a book nerd (no, really, I am, I say to all of you, who are probably nodding right now). I love bookstores, both new and used, and I hit the magazine rack at B&N at least once a week. Barnes and Noble is really hardcore on their discount program. You buy a ‘membership’ for $25 annually and you get 10% off all products, and bigger discounts on best sellers. At least that’s how I understand it. As a loyal B&N customer, you’d think I’d have one of these, wouldn’t you?

I don’t.

I have two reasons for not having one. First is that in some things I stand on principle. I refuse to purchase a ‘discount.’ If B&N would like to reward me for being a frequent customer, they may do so (Borders used to without a fee), but I’m not going to pay for the privilege.

Second, I hate to carry discount cards. I’m a man. That means that I carry my wallet in my hip pocket, and the thinner it is, the more comfortable I am. Hence I don’t carry discount cards. Yes, they could look me up through my phone number, but then I’m back to paying. With what I spend at B&N, the card might save me $75-100 annually. It’s not worth it.

But I know that when I go to the cash register, I’m going to be asked if I have the card. I reply with a firm but polite “no.” Then I’m asked if I want to hear about it. I reply “no” again. At this point, if I’m lucky, the clerk will respect my wishes and ring me up. If not, the clerk might start by saying, “But, you would save $2 on this purchase…” or whatever. At that point, I get annoyed and ask if it’s OK for me to purchase magazines there. The clerk looks at me as if I’m stupid. Clearly I’m making the “wrong” decision. The trouble is that the clerk doesn’t know my criteria.

The optometrist is in the same situation. He’s looking at the value proposition through his own eyes and not the customer’s – but the customer is the one who will buy. The value proposition always makes sense to the salesperson. So, why in the world could a customer prefer cheap, badly made (he’s assuming) glasses in quantity over one high quality and more attractive pair of glasses, especially when there’s no cost to the customer?

There are reasons, much like my reasons for not getting a discount card. Perhaps the customer seldom wears glasses, but wants a pair in multiple locations (I have sunglass shades for my glasses, and I have multiple ones so I can have a sunglass in each car, for instance). Hence, quantity becomes more important than quality. Perhaps the customer doesn’t understand their own buying power. Or maybe they want multiple pairs of glasses with different “looks.”

The problem is that, usually, we don’t try to understand the customer’s criteria for the decision – instead we try to ‘educate’ the customer on the ‘right’ decision. That seldom works. It seldom works because WE say it, and it’s a transparent effort to ‘push’ things that the customer doesn’t want. There’s a better approach.

Ask, don’t tell. The customer’s words are always more powerful than yours; the key is to tease out of the customer what their criteria is, and ask questions that influence the conversation. Let’s take a look at our optometrist again, and how he might work questions into the conversation. Questions like:

“How often do you actually wear glasses?”

(If they don’t wear them all the time): “Do you carry them with you all the time?”

“What kind of impression do you want your appearance to make?”

“How important is it to you to be able to have different looks?”

At the very least, these questions would tell the optometrist if the customer is a good candidate to ‘upsell’ into better frames; at the most, there might be lead-ins to good selling.

So, if you want to succeed in this situation, you have to set up the criteria early, BEFORE you present. Here are the steps involved:

• Respect your buyer’s intelligence. Your customers (usually) aren’t stupid, so don’t treat them like they are.
• Be open to other viewpoints. This goes along with the previous step, but realizing that buyers have their own worldviews is vital.
• Set up the criteria by asking, not telling. Your customer’s words are the most important ones; ask good questions early in the process before you work toward a presentation.
• Ask “what if” questions to address or shift the customer’s criteria. The two most powerful questions in sales are “what if.” Use those words to your advantage by painting an advantageous situation.
• Find a way to solve the customer’s problem, not yours. The key to winning the sale is to get the customer’s agreement that your solution can solve their problem within their own criteria.
• Don’t argue. When you go down the road of believing that the customer’s criteria is ‘wrong,’ you’ve lost the sale. If you can’t get agreement on the criteria, it might be a better strategy to back off and preserve the relationship.
• Respect the customer. Remember, the customer is buying SOMETHING from you (in the case of the optometrist, it’s an exam). You don’t want to make the process so unpleasant by trying to upsell that they avoid you entirely.

Like anything else in sales, this won’t work all the time. NOTHING works all the time. This, however, will give you the best shot at succeeding when you think the customer might be “wrong.”

One of the things I’ve always prided myself in is that I am a student of those activities about which I am passionate. When I get involved in something and I get excited about it, I dedicate myself to learning as much as I can about that activity. It’s been the pattern of my life. When I was in the debate program in high school and college, I ate and slept debate (well, at least with the energy that didn’t go into chasing girls – I was a teenager, after all). I’ve been a student of cars and racing all my life (which has led to me being virtually invincible in games of NASCAR Trivial Pursuit).

More to the point, I’m a student of the three disciplines that make up my career (and are the reason you’re reading this): sales, professional speaking, and training. I’m amazed at how often there is crossover between the disciplines; when I learn something from one discipline, it often bleeds into another. Such is the case with this week’s article. A concept that I learned long ago in speaking has really crystallized a way that salespeople can become much more effective than they currently are, and it’s all summed up by three little words.

Those words are: “Do, Think, or Feel.”

When creating a speech, professional speakers always ask themselves, “After this speech, what do I want my audience to Do, Think, or Feel?”

That’s a pretty good question, isn’t it? What if part of your pre-call planning included those words? “On my next call, what do I want my customer to do, think, or feel?” The answer sounds obvious, of course. “I want them to buy!” But many times, and on many calls, that’s not realistic. Yes, some of you sell in an environment where it’s completely realistic to think that your customer can buy on the first, and every, call. Some of you, however, sell in environments where your sale is one of incremetal steps.

“Do, Think, Feel” can make a huge difference in these multi-step environment, and here’s why. It’s customer-focused; your attention is on what the customer does, not what you do. That’s vital. Too many sales processes get extended beyond the point of any viability because the salesperson continues to move things “forward” unilaterally when the buyer isn’t motivated to buy. I call that “pushing a rope uphill.” It’s a huge waste of time, and “Do, Think, Feel” can help you get away from that.

Try this as a way of definining your call objective (and keep in mind, every call should have an objective, or a reason for being – if not, it’s not a good use of your customer’s time or yours):

What do you want your customer or prospect to DO? “Do” always specifies an action, and the question asks what the customer will do, not you. Depending on where you are in the sales process, there could be many actions that the customer takes. They might:

• Set a next appointment.
• Gather data for your next conversation.
• Entertain a proposal.
• Give a referral.
• Make an introduction.
• Or, some other definitive action that advances the sales process or the relationship.

You might want your prospect to THINK something different after your meeting. This can be early or late in a relationship, and it usually involves a change in perception. For instance, your customer might:

• Accept you as a brand leader.
• Gain respect for you.
• Qualify you as a vendor.
• View you as a resource and not a salesperson.
• Have an elevated perception of your quality.
• Again, there are an infinite number of possibilities here. The key to remember is that “think” is an intellectual or logical acceptance of a fact or reality.

Finally, you might want your prospect to FEEL something after your sales call. In my own selling style (and frankly, my own speaking style), these moments are fairly rare; however, they do happen. My own style focuses more on “Do” and “Think.” However, there is room for “Feel” in the sales process. Some examples of what a customer might “Feel” after an effective sales call are:

• Comfort with you as a contact.
• An affinity for you or your company.
• Fear for the consequences of not taking an action.
• Again, there are numerous possibilities here.

It’s worth pointing out that “Do, Think, and Feel” are not mutually exclusive. You can have sales calls that target more than one of the three. For instance, you might want a prospect to qualify you as a vendor (“Think”) which results in beginning a sales process (“Do”). “Do, think, or feel” doesn’t have to be your approach to sales, but if you’re searching for a way to define your call objectives, this can be a great way to put reason to your rhyme.

There’s an awful lot of bad sales advice floating around out there right now. Sometimes I think that our profession is caught right between people advocating old-time sales tactics that just don’t work anymore, and other people trying to be ‘hip’ and ‘techno-savvy’ by focusing on social networking as the all-encompassing solution for everything – but that doesn’t work either.

A prime example of this is a recent column I read talking about the popular “when to close” topic. The author’s answer – fueled by his Xerox sales training and illustrated by a personal anecdote of his experience in 1976 – was that the salesperson should always be closing. This the old A/B/C (Always Be Closing) philosophy has done more to kill sales and irritate customers than anything else salespeople do. There’s a right way, though, and let’s find it, shall we?

It’s appropriate that the anecdote was from 1976; A/B/C is very much a 1970’s sales approach. For that matter, so is the Xerox approach. The old Xerox approach, heavy with tactics, pressure, and technique, worked back when Xerox dominated its market. Today? Not so much. Today’s customers are more savvy, more educated, have more information available to them, and ultimately have been trained by years of salespeople using heavy sales tactics, and are more capable than ever to resist. This means that today’s customer responds to an approach that is more customer-friendly and respectful.

First, let’s learn how to recognize when you have an actual opportunity to sell:

• The customer must be motivated; e. the customer has a need that he/she wishes to solve through a purchase. If your customer is not motivated to act, you can be the best closer ever and it won’t help.
• The customer must have investigated that need; the customer and the salesperson must both understand the need, and your product must fulfill it (and the customer must agree that your product fulfills it).
• The customer must trust you.
• The customer must believe what you say (i.e. you have credibility in the customer’s eyes).
• The customer must respect you.
• The customer must not dislike you (I know that conventional wisdom says the customer must like you, and certainly that’s a huge help – but I’ve found it’s better to seek respect and trust that is genuine than to seek a like and friendship that is phony).
• You must have presented a proposal that is to the customer’s liking.

The trouble with the A/B/C approach is that it interferes with several of these things. Closing is the part of the sales process where customers are most likely to put up defenses; if you are always in some phase of a close, your customers will be defending themselves too much to be able to give you the candid answers you need to be able to match your products to their needs. Closing too early will interfere with trust and credibility, as well; the customer will perceive you as reaching for their wallet. (Answer to the old question: Why do customers perceive salespeople as pushy? Because too many are.)

Instead, today’s salesperson must have patience as part of the selling/closing process. To assess motivation, accurately assess needs, present your product, check customer agreement, build trust, etc. takes time. Sometimes it can all be done within a single sales call, but even those sales calls can get long. It’s very important that you are patient enough to allow the customer to move through their buying process properly (see my book, Sell Like You Mean It!, for more on this) and get to the closing arena at the same time you do.

You have earned the right to close when:

• You have accurately assessed the customer’s needs, and gotten his/her agreement that they are the needs.
• You have presented a solution(s) to the needs, and gotten his/her agreement that these will fulfill the needs.
• You have presented a specific proposal, including price and terms.

Once you are at this point, the close becomes a natural part of the sales process, and how you ask for the business matters less than the actual asking. In fact, the simpler the closing question (“So, are you ready to buy?”) the better. Forget fancy closing techniques; what works today is clean, straightforward conversation. What’s better is that, by handling this in a customer-friendly manner, you are more likely to get invited back for repeat sales opportunities! Isn’t that better than a one-shot quick close?

Just because it worked for Xerox in 1976 doesn’t mean it will work for you today. Success in today’s selling arena requires a different approach.