I have interviewed many salespeople over the past five years at AWS.
Unfortunately, a common mistake I see candidates make in interviews is when they continuously use a broad “we” when telling a story about an accomplishment.
An interviewer wants to learn how your unique actions advanced a sale or helped a customer achieve impactful results. You are the one getting interviewed, not your team.
My recommendation is to clarify early in your story the members of your team and their roles, then move on to describe what you did that made the difference.
Using a broad “We” generously without specifying your individual contribution is a concern the candidate is slow to take ownership and responsibility.
Using too many “I’s” without giving proper credit to the team involved is a concern the candidate likes to take undeserving praise for the results, which is an earned trust issue.
How To Fix It
The key is to balance the “we” and “I” in your story.
To achieve this, clarify who ‘we’ is and each person’s role early and as often as needed.
Next, describe your ‘I’ contributions and how they led to the ideal customer outcomes and results using a framework like the Situation Task Action Result (STAR) method.
This way, the interviewer gets a holistic view of the scope of your accomplishment, its impact on customers, and the results delivered.
A few weeks ago I had a virtual chat with my mentor, a CEO of a software company in Silicon Valley. Our discussion focused on competing in a complex enterprise sales cycle. After describing the challenges I was facing, he reflected and asked a simple question: Are you playing soccer or lacrosse?
Interesting.
My exposure to lacrosse is limited to its appearance on ESPN SportsCenter: Top Ten Plays. It wasn’t a sport I went out of my way to watch. And if I were to, I’d have to learn the history, techniques, and rules of the game.
My mentor could see my thoughts drifting, so he rephrased the question:
Are you trying to get your customer to buy in the way you sell, or are you trying to get your customer to buy in the way your competitors sell? In other words, are you playing soccer, or are you playing lacrosse?
My mentor and I both share a passion for soccer, as we both grew up playing and watching it religiously. He knew the analogy would resonate.
The point he was making was although the customer may be intrigued by lacrosse, it didn’t mean they wanted to play it. It could be that my competitor introduced prospects to lacrosse because they got tired of losing at soccer. By playing along or trying to get the customer to buy in the way my competitors sell, I was expending valuable resources instead of investing in my soccer game. If I continued to go down this path, it’d be a severe case of self-deceit because it’s playing a game where the opponent sets all the rules, so I was bound to lose. I had to make a change.
After some deep self-reflection, I worked with my team to refine my approach and strategy. Here are some of the steps I’m taking:
Dedicating additional time to deeply understand my customer’s business outcomes by scouring through financial statements, interviews, press releases, social media, investor decks, etc.
Developing a point of view from the perspective of achieving each business outcome.
Validating and refining that point of view by speaking with key stakeholders within my customer’s organization, from the executive to the executive assistant.
Crowdsourcing feedback and the best ideas from experts within my organization to further refine the strategy.
Applying critical thinking and asking tough questions to earn trust and mutual respect in every interaction.
Proactively sharing ideas to solve business challenges even if there are no complete solutions to offer…yet.
These steps are netting positive results and rekindling the customer’s passion for soccer. The customer is fortifying their defense in preparation to mount a counter attack and score some business goals.
On a side note, Real Madrid, if you’re reading this, I’m patiently waiting for that invitation to try out or a free ticket 🙂 Thanks!
When asked what makes a great story, Beau Willimon, showrunner for House of Cards, gave a simple answer: “The most important element in a good story is conflict. It’s seeing two opposing forces collide with one another.”
As I have progressed in my sales career from selling T-Shirts as a college student to negotiating technology agreements as a Senior Enterprise Sales Executive, one thing remains consistent: a good story drives action. Trying to convince a broke college student to spend $25 for a T-Shirt required some artful storytelling. Displacing an incumbent and challenging the status quo means gaining executive consensus and painting a better future through stories.
Telling a good story requires knowing what makes a good story, and from the comment earlier, the most critical element in a good story is conflict. A known supporting cast in any good commercial story is data, which is also a catalyst for conflict and debate.
The key to using data in a story is that it needs to inspire action and accelerate decisions. In Nancy Duarte’s HBR article, she explains that for data to inspire action, they need to do more than make sense – they have to make meaning. If your audience can internalize the purpose of the data, it becomes more actionable, which leads to a faster decision.
Let’s assume you are trying to explain to your audience that your solution could save $2,000,000 over 12 months.
The HBR article shared three strategies you could use to have your data make meaning:
Connect data to relatable size – comparing length, width, height, thickness, or distance. Using our $2M in savings example, you could say to an audience in Seattle: two million dollars stacked up in one dollar bills is about the height of the Space Needle with some change to spare. Guess what happens when next they see the Space Needle from their downtown office? You guessed it, the two million dollars they could be saving with your solution.
Connect data to relatable time – we measure time in seconds, hours, minutes, days, months, and decades. Two million dollars comes out to $7,692 per working day, so each day we delay the decision costs the business $7,692 or $320 per hour or $5 per minute…a minute later in the meeting, you could interrupt yourself and say, wow, there goes five bucks, with a smile.
Connect data to relatable things – more digestible to relate to things people are familiar with. To an environmentally conscious decision maker in Silicon Valley, you could say: two million dollars could get you and your team of 20 engineers a brand new 2019, Tesla Model X. #SaveTheEnvironment (assuming they don’t already own one 🙂 )
When crafting a story, take advantage of opportunities to insert data into the storyline and use the strategies described above to master the art of having the data make meaning. If your audience understands the impact of your data, they would be inspired to use your meaning in internal discussions to navigate conflict, drive action and arrive at a decision in your favor.
I asked the CEO of a fast-growing startup in Silicon Valley his approach to selling to other Executives.
His response was simple: “Executives are people.”
How so?
Executives are busy.
Executives are overwhelmed with requests for their time.
Executives are under pressure to deliver results.
Executives are responsible for setting the vision and making the toughest decisions.
Knowing these truths, he approaches each interaction with an Executive with deep empathy and extensive preparation.
What does this look like?
Executives are busy and overwhelmed, so he streamlines his agenda to give them back some time.
Executives are under pressure to deliver results, so he is precise with how his solution can provide the results the Executive cares about the most.
Executives are responsible for making the toughest decisions, so he does everything in his power to show how his solution reduces risk for the Executive.
To establish credibility with the Executive, he aligns with their vision and priorities.
Speaking of priorities, how do you know the priorities that matter most?
Research.
In KPMG’s interview of over 1300 CEOs, the company identified three key priorities for CEOs in 2019: 1) Make digital a personal crusade 2) Navigate through geopolitical headwinds 3) Find the right balance between data and intuition.
PwC’s global CEO survey identified approaches to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and navigating fissures in policy frameworks as the underlying trends shaping the US CEO agenda for 2019.
Research from Workday identified six priorities CEOs care most about which are: 1) Finding growth 2) Taking on risk 3) Managing regulatory changes 4) Leveraging technology 5) Pursuing innovation 6) People and culture
Gartner also recently published their survey of 473 CEO and senior business executives. The top 11 business priorities are 1) Growth 2) IT related 3) Corporate (structural development) 4) Financial performance 5) Workforce management 6) Customer 7) Product improvements 8) Cost management 9) Efficiency and productivity 10) Innovation and 11) Risk management
While these publications are informative and help inform an approach, nothing replaces asking the Executives directly to articulate their priorities in their own words.
Anything else?
Communication style.
Tell me more.
Having the right communication style comes with experience and repetition. It’s a skill that can be developed, but it requires practice, practice, and more practice. Your choice of words matter. Your self-confidence matters. Your tone matters. Your cadence matters. Your body language matters.
Communication at its core is the successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings. If your ideas and feelings are not getting across then you’re not communicating.
Also, authenticity matters.
Why?
Savvy, and somewhat cynical Executives can detect inauthentic communication in less than one millisecond.
So, be yourself.
Being yourself is the foundation for building trust. And trust is the anchor for all business relationships that last for generations.
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” Henry Ford
Salespeople enjoy reliving their victories play by play; in fact, it’s hard to contain their enthusiasm when they get going. However, when talking about a lost deal, the story tends to get abbreviated. I’ve been guilty of this! 😉
Losing is tough, and one could lose twice if no time is spent learning how and why it happened. As such, it’s important to be deliberate about your next moves following a lost deal. Here are three common actions I’ve observed successful salespeople take after losing a deal:
1. They Reflect: Taking a few minutes to reflect and process the events that led up to the loss allows them to draw insights while the event is fresh in their minds. The process of reflection is two-fold:
Self-reflection: The key is to not sulk in the loss. Rather, with self-compassion as guard rails, they jot down their mistakes, trace every step, and commit to refining their approach the next time. This simple act of self-reflection can be the difference between winning sporadically versus winning consistently. An example of the power of self-reflection occurred with a top salesperson I interviewed. After losing a deal she worked hard to win, she felt defeated and decided to do some self-reflection. After reflecting, she realized she didn’t spend as much time as she should have on enabling a key influencer who at the last-minute swayed the decision in favor of her competitor. Following this realization, she committed to creating stakeholder maps to ensure she invested adequate time with all the key decision makers and influencers.
Team reflection: According to research by Alison Reynolds and David Lewis published on HBR, the best problem-solving teams treat mistakes with curiosity and share responsibility for the outcomes. The idea is to be solution-oriented in the reflection instead of pointing fingers. Successful salespeople realize that one should never lose a deal alone. And if a loss does occur, the team collectively comes up with ideas to improve and hold each other accountable.
2. They Research: Successful salespeople connect with customers to understand their decision to go with an alternative solution. These top salespeople are diplomatic in their request and make it a point to understand the perspectives of all the key stakeholders involved in the decision. This process is difficult, but it’s also rewarding, especially when the customer is candid with their feedback. If it’s a product, service, or pricing issue, the salesperson can route the feedback directly to the team responsible which could be the catalyst for change within their organization. Research is especially valuable in technology sales because if a customer decides not to select your solution because of a missing critical feature, the salesperson can work with the product team to influence the product roadmap which could help win back the deal.
“Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers (and salespeople) ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.” – Zig Ziglar
3. They Re-engage: Change is the only constant in business, and if the customer chooses a solution to solve a problem they have today, the successful salesperson anticipates problems the customer could face tomorrow. They re-engage the customer with new business models, industry insights, case studies, and innovative ideas to improve the customer’s business. They add value in their follow-up and follow-through, which often leads to them winning back the business. A good example of this was a Sales Leader who always followed up at least once a month to ask how things were going with the vendor the customer selected. He asked questions such as: are you achieving the goals you intended, is the vendor delivering on what they promised, are you achieving the right business results, is your team happy with the decision, and where / what are the gaps in the current solution. This Sales Leader has won back multiple deals by being persistent and consistent in delivering value even after losing the initial deal. He encourages salespeople not to assume everything is okay with the customer; instead, focus on anticipating challenges and positioning your solution to solve those challenges.
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison
When next you lose a deal, don’t fret, just remember the three R’s: Reflect, Research, and Re-engage!
