Are you there?

Introduction
When I'm in a conversation with a client, together designing her selling strategies, I know that I can approach her situation from several perspectives:

• how her selling repertoire is enabling her to produce the results that she wants/needs/is committed to and what is missing
• how her moods prevent/allow her to do what she wants/needs to do to meet her sales goals
• if she is able or not to produce action in herself and in others (clients, company)
• her verbal and non verbal communication.

In this particular case, her situation was addressed from all of these perspectives during the process BUT, in this particular conversation, we only covered two points:

• 'listening' and BEING FULLY PRESENT at the sales call.

Listening or not listening?
The expression "you are not listening" is not correct. The problem with some sales representatives is not if they are listening or not. They always are. The problems, in fact, are two:

• what exactly are they listening to and, 
• if they are FULLY PRESENT at the sales meeting

And a great number of them are not FULLY PRESENT at their sales meetings and are not FULLY PRESENT at their selling careers. Lots of distractions, problems, situations (circumstances, says Bernard Shaw) are created just for the sake of not BEING THERE.

I ask them:

• "Where are you when you are at a sales meeting?"
• "Are you THERE?"
• As a joke,  I use sometimes a line from Pink Floyd's masterpiece 'The Wall': "Is there anybody in there?"

BEING PRESENT at a sales call allows a sales rep to use, fully, his sales repertoire but if not, if he's not there, how?

A situation
One of the most amazing things that are revealed in conversations with sales representatives is if they are THERE, PRESENT, at the sales meeting with their clients. Not only physically, but mentally as well.
In the case that I'm going to share with you, we, my client, E., and I, started analyzing how she was handling a particular set of tools previously designed for her to handle this part of her sales process. I asked her if she was asking the questions that were created for this 1st interview and in what order. She said that she was asking the questions, sometimes in a particular order and sometimes in other and that they were serving its purpose BUT suddenly she said:

"My problem is not if I'm asking questions, my problem is, and let me tell you an example, when one client was answering an open ended question, I started to 'think' in other things. I stopped listening to him. I noticed that I wasn't 'listening' when he stopped talking. Then he asked me something about my company and I was still drowsy, recovering from the trip that I  made with my thoughts, so I couldn't answer completely.  Then he said: let me review your information and I'll call you. Thanks a lot for coming. And he showed me the door."

Yes, I know that you might be thinking that:

• "E. is not listening, her problem is that she is not listening to her client. In the moment that she starts listening, everything is going to change."

It can be as simple as that and everybody hopes it is but it isn't. The problem is that 'her not listening' has a cause. SHE is listening, and very clear, but not to the client.

What happens? The mechanics

When I was in Mexico coaching sales representatives, one of the most unnoticed but one of the most debilitating patterns that plagued my clients was that, indeed, they were listening but to the wrong guy, not the client when they were at the sales meeting. Some of them, several times left, more that once, mentally,  the sales interview. Not all of them had this problem, they had others, but most of them, experienced this situation, so often enough, without being able to stop it, that their sales meetings were damaged in a way that they couldn't be closed positively.

So, what takes my clients out of their selling conversations with their clients? What makes them to stop 'listening' to their clients and what exactly they start 'listening'? What are these things called 'thoughts'?

The problems start is when a very sutil, tiny BUT powerful voice, that many people think are 'thoughts',  begins to talk.
Returning to E., she started to listen, while she was with her client, this little voice saying to her ear:

• "What the hell I'm doing here? He is not going to buy! I'll better be doing other things. Oh! Margie is coming today at the evening. What are we going to do? Lets see....

This comment was enough for her to take her mind out of the sales conversation and put her with Margie. Her body stayed there, of course, with that smile that some sales reps have, but tense, just pretending that she was WITH (listening) the client.
The comment made by her 'little tiny voice' opened a door for a whole private conversation and she started to listen to a discourse, a complete story, that she enjoyed of course because the 'little voice' has hypnotic powers and is better to be out, with her company, than to handle the tension with the client.
She started to feel relaxed and comfortable. He was still talking. Please don't think that this happens in minutes. It happens in seconds. One moment you are PRESENT, there, fully there and in other, you are planning your evening with Margie. And the content is irrelevant. The subjects are endless. The purpose is to take her out of the sales interview. To 'leave' the sales conversation with her client. What she listened is irrelevant. Whom she started to listen to was relevant and the consequences of leaving the sales interview the same.

 

How she returned to the sales call, with her client?
E. came back to the sales interview when the client asked her a question. E. noticed that she was drowsy, like awakening from a hypnotic trance and tried to make her mind up so she could answer him. It was hard to return but she did it finally. The client, of course, saw that she wasn't 'paying attention' to him. That she wasn't 'listening' so he took her brochure and promised to call her as soon as he read the info. She never heard from him again. And it's not common to sales reps that are not there, to have a lot of difficulties to close sales.

Awareness
She wasn't aware that a voice took her out of the client's office, hypnotized her and ruined her sales call. She thought that those were just 'thoughts' and a problem with listening, as her manager told her. E. was listening but to the wrong 'person'. Her ability to listen is undamaged. The problem is with her ability TO BE FULLY PRESENT AT THE SALES INTERVIEW. What she had was a very destructive pattern that was destroying her sales interviews.

At some point of our conversation she said: "I was thinking about other things."
Instead she could have said:

• "I was telling to myself some more entertaining stories and is more comfortable."
• "I was hypnotizing myself because I can't stand the fear that causes me to be with a client."
• "I wasn't listening to the client, I was listening to me because I don't give a d... about him."
• "I prefer to listen to me because I don't have ambition."

Her conclusions
I asked E. how many times this had happened. She was able to see that she was blaming other things outside herself without acknowledging that she was losing sales or not closing them, just because she wasn't PRESENT at the sales call. Because she choose to listen to the 'wrong guy'.

Being There
How she managed to be THERE all the time, with the client? How she came back to her sales interviews?
Several things were prescribed that were not easy to apply. First to catch the moment when this 'little voice' starts to talk. Second, make a list of the consequences of leaving. The most important was that this was costing money to her. Third, increase your level of ambition. Understand that there is money in every moment of the sales interview.

A problem
This problem is labeled as 'you don't listen'. As in the case of E., her manager told her several times that she 'wasn't listening' to her clients. He recommended a course, that she took, about 'active listening'. The course didn't work. Until E. came to me, she discovered that one 'little voice' was talking to her and that this 'little voice' was distracting her. Being fully present is an attention skill, not a selling skill.

Ramon Ruiz