Cian Mcloughlin is a best-selling sales author and CEO of Trinity Perspectives.
On this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Cian explains why simply asking your customers what they want might be the most powerful sales technique of all time!
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- Cian on Linkedin
- Trinity Perspectives
- Book: Rebirth of the Salesman: The World of Sales is Evolving. Are you?
Transcript
Will Barron:
Do you want to know how to crush it, how to dominate your industry in B2B sales with just one simple exercise, then this episode is for you. Hello sales nation. I am, Will Barron and welcome to today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast. On today’s show, we have here in Cian Mcloughlin. He is the CEO of Trinity Perspectives, which you can find over it at trinityperspectives.au. We’ll link to all this in the show notes as well over at salesman.org. And the simple process for dominating seemingly in B2B sales is just to ask your potential customers what they want from you. We dive into this, a whole lot more in this episode. So let’s jump right in. Cian, welcome to The Salesman Podcast.
Cian McLoughlin:
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.
What Do Our Customers Expect From Us During Sales Meetings? · [00:48]
Will Barron:
I’m glad to have you on. I’m excited to have you on, and I’m going to jump straight in with this one of, we’ve all been told, it’s sales 101, that we shouldn’t be pitching, emailing, cold calling, going into meetings and just throwing our features or our benefits at our potential customers in this, the first couple of interactions anyway. What do our customers want in those meetings? What should we be leading these conversations with? Any data? From your business, anything that you can provide on that would be really useful as well.
“The one thing I always encourage sales professionals to do is to do their due diligence, to go into meetings with some intelligent questions. Because the tendency is that we will be judged by the quality of the questions we ask. So the better questions we ask, the more likely that we’re going to have a meaningful conversation.” – Cian McLoughlin · [01:35]
Cian McLoughlin:
Yeah, well, I think the first thing I would say is, the one thing they definitely don’t want, as you articulated, is for you to show up and throw up. Those days are gone. If those days ever existed, they’re long, long gone. I think the great answer is, it depends. Every customer is different, every circumstance is unique, but I think the one thing that I always encourage sales professionals to do is to do your due diligence, to go in with some intelligent questions, because the tendency is that we will be judged by the quality of the questions we ask. So the better questions we ask, the more likelihood that we’re going to have a meaningful conversation.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Value is in the eye of the beholder as well. And so, what one prospect constitutes as valuable, another may not. So the only thing we can do is some discovery and go in with enough curiosity and enough confidence to have a conversation and see where it evolves, instead of just throwing some stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks.” – Cian McLoughlin · [02:00]
Cian McLoughlin:
And I have a pretty simple philosophy, which is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We always hear that beauty is in the eye of beholder from when we’re young children. Value is in the eye of the beholder as well. And so, what one prospect constitutes as valuable, another may not. So the only way, the only thing that we can do to really understand that is to actually do some discovery, to do some needs analysis, to have some open-ended conversations, to go in with enough curiosity and enough confidence to have a conversation and see where it evolves.
Cian McLoughlin:
And then instead of just throwing some stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks, we can actually make the connection between something they’ve told us and something that maybe we understand about our product or our service or our offering or whatever that might be. And that’s the bit, I think that’s the meaningful piece that so many sales professionals, unfortunately, are falling down on. They’re getting pressured or they’re putting pressure on themselves to get straight into pitch mode. But there’s no point in doing that, because we don’t know where to create that connection and therefore we can’t really articulate something of value at that stage.
Cian McLoughlin:
So I just think they need to back off, give customers the space. Think about it in the context of walking into a clothes shop and someone walks up to you and, the usual story like, “Can I help you?” “No, no, no, I’m just browsing.” Of course, I’m just browsing. Customers want the opportunity to browse as well. The way they’re browsing in a B2B context is having an open-ended conversation and allowing us to maybe provide them with some insights and some perspectives before we jump into solutioning mode.
Intriguing Questions That Will Get Your Prospects To Think · [03:20]
Will Barron:
It might be better to put this in an example, so that we got some context for here. But what would be an example of a good first two, three-minute question that we should be at least thinking about implementing into our sales calls and meetings?
Cian McLoughlin:
Look, I think one great question that I’ve always found in my career is what happens if you do nothing, right? So, we’re sitting down to have a conversation with someone about the prospect of them changing, because usually that’s what it is. We could talk about an existing customer, but in many instances, what we talk about is a white space, blue sky, net new prospect. And if you’re going in to have that conversation, one of the things that I want to know, first and foremost, is what happens if you do nothing?
Cian McLoughlin:
Because if the answer to that is, “Well, nothing really happens. It’s status quo,” then there’s a high probability that they don’t have a strong enough need or there’s going to be a lot of work that needs to be done on our side to create some sort of a value proposition, or a return on investment or a business case. And maybe we’re still happy to do that, maybe we’re not, but at least we understand that now. So I think that’s a really, really simple… Usually, the simple questions are sometimes the hardest to ask, but also the ones that produce the most insightful responses.
Cian McLoughlin:
Another one which I think is a really, really simple one is, “So help me understand what does success look like? What does nirvana look like? Forget about all the solutions, forget about all the hard graph that’s ahead over the next couple of months, if you decide to make… Forget all of that, just help me understand what does that future look like?” And have them start to articulate that and describe that. And I think that’s a really, really interesting question to start to peel back the layers of the onion.
“Customers will teach us how to sell to them if we ask them the right questions and then we shut up and listen to the responses.” – Cian McLoughlin · [05:10]
Cian McLoughlin:
And a third question is probably, “Tell me about your experience working with other vendors? Be it in our space or in other spaces, what’s the stuff you like, what’s the stuff that really, really frustrated you?” Because again, customers will teach us how to sell to them if we ask them the right questions and then we shut up and listen to the responses. So, that’s a great opportunity to allow them to coach us from the very, very start. So there’s a couple of questions that certainly have worked for me and teams that I’ve worked with over the years.
Will Barron:
I want to add onto this, so this is I got from Tim Ferris, and I do this both in my personal life, then in the business world as well of I ask myself, “What would this look like if it was easy?” And as soon as I answer that question, typically, you get rid of all the nonsense, either side, you get down to the problem that you actually want to solve. And essentially, maybe we don’t want to make our lives easy, because there’s less reward, if everything would be that simple. If we were just sat on a beach, our minimum wage, surfing all day, perhaps that wouldn’t be as rewarding as hustling in our sales roles, but I think that turns the conversation on its head. I get a lot of value out of asking myself that question. But, Cian, is-
Cian McLoughlin:
Well, what it does is it forces people to pause. And I think that’s one of the things we need to do with the questions we ask, force people to lean back in their chairs and cross their arms and tilt their head to one side, because then we know that they’re really thinking as distinct from, we’re going through the motions and they’re going through the motions and it’s all just box ticking. That’s unlikely to unleash something of real insight, I would say.
Why Salespeople Need to Build Skills That Are Not Easily Automatable · [06:30]
Will Barron:
And it strikes me now that there’s going to be two lots, two groups of people in sales nation listening to this. There’s going to be, which is me, one group of people writing down each of these questions and the next meeting they go in, they just regurgitate the questions because they’ve heard it on a podcast. And then there’s going to be another group who perhaps, to use horrible terms I hate referring to, but high emotional intelligence or high conversational skills, charismatic.
Will Barron:
They’re almost the stereotype of this B2B salesperson who’s crushing it, who will go in, “Oh, well, I implement some of this anyway. Perhaps I can add a twist of that to my game.” Is there a strategy or is there a structure for this? Or, are we asking lots of questions, seeing which ones resonate, writing them down in a notebook at the end of the meeting and developing this forward? Can we have a script for this or is this something that we’ve got to just build into our business skill set, the ability to ask good questions, not necessarily verbatim of what they’ve heard here?
“If you don’t want to be automated, you need to start developing skills that are not easily automatable. And one of those skills in sales is the ability to ask intelligent questions.” – Cian McLoughlin · [07:43]
Cian McLoughlin:
I look, I think you have to build it into your skill set, because I know you’ve had guests on that have talked about the evolution of the industry that we’re in and the rise of AI and automation and all of those other scary futures that have us sitting on the couch because we don’t have jobs. One of the things which I think is a fairly consistent theme is, if you don’t want to be automated, you need to start developing skills that are maybe not skills that are easily automatable. And one of those skills is the ability to ask intelligent questions.
Cian McLoughlin:
So, I’ve worked with a lot of young sales professionals early in their career, and I know that that is a very awkward position for people to be in, to ask questions from their own mind as distinct from a sheet of paper. But the reality is that, I think we teach people how to treat us in any circumstance. So, if you’re a young sales professional, maybe you’re meeting with someone who’s older or who’s more senior, who has a C at the start of their title, it’s very easy to get sort of, freeze and be very concerned. But what you have to do is just put that to one side and create a connection. And the best way to do that I’ve experienced is through having a good conversation.
“The more prepared you are, the less nervous you’ll be.” – Cian McLoughlin · [08:45]
Cian McLoughlin:
And a lot of that comes down to the quality of your discovery and that discovery isn’t just the bit that you do on, “Who am I going to be talking to and what business are they in?” There’s a whole lot of other things that we can be doing. Because the more prepared you are, the less nervous you’ll be. The more prepared you are, the more context you have. And also go in with the heart of a teacher. So you’re not actually going in trying to sell anything. That’s the key mistake I think so many of us make. And I know I’ve made it myself in my career over the years.
Cian McLoughlin:
We’re not trying to sell anything, we’re just trying to earn the right to move to the next conversation. So, if we just focus on how do we have a really, really great conversation here, as distinct from six months down the track I might sell you something, I think that takes the pressure off, not just us, but it takes the pressure off our prospective customer as well.
Will Barron:
Might go slightly off topic here, but-
Cian McLoughlin:
Sure.
Why Do Most Salespeople Fear Asking Difficult Questions, Especially to Senior Executives? · [09:20]
Will Barron:
… why do we feel awkward when we ask, the stereotype of a CEO, a tough question. Because realistically, they’re probably answering tougher questions all day, every day than what a B2B salesperson is going to be throwing at them. So, why do we feel awkward about this?
Cian McLoughlin:
Well, it’s funny. I asked that question. I’ve run some academies with millennial, younger salespeople, and I asked that question. And one of the key fears is that the conversation is going to deviate off topic and their ignorance or their lack of knowledge in a particular area is going to be exposed. So, I think that there’s a genuine fear in that area. There’s also a fear that you’re going to be treated like the stereotypical salesperson and someone will respond to you, “Look, what are you doing? You’re just wasting my time. This is ridiculous. How did you get in my office?” And march you out the door.
Cian McLoughlin:
So, there’s those… On the one hand, there’s the fears, and then I think on the other hand, there’s a sense that, well, even if we ask great questions, we may not get great answers back in response. Because many of the sales processes that we go through in the B2B world are very formal, very structured with a lot of probity. This is what we’re giving to the vendors. That’s all the information you get. You’re not going to get anything more. And that puts you in a box and makes it quite difficult to come in with curiosity and come in with a desire to really get under the bonnet. Often that’s all you’re given and you make do with that. So, yeah, I think there’s some constraints that are put upon sales professionals, but then there’s a whole lot that we put on ourselves in addition.
How Asking Great Questions Can Be Your Competitive Advantage · [10:50]
Will Barron:
So, if we are, for example, with my world of the NHS, a lot of these bigger deals, anything, I think it’s about 75 grand upwards, would typically have to go to tender of some sorts. Is asking great questions, is uncovering real needs, and I guess what we’re getting at here is, uncovering a problem and then aligning a potential solution to it, as opposed to saying, “Here’s our solution. You do the mental processing.” Is this a competitive advantage in those scenarios, when perhaps other people are, to use your words, they’re in a structured, formal box? Is spending 10 minutes, 20 minutes with a potential decision-maker, asking good questions, a clear competitive advantage in perhaps a market where the products are very similar?
Cian McLoughlin:
I’m almost speechless at how much I want to say yes. It absolutely is. And this is really, really important context. So, I spent many years in the B2B sales world, in tech, at the high end, and then six or seven years ago jumped ship. And I jumped ship because I had this epiphany or this moment of clarity which is, we need to be talking more to our customers at the end of the sales cycle to understand what happened. What did we do well, what do we do badly? How can we extract some value from all the time and effort and energy, and blood and sweat and tears that we put into the process? And I set up a business to do that.
Cian McLoughlin:
And so, what’s happened over the last six or seven years is, I, and then my team, subsequently have spoken to hundreds and hundreds of key decision-makers at customers all over the world. And a lot of what we’ve heard has been really, really surprising. And a lot of what we’ve heard has run contrary to some of the things that we are almost the accepted norms in the world of B2B selling.
“Product and price, whilst important, are very much just your ticket of entry. It may get you to the long list, but it’s very unlikely to get you to the short list. And ironically, the bigger the deal values, the less important those two things are.” – Cian McLoughlin · [12:35]
Cian McLoughlin:
And one of the things that comes through consistently is that product and price, whilst important, are very much just your ticket to the dance. That’s your ticket of entry. It may get you to the long list, but it’s very unlikely to get you to the short list. And ironically, the bigger the deal values, the less important those two things are. And then all of these other things become much more important. On top of that list is the quality of your people and the purpose and focus of your organisation.
How to Become an Excellent Conversation Manager · [13:01]
Will Barron:
Well, let’s drill into this. What does quality of people, what does purpose mean? And this is a five-hour conversation on its own, I’m sure. But let’s draw into those two things. What does quality of people mean and what does purpose mean? Because I’ve worked for medical device companies that have a mission statement and some wishy-washy, bullshity purpose. And if I just spouted that at a surgeon that I was selling to, “Why you here? This doesn’t mean anything to me, personally.” So what do we need to pull out of those two categories, and how can we, I guess, not formalise it, but how can we write it down so that we can put it in front of our audience appropriately?
Cian McLoughlin:
Yeah. Well, let’s take people first, Will, and then move on to purpose. So I think with people, what I’ve observed or what I’ve learned over the last six or seven years, is that the salespeople and the pre-salespeople, and if we call it the sales team, for want of a better expression, we’re the personification of the vendor or the brand that we represent, right? So, humans, we are just physically incapable of separating the two.
Cian McLoughlin:
So, if a great sales team comes in and they’ve done really good work beforehand, and then they work well with our team and they engage well, and they’re funny and they know their stuff, and they respond well and they get back to us in good time, and that we see good cultural fit and all of these other things, it’s impossible for us to then separate that from the solution and say, well, “Whoa, well, their solution’s probably okay, but it’s not amazing.” Well, maybe it’s not impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.
“Humans, we buy with our hearts a lot of the time, and then we justify with our heads. But as an industry, we have this focus on selling to people’s heads and never recognising that for a decision to be made at the front of your head, it has to come through the back.” – Cian McLoughlin · [14:35]
Cian McLoughlin:
Because humans, we buy with our hearts a lot of the time, and then we justify with our heads. But as an industry, we have this just focus on selling to people’s heads and never recognising they would actually, for a decision to be made at the front of your head, it has to come through the back. It has to come through the feeling, emotional, lizard brain part before it gets to the rational thinking brain. And yet, we’re not finding ways to connect there.
Cian McLoughlin:
So, let me give you an example to illustrate that. We did a review, an organisation spent 40 to $50 million on a very large technical solution. And one of the key reasons that they went with a particular vendor they went with was because one of the project team offered to relocate himself and his family, for a period of 12 months, to their city in order to make sure that the project went well.
Cian McLoughlin:
And that from a people purpose, cultural fit perspective was such a huge endorsement that it wasn’t the only factor. And if price point had been terrible and the product had been terrible, they wouldn’t have got there, but it made a massive, massive difference. And there’s all these little, subtle things that are happening that might be one or two percent that can fundamentally change the outcome of these pieces of business.
Ways to Avoid Sounding Like a Stereotypical Salesperson · [15:45]
Will Barron:
How important, because you said something which sparked my curiosity here, how important, and the word was funny, how important is it for us to not be this stereotypical man or woman, a man in a suit, woman in a power suit, walking with your briefcase, you give them a flyer, you talk very straight down the line, there’s no personality, and you think you’re being professional. How important is it in 2018 to perhaps not be like that? To try and build actual relationships, business friendships? Perhaps you’re not going to the barbecues at the weekend, but you can get on the phone with them and talk about sports, whatever it is. How important is that as a competitive advantage over perhaps those people who are “corporate professional salespeople” who are straight down the middle?
Cian McLoughlin:
Look, this is going to be personal feedback and personal experience, rather than anything’s statistical, but I think it’s critical for two reasons. One, because if when you get up to speak, you move into sales mode or presenter mode, or corporate power suit mode, then that says a lot in terms of you and your confidence in yourself, and the personality that you have, at the rest, when you’re sitting in the lunch room, talking to your mates or whatever. I think that’s an issue, because it’s hard to keep those two personas going.
Cian McLoughlin:
And one of the things that humans, I think, have a sixth sense about, it’s a bullshit detector or an authenticity detector. And we’re always very, very well-honed on that particular topic. So, being yourself is just easier. But also, I think if you recognise that the career that we all want to have is, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, then playing a role for 5, 10, 15, 20 years is going to get pretty exhausting as well. And at some point, you’ll let your guard down. At some point, someone will say, “Actually, you’re quite a nice person. Why are you only behaving like this now?”
“If you’ve been a halfway decent human being throughout the process, even if you’ve lost the deal, there’s a high probability they’ll give you some of that feedback.” – Cian McLoughlin · [17:55]
Cian McLoughlin:
So I think it’s important, because that human connection that we hear about so often, to be honest, whether you win or lose the deal, it’s just a nicer way to engage. And the piece that we about a lot, which is have I earned the right to get some analysis and get some feedback afterwards? If you’ve been a halfway decent human being throughout the process, even if you’ve lost the deal, there’s a high probability they’ll give you some of that feedback.
How To Become A Well-rounded Salesperson · [18:00]
Will Barron:
So, making the assumption here that the audience are representing a great product. It doesn’t have to be the cheapest, doesn’t have to be the most value. Perhaps it’s just a good product in the market. Let’s assume that they’ve got good product knowledge, all the fundamentals, they know the industry, is this a competitive advantage that we should be working on? Should we be, as salespeople, taking up a hobby if we don’t do anything other than work, so that we’ve got something to talk about other than, for me, endoscopes and surgery? Should we be reading books on how to become more charismatic or taking, I don’t know, Dale Carnegie speaking courses and things like that? Because sales trainers, and some I have on the show, never touch this area thing. It’s always, “This is the structure, this is our sales methodology.” Should we be focusing on some of these things as well?
Cian McLoughlin:
It’s not a means to an end, it’s an end in itself. If you’re taking up knitting or pottery, because you want to have something to talk about on Monday morning when you go and visit a client, I mean, A, it’s pretty sad, and B, unless you’ve really stalked them on LinkedIn and found out they’re in a knitting circle as well, it’s probably not going to deliver much value. But I think what it speaks to is being a well-rounded individual. What it speaks to is someone who is able to engage in conversation beyond just their core topic or their core focus area.
“That lovely sales cliché that we all want to be trusted advisors. The trust piece isn’t the hard piece, the advice piece is the hard piece. Because to be able to advise, you need to have perspective. You need to have knowledge and you need to be able to understand your product in the context of their business.” – Cian McLoughlin · [19:31]
Cian McLoughlin:
One of the things, and this has come through a lot in recent years, more so, actually, in recent years than the first few is, that lovely sales cliché that we all want to be trusted advisors, or whatever we want to call it. The trust piece isn’t the hard piece. The advisor piece is the hard piece. The advice piece is the hard piece. Because to be able to advise, you need to have perspective. You need to have knowledge, you need to be able to pull different strands together. You need to be able to understand your product in the context of their business, in the context of their industry, in the context of what’s happening in the economy, in the context of what’s happening in adjacent, and all this other stuff.
Cian McLoughlin:
Now, you don’t get there overnight. But I think having the curiosity that we talk about when you’re doing discovery with a customer needs to extend beyond just that customer, and it needs to imbue other parts of your life. Because, Will, picking up all these little different pieces of information and data points, we don’t know when that’s going to become useful or valuable, or it’s going to crop up in a conversation. But it speaks to you as a well-rounded individual, rather than someone who’s single-point sensitive around a particular topic.
Customers Want to Be Lead With Purpose. But What is Purpose in Sales? · [20:34]
Will Barron:
Makes total sense. Okay, purpose. What the hell does purpose mean? Is this our purpose? Is this the company’s purpose? How do we put it across without sounding all high and mighty, “My purpose is this, and you should pay attention to it?” What do we mean by customers want to be led by people and purpose?
Cian McLoughlin:
Well, I think, look, and you hit the nail on the head there, because there is two levels of that. There’s what you get out of bed for in the morning. If you look at the average salesperson, you say, not an average salesperson, but any salesperson, you say, “Okay, you’ve got a skill set. You could apply that skill set in any different industry, because the skill of being a good or a great salesperson is eminently transferable. Tell me why you’ve picked this particular industry? Help me understand what it was that led you to doing what you’re doing? Aside from the money, aside from the plaudits, what do you enjoy about it? What do you really extract from it?” Now, the reality is not every salesperson has an answer to that question.
Will Barron:
[inaudible 00:21:33].
Cian McLoughlin:
The worst thing you can do is try and fake a purpose. “Ah, no, I’m super passionate about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And it just comes across as inauthentic and tragic. But if there is an underlying purpose, and quite often there is, but sometimes we just haven’t taken the time to actually sit down and scratch the surface on that. Then that is something which is really, really meaningful and something that has a huge capacity to connect with other people.
Cian McLoughlin:
Now, I’m not suggesting that you rock in your first meeting and you start saying, “Well, look, I’m incredibly passionate about patient outcomes and that’s why I’ve…,” even though that may well be the case. But there’s ample opportunity to work it into conversations, and there’s ample opportunity to try and understand what the purpose of the other individuals on the other side of the table from you is-
Will Barron:
Okay-
Cian McLoughlin:
… and look for ways to create connection.
Will Barron:
… let me give you an example here. Let me give you-
Cian McLoughlin:
Yeah, go.
Will Barron:
… example of me. So, in medical device sales, I was selling endoscopy, both scopes that physically go inside the patient, and then also the camera equipment, the networking equipment, the full operating theatres that would go around in that. So, as you say this, as I’m pondering it on it myself, because I didn’t realise this at the time, but I really enjoyed, not necessarily… Most of my time was in theatres with surgeons. I didn’t necessarily not enjoy that time, but I more enjoyed setting up the equipment, teaching people how to use it, because I enjoyed the technology.
Will Barron:
It was actually mind-blowing, the lenses that were used, the fact that one particular company I worked for, most lenses in most cameras, I’ll bore the audience for this for two seconds. It’s interesting fact, are made in a town in Tuttlingen, in Germany, and they’re all glass polished. And that’s why camera lenses, medical equipment, microscopy, things like this are so expensive, because all made in one specific place. One of the companies I used to work for, they were one of the only companies in the world to do glass injection moulding, and they would have specific lenses. So I’d nerd out on all this. I freaking love it.
Will Barron:
And this is why the production quality of the podcast is so much higher than our competitors out there, because it doesn’t make that much of a difference to the end show and the content, but I enjoy nerding out about cameras, lights and setting it all up. So as you were saying that, Cian, it seems to me that my passion was less on the medicine and helping people and patient outcomes, it was more on, I loved talking about the technology. And I knew this when I’d connect with a surgeon, who’s a huge nerd, they would then be instantly buying everything from me, because they wanted the latest, best equipment. So, am I-
Cian McLoughlin:
Absolutely.
Will Barron:
… on the right tracks here of, would that be my purpose?
Cian McLoughlin:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think the other thing you mentioned there was the training bit as well. So helping people saying you can’t just have the best equipment, you’ve got to understand how to use it. So, absolutely. It’s the bit where we look inside us. And sometimes, and you’ve just described it there, Will, we have to look back over our shoulder to understand how the bits of our own story link together. And you’re like, “Ah, that’s why I did that thing versus that thing.”
Cian McLoughlin:
So, it’s not about having to memorise the vision or mission statement of the company you work for and then regurgitate it in front of customers, it’s about seeing if there is something there, which you actually are passionate about, or which does have a broader purpose than just, I want to sell you something so I can hit my number in this quarter. Now, I’m not for a moment saying that that isn’t an important purpose, because A, that pays your wages and puts your kids through school and all that sort of thing and keeps the lights on in the business. So there’s a level of nobility to just us doing our jobs every day. But for a lot of people, when you do actually scratch the surface, there’s a whole lot of stuff underneath there.
Cian McLoughlin:
And once it comes out, it’s really, really interesting to see how the dynamics of a conversation will change how the interactions between A, if we use the term customer, and a term salesperson will change. Because as we all know, B2B is a fallacy. It’s people to people or human to human. And if we start to look for that connection, yeah, it can certainly be there. But, obviously, there’s a caveat to that, which is, if your sales cycles are short, there isn’t necessarily an opportunity to do that all the time, so you have to weigh that up between you can’t find a connection with everyone, but at least understanding your purpose, you know when to bring it out.
Things That Customers Want But Salespeople Aren’t Implementing · [25:35]
Will Barron:
So, going back and we’ll wrap up the show with this, with your conversations with customers, whether business has been won or lost, I want to wrap up the show of asking you how we can, sales nation, the audience can pull some of the states themselves, but before that, are there any gross, across industry trends that you see that customers want, that sales people aren’t implementing, putting in practise or putting in front of customers? Is there anything that really stands out that can be a big bang for buck for everyone listening?
Cian McLoughlin:
Yeah. Yeah, there is actually, and it’s funny, I hadn’t prepared it, just come to me as you were asking. You know that term best practises, right? “Ah, well, we’re a global organisation. We could bring best practise to bear in your business.” And it’s great in the sales cycle and it never, ever, ever happens after the fact. Because one of the things that any… We’re all curious at heart, tell me what’s happening elsewhere in the world, tell me what’s happening in my industry, tell me what’s happening in other industries that do stuff a little bit similar to us. Help me understand the trends that are emerging.
Cian McLoughlin:
I don’t want to just be a slightly better version of the company that I am, based on your product or your service. Actually help me improve. And it’s relatively rare when it happens, but when it does happen, what happens is you get invited into the inner sanctum. You get a seat at the table in their planning meetings. You’re now beyond trusted advisor to a strategic partner, because you’re actually going above and beyond the call of duty to give them stuff, which is inadvertent [inaudible 00:26:57] best practise. There’s a million other things that have come out over the course of the last six or seven years, and things that really frustrate customers, the thing they a
Understanding Strategic Partnership From the Customer’s Perspective · [27:12]
Will Barron:
This is brilliant. From what you said then, Cian, so we know what we want a strategic partnership to be, as in long-term business, data back and forth, and open conversation. What does a customer want when they’re in a meeting saying, “This person, this company could be a strategic partner for us moving forward.” What are they after? What value are they trying to suck from that relationship?
Cian McLoughlin:
I think usually what they want is they want access at multiple levels in that organisation. So yeah, that’s great having an account manager, but we also want access to your R&D team, potentially to your senior management team. They want you to be not just treating them as a customer that you can extract money from every quarter or every year, but coming to them and asking them how to innovate your offering, your solution, your service. How can we better service your needs? And actually then closing that loop and letting them know the things that you’ve done off the back of the feedback they’ve given you.
Cian McLoughlin:
They want you to be bringing them insights and beyond and partnerships and beyond, that maybe you’re not even going to be clipping the ticket on, but you see the value to them in their business. They want you to be around for the long haul. So, it’s in their best interest for you to be financially successful, because if you’re a strategic part of their makeup, then they’re on your team.
Cian McLoughlin:
But there’s things that we can ask them to do, to be references and to sit on steering committees and all of that stuff, but there’s expectations back on their behalf, in terms of the level of professionalism and access they’ll get, and also, that you won’t take them for granted. And unfortunately, a lot of customers, once they’ve been in for a couple of years, ah, yeah, they’re locked in, they’re good as gold, and we just take them for granted. Then we go out to the great unwashed because we get so excited about that.
Why You Must Know What Customers Expect From You · [29:00]
Will Barron:
Okay. For everyone who’s listening now, Cian, who wants to pull in some of this data themselves, who perhaps is one business, lost business, but built good relationships in the process, how can they find out what, bespokely, their customers wanted from them, or perhaps even want more from them in the future?
Cian McLoughlin:
Yep. A hundred percent. Look, I’d say the simplest and quickest way to do it is to proactively go and sit down with their customers and ask. What I would say, and this is after years of trial and error is, ask the question early in the sales cycle. Don’t wait for the deal to be done or the ink to dry, and then say, “Oh, yeah, we lost. So any chance we can come in and do a debrief?” Or, even we won. Position it early, because what that does is, it significantly increases the chance of them saying yes, but it also, it just separates you from the other companies they may be talking to, or the salespeople.
Cian McLoughlin:
Because what it does is, it smacks of professionalism. If you are saying, “Win, lose or draw, we’d really appreciate the opportunity, or I would really appreciate the opportunity to sit down and spend 45 minutes with you and just do a really consistent debrief, ask you some questions about what we did well, ask you some questions about maybe where we can improve. And what we’re going to do with that is, we’re going to take that back in and we’re going to use it.
Cian McLoughlin:
“And what we’re not going to do is we’re not going to beat up on our salespeople, or we’re not going to beat up on our pre-salespeople, we’re not going to try and get back in the door, if we’ve lost or try and muddy the waters. This is just an internal opportunity for us to get some value from the sales cycle.” And you’d be amazed at how frequently they say yes, and you would be absolutely amazed at how many things they will tell you that surprise and sometimes shock you.
Questions to Ask the Buyer After Losing the Sale · [30:37]
Will Barron:
And final question I’m going to ask you here, is there one or two questions that if that door is open, that we should always ask? Are there any bang-for-buck questions, big leverage questions that we should always include in this interview process at the end of a lost deal, perhaps?
Cian McLoughlin:
Well, if you think about a bang-for-buck question, it’s, can this give me some value for another one of my deals or more broadly across the business? So, I think one of the key things I would be asking is, what triggered you to go out to market in the first place? What was the trigger event or what was the catalyst that you decided to go out? Because then we can actually start to go looking for those elsewhere in our business. And then, I’d be asking questions around what we like to deal with.
Cian McLoughlin:
We’ve all seen a million different matrixes of what a sales cycle looks like. So just ask them, “What were we like to deal with at the very start, when we first engaged? Quality of our marketing content when we first engaged with you? Quality of our demos, quality of our tender response document? What were our legal people like? How did our pricing stack up?” So just, almost use that as your template. The questions don’t have to be slick and psychologically, it’s just honestly want to know, and you’ll usually find out.
Parting Thoughts · [31:54]
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well, with that, for everyone who perhaps can’t do this, haven’t got the bandwidth to do this, we want to bring you in to sort it out. Tell us a little bit about that you do Cian, and tell us about the book as well.
Cian McLoughlin:
Sure. So, quickly, in terms of the business, so what we do is we really, we do it for you. And the nice thing about that is, we have a third-party independence. Bizarrely, even though companies are paying for us to go in and talk to their customers about why they won or lost, that little bit of separation allows the customer the space to be much more candid, much more frank and transparent in what they do. So what we do is we extract all of that feedback and then we create some really simple, usually five, six, seven key things, priorities, “Go away and do this.” So that’s off the back of any individual customer interview.
Cian McLoughlin:
We might interview three or four people, but the other thing we do then is use that as a mechanism to say, “Right, this is what you need to go and focus on.” So the sales transformation piece. So we work with our clients to help them actually extract the value on the one hand, but then go away and do something with it on the other hand, and actually start to get the return on investment. So that’s the business.
Cian McLoughlin:
The book, product placement, there we go, is… You know what? It’s funny. It started out as a book about win-loss reviews and how important they are, and I’m hugely passionate about that, but actually, it turned into a book about something else entirely. Because what I started to do was hear all of this feedback from customers about what they loved or what they hated, and what I observed was that the world of sales is massively evolving around us. And so, then what I did, was I actually wrote a book about what are customers saying they want and what really frustrates them?
“If you want to stay relevant, if you want to stay engaged with your customers, and to be honest, if you want to stay employed, you got to start burning some of those old skills that have worked well for you for five or 10 years.” – Cian McLoughlin · [33:37]
Cian McLoughlin:
And so, I really wrote a book for sales professionals to say, look, if you want to stay relevant, if you want to stay engaged with your customers, and to be honest, if you want to stay employed, you got to stop burning some of those old skills you had, some of those skills that have worked well for you for five or 10 years, you’ve got to actually start disrupting those yourself. And here’s some stuff to go away and focus on. And the reason I’m reasonably confident about telling you to go away and focus on this is because this is what customers keep telling us they like and what frustrates them. And so, that was the genesis of the book in the end.
Will Barron:
Is this what we should always be focused on? It seems like a stupid question to ask, but should the starting point of all our sales activities, how we approach people, whether we’re going to do cold email or cold calls or where we’re going to meet people and speak to them, should it all… I feel like I’m melting down as I say this. Should all of this be based on what the customer wants, as opposed to what we as salespeople set in an office could be bothered doing?
Cian McLoughlin:
Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s embarrassing to say it is that easy. And I tell people all the time, they say, “Oh, what do you do?” And I tell them it couldn’t be less rocket science. Let’s go and talk to our customers. Let’s go and talk to our customers. I did a little bit of work with a company and there was one guy who had moved from the customer side to become a salesperson for the first time in his life, never… And he was really concerned. I was saying, “Look, don’t worry, because you’ve got oodles of credibility having walked in the customer’s shoes.”
Cian McLoughlin:
But he asked me, he said, “Can you just help me map out the sales cycle so I can understand it. Because I’m really clear on what the buying cycle is, because I was on the customer side.” And I was like, “Whoa, whoa, let me see the buying cycle. I’d be really interested.” So he mapped that out. So we had the two maps. So then he did something which I wish I’d told him to do, because I could then have claimed credit, but I didn’t. He takes those in and he sits down with prospective customers and he said, “Look, this is, broadly speaking, how we tend to engage with customers on our side. So here’s all the steps and stuff that we’re doing. And this is often how customers engage on your side.
Cian McLoughlin:
“So, the buying side, you’re doing all these things. So I just wanted us to get clear on the language. If I’m asking you to do things and you don’t know why, it’s probably for one of these reasons. And equally, if you’re here, so let’s try and maybe stay as aligned as we possibly can and that’ll avoid any of the confusion or answer.” And he just gives it to them, and it’s been a transformational thing, because the biggest thing that’s happened is, his deals don’t go quiet anymore. He doesn’t win every single deal, but the sales cycles are shortened and customers are happy to respond to him, because they don’t feel they’re being dragged, kicking and screaming because they have this common language.
Cian McLoughlin:
So, I think, if in doubt, just go back to your customers. If you’re running off-sites for your sales team, you should always have customers in the room, not for the whole day, but have them in, because it just changes the dynamics. Everything shifts when your customers are at the heart. It’s that Jeff Bezos. I don’t know if you’ve heard the story. Jeff Bezos apparently always has an empty chair in every meeting, which has to represent the customer, because that needs to be at the heart of everything you do. If we put the customer at the heart of everything we do, if we try and become easier to do business with, a lot of the noise just goes away.
Will Barron:
Yeah. And to put Jeff into perspective, I think he’s worth 76 billion at the moment. If it’s working for him, I’m sure it can work for us with our sales targets as well.
Cian McLoughlin:
That’s right.
Will Barron:
Well, Cian, I want to thank you for your time, mate. I appreciate. Just for the audience, Cian’s over in Australia. There’s some real hustle going on from Cian’s sign don’t mind to make this happen. So I appreciate that, mate. I really do. The audience do as well. And everything we talked about, I’ll link to show notes over at salesman.org. And with that, want to thank you for your time and coming on the show.
Cian McLoughlin:
Thanks, it’s been a pleasure. It was great to talk to you, Will.
