Every Sales Leader Needs to Navigate These 7 Tensions with Their Customers
By Michael J Griffin
Adapted from HBR article by Jennifer Jordan, Michael Wade and Elizabeth Teracino
B2B Sales people are leaders who collaborate with customers to build long term relationships that lead to win-win decisions. When I have business discussions with my customers, I too experience the same “tensions” that managers have when leading people. Let’s look at the tensions I found reading the HBR article “Every Leader Needs to Navigate These 7 Tensions” and explore how they relate to B2B salespeople.
Tension 1: The Expert vs. the Learner
B2B salespeople create trust by being professional: customers want to see their deep expertise, industry and market knowledge to solve their problems with their solutions. If this tension of Expert vs the Learner is not managed well, our expertise and perceptions may cause us to be rigid in recommending our solutions that may be flawed or even outdated in today’s fast changing global/digital environment. Customers assume B2B salespeople bring superior insight to the challenge at hand. We must accept that our specialized expertise and solution knowledge is limited (in some cases obsolete) and be open to learning from customers. Reconcile your expertise with learning from the customer by being an active listener, ask good questions, and be open to exploring new ways to solving customer problems.
Tension 2: The Constant vs. the Adaptor
All sales organizations have processes and policies to be followed. Customers are the same. Smart and innovative salespeople recognize that in fast-changing markets, processes often need to be upgraded and policies “bent” or adapted to secure a win-win sale. Salespeople must learn to be “strategic orchestrators” by using their communication skills with both their internal stakeholders and customers in response to new information. If this tension is not managed wisely, salespeople run the risk of seeming too rigid, on the one hand, or closing deals that are a win for the customer but a loss for your organization. Reconcile this tension by creating good internal relationships to gain by in to adapting processes, solutions, and even pricing to create a win-win solution with your client. On the client side, support him/her to get buy in to adapting their policies and processes.
Tension 3: The Tactician vs. the Visionary
It is well known that successful B2B salespeople set realistic sales goals or outcomes before they meet with the customer. Having a win-win vision leads to the focus to succeed. The vision may not be met if the salesperson has poor tactical skills: foundational B2B selling skills. One reason for this is in low trust sales situations, clever customers force the salesperson to negotiate first and sell later. Visionary salespeople hold healthy business discussions first using solid B2B selling skills then negotiate later if at all necessary. Reconcile this tension firstly by realizing that you a B2B salesperson you need to set realistic sales call objectives, secondly, you are a business person that needs to employ your selling and listening “tactics” to thirdly, achieve your vision of an outcome that is beneficial to both you and your customer.
Tension 4: The Teller vs. the Listener
“Tell and Sell” leads to failure. I have also learned that with customers sometimes you have to “Give to Get.” How might you balance when to tell and when to listen? With new customers or in low trust situations, you may have to answer the customer interrogation to give him/her a level of security to open up and talk – “give to get.” The higher the trust you develop with your customer the more they will talk and reveal their issues and problems. When trust is healthy, you find the customer talking 70% of the time and you, the B2B salesperson only 30% of the time. Excellent B2B salespeople value building customer trust so they can listen carefully to customers before coming to a decision. Let’s paraphrase the HBR article: “If this tension is not managed wisely, sales leaders run the risk of missing important information that resides in the customer’s surroundings (and problem). Conversely, if a sales leader refrains from providing their viewpoint (expertise), they miss the chance to apply their own valuable knowledge (to build creative solutions for their clients).” Reconcile this tension by assessing customer trust levels, develop a number of storytelling anecdotes to build customer trust so you can listen well to their issues, problems and ideas.
Tension 6: The Intuitionist vs. the Analyst
Older more experienced salespeople leaders build up an “expert gut” to move sales forward by relying on their intuition. By contrast, the fast emerging approach says that salespeople need to should base sales decisions on relevant data. If this tension is not managed wisely, (sales)leaders run the risk of making decisions based on outdated and biased outdated perceptions of the market and what customers want. But if a salesperson ignores their inner compass and experience, they may overlook or ignore the “human side” of their customers. Sales manager/coaches need to step up and guide their salespeople on reconciling gut feelings, valuable sales experience, with good data analytics. This may mean having a more robust but user friendly CRM, better key account strategies, and team meetings that share key accounts with learning new ways to employ relevant data to advance the sales process.
Tension 7: The Perfectionist vs. the Accelerator
Jordan, et al, say in their HBR article “The traditional approach asserts that (sales) leaders should take the time to deliver a perfectly finished product. The emerging approach calls for (sales)leaders to acknowledge that doing something quickly, and failing fast, is often more important than doing it perfectly. If not managed wisely, (sales)leaders run the risk of delaying the launch of key (customer/market)initiatives due to a fear of imperfection. Conversely, bringing initiatives forward without ample consideration and testing can lead to embarrassing results.” I have found salespeople who lean on total perfection fail through procrastination, and, sales people who want to accelerate the sale only to meet plan fail. The balance is being a practical realist understanding no product is perfect and learning to appreciate customer issues and their timing can allow you to “shepherd” the customer with a solution while moving the final decision forward.
What can Salespeople do to Navigate these Tensions?
Self-awareness. Understanding one’s communication style and motivators is an important step. We regularly employ Sales Profiling to help salespeople understand their own style, skill level and “heart.” This supports how you adapt, communicate and build trust with different customer styles. This process also involves learning about your “triggers” and stress points and how to better manage them.
Learn, adapt, practice. Excellent successful salespeople never stop having the attitude to keep learning. They continually develop and sharpen a portfolio of behaviors and skills to address sales situations and the tensions communicating with external customers and internal staff brings. This process can be enhanced by having a sales manager that actively coaches you.
Reconcile the 7 Tensions. I have learned from Dr. Fons Trompenaars that successful leaders learn to “reconcile” seemingly opposing tensions. This skill is a competitive advantage as it allows salespeople to collaborate with their customers and their own organization to come up with unique yet effective solutions for both the customer and your sales organization. Here is a link to a Trompenaars article on reconciling dimensions, or tensions. https://www.leadershipandchangemagazine.com/dr-fons-trompenaars-transcultural-competence-reconcile-dilemmas-to-collaborate-and-innovate/
Contextual awareness. Becoming a more salesperson leader means not only expanding your sales communication skills and attitude to incorporate new behaviors in environments that may be new and diverse. This requires both contextual awareness, a mindset of inclusiveness, cross cultural savvy and emotional intelligence. You learn and change as your customers change.
If you want to read the original HBR article on the 7 tensions, click here.
Be a better more successful B2B salesperson this year!
Michael J Griffin
Founder ELAvate
Cross Cultural Sales Coach