What is phase 4 of brain-friendly selling? Convincing customers

Grant Leboff: Simon, Phase 4 of brain friendly selling is going to be less of a surprise to sales people because it's about convincing either the customer or prospect. But what are the keys in making sure you do that well?

Simon Hazeldine: Firstly, and probably most importantly, it's the customer you're attempting to convince. So it's the things the customer is interested in. And I know that sounds very obvious but we do a lot of work coaching salespeople on their value propositions and their pitches and on their proposals and so many of them are unbelievably self-obsessed. I joke about 'the first five slides are always the same'. Slide one has some stuff about us - aren't we amazing - slide two, here's some more stuff about us... slide three is a map of the world showing all of our offices... and it's just kind of it's all about ME, ME, ME, ME, ME straight out of the gate, whereas I would always say; you must start with the customer.

Here's the case the context of our conversation, here's the background, here's what we understand you want to achieve, here's the problems you're trying to solve, so on and so forth and - here's how we can help you to achieve what you want. And then you show how you've done it and then show here's how we've helped other people, using testimonials, case studies white papers... Robert Cialdini's principal of social proof and then always, I would advocate having an implementation plan in there as well, showing the customer the stages that it will go through. And I will sometimes call them 'draft action plans' or 'draft discussion documents version #1' not; 'Here's my proposal Grant'. [Rather] 'Here's a draft discussion document for us to work through collaboratively together'.

And what I usually do, a fairly simple process is; here's where you are now, here's the situation, here's the challenges or the problems you've got, here is what is costing you, here's what a solution would look like and here's what you would gain from it, and here's how we can enable you to make that move. It's a fairly standard process that I would tend to follow with our clients - that's what works. Because they don't care about the bit in the middle - which is what you do - what they care about is the results, the effects you bring, the benefits that you bring to their organization. So that's a customer focused brain friendly way to do it, because it's all about the customer, so the customer's brain is interested in it, rather than you pitching your solution at the customer.

Grant Leboff: And you talk about the power of storytelling as well and the power of stories. How does that work within this process?

Simon Hazeldine: Neuroscience seems to indicate that when we hear a story, our brains tend to behave differently from when we're being made a proposal. So being being stories, for example; historically, have been part of human society and we are very attuned to being told stories. A lot of our day to day conversations are about telling stories about what's happened to us. We watch stories on the television. So if you say what can I just tell you a little you know a little story about how we've helped a customer, you introduce the customer's character, what are the problems the customer was facing etc., how you helped the customer and the results that they achieved. And what it's done in not way, firstly it brings in the very strong principle of the social proof, on what you've done for somebody 'like me'. If you're telling me how you've helped somebody 'like me' to achieve a similar result that's very, very appealing. It's also a very soft and subtle way to explain the kind of the benefits that you'll be bringing to the customer

Grant Leboff: And stories hit people on those different brain levels - doesn't it - because it hits on an emotional level as well as, perhaps the more cognitive emotional part of the brain.

Simon Hazeldine: Absolutely, because you identify into the stories. You introduce the customer's character. You tell them a little bit about the character and they're probably almost starting to visualise what this person looks like and how and how they're behaving. And it engages a lot of the brain and these are very, very powerful but subtle and quite gentle way to persuade people. So tell more stories to your customers about how you've helped other customers like them, to achieve the things they want to achieve.

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