Ian Altman discusses why sellers struggle to close deals, emphasizing that the key to success is building trust and focusing on the client's outcome from the initial meeting. He highlights three common buyer concerns: trust, problem severity, and better alternatives. Altman advises sellers to "disarm" clients by showing genuine concern for their results rather than just making a sale. He suggests asking questions about success metrics and potential obstacles, which few vendors do. This approach, known as same-side selling, can lead to faster sales, less price sensitivity, and more repeat business if executed effectively.
Ian Altman 0:02
Ian, welcome to the same side selling podcast. I am your host, Ian Altman. One of the most common questions I get asked is, how do we help our team close deals? We get deals to the finish line, they're at the one yard line. The deal's about to be done, but we can't close the deal. Can you help my team get better at closing deals? Well, here's the answer. After spending 17 years helping people to improve their sales. The greatest impact that you can have in the sales process doesn't happen at the finish line. It actually happens at the very first meeting. And here's what I mean, when your client or prospect is at the end of a long process and they still haven't made a decision. Usually, there are a few things going through their mind. The first thing is, well, can I believe and trust what the seller is telling me? The second thing they're worried about is, is this really a big enough problem, and if we buy from these people, are we going to get the results that we're looking for? And the third thing they're worrying about is, well, is there a better alternative out there for us? Should we be looking elsewhere? So, these are things that often go through the buyer's mind in that 11th hour, and it's very difficult at that final stage if the customer doesn't have great trust in you, if they don't have tremendous confidence in your ability to execute, if they don't have faith that their team can execute effectively, then what are you left to do? And what happens is the inexperienced seller starts to do things like offering discounts or creating false senses of urgency, so they say things like, hey, if you can get it done by the end of this month, then we'll do something special for you. Well, those things actually don't alleviate the concern, they actually heighten the concern on the part of the buyer, because now they feel like the seller is somewhat desperate, and if anything, they trust you less than they did before you asked that question. So, instead, what can you do early on in the process? You need to do what we call in same-side selling disarm, and what I mean by that is early on in the process, you need to make it clear that their outcome or result is more important to you than the sale, so how do we do that? Well, we ask questions like just because you spend money with us, just because you select us as a vendor doesn't mean we're successful. What would you and I measure together six months down the road, a year down the road, to know that we were successful? And then once we get that information from the client, which, by the way, the top answer will be I don't know what we would measure, in which case you need to be prepared to share what other people have found meaningful to measure, but once you get that information, then you want to ask a question like, okay, even if we do everything we said we would do, what might prevent you from getting those results, and so now what happens is you're making it clear that you're focused on the result or outcome. You're not asking questions like who's the decision maker, you're not asking questions like who needs to be involved in this contract, how do we get the contract done. Those are all transactional questions. Instead, we're asking questions that they would want to know themselves. They should be thinking about what are we going to measure together. They should be thinking about what could go wrong on their end, not just on your end. See, if early on, if you said to your client or prospect, look, last thing we want you to do is spend money and not get results. So I want to make sure we spend the time together defining what success looks like, and identifying what might be something that can get in the way and prevent you from getting those results. So, now if we have that conversation, then the client realizes, wait, you're more concerned about that than maybe my alternatives are. See, what we realize is that most vendors don't ask these questions. Most sellers do not ask these questions at all.
Ian Altman 4:24
In fact, when I'm with CEOs, I ask CEOs for these types of questions, what percentage of your vendors actually ask these questions? Is it more than half or less than half? The answer is less, more or less than 10% less more or less than 2% and the answer is emphatically less. And in the last 17 years, what I find is that when someone says, well, actually, I have this one vendor who does ask those questions, and we pay a little bit more for them, and our sales tend to, when we buy from them, things tend to happen a little bit faster, and we're a little less price. Sensitive, and usually once I ask a few questions, they share that the vendor they're dealing with happens to be someone else who's using same side selling, so don't fall into the trap of trying to figure out how to drag the client across the finish line at the closing stage, which, by the way, the term closing is a terrible term to use when it comes to sale, because you're not closing anything. If anything, you're opening a relationship. So, instead, what we want to think about is how can we build that trust and confidence with our client or prospect at the first meeting. How can we reinforce that throughout the sales process, so that way the client is never wondering, well, are these guys more interested in the sale than the outcome. By your actions, it's clear that you care more about the results than you do about the sale. Now, here's the beauty of all this: if you actually deliver amazing results for your clients, that tends to drive repeat and referral business from your clients, in fact, when I ask people, when I say, "Look, if everyone's not on board with same side selling, I wouldn't do this. It's not some clever tactic. It happens to be true. In the last 17 years, there are only a few clients who haven't seen tremendous results, and in each case, it was because the team overall wasn't all in, and so now I try to prevent anybody from pursuing same-sized selling and investing in it, if they're not going to be committed to following through, because if they do, they'll get great results, and if they don't, it's likely not, it's likely not going to be a good outcome for either of us, and once you're committed to that, that's when your clients realize you're truly on the same side with them, and you're trying to drive results more than you're trying to drive sales, which, when you do that, and the client realizes you're focused on results instead of sales, the sales will follow. Hopefully, this topic has been helpful for you. If there are topics you'd like me to cover, just drop me a note to [email protected] I'll see you on the next episode of The Same Side Selling Podcast. So long.
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