Phase 2—Analyzing Customer Value: Needs and Motivations

Thanks to the indications in the previous phase, Renato managed to set up some appointments. He is now face to face with one of his prospects but again he has a number of doubts: “How long will it take me to understand the customer’s needs? How will I know what this person really needs without appearing intrusive? In the end customers are all the same, and my experience permits me to actually know their needs in advance, so doesn’t asking questions just make me seem inexperienced?” Renato, however, also wants to show off just how much he knows about the item he is selling ... but are we sure that it is ethical and effective to take over the “lead role” in this exchange? Let’s use the tools of Sales Ethics to give our friend a hand.

Once you have built a solid foundation to your relationship with customers and encouraged them to mitigate their initial skepticism, you are ready to move on to the next phase.

In this second phase, certain sellers tend to lose track by praising themselves, their offer system, and their company, due perhaps to anxiety about their own performance of the desire to take over the negotiations. This is a serious error.

The most likely outcome of this behavior is that the person you are dealing with will blank out. You may miraculously persuade certain customers to make a purchase about which they are unconvinced, purely because they are totally bemused by your presentation—but this is not the desired effect.

The task of the seller at this stage is to become a master detective, to discover the goals that the customer is unconsciously targeting in these negotiations or the needs and motivations that guide their choice. The sole repository of this information are the customers themselves and it is therefore right that they should be the protagonist of this encounter. If you want to get an idea of what your customer’s concept of value is, so you can calibrate your sale appropriately, you need to ask the right questions.

Do not worry; customers themselves will aid you in this task. In a world where it is often difficult to get a word in edgeways they will be more than happy to have someone listening to them and taking the time to understand their needs. Indeed, the only time we can express ourselves freely is when someone consciously chooses to devote their attention to us and, if possible, to help us.

It is fundamental to ask questions, but it is even more important to listen to the answers. Let’s examine this in the following paragraphs.

Asking Questions

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, likened the human mind to an iceberg where the top part that lies above the water is the conscious mind, while the much larger mass that is submerged is the unconscious mind. We could use the same metaphor for our customers. Just as the part of the iceberg above the waterline accounts for roughly 10 percent of its total volume, so the needs, which our customers initially explain to us quite freely and more or less spontaneously, account for just a fraction of their overall needs. However, we must bear in mind another factor: If you want to satisfy customers fully, and this is the primary goal for any salesperson, you must find solutions not only for their needs (whether expressed or not) but also meet their deeper motivations for this purchase (see Figure 5.2). Before proceeding further, let us define both these terms.

•  Needs: This term describes what customers actually require. They respond to the question “What do you need or what do you want?” Frequently, customers have a clear idea of their needs and are happy to tell you what they are, but sometimes they may not recognize their true needs themselves. When this is the case, we talk about unexpressed or unconscious needs. Needs are the goal that the customer wishes to achieve with a purchase.

•  Motivations: This term describes the deeper reasons customers have for making a purchase. They answer the question “Why do you need it?” It will be necessary to explore these motivations together with customers, as often they are unaware themselves what their motivations are. Motivations are the drive that pushes customers to achieving their objective in the purchase.

Returning to Freud’s metaphor, we could say that a fraction of the customer’s needs is declared (tip of the iceberg), while the largest part is not (proportion of the iceberg below the waterline). Needs are, however, governed by motivations that are forces that keep the entire iceberg afloat (see diagram). You must investigate both the unexpressed (or unconscious) needs and basic motivations.

To clarify this difference between needs and motivations we will use our friend Renato as an example.

Let’s suppose Renato is dealing with a customer who said she was interested in buying a city car for her son, who has just obtained his license. So far, the customer has stated an expressed need, a city car. After asking several questions, Renato also discovers that the customer wants the car to be low on fuel consumption because she knows that her young son is still looking for his first job and cannot spend much on running costs.

Figure 5.2 Diagram of needs and motivations

Initially the customer was reluctant to discuss fuel consumption, because she did not want to admit that her son would not have much money to spend, but when Renato asked the right questions after establishing a good relationship in the previous phase, she was able to bring forth this unexpressed need.¹⁴

As the conversation continues, Renato realizes that his customer wants a model with robust, washable interiors because her son does a lot of sport. In fact, when they touch on this subject she exclaims, “I hadn’t thought about it, but that would allow him to load his surf-board without ruining the car.” In this case, we have an unconscious need because the customer herself was unaware of it until her conversation with Renato. As they continue to talk, it emerges that the customer’s reason for making the purchase is to actually ensure her son has a safe vehicle, so she prefers that he get around in a car rather than use his old motorcycle. She also rather wants something with a certain style, as befits the son of a well-known professional.

Style and safety are the two motivations for purchase, while a compact car with low fuel consumption and washable interiors are the various needs.

As we will see in Phase 3, the motivations for any purchase can be summarized in a finite list. Concepts such as usefulness, safety, energy saving, and so on belong in this list. If these concepts are taken out of context, they will be rather vague and therefore not very useful for the purposes of our sale. If your customers, for example, reveal that their motivation for buying is generically safety but do not go on to explain what they mean by this term, then you will have trouble associating this idea with a feature of your offer system. Try to think of something that is very safe, then ask a friend to do the same—you can be sure that the two answers will be partly or completely different. The salesperson’s skill is to extract from a customer exactly what they mean by the word safety and to clarify the motivation for the purchase. In Phase 3, you will learn how to associate these specific motivations to the features of your offer.

By asking the right questions you can find out what lies beneath the surface of the water, that is, explore the deeper needs and motivations that your prospect probably failed to express at the outset.

Why should customers behave like this? Do they want to embarrass you or put you to some sort of test? Do they feel insecure or timid?

If you have done your work well in Phase 1 and defused the customers’ skepticism they will feel ready to trust you; they will recognize your enthusiasm and be prepared to open up to you. If on the other hand, you bombard customers with a series of questions without having first established a relationship of trust, their answers will be spare and concise and will fail to provide you with anything concrete on which to base your presentation afterwards.

Often customers will be encouraged to consider new points of view thanks to your questions, and will reflect on issues they had not initially evaluated. This is the stage when they may recognize their real needs or the necessity to satisfy certain requirements that are different or complementary to those they initially had in mind. At this point, the deepest part of the iceberg has emerged and your informational asymmetries have been resolved.¹⁵

We suggest that you start the conversation with questions that encourage your customers to talk about themselves and their business, as these are topics that most people will happily discuss.

It is very important that you ask questions in a courteous, polite, and nonintrusive way; a healthy curiosity that allows you to get to know another person should not be confused with gossip, nor should it turn into a third degree interrogation, or a prepackaged list of questions that sound more like market research.

A winning technique to engage the other party and convey your expertise is to explain why you are asking a particular question. For example, Renato could say, “I’m asking this to get a clearer idea of what type of driver your son is.”

In the context of Sales Ethics, it is crucial to be able to ask questions correctly and efficiently for two further reasons: to guide the negotiations and to involve customers, by putting them at the center of the relational experience.

Accompany the Customer Through the Phases of the Negotiation

By asking the right question, competent sellers, who know their sector well and have clear objectives, can expertly guide the customer through all the stages of the negotiation.

It takes preparation and training to ask carefully crafted and logical questions that assure customers that they are in the hands of a professional.

You may also find that potential customers are the ones to start the negotiation by asking a direct question like, “Well, tell me what you do?” or by inviting you to make your presentation by saying, “Tell me something about yourself.” The reason for this approach may be that the customer wishes to overcome any initial embarrassment by inviting you to make the first move, or maybe it is a sort of a test, or again, they may be allowing themselves time to shift their attention from what they were doing before your arrival.

To avoid losing control of the conversation by reeling off figures and company data that are bound to bore your interlocutor, you may want to prepare a concise answer that briefly describes who you are, and what company you represent. You will then round off this presentation with a question to the customer, encouraging them to talk: “Could you tell me what you do, so I can see how we can help you?” It could be useful to imagine yourself as a doctor talking to patients, and ask yourself if you would let them be the one to ask the question “How are you?” rather than enquiring yourself about the patient’s health. Remember you are the customer’s tutor in this situation and must take care of him or her: this means leading the negotiation carefully and with respect.

Once you have asked the first question, a mechanism triggers, which leads your customer to answer the following questions almost automatically and their interest will grow as they discover the conversation is to revolve around them. This also leads your customers to gradually relax and become more comfortable about talking about themselves or their company, providing you with valuable details when handling the rest of the negotiation.

Involve the Customer by Placing Him or Her at the Center of the Buying Experience

Negotiations in Sales Ethics are based on what customers want or do not want, based on a careful investigation of the precise value they are seeking to maximize.

Our questions enable potential buyers to assume an active role, encouraging them to tell us about themselves and stimulating their interest while avoiding the boredom that sets in when someone is obliged to listen passively. In the book we cited earlier, Give and Take, Adam Grant presents the results of a scientific experiment that unequivocally demonstrates that most of us find people who ask questions about our lives more interesting—even if we know nothing about them—than those who are very clever at describing themselves.¹⁶ The equation questions = interest was so close that the interlocutors’ appreciation of the conversation was directly proportional to the time spent answering questions about themselves.

Even in the more advanced stages of negotiation, it is advisable to ask questions such as “What do you think of this point?” during the explanation of your offer. This will stimulate customers’ attention and involve them further so that they perceive the negotiation as a shared experience.

Practical Tips for Asking Ethical and Effective Questions

Much has been written about the art of asking questions. We will give you a few basic guidelines to ask questions in an ethical way.

In the classroom, we often find that when salespeople are invited to draw up a list of the questions they use most frequently they prepare a list of statements. The statement “I know that you deal in medical equipment” will not be as forceful and incisiveness as the question, “I know that you deal in medical equipment, but can you explain specifically how your company works?”

In our experience, there are still too few salespeople who know how to involve customers and give others the space to express themselves, rather than hogging the entire conversation.

In the initial phase of the dialogue, you must encourage customers to speak freely and at length in order to gather as much information as possible. Concentrate on using open questions, that is questions starting with who, what, where, how, when, and why. This will allow your customer to build up an extended discourse and provide important details that you can then use in the next stage of the negotiation.

Closed-ended questions can be answered with a simple yes or no and are primarily used to check information (You wanted a red sweater, right?), for classification (Does your company produce the products it sells?), or maybe to confirm an agreement (Shall I proceed with the order?).

To clarify further the difference between open- and closed-ended questions, let’s analyze the classic question most sales clerks ask when we enter a store: “Can I help you?” This is a closed-ended question and elicits the answer yes or no. If we transform it to an open-ended question by asking “How can I help you?” this involves a new concept that we could express as: “I’m happy to help you—just let me know how.”

By asking a question in a different way, we obtain a different answer and send different signals to our customer. This confirms the concept we explained earlier when introducing the different phases of Sales Ethics, when we discussed the observer effect of quantum mechanics. The way we ask a question influences the behavior of the customer; our ethical responsibility, which requires that we create shared well-being, is engaged from the first moment when we observe, ask questions, and listen to the customers’ answers.

Given that asking a question is a creative act that can influence the answers (and mood) of customers, you should also remember that whatever you create comes from inside. This means that if you are feeling hostile toward a customer (you feel there is a conflict of interest), or if you are suffering from an identity conflict, you will transmit these feelings and hence undermine the relationship and lose ground in the circle of trust.

When preparing your questions remember what we said in the previous chapter regarding the direct construction of phrases and the use of positive words. If you say, “Don’t you want to try this new model?” the most likely answer will be no, rather than acceptance because you are unconsciously focusing the customer’s attention on good reasons why not to try the new product rather than on the reasons for doing so.¹⁷

You must not settle for superficial, generalized, or unclear information in this strategic and challenging stage of the sale. Rather you must probe further and ensure that you understand fully the demands and needs of the person you are dealing with. Use penetrating questions that require customers to explain or clarify the obscurer parts of their reply: “What do you mean by safety?” “Can you clarify what you mean by quality?” The more your customers talk the better you will understand them.

If you have not been in the business of selling for very long, or if you have recently changed sector, you might find it useful to prepare a comprehensive questionnaire. Carry out your research thoroughly and then carefully list the questions that you want to ask your potential buyers.

Remember to create a conversation that progresses naturally and that is tailored to the person you are dealing with. If the customer has already given you the answer to a question while talking about something else, do not mechanically go back over the same ground just because the question appears in your questionnaire—you would give the impression that you are reading from a list without focusing on the customer. We want to make it quite clear that you should never approach your customers with a written list or read from your laptop.

Bear in mind that as our colleague Marzia Mazzi¹⁸ underlines in her courses, both the use of space and the way we position ourselves within it have a material impact on relationships. You should place yourself in front of your customers in an open way, looking them straight in the eye and making sure no objects stand between you or block eye contact.

It is impossible to create a universal set of questions, as they must be designed specifically for your sector and tailored to your style. You should also pay attention to the order in which you ask your questions. Initially we advise asking general questions such as “What does your work entail? What exactly is your role in the company? When will you be using this car?” You can progress to enquire about more delicate, sensitive, and personal areas as your relationship becomes closer, with questions such as “What sort of problems do you encounter in your work? What feeling are you looking for? What aspects do you want to improve?”

With practice and experience, the questionnaire will take shape within you and you will be able to use it more naturally.

We will draft a questionnaire suitable for the customers of a car dealer, such as Renato. Let us imagine he is meeting an entrepreneur who needs to buy a car for himself. We will split the questions into groups, based on the topic they are dealing with.

General Questions for the Interlocutor

•  What does your company do?

•  How often do you travel by car?

•  Who normally travels with you?

•  How did you hear about us?

Questions regarding customer needs

•  Are you interested in a specific model?

•  How far do you drive each year?

•  What sort of vehicle do you have in mind? Comfortable, a sports car, luxury?

•  What exactly do you mean by … ?

Questions for analysis of customer motivations

•  What car did you have previously and what did you like about it?

•  What didn’t you like?

•  What are you looking for in a car?

•  What do you feel while driving?

Questions to prepare for the next phase

•  Where would you like to try out the model?

•  Would you prefer to try model A or B?

•  When are you going to visit us with your family?

•  Would you like to pick up the quote or shall I pass by with it?

Listening

In Sales Ethics, listening is the foundation stone on which the whole construction of any negotiation is built.

The aim of listening is to obtain as much information as possible in order to get to know our potential customers and find out the motivations that lead them to act and the needs or desires that led them to meet with us.

Bearing in mind the concepts discussed in Chapter 2, we could say that the goal of listening is to both diminish the information asymmetries that sellers must tackle when dealing with customers and ensure that they have the necessary knowledge to define the notion of value and set the sale up properly.

While hearing is a passive action (a sound stimulates our auditory senses), listening is an action that requires the desire and willingness to tune in to another person with sensitivity, tact, genuine interest, and care for the person with whom we are interacting. If you want to really listen, you must do more than simply take in the words. You must grasp how the words are pronounced (the voice may be calm, upset, angry, serene, and so on). You must observe what the customers’ body language is communicating—do they look me in the eye? Is their posture relaxed or signaling discomfort? Are they playing nervously with a pen, stroking their face or clenching a fist? These are all precious elements, upon which you should base the presentation of your product or service, and they must be considered when answering customers’ questions or adding comments.

During this phase of analysis, imagine yourself as an investigator searching for information and clues from half-hidden details. The needs and motivations that together make up a customer’s quest for value are hiding between the lines of an anecdote or the story they recount about setting up their business, or when they describe their last purchase. When customers tell us about themselves or things that concern them, they are providing us with the opportunity to understand how they reason, based on the values they choose and how they make decisions or the issues to which they attach importance and what makes them feel insecure.

When your prospects sense your attention focused on them, they will feel acknowledged both as buyers and as people, and we know that each and every one of us desires in our heart to feel special and unique. Your sincere interest will thus contribute to creating a positive climate for exchange. We could say that your attention guides the customer’s attention, taking the relationship to a new level of trust. Adam Grant’s experiment, which we described earlier, is relevant here: behaving as a giver during the listening stage means ceding the center stage to your customer and thus ensuring increased involvement.

Resist the temptation to talk about yourself; do not take up a customer’s request to concentrate exclusively on what you are offering. Do not react immediately and directly to prejudices such as “Look, I don’t want to waste your time, are you the one selling that water-based vacuum cleaner?” This type of comment is often based on a lack of information (i.e., asymmetries) regarding what you are actually offering.

Remind yourself that the main focus here is the customer’s interest and not your desire to show off your knowledge, the products you are selling, or even your right to self-defense. Reassure the customer with a short retort and stimulate new questions. You will not get the chance to present your offer in the most captivating way for a customer and effectively get past the next objection unless you comprehend who you are dealing with and enter into the other person’s world to identify their innermost concerns.

To become adept listeners, you must develop the ability to put the other person at the center of the sales experience. Leaving them to play the role of protagonist throughout, and observing the world from their point of view will later help you to motivate your proposal. All too often, we have preconceived ideas about our customers even before they open their mouths, just as they do about us, based on deep-rooted prejudices. Such an attitude may seriously risk compromising the success of your sale!

Salespeople may also be victims of information asymmetries regarding the offer system that are equal but opposite to those of their customers. Just as your interlocutors may think they know everything about your products and services (because they have read every page of your site or spoken with a knowledgeable friend), you may sometimes think you know everything about them. We are all frequently misled by our experience and imagination to believe that we know more about a customer than we actually do. When we make the mistake of failing to listen to customers or not giving them ample opportunity to express themselves, two very unpleasant things may occur: We miss opportunities and create Watzlawick’s self-fulfilling prophecies¹⁹ by unknowingly behaving in such a way that our worst expectations are fulfilled. This happens each time we sum up a customer too quickly or let ourselves be guided by past experience rather than allowing the present to chart our course.

To comprehend just how our attention can influence our perception of the world around us, consider how you notice a particular car all over the place when you are interested in that model. Obviously, it is not the number of cars that has changed, but your awareness of them! We do the same thing with customers by observing only what we are accustomed to noticing, and this confirms our beliefs (or rather our prejudices), and hence we neglect valuable information. Have you ever heard an experienced salesperson boasting, “I can see whether customers are going to buy something from the way they come in through the door?” His prophecy will most likely prove right, not because he can foresee the future but rather he has unconsciously adopted a strategy that has conditioned this outcome. We are so enamored of our convictions that we sometimes mistake them for the basic elements of our professional identity, as though changing your mind about a customer means denying the worth of your experience or questioning your acquired ability to read reality.

Resistance to change is nourished by our inability to give up the reassuring image we have of ourselves. Yet often this self-image limits our reality and shrinks the world around us, restricting the potential market in which we can sell our products.

Likewise, if you set out thinking “This looks like a customer who is ready to make a purchase” you will behave with the strength, confidence, and helpfulness that comes from the certainty that the sale will end well. The customer, feeling reassured by your willingness to interact and the pleasant determination of your gestures, will very likely be stimulated to buy.

To listen well you need (a lot of) patience and attention: The more you give, the more the customer will open up to you. In order to create the right atmosphere, you must dedicate yourself to that customer as if you had all the time in the world and they were the most important person on earth. Though the frenetic pace of our lives tends to drive us to rush our activities.

Listening clearly means acting as a giver because it involves investing time and energy in a person before we know their purchasing power, and before knowing if we can meet their needs. Once again, you should remember Adam Grant’s lesson on generous reciprocity: giving unconditionally, without expecting any immediate reward will broaden your network of contacts and reinforce your reputation, thus generating new opportunities in the medium to long term.

Many salespeople are influenced by the pressure to serve as many customers as possible or to quickly switch from one appointment to the next and hence rush the listening phase, which thus becomes superficial and forces us to fall back on prejudices and preconceptions. This attitude may be the cause of deep misunderstandings that can in turn lead to lost sales.

If you think of selling as a process made up of phases and related moments, you will find that the time saved by cutting down on your listening will then have to be spent on resolving disagreements in the after-sales period or dealing with an angry customer.

Active listening is a complex action, but it is essential for reducing the information asymmetries that hamper sales. We list below the 16 subactions that together contribute to define active listening:

1. Be open to others, be curious and respectful to the ideas, opinions, and points of view which others have.

2. Do not assume you know what others will say and do not stop listening, presuming you can guess what the customer is about to say.

3. Do not interrupt but always allow the other person to finish and never finish their sentences for them.

4. Wait for customers to finish speaking to assess what they say and draw your conclusions before answering.

5. Remain neutral while you are listening, and avoid prejudice and bias regarding your interlocutors—do not judge them.

6. Do not think up answers or reflect on how you are going to reply while the other person is still speaking.

7. If there is any doubt make sure you have understood correctly and ask the other person to explain any words you are not sure of or that are too vague.

8. Make it clear to customers that you are listening by maintaining eye contact, nodding, and transmitting openness through your body language;

9. Do not pretend to listen when you are really thinking about something else—remember our nonverbal communication is often uncontrolled and your body and tone of voice may be revealing your true thoughts.

10. Be careful of details and information communicated by voice (tone, volume, speed, rhythm, pauses) and body language (eye contact, facial expression, posture, distance, skin color).

11. Be patient and control your emotions.

12. Do not mentally criticize what the person is saying, thus falling into the trap of not listening and transmitting your disapproval.

13. Do not be distracted by sounds, noises, or the presence of other people—if necessary move to a quieter spot.

14. Listen carefully even when customers say something you do not agree with or do not consider interesting and remember you should note not only what customers say, but also how and why they say it.

15. When customers are angry or upset let them speak to vent their feelings without immediately interrupting, they probably only need to release their negative energy.

16. Try to understand your customers’ point of view and moods to create empathy.