Sheila Boyington, President - Thinking Media/Learning Blade®
National Senior Advisor - STEMconnector®/Million Women Mentors®
Sheila Boyington of Thinking Media/Learning Blade in Chattanooga was left scratching her head when she looked at her books compared to the level of talent that was on her team. She had joined a team that she knew was technically savvy and had the capability to make a powerful difference for their prospects.
Yet for some reason, it simply wasn’t translating into new sales and partnerships. What was missing was a process for turning their expertise into solutions which their prospects considered practical. At Sandler Training, we warn our clients against “painting seagulls in your client’s picture.”
Here’s what we mean.
If you have an experienced team, they’ve likely sat through hundreds of hours of training on your products or services. They know your company history, the way that your product or service can apply to various scenarios, and many different other things that your company can offer clients. What can happen, though, is your team members know so much about the company’s many solutions that they may overlook the client’s own solution.
Your client oftentimes has a picture in mind of the solution that may solve their problem. While they might not completely know everything your company can offer to help with their pain points, they do distinctly know the pain that they’re experiencing that has led them to seek out a potential solution. Experienced teams like Sheila’s are susceptible to adding things to the client’s mental picture—like inserting a superfluous seagull into someone else’s beautiful painting of a beach. Experienced teams can be prone to oversharing about the amazing features and benefits of your product or the perks that come from working with your company, which can leave clients feeling overwhelmed or feeling like a square peg in a round hole. They begin to question whether your solution is really the right one for them or whether someone else might have a simpler, more straightforward answer. It almost always comes from good intentions from your team members, but could it be crowding out the actual solution for the client?
By learning the Sandler method of keeping the client’s solutions at the forefront of their sales process, Sheila’s talented team experienced a rapid 30% growth in their company sales. “Sandler did a phenomenal job of keeping participants engaged, making sessions interactive and keeping people discussing,” said Sheila.
Just as the Thinking Media team did, take time to begin asking your clients what specific solutions they are seeking, not simply telling them the myriad of tools you may have for solving their problem. You might be surprised that the picture they have painted in their mind has no seagulls at all.
