I’ve seen this situation countless times during my 25 years in B2B Sales and Marketing. You spend all that time setting up a customer visit with key decision-makers only to see another B2B salesperson’s ego take over.
The best-laid plans can’t overcome a loudmouthed, me-first, "I-know-everything" salesperson whose own ego can’t get out of the way of a productive customer visit.
Instead of the customer divulging important information that will help your company grow its business, your ego-driven salespeople dominate the conversation with a constant barrage of what they know and how good they are. This aggressive and cocky sales approach is not conducive to winning business.
These ego-driven salespeople cut customers off at the knees. They take over. They constantly interject because they’re so concerned with making sure everyone knows how knowledgeable they are, so much so that they don’t notice the customer shutting down.
Let me be clear about this: The customer – your customer – is not interested in what you know. They’re interested in how you can help them. You’ll only find that out if you get them talking.
Now, does this mean that salespeople shouldn’t have knowledge or ask pertinent questions that help to demonstrate their competencies? Absolutely not. Your customer often needs to hear what you think and why. However, there’s a big difference between asking the right questions at the right time and offering insightful comments, versus an insecure salesperson whose only goal is to protect their fragile sense of self.
So, what do you do to avoid these salespeople? Better yet, what should you implement right now if one of your salespeople is exhibiting this counter-productive behavior?
1. Role-Play the Sales Call: Sales role-playing is a great way to show just how difficult a meeting can be with an ego-driven salesperson. You can make up the conditions of the sales role-play yourself. You assume the role of the customer while your salesperson pursues their strategy. This will help your ego-driven salesperson understand all the pertinent information they’re missing out on every time they interrupt or don’t listen.
Plan the sales role-play out so that you have specific objections and concerns you want to bring up during the session. Itemize these objections and outline which ones are most important to you and which ones you want to elaborate on. Any time the salesperson interjects or cuts you off, you take note of the information you didn’t disclose because they didn’t allow you to.
Debrief this entire exercise and repeat it until the salesperson understands that listening and following with leading questions is more important than trying to convey an all-knowing image. By the end of the sales role-play session, the salesperson should have a list of items they’ve learned from the exercise and points to keep in mind the next time they have a customer visit.
2. Practice Leading Questions:
I can’t emphasize enough just how important it is to practice leading questions during a sales call. It’s not about what you know or how much you can show. It’s ultimately about what your customer knows and how you go about getting that information. In the end, sales success is all about using customer information to resolve problems.
If your salesperson is talking ad nauseum about features and benefits, or how their offer is better than the competition’s for a multitude of reasons nobody can keep track of, then the customer’s interest is never there and the sale is surely lost.
3. Focus on the 75-25 Rule:
Keep it focused on the customer. They should be doing most of the talking. When customers talk, they buy. Why? Because when customers talk, they feel in control of the situation. An aggressive salesperson tries to dominate the conversation. They focus entirely on trying to show how much they know about the product and the problem.
A solutions-based salesperson has a thorough understanding of their product, but they’re not insecure or preoccupied with demonstrating that knowledge unless it’s needed. They guide the customer by asking leading questions that define the customer’s problems. They then wrap up their solution in their offer. Throughout this entire process, they focus on getting the customer to talk and they use the information they gather to win business.
4. Understand Your Value Proposition:
Your salesperson should understand the total value your company brings to its customers and not merely summarize that value by your product’s features and benefits. Getting into an endless discussion of features and benefits is not what your customer wants to hear.
Customers want to know how you’ll solve their problems. An overly aggressive salesperson who talks about what they know, their knowledge and their expertise, and how their product is the end-all-be-all solution, never gets to the heart of the customer’s problems. Think of how you react when you get a telemarketing call. You listen for minutes at a time while someone reads from a script. That’s the same type of mentality that some ego-driven salespeople use. It doesn’t work.
The value you bring your customers is much more elaborate. It’s everything from how you manage your supply chain to how you support your customers after the sale – and most importantly – the reasons you give your customers to return. It's how your entire company solves problems. The following video shows how to use a value chain analysis to define your company's true value for customers.
5. Check Your Own Ego at the Door:
Unfortunately, a large number of ego-driven salespeople are managed by ego-driven sales managers or business owners. If you're one of those individuals who manage sales with a "take no prisoners" mentality or someone who believes your salespeople should dominate the conversation with a customer and force a "no" into a "yes" - then you may be the problem. That kind of me-first approach might work for used car sales - but in the world of business, there is a time to close and a time to listen.
If you're pushing your salespeople to dominate the conversation, and it's not working, then maybe it's time to try something different. There was a time when this approach might have made sense, but no longer. Today's salespeople need to investigate their customer's problems and focus on solving those problems. Forcing your customer to sit there and listen to an all-knowing salesperson who is not interested in solving their concerns gives the customer no reason to invest in your company.
Get your salesperson to abandon that aggressive, cocky, me-first, and all-knowing sales approach. Focus on properly training them to identify and solve customer problems. Once they learn to listen and become an active participant in solving customer problems, you'll see a drastic improvement in sales and your customer relationships.
