Teaching When You’re Selling

In The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson say the key to selling is “teaching, tailoring and taking control.” They back that up with data from surveys of sales managers from their work with the Corporate Executive Board. They say teaching a client, tailoring the service and taking control of the sale is how the most successful salespeople have become successful.

It all starts with teaching.

There are six phases to teaching when you’re selling, according to Dixon and Adamson:

1. You warm up the client with your hypotheses about the challenges or problems in their business. Your hypotheses could be laid out in the form of a challenge their competitor faced. Your hypotheses could be in the form of results from benchmarking data. Or your hypotheses could be in the form of a story you heard from another client. In the initial phase, you’re telling stories you think will resonate with the client’s problems. While you’re doing that, you’re teaching them about their industry, their competition and their customers.
2. After the client responds to one of your hypotheses, you connect that problem to either a bigger problem or a bigger opportunity. Dixon and Adamson calls this “the reframe.” The goal is to surprise the client and make them curious. Which makes them want to hear more. This is a key moment, according to Dixon and Adamson.
3. In the third phase, you want to make the client uncomfortable. You want to overwhelm them with data and numbers. You want them to understand they can’t solve the problem on their own.
4. In the fourth phase, you’re making sure the client sees themselves in the stories you tell. You’re looking for a connection at a deeper level. You’re looking for emotional impact, according to Dixon and Adamson. Which means the client should identify with the problems or opportunities in your stories.
5. In the fifth phase, you’re moving toward a solution. You’re going to solve their problem with what you’re selling. But before you sell your solution, you want them to commit to a solution. You want them to say things like “That’s what we need to do,” or “That’s who I want us to be.” When they say things like that, you’re ready to move on to your solution.
6. In the final phase, you’re teaching them how your solution to the problem the client accepted must be solved. The stories you’ve told have led the client to internalize the problem and identify the solution. Now, they’re looking for a solution, and your solution is right there. Plus, they’re grateful for what you’ve taught them, and reciprocity is key to any sale.

When you put the sales process in phases like that, it sounds easy. But there’s a problem: Most people aren’t good at telling stories. Most people don’t know how to use pacing, foreshadowing, implicit questions and payoffs. Most people don’t know how to use narrative structure. And even fewer know how to create a story that resonates with someone else.

Which is why it helps to have a shortcut.

Here’s a shortcut that helps you build stories that resonate with your clients: Look for their Positive-Sum and Zero-Sum Games.

Positive-Sum Games are win-win games. Zero-Sum Games are win-lose games. Everybody plays both, and when you put them together, the structure looks like this:

People play Positive-Sum Games of alliance-building in order to win Zero-Sum Games of competition in order to get what they need for their Positive-Sum Endgame (for more on this structure, see A Spy’s Guide To Strategy).

That structure is also a narrative structure. It has all the elements you see in stories from Huckleberry Finn to Star Wars to the hero’s journey. There’s an alliance built to beat the competition in order to get into the Shangri-La of an Endgame.

When you see a client’s Positive-Sum and Zero-Sum Games, you see who their partners and competitors are. You see what they’ll need for their Endgame. You’ll see the narrative they’ve already internalized.

Which means you can build a narrative they’ll resonate with. You can find parallel stories to tell them. You can identify others with similar game sequences. And you can build hypotheses about the problems they need to solve.

And you’ll be doing one more thing: When you sell them a product or service, you’ll be inserting yourself into their game sequence.

But you’re not inserting yourself into their Endgame. You’re inserting yourself into their Alliance game.

You’re at the bottom of the narrative structure. The Positive-Sum Game you’re playing is an alliance game. You’re not in the client’s Endgame. And you never will be (Dixon and Adamson also talk about the problems that come from being a “relationship builder” in sales. Those type of salespeople are trying to be in the Endgame, instead of the Alliance game).

When you understand that, it’s easier to do what Dixon and Adamson say is the initial phase: Build hypotheses about your clients.

It’s also easier to do what Dixon and Adamson say is the second phase: Reframe the problem or opportunity into something bigger. You can reframe it into something bigger because you see the big picture of their strategy.

Which makes the third phase of making the client uncomfortable easier. You’re creating a need for the value you can offer. You’re establishing yourself as a necessary ally. You offer something no other ally can offer.

In the fourth phase of emotional impact, you’re someone who understands their story, because you just told it to them. And in the fifth phase, you’re moving toward a solution that they’ll be asking for in the sixth phase, when you offer it.

Combine the simple narrative structure of Positive-Sum and Zero-Sum Games with Dixon and Adamson’s six phases of teaching while selling, and you’ll find yourself selling a lot more.

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Dixon and Adamson’s The Challenger Sale is available at Amazon here.

A Spy’s Guide To Strategy is available here.

Also available in the Spy’s Guide series are A Spy’s Guide To Thinking and A Spy’s Guide To Taking Risks.