Master Sales Conversations: Conceptual Selling® with Perspective

Conceptual Selling with Perspective Video Transcript – Purbita Banerjee and Pascale Hall

Banerjee: Hello everyone. Welcome to yet another episode on tips to elevate your sales game. Growth is on top of everyone's mind nowadays, especially for enterprises and sellers are always thinking about how best to tell their stories to address customer problems. I am the general manager of Korn Ferry's sales and service portfolio. The world-renowned Miller Heiman methodology, which we acquired in 2019, is a key part of this portfolio. So today I have with me an expert on Miller Heiman methodology, Pascale Hall. Thanks for joining me today, Pascale, she's one of our top advisors who helps chief revenue officers, chief commercial officers, and sales leaders implement the sales methodology and best practices in their organizations. So, it's great to have you today. Today’s topic is centered around how can you ensure that any customer meeting that you've got is set up for success? So, Pascale, can you set the stage by talking a bit about conceptual selling with perspective, which is a, key piece of our Miller Heiman IP, and why is it really critical in today's enterprise sales environment?

Hall: Yes, absolutely. So, conceptual selling with perspective is the methodology that we have where we help salespeople having customer-centric conversations. So, when we look at today, a lot of the conversations we have, like you and I are having here today, are digital. So, which means that there's a demand for something that is relevant and very concise, that takes a different level of,  preparation. And, also our clients today are more and more difficult, to have meetings with. So, what can you make happen in 25 minutes that allow you to not only gain the information you need for the opportunity you want to win, but also making sure that here you drive a conversation that takes a customer from being interested to actually act on.

Banerjee: So, explain a bit more about what that feels like from a customer's perspective.

Hall: Right. So, how it feels from a customer perspective is having in front of you a salesperson that is fully prepared. It's having a salesperson that has done their research, understands what has been published in the public domain about your organization, and actually also understanding what your function is and asking you questions that are relevant to your function and to your current context. So, for you as a customer, you really start feeling that the salesperson not only is prepared, but genuinely is interested in, in helping you and, is more oriented towards your context and objectives more than thinking about what solution they could sell you.

Banerjee: That sounds like a lot of preparation. So just putting myself in a seller's shoes, how should I think about preparing for a meeting? What are the key concepts I need to think about and how do I minimize that time to prepare?

Hall: Right. So, I mean, how, how you prepare, and that's what I love about the methodology is that the methodology sets you to do the right research. So, when I research an organization, I can start reading a lot, but the methodology is going to have me focus on doing the research that is relevant to the audience I am going to meet. Now, for sure, preparation does take time. I'm not going to say it's a quick thing. However, if you think about it, it's that time that you establish your credibility. It's there where I really show the customer that this conversation is relevant to them and also what my value contribution can be. So, I think failing to, to prepare is, is clearly preparing for, for failure. So, it's not, it's just not optional. Now, if, if you want to reduce time in your preparation, I think that's where marketing, but also your, you’re learning and development organization can support by, reducing that preparation time with question playbooks, with battle cards where you can find inspiration in it. And of course, most of the salespeople today are starting to see the value of AI in helping them prepare faster by just winning time into their research.

Banerjee: So, you know, obviously I keep thinking about the Korn Ferry Sell product that we have, you know, centered on the methodology. Obviously, one of the things that we keep thinking about is if you use conceptual selling a few times with some clients and start to see successes, especially you mentioned, you know, this concept of action commitment, it's a, both the seller and the buyer agree on what's the action they take for the next step to move something forward, right? And so if we were able to capture that qualitative data on what was the valid business reason for the call, what were the call outcomes over time, we can actually mine that data to create a call blueprint that would be, you know, something that everybody can learn from within the organization and they can share it and practice it more often. And this is how you take, you know, what's working for the best performers and lifting of the performance for the rest of the organization. So that's something just from a product perspective we think about all the time. And then you mentioned AI. So, this is another very interesting, and it's a very hot topic nowadays, right? If can AI do all of this? So, in your mind, what are those things that can be outsourced to AI, but what is it that that, that a seller needs to actually spend time on themselves because, um, you know, it's important for them to do that.

Hall: Right. So, AI definitely can help you with, with your research, right? The interpretation of the research. I think that is where the seller, really is relevant. AI also doesn't understand necessarily you’re offering in the solution that you are bringing. So there again, it's about you being able to translate the information that AI is giving you back to, to your stakeholders that, that you are meeting. If you think about your, the questions you are going to ask, definitely the way you ask it, the way you prepare them to the personality type or to the function, of the people you're going to meet is something that you as a salesperson cannot outsource to AI. So I see today AI really speeding up my research. I have the information about the function, what is relevant to the customer. I can then ask AI to fine tune maybe part of that, the wording. I might not be finding exactly the right word. So, I might be asking AI, can you formulate this different, can you make this formal? Can you make this more amicable? Whatever the level of relationship we have. But AI doesn't know the level of relationship that I have with, with my buying influences or with the people that I'm meeting further than when I understand what, what the client is really looking to fix, avoid, or accomplish. I understand my solution, AI doesn't. So, it's all about my argumentation and how do I build up that argumentation. I don't see AI being able to help there. Not yet anyway.

Banerjee: Yeah. And, and we shouldn't forget that the buyer is a human being too. So, I always feel like, you know, you ultimately, you need the human touch to be able to impress upon the buyer on what are the key drivers of value, right?

Hall: Absolutely. I think likability is always going to be a key thing, right? And, and, and how, what can I do to be likable and how do I remain humble will all be about my, my tone and the quality of my preparation in, in the questions driving somebody to collaboration. You were saying action commitments, right? If I, if I want a client to do something first, I need to get credibility, but they will only do something for me, if it's a reciprocation. So, what, what have I been able to add in the conversation that was of value to them for them to be willing to reciprocate this so that these are areas where I do not see AI being capable to have the conversation, the dialogue, that human aspect.

Banerjee: So, what, what do you think is the value that a sales manager adds in that from a coaching perspective or to help the seller be ready?

Hall: Oh, I just love that question. Purbita, I think it's, it's huge, right? So, if I'm a sales manager, and I dunno, I have a team of eight to 10 people, and maybe these people in complex selling environment might have, four or five meetings a, a week, right? Hyper complex. As a sales manager, I can't join 50 sales calls, so I might be seeing four, five sales calls in the month. So, if that is the way I coach, it's just not enough. The beauty about having a platform, having a formal preparation approach is as a manager, I can read through the preparation that my salespeople do. So not only does that allow me to measure their ability, their skill level, their maturity level, but it also helps me make recommendations about the questions they are asking or the argumentation they're bringing forward, or the quality of how they are opening the meeting, or maybe in the action commitments they're even asking the customer. So, from without being in the meeting, I can literally set up my salesperson for success without being in the field with them. So, for me, that's just huge. Um, and then, you know, checking whether they're just asking those questions out of habit, same, same questions or whether it's really questions that will be thought provoking, influencing, provoking the dialogue is a key differentiator.

Banerjee: Love that. And, and I think this is another place where AI and technology can help with the scaling, both before, but also like with, you know, we work with partners all the time on post call coaching, so, you know, conversational AI intelligence, and we can allow for, you know, we can point AI to listen for certain things that our methodology says, our best practices, and then, you know, in a scalable manner, track that so managers can provide coaching to the sellers. So, that's also helpful. Okay. So, provide, your final thoughts and any call to action for our listeners here. It can be sellers or sales leaders. Anything you wanna leave as final thoughts?

Hall: Yeah, I think the final thought definitely is that it's the differentiation today happens through the dialogue. I, I think the likability factor, being authentic doesn't go away. Establishing credibility is absolutely something we do through the quality of our preparation. I also believe that we can accelerate the skill level by having a good sales and marketing alignment, right? So, we say we need to be relevant. We say we need to bring perspective, salespeople need to be seen as a contributor to the business problems of the clients. And I think that's where marketing also can bring a lot of input and ensuring also that the marketing content also gets leveraged, whether it's in the action commitments or whether it's giving proof of the argumentation that, that we are bringing. So, for me, everything happens with the dialogue, right? If, if the dialogue hasn't been good, but that whole preparation of having those customer-centric conversations is, is really something that can be prepared and be optimized.

Banerjee: Well, thank you so much Pascale for all your insights today and for joining me on this episode.

Hall: Thank you so much, Purbita, Thank you.