Tim Hurson
Author: Never Be Closing and
Think Better
The Secrets of a Waiting Room
Jedi
By Tim Hurson and Tim Dunne
It happens all the time. It’s happened to us, and it’s
happened to you.
More than once, guaranteed. It goes like this:
You’ve finally scheduled a meeting with that prospective
client you’ve been after
(or maybe a first meeting with a new client—where you’ll
set the tone for your relationship).
And you’re ready.
You’ve done your research, both online and off.
You’ve consulted with your analysts and your colleagues
back at the shop.
You’ve thought about what you can offer that your
prospect might value.
You’ve refined and rehearsed a short script or two.
You’ve got your initial questions lined up.
You’ve left yourself ample travel time to compensate for
unexpected traffic.
You’ve even used the facilities by the elevators, just in
case.
You arrive at reception, you give your name, and you’re
told by the employee behind the desk
that unfortunately your meeting will be delayed because
Ms. Bizzee is still on a previous call.
So far, not unusual. The question is, what do you do
next?
If you’re like 99% of your competitors, you take a seat
and do one or more of the following:
Review your notes for the meeting
Flip through a waiting room magazine
Pull out your smart phone and check your emails
Check your mobile contact manager
Listen to your voice mails
Check Facebook
Make a call
Complete your half-finished Sudoku puzzle
Check your email again
Hey, you’ve got some time to kill. Why not kill it?
Really?
One of most important sales skills we address in our
book Never Be Closing is art and science
of discovering what’s useful to your client. In our
experience, your potential usefulness is
the most important thing you can communicate—and the
thing that will most likely win you the sale.
But the concept of usefulness goes way beyond your
conversation with your client.
It’s threaded through everything you do in the sales
process.
In fact, we suggest asking the simple question,
‘Is this
useful?’ about every aspect of your own sales or business behavior.
If your answer is ‘no’, ‘maybe’, or ‘not sure’,
we suggest you seriously consider deleting that behavior
from your repertoire.
Behavior Testing
Let’s use this simple test on the list of behaviors
above.
Reviewing your notes for the meeting could be
useful, but if you’re not familiar enough with them
by this point, another few minutes probably won’t do you
much good.
Flipping through a two-month-old waiting room magazine is
decidedly unuseful. The exception here might be the possibility of finding a
relevant article in a recent industry or corporate publication.
Checking your emails, your contact manager, or your voice
mails?
Psychologists would call these conditioned responses to
having time on your hands.
But useful? Who are we kidding?
Checking Facebook? Ditto.
Making a phone call?
Maybe, but chances are you’ll have to say a quick
good-bye, so is it really worth it?
And re-checking all of the above is about as useful as
finishing that Sudoku puzzle.
In other words—not.
So if none of these behaviors are particularly useful,
the next question becomes,
what could you do that would be
useful?
Seeing with Jedi Eyes
Your clients’ offices—including reception and common
areas—are their habitats,
filled with clues about the company, its culture, the
people you’ll be meeting.
Sure, you’ve done research online and with your
colleagues,
but where better to begin to truly understand the people
you’ll meet
than where they spend the majority of their working—and
waking—lives?
Being in your clients’ territory affords you the best possible
opportunity to get to know
who you’ll be meeting. You’re exposed to information and
resources that simply aren’t available
in company reports or on the internet. That’s pretty
special, considering all your competitors
have access to that same internet information.
Once you appreciate the value of spending time in your
clients’ space,
you’re ready to practice the art of the Waiting Room
Jedi.
The first thing a Jedi needs to understand is the power
of the Force.
And in business, the Force is Connection.
Anything and everything you can do to increase the
connection between you
and your potential client is a step in the right
direction—a step toward the sale.
Finding Hidden Connections
If you had a first appointment with an important
potential client and a friendly leprechaun
offered you the opportunity to meet someone who knew your
prospect,
and who might be able to give you some useful information
about them,
you’d be delighted, wouldn’t you?
Well, today’s your lucky day.
Because have the opportunity to do just that—every time
you arrive early for a client meeting
and every time your client is late.
Introduce yourself to the receptionist. We mean really introduce
yourself.
There’s a good chance the receptionist knows your
prospect.
If they’ve been with the company a while, receptionists
can be a great source of useful information. They know who comes and goes. They
know the culture of the organization.
They know if times are good or times are bad.
They know if executives and managers are part of the team
or if they ride above it.
They know when it’s an up day or a down day. Furthermore,
receptions are often invisible
in the waiting room, treated as just another piece of
furniture.
If they’re not too busy, they may really appreciate a
chance to talk. Imagine standing face to face
with a resource like that and
deciding to check your email instead of talking to them!
How do you probe for information from the receptionist?
Just ask. Clearly, your chances of getting under the
sheets are limited (nor do we suggest you try;
you risk coming off as
inappropriately nosey, and even sleazy), but you can open the tent.
Here’s a list of simple starter questions that most
receptionists should be able
(and often happy) to answer:
How long has the company been at this location (or on
this floor)?
What was the reason for the move?
How many people work here? What kinds of jobs do they do?
This can often lead to great follow-up conversations.
If the location has both engineering and marketing in it
for example,
you can observe that that’s an unusual combination. Any
reason for that?
What’s the biggest department or division in this
location?
Is everyone always this (relaxed, friendly, energized,
busy) around here,
or is something special going on today?
What do you like best about working here?
Are the principals usually around, or mostly on the road?
Do you get to see or talk to them much?
These are the kinds of questions you can work into almost
any conversation
and which can provide you with useful ways to make
connections later in your meeting.
Imagine in your meeting with your prospective client
being able to say something like,
“I understand you’ve only been in this location for 18
months and you’re already bursting
at the seams. Sounds like things are going well. Must be
challenging to manage that kind of growth.”
Searching for Other Threads
Aside from these general starter questions, there are
clues to the personalities of the company
and its employees literally littering the walls.
The artwork, the trophy case, the plaque, the photo of
the ribbon cutting, the mission statement,
the free (or maybe not free) soda
machine, even the building itself if it’s company owned.
All of these are data about the founders, the principals,
the charities, the activities,
the culture of the office and the organization.
Each is a conversation starter with the receptionist or
others you may meet.
And each is a thread of a possible connection to your
client. The more threads you discover,
the better your chances of weaving them together into the
beginning of a relationship.
Curiosity Killed the Can’t
The skill of being a Waiting Room Jedi is to transform a
series of waiting room habits
—checking email, posting on Facebook, and flipping
through magazines
—into a deliberate process of exploration and discovery.
More than anything else, being a Waiting Room Jedi is
about being curious.
The more genuinely curious you are, the more you learn,
and the more you learn,
the more likely you’ll be able to make connections with
your client.
The attitude and skill the Waiting Room Jedi is one of a
series of interlocking steps
that form what we call the Productive Selling process.
It starts with knowing who you are and why you’re
selling.
Then moves into finding, making, and developing
connections.
The next step is earning the credibility required for
your clients to feel comfortable answering
the tough, probing questions you’ll need to ask so that
you can understand their situation.
Once you truly understand your clients’ issues, itches,
and challenges, the next step
is to demonstrate your usefulness.
Once you’ve done that, you can start developing a
productive business relationship.
And after all, isn’t that what the best selling is all
about?
_____________________________________________
We hope you found the ideas in this post useful.
They’re culled from our book Never Be Closing,
recently featured by the Oprah Winfrey Network as one of the top fifteen
self-improvement books.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141206100715-599719-the-secrets-of-a-waiting-room-jedi
Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:
www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com this takes advantage of the experience and expertise of
others.
www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com describes the steps to reading in the
way your mind prefers.
www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com just for fun.
Advanced Reading Skills FaceBook group
To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more
things you will know.
The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”
