Too Close to the Customer?

by Graham Denton

In preparing for a sales call, is it possible to learn too much information about a customer? Not really, if you come by it honestly and use it wisely. But it is possible, by misusing sensitive or privileged information, to trip yourself up in your own intelligence. A case in point comes from Orvel Ray Wilson, a coauthor of Guerrilla Selling and a frequent contributor to the

Guerrilla Group's website. In an online article entitled "Close to the Customer: How Close Is Too Close?" he reveals the hazards of using pre-call research inappropriately.

It happened at a company staff meeting that Wilson was addressing about customer service problems. Rather than deliver a boilerplate message, he chose to research this client in depth, spending days reading its literature and internal documentation and interviewing employees from the biggest brass on down. Armed with this inside detail, he was able to pinpoint customer service problems that were quite specific to the company and to suggest solutions that would require equally specific responses from key individuals. Since this was a full staff meeting, Wilson named no names, assuming that, with the resulting anonymity, everyone would hear his recommendations without taking offense.

That didn't happen. The detail derailed the anonymity gambit and, although the owner liked the show fine, the rest of Wilson's audience was less than enthusiastic. Feedback from a manager a week later told him that, for many employees, the presentation had been "a very intense and emotional experience." Some had resented what they saw as attacks on colleagues, others felt that they themselves had been savaged, and still others, thrown by Wilson's intimate revelations, "completely missed the point of the meeting."

What Wilson should have done, he realized after the fact, was to manage his audience's expectations more deftly. Informing them about his in-depth research and asking for permission in advance before using any examples might have enabled him to deliver the same message without ruffling feathers. "I was too eager to show off how well I had done my homework," he concludes. "I impressed the General, but the troops in the trenches didn't buy it."

For more on this and other stories about "guerrilla selling," check out the Guerrilla Group's website: www.guerrillagroup.com.