Come On, People, Get Together

by Stephen E. Heiman, Diane Sanchez with Tad Tuleja

When people make buying decisions, they follow a natural thought process. That process begins with cognitive thinking (understanding), moves to divergent thinking (the consideration of options), and ends with convergent thinking (the selection of the best option). In traditional selling, the salesperson often undermines or ignores this natural process. In the approach to selling that we recommend, Joint Venture Selling, the salesperson facilitates the process, which makes buying infinitely easier for the customer.

The comparison diagram on page 258 of New Conceptual Selling summarizes the differences between the two approaches. The key difference between the two is that Joint Venture Selling allows you to link the two crucial phases of the sales call: the Getting Information phase and the Giving Information phase.

Make It Easy On Yourself
The most obvious advantage of Joint Venture Selling is that it makes the sales call easier—not only for your customer, but for you, too. Because it's a natural fluid method, salespeople who adopt Joint Venture Selling typically report that their sales calls become less stressful and far more predictable. There's a psychic boost that comes with the realization that you "don't have to sell" your customers. All you have to do is make buying logical and easy for them.

Searching for a match—as exacting and challenging as that can be—is infinitely less of a burden than cramming product. Joint Venture mentally liberates you. It frees you from the strictures of traditional sales rules, and especially from the oldest rule of all: the idea that your job is to make someone need your product. With the dead weight of that rule lifted, you're free to get down to the real business of selling, which is to provide your customers with solutions.

We're not saying that providing solutions is easy or that if you practice Joint Venture Selling, the orders will fall into your lap. Joint Venture salespeople work as hard as anyone else. But they work with greater efficiency. The energy they put into sales calls isn't misdirected, beat–your–head–against–the–wall energy. It's energy that leads, logically and naturally, to results. In the words of another colleague, "For most people, making a tough sale is like driving a hundred miles with the emergency brake on. Joint Venture Selling takes the brake off."

Input, "Ownership," and Commitment
Another advantage of Joint Venture over traditional selling is that it facilitates customer input into the solution. Traditional, product–pitch selling by its very nature cuts down on the client's involvement. This is hazardous because it allows you to push through sales than can easily become derailed later on. As one savvy executive puts it, "People don't resist their own ideas." The opposite of that dictum is also true. People do actively and vociferously resist ideas that they do not "own" – even when they've ostensibly accepted them by purchasing a product or service.

When you make a sale without developing customer ownership, you set yourself up to lose down the line when the person discovers he has been "sold." But when you actively encourage the buyer's input in the decision–making process, you allow him to buy into a mutual solution. When a customer owns a solution in this way, he will fight to keep it in place.

And not just for the present. When you work with a customer through all the necessary stages of a Joint Venture Selling process, you lay the groundwork for a long–term commitment that will be far more profitable to you over the years than any one–time commission ever could be.

Adapted from The New Conceptual Selling Stephen E. Heiman, Diane Sanchez with Tad Tuleja © 1999 by Miller Heiman, Inc., All rights reserved with permission of Warner Books. Inc.