Inferring Personal Wins

by Stephen E. Heiman, Diane Sanchez with Tad Tuleja

To attain the much coveted Win-Win outcome, you need to do at least two things. First, you need to identify which Result(s) each of your Buyers needs to get from your sales proposals. Then you need to show each of them how the Result(s) can bring him or her a personal Win. When you accomplish these two tasks, you’re delivering Win-Results.

It isn’t always a straightforward task to understand and address your customer’s subjective needs in this way. But determining their Win-Results needn’t be all guesswork either. Years of working with sales professionals in various fields have taught us that there are three reliable methods for doing so:

1. You can infer your individual customers’ Wins, either from the Results they’re likely to want or from what you know about their attitudes and lifestyles.

2.You can ask them directly what’s in the sale for them.

3. You can get Coaching.

In this article, we’ll concentrate on perhaps the most common method for determining Wins: inference. Even though each of your customers Wins in an individual way, categories of buyers tend to look for similar Results for their organizations. Knowing this can help you assess whether or not a particular customer is likely to Win with a particular Result. True, determining Results alone is never enough, but if you start with the Results that a customer wants in a given situation, you’ll be in a better position to infer the different Wins that each of those Results can give him.

Here are some examples of Results. This outline has been useful to many of our clients in getting a handle on Results that typically produce Wins for people in each of the four Buying Influence categories.

Economic Results

• Low cost of ownership
• Good budget fit ROI
• Financial responsibility
• Increased productivity
• Profitability
• Smooth out cash flow
• Flexibility

User Results

• Reliability
• Increased efficiency
• Upgrade skills
• Fulfill performance
• Best problem solution
• Do job better/faster/easier
• Versatility
• Super service
• Easy to learn and use

Technical Results

• Product best meets specs
• Timely delivery
• Best technical solution
• Discounts/low bids/price
• Reliability

Coach (Wins)

• Recognition
• Visibility
• Get strokes
• Make contribution
• Be seen as a problem solver

(Notice that Coaches don’t have their own Results—only Wins. Your success in the sale is the Result that will give your Coach a Win.)

There’s an element of speculation in inferring Wins from Results, so you need to double-check your inference by looking at other data. It’s likely that you already have access to that data. If you’ve called on a customer three times, you already know something about her Wins. If her office is full of golf trophies and community plaques, she’s probably got a strong need for achievement and recognition. If pictures of her children dominate the walls, security or family approval might be a key. If her appointment schedule is a model of regularity—if your one-hour meeting begins promptly at 10 a.m. and ends precisely at 11 a.m.—then she probably values precision and efficiency. The more you know about your customers’ lifestyles and attitudes, the better you’ll be able to infer their personal Wins.

You can pick up other data from the company culture in which the individual works. As numerous observers of corporate life have pointed out, each large company today has its own internal culture, comprising attitudes and values that both reflect and influence those of its employees. For example, recognition for public service is more likely to be seen as a Win by people in a company that projects a high community profile than by those in one that prefers isolation. Being seen as an innovator or a maverick is more likely to be appreciated as a Win in a company that sees itself as the leading edge of an industry than in one that has been doing business the same old reliable way for 50 years.

We’re not saying that individual customers’ values are ever merely a reflection of their companies’ values. But company cultures are still a valid standard against which to check your impressions of a given person’s Wins.

One caution: Remember that inferring is only a sophisticated form of guessing. Your inferences should always be checked by asking the customer directly, and/or by getting Coaching.

Adapted from The New Strategic Selling
Stephen E. Heiman, Diane Sanchez, with Tad Tuleja © 1998 by Miller Heiman, Inc. All rights reserved with permission of William Morrow & Company, Inc. and Warner Books