What To Do When Everything You Thought You Knew is Wrong

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by Stephen E. Heiman, Diane Sanchez with Tad Tuleja

You've done your homework. In fact, you've spent the last two months gathering and compiling information on a customer and his company. You know exactly what your customer wants from your product. You know who makes the final decision to purchase your product. And you know how much money they're willing to spend. You're ready to close the deal. But halfway through the big call, something—everything—goes terribly wrong. What you thought you knew turns out to be way off course. Your customer now wants a product with different features. The decision maker has been promoted to a new position. And the budget for the new product has been cut by a third. There will be no sale today.

So what happened? It wasn't that your information was wrong, it was just outdated. A lot can happen within a customer's company in two months. Needs change. People come and go. And budgets waver. A good way to prevent yourself from being caught off guard is by asking Confirmation Questions. Confirmation Questions have a dual purpose. They help you verify the information you already have—or you think you have—and they help you discern discrepancies in it. These questions provide you with the up–to–date picture you need to be able to proceed effectively with a call. It's especially important to be current with regard to:

Your customer's Concept (what the customer believes you product or service will do for them)

Business issues that might have arisen since your last meeting

Any possible changes in organized structure

But these are only three of the most common areas. You should use Confirmation Questions to check the accuracy of any and all data.

The focus of a good Confirmation Question is always the current situation. By asking a Confirmation Question, you're trying to determine what's happening right now—and by implication, whether what's happening now is different from what was happening a week or a month ago.

Three phasing techniques can help you accomplish this. First, always phrase your confirmation Questions in the present tense. Second, use key words that signal the customer that you are asking for information about the present. "Does inventory continue to be a problem?" "Are you still using the X4000 models?" Other key words that are useful in phrasing Confirmation Questions are remain, as usual, now, currently, and at the present time. Third, phrase Confirmation Questions so they can be answered by a simple Yes or No. When you ask a Confirmation Question, you already have an idea in your mind as to what the current situation is. Either that idea is correct, or it isn't. Hence, Yes or No.

Many times, when you're having trouble phrasing an appropriate Confirmation Question you can shift to a statement–question combination by first making a statement that you believe to be true about the past and then asking, "Is this still the case?" If a customer has been having inventory control problems, you could begin the sales call by saying, "The last time I was here, you were experiencing database problems with the inventory system. Are you still having those problems?" Again, the point is that you want accurate information about possible discrepancies between your view of the situation and what the situation is right now.

In emphasizing the value of Confirmation Questions early in the sales call, we have suggested that you may want to open most sales calls by asking this type of question. One good way of doing this is to verify the purpose of the meeting, as you understand it, in the form of a Confirmation Question: "As I understand it, Sarah, what we had planned to do today is asses your finance committee's reaction to my last presentation. Is that your understanding?" This has the double advantage of confirming the situation and confirming the agenda.

Asking Confirmation Questions will keep you from being caught off guard, and will send a clear message to your customer that you're concerned by their most immediate needs.