sales

Same Side Selling, or Sales as a Jigsaw Puzzle

jitha
[Note: I shared this mental model with my email subscribers on Jan 15, 2017. If you want to receive a new mental model every week, join the club.]

What it is:

For a long time, we’ve had this notion of great salesmen as master persuaders. Skilled negotiators who can seal the deal. Who use anchoring, pricing hacks, false urgency, etc. to close the sale. And if that doesn’t work, they use bull-headed tenacity to wear down the customer into a tired “YES”.

But as Same Side Selling (an excellent, short book) says, nothing could be further from the truth. 

Our mental model of selling is wrong. Sales is not an adversarial game, where you “close a sale” or “hit up your targets”.

Instead, look at sales as a jigsaw puzzle.

Sales is not:

Chess

How can I bamboozle you?

Sales is:

Jigsaw puzzle

Let’s solve this together.

[Tweet “Sales is not chess. Sales is a jigsaw puzzle #samesideselling”]

The moment you change the metaphor, your frame of reference changes. Completely.

 

Examples in business:

  • You are not on opposite sides of the table. This is not like chess or checkers. Like when you’re solving a jigsaw puzzle with your friends, you and your customer are on the same side!
  • Do you have the right piece for the puzzle? Are you solving the customer’s problem? Or are you selling the solution you have, with scant regard for whatever the customer’s problem may be? Focus on benefits, not features. Focus on the “job to be done”.
  • Sometimes, the pieces don’t fit together. Maybe the client needs something else. Can you help him find it, even if it’s from another vendor?

If your job / business / life involves selling (and trust me, it does), this subtle change in the game metaphor will change your approach forever.

 

Rules to follow:

  1. Start with what the customer wants. How you can help?
  2. When selling, focus on benefits, not on features. Remember – you’re not selling saddles. Your customer is buying a better way to ride.
  3. Always think from your customer’s point of view. You’re not selling to her. You’re working with her. Helping her solve a problem. You’re on the same team.
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Further Reading:

 

Linked to: Job to be done

Filed Under: Sales & Marketing

“We don’t sell saddles here” (The job to be done framework)

jitha 2 Comments
[Note: I shared this mental model with my email subscribers on Dec 4, 2016. If you want to receive a new mental model every week, join the club.]

 

At the beach, I saw a guy who sells fishing tackle. I asked him, “My God, they’re purple and green. Do fish really take these lures?” He said, “Mister, I don’t sell to fish.” – Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack

What it is:

Selling is a huge part of what we do in our lives. Whether convincing our teams to do a particular task, convincing customers to buy our new products, or even convincing our children to do their chores. We’re selling every day.

But all-too-often, we misunderstand the fundamental truth about selling: We’re not selling what we have. The buyer is buying what she needs.

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” – Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School

Every customer “hires” your product for a “job to be done”. The customer wants a hole in the wall. So she buys a drill. And when you buy a Rolex, it’s not because you want to tell the time.

And why do you think people buy a milkshake every morning en route to work? As McDonald’s found out, it’s not for the taste. It’s to make their boring work commutes more interesting.

Stewart Butterfield (Founder, Slack) captures the essence of this in his 2013 memo to his team – “We don’t sell saddles here”. You’re not selling a feature. You’re delivering a benefit to the customer.

Subtle difference, huge implications.

job to be done

We don’t sell saddles here. We sell a better way to ride. That’s the job to be done.

Examples in business:

  • When selling, we focus too much on talking about our product’s cool features. Instead, listen first. Understand what the customer needs.
  • “Solution looking for a problem”. Another instance of the “hammer looking for a nail” tendency we spoke about last week. We start with a product idea, rather than first seeing what customers need.
  • We define our competitors too narrowly. We see others who offer the same solution as our rivals. But that’s upside down. Our competitors are others who solve the same problem. Even if their solutions are different.

Who does McDonald’s milkshake compete with? Not just Burger King’s milkshakes. Not just other breakfast items. Given the job that customers have hired it to do (make boring commutes interesting), it also competes with FM radio!

Apple is a great example of the power of this framework. The job-to-be-done is quite clear with the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. But Apple is struggling to find jobs for the Apple Watch and Apple Pay.

 

Rules to follow:

  1. Start with the customer. Even before you build your product, get out of the building. Talk to customers. Identify what jobs they need done. How you can help?
  2. When selling, focus on benefits, not on features. Remember – you’re not selling saddles. Your customer is buying a better way to ride.
  3. Always think from your customer’s point of view. You’re not selling to her. You’re working with her, helping her solve a problem. You’re on the same team.
[fancy_box id=5][content_upgrade id=606]Want to get new mental models straight to your inbox? The next one arrives this Sunday – don’t miss it![/content_upgrade][/fancy_box]

Further Reading:

 

Filed Under: Sales & Marketing