The Lost Art of Conversation

Recently I spent some time with a pair of our customer facing team that were preparing for a customer meeting where they were going to present a proposal they had drafted for a new Business Website. The proposal was great and they had put the effort in to really understanding what they thought the solution should be for the customer. I overheard the way they intended to pitch their proposal to the customer and I noticed how nervous they were at that thought. It was at that point I went over and sat with them and asked them to run their pitch by me, I was the customer in the scenario and I heard them out.

The one thing that surprised me was how quickly they intended to pull the proposal out and present to the customer, in fact the intention seemed to be to lead with that. There is a time to be direct with a customer and get straight to business, but what I saw was that they were so focused on winning the business that they overlooked a simple fact. A customer is just like any other person, so I suggested that we reverse the role play at that point and they be the customer.

I started out with an introduction and then asked some questions to understand the business we were providing the solution for and the customer also, because we were not just providing the business with a solution, but the customer personally too. I spent about 10 minutes with some back and forth conversation with my team and it was then that they started to feel more relaxed. I had shown them that they did not need to sell a solution to the customer, they just needed to have a conversation and ask questions that helped identify what the customer really wanted.

My team now approach each customer the same way and when they schedule a meeting they prepare an agenda, but they treat it as a conversation rather than a sales pitch. We have seen a much higher result in follow up meetings booked from this practice and my team is much more relaxed and confident to go out for meetings now. My advice is to treat every customer meeting as a conversation and since we all have conversations in almost all our daily interactions it’s not really a skill we need to learn, but perhaps just refine.