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You Can Be in Trouble when the Buyer Cares

By Alan Weiss

We all want the buyer to hang on our every word, but there are times when this can be a deadly warning. If the buyer is too engaged at times, we may be speaking the wrong language.

Methodology Monsters

Generally, we want to achieve conceptual agreement with clients and create a proposal that reconfirms such agreement. When we are speaking in strategic and global terms, there can be some ambiguity, uncertainty, and compromise. Those are healthy and fine.

But when we speak in specifics, we are almost always engaged in talking about the "how" and not the "what." In other words, we are immersed in our methodology and approaches, which mesmerizes consultants, but has a completely different frame of reference for a client.

Once you are talking about the specific approaches and techniques you intend to employ, the client is utterly fixated on cost. You have become a commodity. You are no longer talking about the value of memories, but the comparative cost of creating photographs. You have abandoned the rejuvenation of the tropics and instead are focused on the cost of transportation. You're not speaking about effective information exchange, but rather about the price of a computer network.

And, in consulting, you've abandoned faster sales closing time and better public image to talk about prices of workshops and numbers of focus groups. This is the essence of professional services selling self-destruction.

Build a Door…Then Disappear

Significant level buyers want to talk about how their condition will be improved and how they will be better off once your work is done. If they are impressed by those dynamics, they will find money and move you up on their priority list. They don't need specific details; they need an idea about the results.

But their eyes will glaze over if you start talking about seven-step processes, client interviews, 360° assessments, and the rest of the tool kit. They will take one of two actions, both unpleasant: delegate you to someone at a lower level who does care about such things (which means you will be lost in the depths of the human resources department, a fate worse than root canal); or they will start doing basic math and demand to know what your alternatives will cost.

If you're talking about price and not value, you've lost control of the discussion. Simple as that. Consultants often build elaborate methodological doors, and then use them to walk out of the buyer's sight!

I Just Don't Care

I don't care what your methodology is (so don't try to force me), and I'll stipulate you're good at it (though not as good as you undoubtedly think you are). I care about my future, not yours. I care about how I do things, not about how you do things. I care that my investment with you is reflected in better business outcomes, not arbitrary tasks and evanescent "benefits" such as "better understanding," "clarification," "identification," and the rest of that training nonsense.

Show me something of worth on my top line or bottom line; demonstrate how my repute and image will be enhanced; highlight the costs that are reduced; impress me with the alleviation of stress and failure work. All of those are fine, I probably need a few.

But don't tell me that my people will have a common language, or that they will have access to an online coach, or that they will enjoy coming to meetings. Because none of those has any immediate impact on my business needs—unless you can demonstrate them.

At the end of the day, if you can improve every salesperson's production by 20 percent merely by rubbing cinnamon ice cream on their heads, that's fine with me. I don't really need to know why it works. I don't care about your certification from Ice Cream University, or your rubbing methods, or how you avoid an ice cream headache. I only care that the sales team is more productive.

So please stop telling me how you do things. If you insist, then go visit my training and HR people in the basement. I know they'll be happy to talk to you. I also know nothing is going to happen and you won't be bothering me again.

Want to read more by Alan Weiss? Visit his author page.

Alan Weiss, Ph.D. is the author of twenty-six books—including Million Dollar Consulting—which appear in eight languages. He runs the unique Million Dollar Consulting™ Colleges three times a year, and has a global mentoring program. You can reach him at www.summitconsulting.com. He has won dozens of writing and consulting awards and is a member of the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame®.

Visit his blog at www.contrarianconsulting.com, where you can also get his weekly Podcast.