WHAT DRIVES REVENUE? PROBOS perspective #1

Oct 8

5 min read

Stop Selling. Start Understanding.

How much of your sales conversation is genuinely about understanding the customer, and how much is simply waiting for your opportunity to sell?

I've watched a lot of sales conversations over the years and one of the things that continues to fascinate me is how quickly we want to get to the answer.

The customer mentions a challenge, we recognise it, we know we can help and almost immediately, we're off; explaining, presenting, demonstrating, positioning our solution, telling them about our experience, sharing the case study, opening the deck because that's selling. Isn't it?

My observations confirm that some of the best salespeople do almost the opposite.

They resist the urge to sell. They get curious.

Discovery Isn't a Stage in the Sales Process

Most sales methodologies include some form of discovery. We know we're supposed to ask questions, so we do:

What are your priorities?
What challenges are you facing?
What's your budget?
What's your timeline?
Who else is involved?

Perfectly sensible questions but there's a huge difference between asking questions and being curious - one gathers information and the other creates understanding and customers can usually feel the difference. We've probably all experienced the salesperson who asks a question, listens just long enough to recognise the opportunity and then jumps in with:

“That's really interesting because we actually...”

Discovery over. Pitch activated.

The question wasn't really designed to understand, it was designed to find a route into the product.

The First Answer Is Rarely the Whole Answer

A customer might say: “We need our sales team to improve conversion.”

Okay but why?

What's happening now?
Where are deals being lost?
Has something changed?
Are they losing to competitors?
Are customers doing nothing?
Is discovery too shallow?
Are sellers getting access to the right people?
Are they struggling to articulate value?
Are managers coaching effectively?
Are opportunities being qualified honestly?
Has confidence dropped?
Is the proposition wrong?
Is there actually enough demand?

Suddenly the “improve conversion” becomes a much more interesting conversation and this is where great sellers differentiate themselves. They don't just hear the problem the customer describes. They help the customer understand the problem more deeply.

Great Discovery Creates Value Before You've Sold Anything

I think this is one of the most overlooked aspects of selling. We often think we create value when we present the solution. I'm not sure that's true. Value can start much earlier.

A brilliant question can create value.
A different perspective can create value.
Helping somebody connect two things they hadn't connected before can create value.
Spotting an assumption can create value.
Helping a customer articulate the real problem can create enormous value.

Some of the best moments in a sales conversation are when the customer stops and says:

“That's a really good question.” or even better: “I hadn't thought about it like that.”

At that point you haven't sold them anything but you've already demonstrated something incredibly important. You understand their world.

Curiosity With Commercial Intent

There is an important distinction here- great discovery isn't an endless series of open questions and it certainly isn't an interrogation. Commercial curiosity means understanding enough about the customer's world to know where to explore.

You bring experience.
You bring hypotheses.
You bring pattern recognition.
You bring a point of view.
You don't assume you already know the answer. You might say:

“We're seeing a lot of organisations struggling with this because their customers are taking longer to make decisions. Is that something you're experiencing?” or:

“You mentioned conversion. Where in the sales cycle are you seeing the biggest drop off?”

or: “If nothing changed over the next twelve months, what would that mean commercially?”

That's very different from arriving with a blank sheet of paper and saying: “So... tell me about your challenges.” The customer shouldn't have to do all the work.

Understand Why Someone Would Change

This is where selling and human behaviour become inseparable because buying something usually requires change; changing supplier, changing system, changing process, changing behaviour, changing priorities and / or moving budget, taking a risk, convincing colleagues or just doing something differently so understanding what somebody wants isn't enough.

We need to understand: Why would they change? and equally importantly: Why might they not?

What are they worried about?
What do they stand to lose?
Who else needs convincing?
What happens if they do nothing?
How much effort will implementation require?
What political or personal risk sits behind the decision?
What would make change feel worthwhile?

......because customers don't experience buying decisions purely rationally. There are people inside every buying process and people bring confidence, fear, ambition, relationships, reputation, uncertainty, competing priorities and emotion into decisions.

B2B is still H2H. Human to human.

Stop Listening for the Opportunity

There's a subtle shift I think makes a huge difference. Instead of listening for:

“Where can I sell?” Listen for: “What's really happening here?”

It changes the questions you ask.
It changes what you notice.
It changes how quickly you speak.
It changes how comfortable you are with silence.

.....and interestingly, it often changes how the customer experiences . You stop feeling like somebody trying to sell them something and start feeling like somebody trying to help them make sense of something. That's a very different commercial relationship.

But Here's the Leadership Question

If your salespeople aren't doing this consistently, why not? It's easy to conclude:

“They need discovery training.” and perhaps they do, but they may already know how to ask good questions and it maybe just that they're under pressure to get to demo. ...

Maybe your CRM demands information rather than insight.
Maybe they're rewarded for activity.
Maybe they don't understand the customer's industry well enough to ask intelligent questions.
Maybe they lack the confidence to challenge.
Maybe managers spend one to ones asking about close dates rather than coaching conversations.
Maybe the organisation has unintentionally taught them that selling means talking.

This is why I'm wary of diagnosing every sales performance problem as a training problem.

Before deciding on the intervention, understand the behaviour and then understand what's driving the behaviour.

Revenue Follows Behaviour

Great discovery isn't about having a list of twenty clever questions. It's a mindset.

Be interested before trying to be interesting.
Understand before proposing.
Explore before solving.
Listen for what hasn't been said.
Be curious enough to challenge your own assumptions.
Don't rush to demonstrate how much you know.

.....because sometimes the most commercially powerful thing a salesperson can say is:

“Tell me more about that.”

Leadership Reflection

If I listened to ten of your sales conversations this week, would I hear people genuinely trying to understand the customer, or people trying to find their opportunity to sell?

Revenue follows behaviour.

And sometimes the first behaviour we need to change is our instinct to start selling.

PROBOS Revenue Sprint

Find what's getting in the way of your number. Then fix the right things.

We work with commercial leaders to identify the behaviours, capabilities, leadership practices and organisational barriers affecting revenue performance.

Then we build the right intervention around the problem, combining training, coaching, leadership development and change support where it's needed.

Not training for training's sake. Commercial development designed around the outcome you're trying to achieve.