FranklinCovey-The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Sales Leaders

HABIT 5: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD

HABIT 5: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD The previous section focused on Habit 4, ‘Think Win-Win’, a powerful platform for guiding your thinking and governing your interactions with clients and others. Habit 4 consists of two parts: Think their win first, then your win (and the sequence matters).

If Habit 4 is about getting your head and heart right, then Habit 5 is about putting this mindset into action. There are also two distinct parts to Habit 5: Seek First to Understand—Then to Be Understood. The first half involves enquiry or ‘diagnosis’— deeply listening to the person you’re interacting with (seek first to understand). The second half involves advocacy— sharing your point of view (then to be understood), which sometimes requires doing so courageously. Both halves are required and both are equally important. Again, sequence matters a lot. Habit 5 focuses on enquiry first for a very compelling reason— it makes our advocacy much more influential! But when it comes to sales, all too often we get it backwards—we start our interactions by “credentializing,”

Somewhere along the way, when executives aren’t seeing the sales numbers they want,

they believe it’s because salespeople don’t know

enough about their products or services. So they roll out more product training or revamp the marketing collateral, all designed to help you tell more (and do a better job telling it). Of course, clients rightly expect salespeople to have a point of view. They might say, “We need to build a social media strategy. We’d like you to tell us about your experience. Which companies have you worked with? How would you approach social media for a company like ours? What are the pitfalls we need to be aware of?” They’ve set you up for a brag session about your company and you think, “Aha, this is an opportunity! I’m sure I can get through 54 slides in 60 minutes. I’ve got this down cold.” There’s no doubt that for a client to pay attention and ultimately buy from us, we must be credible. And it seems we believe credibility comes from what we say, not by what we ask and how well we listen. So repeatedly, we pull out the pitch deck and drone on. It seems like everyone does it. For all of these reasons—social, cultural, personal—we’re wired to focus more on advocacy. This behaviour isn’t entirely wrong. Normally, you do need to advocate before you’ve earned the right to do deep inquiry— but it doesn’t take much more than three to five minutes, especially in early meetings. The problem is we tend to go on and on, rather than sharing the smallest amount of information needed to get someone to be open—not to be impressed, but to be open. The impressive part can come later.

sharing our point of view, telling someone about our

company’s products & services and our track record of stunning successes with other clients. We focus on the second half of the habit first. Why? We’re deeply scripted that way and conditioned to do it. The companies we work for and even our clients expect us to do it. Adding to the problem is the fact that we’re trained more in speaking than in listening, more in advocacy than enquiry. WHY DO SALES PEOPLE USUALLY GET THIS HABIT BACKWARDS? It starts even before you’re hired. Chances are, in your job interview someone said, “Tell me about a time when you…” It sets you up for a brag session. Nail it and you get the job. Then your initial training is almost always focused on the company’s products, services, and its successful track record.

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