Technical experts often think that telling is selling. They go straight into detailed technical conversations and try to pitch their way to a sale. Often obliviously getting caught up in the depths of their own detail. This needs flipping. You listen your way to a sale, but steer with the right questions.
Key facts
- Technical experts often think that if they’re not talking, they’re not selling. That selling is a ‘push’ of information. This perhaps fails them the most.
- One of the number one complaints from buyers is that technical sellers don’t listen. They don’t listen because they don’t ask questions. They don’t ask questions because they’re not curious about the buyers business. They’re not curious because they don’t start with empathy. Good selling isn’t about the seller, it’s about helping the buyer to buy.
- Logic makes us think, emotion makes us act. Technical experts often just use logic. The buyer thinks but isn’t compelled to act. Until they meet the competitor technical expert who taps into the emotional buying drivers.
- Technical experts should aim to talk 30% and let the buyer talk 70%
- A free 3-minute starting point is our Revenue Generator Score diagnostic tool, which reveals where your sales approach is breaking down and the single area to fix first.
What’s the single most common mistake?
Technical experts often think that value comes from telling. They go straight into technical conversations, and tell the buyer all about their solution, it’s features, and generic benefits that might not benefit this customer. The buyer sits there quietly trying to fit all that into their own world, and often struggles. They don’t feel listened to, understood, or helped. They don’t feel that the technical expert is acting to help them with their larger business problem or challenge. The one the buyer is paid to solve.
Why does it happen?
Because technical detail is the comfort zone. They go in using all they know, using their own default style and preferences. Not much empathy or adapting to the buyer’s world. If the buyer takes the conversation into other areas (like commerical) the technical expert often steers it back to what they know. The technical expert thinks they’re being helpful by explaining everything. And often they don’t know how to put the brakes on as they pour more and more detail out. They often get caught in their own technical enjoyment. The buyer feels alienated, and that their time is being wasted. In short, it happens because engineers and technical experts haven’t been made aware of all this, or trained in it. That’s solvable. It’s learnable. Engineers can learn to sell.
What should they do instead?
They should get specialist help learning a structured conversational process that builds value. It’s not something you can just learn on paper. You need to explore it, practice it, make it fit your world. But it includes knowing how to switch your empathy and curiosity on, how to know what to look for in your conversations, what questions to ask and when, and what to do with the answers. It covers strong consultative discovery, building value for the buyer, earning trust and respect as you go, and helping the buyer think it through and fit it into their world. It gets them off their solutions and onto the customer’s problem. It leads with care, alignment and a customer-centric approach. You can start by assessing the weaker links in your team of technical people that might be impacting customers by taking our free diagnostic tool below. Takes just 3 minutes.
Doesn’t that make them look unprepared?
Going in with questions to ‘learn’ from the buyer actually looks smarter, more professional and more helpful. It’s good selling, because it warms customers to you. The technical depth can be tapped into later. But for now the technical expert is holding a professional conversation that makes the buyer feel good – that they’re in the right hands. Which goes a long way.
What’s a one-line cure?
“Every single thing you say or do either takes you towards the sale, or moves you away from it.” You want to load the dice with the things that take you towards the sale. To do that, you and your team should learn them. Get off your solutions and your logic, and onto their problems and their emotions. Logic makes us think, emotions make us act. Your goal is to hold conversations that help your buyer think things through, including tapping into the emotional impact of their journey and their choices.
Don’t buyers want to hear about the technical solution straight away?
Technical experts often think buyers want to dive into specifications and features immediately. They don’t. Buyers want to know you understand their situation before you start solving it. They say “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” The care and alignment come first. When you launch into technical detail without discovery, the buyer thinks you’re not listening or that you’re pitching a standard solution.Buyers choose suppliers who understand their world, not just suppliers who understand their own products. That’s where they see the real value.
How to spot if your technical team is making this mistake
Observe them, or ask them to recall their last meeting and everything they said or did. If sales aren’t progressing at this stage, you’ll know something is up. Another approach is to take our one of our free diagnostic tools on our site – they take just a few minutes and you get a free report showing you where you’re losing sales, and what to do about it. (Link below or top menu under ‘resources’).