Unmasking Needs: The Sales Skill That Makes You Everyone's Best Friend

Hello and welcome to the show. Yesterday we started the series on how sales skills can help for your personal growth and development. Now the reason why I'm tackling this topic is because I figured that most people who are listening to this podcast are probably in business for themselves, self-employed, or intend to be involved in some entrepreneurial endeavour at some point in the future. But then I figured that, well,

it's just a guess anyway, because I can. The level of analytics that we get over here on the podcast are quite poor. So even if loads of you here already in business, then that means they're still going to leave a small percentage of folks who are listening to the show right now and who are probably thinking that all these things that these people discuss over here about sales and business development, all the questions that they address, how do these things affect me?

So that's the reason why I have started. The last narrative arc has been around this question, how can sales skills help for your personal growth and your personal development, whether you carry a quota as a salesperson or not, whether you are involved in business for yourself or not. Now some of the sales skills that we started looking at yesterday that we need for the purpose of well that traditionally that we need for the purpose of growing a business, building trust and rapport with potential customers, understanding client needs, coming up with effective presentations, getting people to commit to the next action steps and then also making sure that everybody is happy and satisfied and then trying to get repeat business and referrals.

So these are the traditional skill sets that are needed when it comes to sales and business development. And I am dedicating last episode, this episode and the next couple of episodes that come to show you guys that if you pay attention to these skills, it's going to benefit you. No matter, no matter whatever it is that you do, whether you're a sales person or not, employee or employer or not, whatever it is. So if you want to find out what we discussed yesterday, then just after you're done listening to this, then scroll back one episode.

We have over 790 episodes so far, so don't just stop there. Don't just stop listening to yesterday's episode, the other loads of interesting episodes that you can listen to and gain benefit from. But today we're going to be looking at how skills around understanding your client needs can help with your own personal growth or development. So remember when I mentioned the skills that we listed yesterday? One of them was being able to understand your clients needs.

So let's try and figure out what are the subset of skills that are involved in understanding client needs and how this can help with your own personal growth and development. Whether you're a pastor, whether you work in Zenith Bank, what else, whether you're a stay at home dad or mom or whatever. Now, what are the skills that salespeople traditionally need to understand their their client's wants or their client's needs?

Now, first of all, I would say that you have to realize that there's a difference between value discovery and value communication. Now, the reason why I'm saying this is because when most people think about sales, what they think is value communication and value communication are those scenarios or contexts where you are telling the other person how good you are, how great you are, how wonderful your company is, how wonderful your product or service is, why people should work with you.

These are the benefits of working with you, blah, blah, blah. So these are what people traditionally think when they hear sales, but that is just a part of it. That is value communication. Now there's a much more important part of it, in fact a much more foundational part of it, which is value discovery. Now value discovery is trying to figure out the chief benefits or the chief solutions or the chief. Well, like it says here, the chief value that the customer is going to get or trying to get in interacting with your product or your service.

This is foundational because until we know what it is that the customer finds a valuable, we might spend a lot of time communicating value saying do business with me because I'm the latest, I'm the greatest, I'm the best, and because you will benefit XYZ but you later find out that the customer is not concerned with XYZ, the customer might be concerned with 123. So that's the reason why value discovery is much more of foundational and much more important than value communication.

We need to figure out what the client is interested in, what the potential customer is interested in, and it is only then that we're going to be able to make an effective presentation to say that if you do business with us, you will indeed achieve XYZ and ABC. Now how do we go about value discovery? We do this well. First of all, we've been listening to the show for a very long time and if you are not subscribed to the show, this is a good reason why because he has sort of things that we discuss over and over and over again.

So it's good to get yourself caught up to speed, I'm reminded from time to time. So how do we go about value discovery? We do that by having open-ended conversations and we do that by having question LED conversations. Now this is what that means when we say open-ended conversations it means that we should be OK, Let me start from the back. So question LED. I guess that one is much more obvious. You should be asking questions and not making statements.

So if you go into the room thinking about bragging about yourself, this is me. I graduated first class. I'm very articulate. This is my product. My product or service does this I'm so great. I'm so good. I'm the best. If you start off the conversation that way you might think you've had a fun conversation and you might have a fun conversation and I'm not be able to have. I have seen some individuals who are really skilled at having those sorts of conversations and get people, you know, generally interested and laughing along and things like that.

So yes, you can have a fun conversation that way. It's just not a very useful or valuable conversation when it comes to networking and sales and things like that. Because you go in there, you say a ton about yourself, but you don't know much about the people that you've spoken to. So when the time comes to build relationships or to actually try selling something, there's nothing that you can wrap your head around to try and sneak in the sales conversation.

So it should be question LED, not statement LED. So this is not you going in and trying to see how well you can talk, whether you can talk for 20 or 30 minutes straight and then get people laughing and eating out of your hand. That's not the goal. So the goal is it should be question LED. You're talking to one person or a group of people. You're asking them conversations and those conversations have to be open-ended. So you're asking who, why, what,

where, when, kind of questions and you're just having a feel to see where the conversation will go. No agenda yet for the conversations. Now the agenda is going to come in later on when you know who it is that you're talking to. Because if you're having an agenda to try and close someone, to try and get the person to invest your company or whatever, but you don't know who this person is, whether they can invest, whether they can afford,

afford, things like that and you just waste your time. So you're better off having open-ended conversations now, then later on, you can think that, OK, I spoke to Mr. Jake, I spoke to Madam Jacqueline, and I spoke to Miss Miss EC and Mr. Isiaka, Mr. Isiaku. So from the conversations that I had with them, Madam EC is interested in this, Madam Isiaku is interested in this, Mr. Jake is interested in this, and Madam Jacqueline is interested in that.

So it looks like I might have much more fruitful conversations. If I pay attention to Madam Jacqueline and misses EC, then you can now go into the conversation with an agenda. So that's how it works in the beginning, open-ended because you're trying to fill out who is this person, what are they interested in. Of course you already know what you're interested in and then you can figure out how your interests align for the future and you know how you're going to try and build the relationship or try and sell or deepen the network or whatever it is.

So value discovery, number one, it has to be question LED. It's not you going to go and talk and then #2, it has to be open-ended. So who, why, what, where, when? Questions and no goal in mind yet. You're just trying to feel this person out. You're trying to figure this person out. You're trying to source out the opportunity first of all. Then the agenda can come in later on. Now in my own opinion, if you're going to go about these conversations, there's a hierarchy and the hierarchy of conversations is this number one face to face.

The best conversations are the ones you're going to have face to face, whether they come to your office, you go to their office, it's a networking session. They meet in your house, you meet in their house. You run into each other at the market or at the church. I mean, you, you get the point face to face. That's where you're going to get the best because you're going to be able to hear what the people are saying. You're going to be able to get feedback, visual feedback,

auditory feedback, body language feedback, all kinds of feedback. You won't be able to see what is landing, what is not, what they're interested in, what they're bored by, what they're excited about. You know, all these things. They matter. So face to face, number one, top of the hierarchy #2 conversations voice. So this is phone call, WhatsApp call, Skype. What else? Telegram call. You get the whole point, #2 would be voice.

This is because voice can be quick. You're going to get some auditory signals because you can tell when somebody's excited. Maybe when somebody is not quite convinced, you can pick up on some non what's that word non. When you're trying to communicate through words, I can't remember what it's called anyway. But basically you can pick up on not just what the person is saying, but how the person is saying that. The emphasis, what the person emphasizes, what the emphasizes,

things like that. So that's why voice is #2. Next, I would say voice is #3, especially in today's day and age post COVID, where people are now used to doing zooms and stuff like that. Now the reason why the Zoom call, the WhatsApp call, the Skype with the video call, the Telegram video call, why that would be important is because you're going to get more signals quite clearly over the screen. You're going to be able to tell when somebody's bored, when they're looking away.

It looks like even though they're there, maybe they're playing chess on their phone or something. Something else has gotten their attention. You can tell where attention is wavering and then things like that. So that's why video is next on hierarchy. Then I'd say after that would be SMS. That is either sending text messages or sending WhatsApp messages or Telegram messages or whatever chat messages that you do. I think there's something called Z WeChat or we Go or something like that.

I've seen some youngsters up north use that in Abuja. I haven't seen it in been with state, I haven't seen it. I haven't been to Lagos in a while, so I don't know if other people use it in other parts of Nigeria, but I know that there are different chat things that are out there. So I'll say that is next. And that's because as of today anyway, in 2024 in Nigeria at least, these forms of communications are seen are taken to be more personal forms of communication.

So if you're SMS ING with someone, your whatsapping with someone, then the assumption is there's on trend, there's you guys are kind of personal, then at the very least I would now say e-mail. And that's because e-mail, at least in Nigeria anyway, As of the date of this recording in 2024, e-mail is the least personal. e-mail is the very official, impersonal form of communication. It also has the least context behind it.

You just have a wall of text. You can't tell whether somebody's excited to say this, or bored about saying that, or enthusiastic about this or not enthusiastic about that. You can't tell if somebody is falling asleep while typing, because it happens that you start typing an e-mail and then you fall asleep and then you wake up at your desk, and then you finish the e-mail. You know the person can't tell that. You just type this thing in the you know that you typed it in a you know, in a very bored,

nonchalant, like a lackadaisical manner. You know, you can't tell these sorts of things. So there are no interpersonal queues. There's no context. It's the least personal. It's the most easiest to be ignored or to skim, because there are people who just take the e-mail, you open it, you see it's 600 words and 10 paragraphs. So you just, you know, flip, flip, flip, skim. I say, OK, I think I get the gist. So these are the reasons why I

think it's at the bottom, because of all these deficiencies. But unfortunately it is the easiest to send because everybody can send a message and it's the easiest to deliver. So most people start here. If I try face to face, it's easy to snub me and to block to say, OK, Bros, you know what, let's see next week. And then next week you don't answer your phone or, you know, or I show up and you're not around, you know, things like that.

So but for the e-mail, The thing is when you send it, you have sent it. When it delivers, it has delivered. And so there's some comfort in knowing that you wanted to shoot your shot. You sent over the salvo. Salvo has been received. But unfortunately, like I said, it's impersonal, No context, no interpersonal queues, most likely to be ignored or to skim. So that's the reason why I say that there's a hierarchy for having these sorts of conversations.

So face to face at the top if you can, the bottom is e-mail. But the most important thing that you have to consider, no matter the form of communication that you choose, is that you are having a conversation, even if you send emails. Because I've noticed that when it's face to face, people know they're having a conversation. But for some reason when it comes to WhatsApp, SMS and e-mail, people just think that you are talking at people.

So you're copying and pasting at people, you're blasting people you know, that sort of things. You forget that it's a conversation. So even when you're sending emails, make it a conversation. Don't talk at people, ask questions. When you ask questions, prompt feedback, try and clarify that you have understood correctly and then talk naturally. So for some reason people start off face face to face conversations by saying hey guy,

how far now, long time happy New year, how have you been? But then if it's e-mail they say please here to forthwith refer to my previous hitherto e-mail that I sent forthwith Betwixt 3 follow up emails last weekend. You know, that kind of thing. All that formal talk. Now let's give an example about how these sorts of conversations are supposed to flow and at least in the business context, and then we can learn from there.

Now, I'm going to use an example that I've used time and time again over here on the show, and that is the person who is a vanity pajama vendor. And that's because Christmas Mark likes to buy Christmas pajamas. And of course, there's no point in buying the same pajamas this year that you bought last year, only in the bigger size. That way, if you do that, then you know there's no thrill for the kids or for anyone else.

So it's become little bit of Christmas tradition over here in the ID household. So let's say you are the person who sells these pajamas and then someone reach reaches out to you on Instagram and let's say that's my wife. Now of course, given the scenario that someone has reached out to you on Instagram DM, the phone call or video call most likely is not an option because there are some people that hit hitch up on IG to say Instagram to say do you have this inside 16?

OK, no, size 16 is big. Size 16 is big. Children, let's say size. OK, let me guess, let me say size 8. I'm not a fashion person anyway so they hit you up on Instagram saying do you have this in size 8. My guess is that most people, if you if you reach back out to them saying no, yeah sure I have it. But can we have a phone call or a video so I can video chat so I can figure out exactly what it is you want. I'm assuming that most people will just fashion you and move over to the other person who responds to the Instagram DM

saying yes I have it, it's 15,000 for boys and 18,000 for girls. Ages this to this, all size that to that. So in my own opinion, someone I've reached out to you on Instagram DM, I think it's cool continue with the DM in chat but don't go straight to to price. You have to do some value discovery. Now the possible conversation points or the questions that you could be asking could be you know how many kids that they have, the ages of the children,

the things that they're interested in, the themes for the pajamas in question. You also want to figure out why mommy or daddy or whoever is reaching out, why they think that the children will like these sorts of characters and not these other kind of characters. Trying to figure out what the kids like. What are their favorite TV shows, favorite computer games. Trying to figure out timelines. What celebration do they want to delivered for?

Is it birthdays? Is it holidays? Is it Christmas? Is it blah, blah, blah. There's some special occasion. Is there going to be a family photo planned that allows you to know whether you can try and upsell Mommy and Daddy on pajama options to, you know, all these sorts of things? Now, if you're a salesperson, these are the kinds of questions that you need to ask before you deliver a price, because it gives you all the information that you need.

You now know that they're interested in Christmas pajamas that are Mickey Mouse themed or maybe Dragon Balls themed, and between the sizes of this and this and they need it in the next three weeks. You now know that you can give an accurate quote based on these two options because you can give prices for Option A, Disney Option B, Dragon Balls, and then you're going to be able to add in express delivery since they need it in less than two weeks or less than three weeks or whatever.

So this is the reason why it's important to do value discovery. So another reason why it's important is because when you ask all these questions, it allows you to build rapport. You now know a little bit about mom because it's not how you can be asking all these questions. They don't get a sense of who mommy is or who daddy is. And mommy is also going to know a little bit about you because if you're smart, you're going to be do some build some rapport.

So if mommy says, oh, I have 4 kids, you know, you can say mommy, you're trying to me, I only have two. And sometimes I only kill myself. I mean, how do you cope, you know, that kind of thing. OK. No, not kill myself sometimes I'll pull my hair out, you know, how do you cope? You know, you have that talk. You guys bond over that whole mom would thing. So with all these talk chatting back and forth, you guys probably are going to be on a first name basis.

I might feel more comfortable now talking to each other. So these are reasons why from a sales perspective value discovery is really, really important and we must always go through all these things. Now, let's pretend that you've been listening to the show and you are definitely not a salesperson. You are not in business. You don't sell pajamas. Why is it important to learn all these skills, To learn to ask all these who, why, what, where,

when questions, to try and figure out who the person is, where they're coming from, things like that? Because if you adopt this kind of philosophy when it comes to having conversations, you're going to be a much more better conversationalists. So making friends is going to be easier. Networking is going to be easier. So I mean, who couldn't use more friends or better friends and better networking opportunities in the future?

Then you're also going to be able to build a better relationship with colleagues at work or collaborators in business. You might not be in business now, but eventually you might have a side also or be in partnership with someone who has a side also. Even if you're not going to do all of this and you're going to do the Niger thing of eventually you want to run for office, it's better because you're going to be able to have wonderful conversations with political associates then if you're a pastor.

Of your Big Brother in church or a Deacon or your some deaconess or auntie in church or whatever. It's also useful having these sorts of skills as well. And then as your children grow older and they enter the teenagers, you know, teenagers, that's when they don't want to hang out with us, when they'd rather hang out with their friends and do cool stuff, you know, take your car and drive and go drinking with the boys or attend parties and sleepovers with the girls and all that.

That's for those of you with daughters. So and at this stage is going to help you better prompt conversations with them so you can know what it is that is going on in your loved ones lives. But most importantly, it's going to make you less fearful of being thrown into, sorry excuse me, potentially awkward social situations because you're going to be confident that you can use conversations and feel your way out of it.

So if somebody nominates you for some church committee, it's not going to be a problem. You're not going to start palpitating and sweating blood because you know that you're good at conversations. You'll be able to figure it out. You'll be able to handle it. The same thing at work. They put you up for a committee. You're going to get the sense of you want to be able to handle it. So no matter what it is, you're going to be less awkward, sorry,

less fearful of being in those awkward situations. Now, I hope you are convinced that sales training is going to help you whether you run a business or not. If you're not convinced, you should. And don't worry, listen to more episodes. I'm going to devote, so excuse me a couple more episodes to try and convince you guys now. So that's all for today folks. Remember to connect with me on WhatsApp. The number is 08064662140.

The country code is +234 for those of you who are not Nigerian. And then also connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name and e-mail address from the link. We're currently listening to this episode. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next recording.