The Transparency Sale Book Review – Part Two

📅  10th December 2020 | 2020/21 Sales Book Reviews

Empathy For The Listener

By my reckoning, this is only the third or fourth book of my current reviews that starts to address the issues surrounding B2B sales in the post-pandemic world. Sellers must grasp the importance of decision making and the brain science or neuroscience that lies behind it.  Understanding this point will help you achieve transparency in your selling.

Part One of my review of The Transparency Sale is here. It’s hardly surprising this book was awarded ‘Best Sales Book’ by the American Book Awards – it is full of usable information.

 

 

What’s New

Each chapter has a succinct summary. Todd Caponi calls them ‘Keepers’ – one of the best bon mots I’ve read in a sales book. Chapter One has three ‘keepers’ – one I’ll mention below, the other two really set the scene for the entire book.  1. Us humans make around 35,000 decisions a day – the overwhelming majority of them subconsciously. And 2. our brains are wired for protection (Study any child who has cut his or her hand on something sharp; they tend not to make the same mistake again!) likewise with your buyers, who will resist your overtures. Understanding the fundamentals of decision-making, in my view, will be key in the 2020’s where for the most part, it’s a buyers world.

Engendering trust with a buyer is aided by the use of an MDP or Mutual Decision Plan as the author likes to describe it. This gives the seller an opportunity to work alongside the buyer and discuss what both parties have to do. One such item is to ask “Who, other than you, needs to be involved in this project”?  A table showing a typical MDP is laid out in Chapter 7.

Todd adds a reading list, the likes of which I haven’t seen before in book on sales. All the titles are to do with how our brains react to sales, marketing and branding.

What’s Old

In the 1980’s, it was explained to me and my fellow sales colleagues that buyers make decisions with our emotions and feelings. They then justify those decisions to themselves by logic (using the neo-cortex part of one’s brain).  And yet, one still hears of salespeople bombarding their prospects with facts, logic and reason hoping that it sinks in and the client signs on that dotted line. Sales doesn’t work that way. Unless you are buying a really low-cost item on a transactional basis, emotion always plays a part in selling – so don’t ignore it. Ever. Todd outlines this in Chapter 1 and explains Dr. David Rock’s “SCARF“ model – this shows the five ‘types’ of feelings central to decision making.

Chapter 8 cover presentations and Todd beautifully explains that even in the relative safety of an auditorium the ‘reptilian’ brain is hard at work in the audience. Your presentation has to be compelling enough for your audience to take action – despite their reluctance to do so when they entered the room.

What’s Better

It was so refreshing to see the chapters on ‘transparent negotiations’, customer reference and contract terms & conditions. With the latter, Caponi questions the use of to much legalese in documents. Keeping it simple with your self-serving  T’s & C’s carefully explained, suits the whole ‘transparency’ shtick.

I regularly post this on social media……..”sales are never complete until your customer is satisfied” and was delighted to read Todd’s short Chapter 12 which essentially says that the ‘close’ is not the end of the business deal – it’s just the beginning of a potentially fruitful business relationship.

Loved the chapter on e-mail marketing and in particular the references to negativity bias and having empathy with your customer’s e-mail inbox. And throughout the book, Todd rams home how decisions are made firstly with emotion and then logic.

Finally, you’ll be blown away by the Afterword. No spoilers. Just buy the book.

What’s Worse

I could find no reason to give a ‘black mark’ to anything in TTS. Not even a ‘must try harder’. (Although being a Brit, I don’t quite get what Quarterbacking means)

 

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Tags: behavioural economics, behavioural science, customer-centricity

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