In sales conversations, experts in professional services firms let their expertise get in the way of true understanding. This leads to miscommunication, assumption, and the inability to uncover the client’s true problems. This is part 1 of a 2-part series.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of understanding. Let’s consider this future scenario:
You’ve worked hard to win a new client through a challenging, competitive process. Your team has prepared well for each step, staying focused on the client and their needs, and asking great questions along the way. The client selects you to work with them! After beginning to work together, you find a quiet moment to ask your new client the question… “Why did you select us?”
“We picked you because you get us”
That is exactly what we all want to hear, isn’t it? There are always many factors involved when a client chooses to work with you over someone else. Sometimes it’s your expertise. A part of it may have been price. Or maybe it’s the fact that, from the very first conversation, you focused on them and their needs more than anyone else. You asked great questions and listened closely. You worked hard to gain a deep understanding of their situation. Your team was open, honest, and curious. Your eventual proposal was a bullseye. You nailed it, mostly because it was everything they wanted and needed and dreamed of because you recognized the importance of understanding. You got them.
Now rewind the clock to today. Let’s examine why this can be so difficult for professional services firms to achieve by first exploring some terminology and a bit of psychology.
Hearing and Listening
Yes, they are different things. And unfortunately, much of what hits our ears is only heard.
Hearing requires zero effort on our part. It’s an unconscious, involuntary function just like blinking and breathing. We hear hundreds of sounds throughout each day that don’t register and don’t distract us. In many cases, that is a good thing. But in situations where we need to understand and process important information, just hearing something isn’t enough. All sounds, important or not, go in one ear and out the other.
Unlike hearing, listening is voluntary, intentional, and active. It requires our focus and attention. As such, real listening can be almost impossible in a world full of distractions.
Listening to Understand
When we muster the energy, focus, and attention required to really listen, we take information into our heads and start to process it. Understanding occurs “when the gears start to spin”… when we consume what we’ve heard through active listening and start to construct a picture out of the many puzzle pieces. We experience a sense of resonance. We start to nod in agreement. When we understand something, most of us experience a powerful shift from confusion to clarity. Our attention narrows and our curiosity ignites.
Much has been written about how we can become better listeners. Minimize distractions. Make eye contact. Ask open-ended questions. Allow for silence during the conversation. Don’t listen just to respond. All good practices for better listening.
But with experts, there is one fatal flaw that can lay waste to all of this.
Why Experts Fail to Understand
Put simply, experts fail to achieve a deep understanding because of their expertise.
Blasphemy, you say. Your practice is founded on discovery and understanding.
Well, I beg to differ. And there are very real reasons why this happens—most of which you are completely unaware.
First, experts don’t ask enough questions. Good, open-ended questions that often start with “why” allow our clients to do the talking and let us just listen. Given the option, it is easier to talk about one’s self rather than to conceive of and ask good, exploratory questions.
Next, your expertise provides little room for understanding. In order to listen to, absorb, and process words and ideas from someone else, there needs to be space for them to exist.
Emptying our heads to enable listening and understanding must be a conscious decision. Experts need to put aside their experience and knowledge and let their youthful sense of curiosity take over. Make an empty room in your brain. Pull out the old couch and chairs. Cast aside the bookcase containing your degrees and awards. Throw it all away.
And then just listen.
… and a couple other reasons
Beyond not having the room in your head, the assumptions and solutions you’ve developed over the years wage war against everything you hear. Rather than letting new ideas weave together peacefully with your knowledge and expertise, a battle erupts. Exploration is stunted. You develop an obvious solution to the problem before your prospect has finished their first few sentences. And this happens in real-time during your conversation, so you’re likely just hearing them and not really listening at all because your brain is too busy solving their problem and thinking about what you’re having for lunch. Victory is declared. Long live expertise!
Lastly, experts fail to pursue a deep understanding through good investigation because being curious may imply a lack of knowledge. It comes off like a gap in the armor, or maybe like you skipped that course in college. Experts should have all the answers. Simple, open-ended questions might be good for inquisitive 8-year-olds, but not for 40-year-old engineers. This misguided belief is a painful, unfortunate reality that gets in the way of a true understanding.
The Consequences of a Lack of Understanding
There are two fundamental problems that arise from a lack of understanding. One is fairly obvious, but the other is the silent killer of many experts.
First, a disregard for the importance of understanding doesn’t get things off on the right foot – or footing. A deep understanding creates the strong foundation from which all mutually successful partnerships rise. Early investments in open-ended questions, active listening, and curiosity pay dividends later. These early, exploratory conversations don’t delay the real work, they are the real work. Consultants are able to offer the right services, solve the right problems, and achieve the best outcomes with a thorough understanding of what their clients want to get out of it… not just what they get.
Most importantly, when we fail to understand the people we serve, we disregard the need for people to be heard. Dutch writer and professor Henri Nouwen wrote:
The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends.
– Henri Nouwen
Translating this powerful sentiment into our professional lives, listening to understand builds trust with our clients and partners. It welcomes them into a conversation of equals where both parties seek to understand and be understood. Listening awakens deep discovery and exploration. The mutual benefits of listening and being listened to are how we create connections and build empathy.
Putting the Importance of Understanding to Work
In Part 2 of this post focused on the importance of understanding, I’ll present an approach and framework to create a Statement of Understanding. We’ll walk through the right steps to take, starting with the best questions to ask, how to progressively build the understanding, and ending with the presentation of this statement.
The ability to articulate a strong understanding will differentiate you from competitors. While other firms wade into an expertise gunfight, you’ll steer clear of the mess with a powerful statement of how much you understand about your client’s needs and dreams. This statement overcomes barriers and unlocks doors. It turns doubters into believers. And next, we’ll learn how to build it.
Wainwright Insight provides fractional sales management and sales consulting to organizations who want to take control of their pipeline and build future sales leaders—but could use a little, part-time expertise. I work with professional services firms, and the experts in those firms, who need to get better at chasing and winning big deals when the stakes are high.