Are You Bringing ‘Presence’ to Your Prospects?

Not donuts…or lunch…or coffee mugs. But are you bringing your ‘full self’ when you meet with people?

In this video, Bill tells you a story of how he and his team are brought in to interview sales people upfront before an offer is made. What they see is not good. And it all gets back to the little word with big implications: Presence.

He tells you what he looks for in those interviews and how you can think about what you bring to prospect meetings.

 

Video Transcript:

You know, in our work with organizations, we are asked to come in and interview people and so let’s say that a sales leader, a VP of sales, wants to hire two or three people. We will put them through some profiles, batteries of tests and they will say, “Bill, Bryan, Brooke, why don’t you come in and interview them and let me know what you think?”

So a lot of these are very opinionated things and I’m always looking at how the persons carry themselves, how they speak. Do they use run-on sentences? Do they talk and talk and talk and never get anywhere? You know, a lot of words and not much said. But one of the things that we look for, and it’s really interesting to me how often this is missing, is this concept of presence. When you’re in the presence of another person, are you really present? Are you listening to what I say? Am I listening to what you say? Is there a further, deeper conversation that happens? I’m going to draw it for you here on the board because I think it makes some sense to have a visual behind it and I’m not much of a drawer here so I’m going to draw the stick figure. OK?

So here we got two stick figures and these people don’t even have arms but that’s OK. What happens a lot of times is we will have a head-to-head conversation and a head-to-head conversation is when I say, “How old are you?” You tell me and then you ask me, “Where do you live?” I say I live in Indianapolis. You say, “What’s your favorite team?” I say this. I say, “Where did you go on vacation?” It’s very exchanging information. It’s a head-to-head conversation and a lot of times in sales and in leadership, this is where it begins and this is where it ends.

I think that it’s important also to have a heart-to-heart conversation, something that goes below the head surface and gets down into the heart and the heart would be things like – I always coach salespeople to ask their prospects or clients, “What are some of the biggest issues that you see in your business for you to accomplish your goals over the next couple of years?” I want to know personally what’s in it for them. What are they struggling with? What are their frustrations? What’s it going to take for them to be ecstatic about their world and their business? What’s wrong with their world right now? What pain are they in?

That stuff goes way beneath the head and gets into the heart-to-heart information. We always say that we want people to expose their needs and their frustrations and things like that and yet, we don’t do a good job of exposing what we want from them. So you can’t go from a head to a heart. You have to be in the heart if you’re going to have a heart-to-heart conversation with them.

So over the next few weeks as you think about this and you see prospects or if you’re in a leadership position, you’re with your team, make sure that you’re engaging them at a deeper level. Make sure that you’re present with them and as you talk to them, don’t just do a head-to-head thing. Go a little bit deeper. Find out a little bit more about what they’re struggling with or what they’re hoping to accomplish in the next quarter.

There’s always something you can ask. Always. There’s never a lack of things to ask that will help people get down into this heart-to-heart role. Be present. Be engaged. Care about what you hear. Be curious about other people and I think you will find the connection to be a lot healthier whether it’s a prospect or one of the members of your team. Hope that helps. Bye-bye.