egyii blog

Trust.

It remains a hot issue and will for a while.

With that, we at Egyii will be doing a series of interviews and Podcasts with the leaders in Trust, in anticipation of our August announcement on our new programme on Trust.

The second of the series is Charles H. Green, one of the founding fathers of the “trust movement ” and founder/CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. He is the author of Trust Based Selling and co-author of The Trusted Advisor. His expertise is in trusted relationships in business. For more on Charlie, click here.

Here is Part 2 (a continuation of Part 1).

The following is transcribed from a recorded session.

Trip Allen: Moving on to 2006, the theme of your second book called “Trust Based Selling,” encompasses two words: sales and trust.

These terms together have a bad reputation and don’t mix well with the business world, a little like oil and water.  Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Charlie Green:  Well, you are exactly right and I was completely conscious of that when I wrote it that way. In fact one major firm told me if you write a book with “sales” in the title we are not buying it.  The phenomena you just mentioned is that strong, and I wrote that way any way because I wanted to play off the tension.

I think the word sales or selling is a four letter word.  We all have these negative feelings about it, and the whole sales function in many ways has gotten a bad name, too.

What fascinated me about is that sales is where the person and the business come together. When a company buys from one and sells to another, with the exception of reverse online auctions, there are people doing “the deal,” and that is where institutions come together, where they connect. That is what fascinated me – how do people behave when there is serious money at stake and they are doing business? That is the essence of commercial relationship; commerce, in the old sense of the word.

I am happy with the choice I made, because I think it intrigues people. They say “how can you put those two together?” Well, you examine why they don’t fit, and it turns out to be a very interesting way of looking at it.

In a nutshell, there is nothing that sells better than being trusted – period. That’s the power of trust in the commercial relationship. I just find it fascinating.

Trip Allen:  Charlie, what’s the biggest thing you see wrong with selling today? You just mentioned that the reputation of a salesperson is bad, but what else do you see out there? What’s happening?

Charlie Green:  Well, it’s a great question because 10 to 15 years ago the biggest problem was salespeople selling and really not understanding the customer very well.  I think we have come to have a different problem and that is, let me call it the “mechanisation” of selling or the overdoing of “process reengineering” and the overuse of sales management systems.

Because of that we have broken the personal relationship and we have taken that “commercial” personal relationship (that I mentioned) and broken into a thousand mechanistic, metrics based, measurable behaviour based process. We have taken something that is, ought to be and can be very personal and have essentially depersonalised it. We have gotten to a level of detail where too often metrics have taken over from what the metrics were supposed to be measuring. People have therefore long ago “lost the forest for the trees” and have gotten deep in sequentially linked behaviours, so there is no relationship left.

I would actually say that is the biggest problem in selling today. We have lost the long term interpersonal relationship component of it. Every business I can think of out there still has an enormous amount of room for an increase in the level of relationships, and again, nothing is still better than that.

Trip Allen:  Great Charlie. One thing I am going to pull specifically from the book and one of the many activities I use – and I believe is very powerful,  is called “selling by doing and not telling.”

Traditionally salespeople told clients about the products, the features, the benefits etc. Salespeople have pretty much controlled the conversation. Can you elaborate a little bit on “selling by doing not telling?”

Charlie Green: Yes, and thank you for raising that. I agree with you, that is one of the powerful ideas in the book. If you think of it this way, with “selling by doing and not telling,” the more complicated the product, the more intangible the service, the longer relationship,  the more difficult  the whole sales process is, the less it is likely to be about snap decision and product qualities and so forth.

It’s complicated.

What you don’t want if you are buying a jet engine or if you are buying an audit or buying a brand advertising campaign, is to “out the expert the expert.”  That is an endless game that you will never win as a client or a customer.

What you really want to do is to be able to sleep at the night knowing you made the right decision about the person you deal with. And that is not going to come through PowerPoint presentations, Etc.; people are human beings and not persuaded of the trustworthiness of another human being by overused tools such as PowerPoint decks.  We’d like to think they are, and they will tell us they are, but they are not.

We are all human beings and profoundly make trust judgments based on much more of a “gut feel,” emotional feelings through connectivity and emotional feelings of safety. And that’s simply the way it is. I think we sort of rationalize it with all the logic and the data because, after all, we are supposed to be able to justify things.

That’s all true. But “selling by doing” basically says, instead of telling somebody about all the other past clients and all the wonderful things you have done, leave that behind and “just do it.” Deal with the person in front of you and deal with their issues, with their concerns and bring to them all the wonderful things and experiences you can deliver for them.

Just to simplify, I like to say it is like going out on a blind date with somebody. If they were to talk about the last seventeen people they went out with, you would be bored and offended.

But if on the other hand, what if your date is interesting, innovative and engaging and instead they ask you questions about you, we love that. We love it when people make the topic and conversation about us.

We need to take our expertise and apply it in real time to the problem at hand as it affects the person sitting in front of us. They don’t want to hear our resume or our history. They want to hear what our resume means for them.  That’s what “selling by doing and not telling” is all about.

Trip Allen: Great. Thank you for that. The next question has to do a bit with “selling by doing a not selling,” but it is all about collaboration. That is another key point you have in your book “Trust Based Selling.” How does collaboration improves trust and thereby improve the relationship?

Charlie Green: Well collaboration is one of the important elements I outlined in the book and it goes well beyond selling actually, although we will focus on the selling aspect only.

The other three key elements on the list are transparency, focus on the well being of the client (for sake of client and not just for us) and the tendency to look at the medium to long term (rather than just the short term).

Collaboration may be just the most important of the four elements. In any case, what collaboration means is a fundamental mindset. It says “I am not in this for me and dealing with you as an object. We are in this together. We are in for the sake of however long this relationship is going to be, working together for the greater outcome for both of us, but mainly for you, the client.”

So any decision we make has to be good one for both of us. We both have to be involved in it. We can’t keep too many secrets from each other. And if you begin thinking that way, you will begin behaving that way. You’ll start sharing more information with your customer, you’ll start feeling more free to ask them questions. After all, you have to know their answers in order to be collaborative, and frankly it even begins in the selling process. 

In those businesses that have process of using proposals, my “radical” suggestion is to write the next proposal, sitting next to the client in their offices. Instead of saying “great discussion” or “I’ll get back to you with the proposal later this week,” say “let’s book the conference room again and let’s work on this together. I know it is a proposal and, we may not get the job, I understand that. But if we may do this, you will have, at the end of the day, the best proposal possible from the combination of the two of us. By the way I suggest doing that with other potential vendors also. You will learn so much more about working with people if you begin working with them.’

That is an example of the power of collaboration.

End of Part 2. To be continued…

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Things are heating up!

Egyii is featured in an article titled “SMEs Send Out the SOS: Seven SME Owners Tell Their Stories from the Recession Frontline ” from the Singapore Business Review,  July 2009.

“Stay focused, stay flexible and stay on board.”

For the complete article, click here.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Banks just don’t get customer experience. Why?

  Hotels get it.

  Umpqua Bank in Oregon, USA gets it. But only partially…

Bank clients clearly are not happy. Banks continue to operate in the same manner.

So what are they missing?

The true client relationship. A genuine, authentic interface. Bankers are too busy pushing products, too pre-occupied with short term bank and personal results. They are too focused on the bank and the bank’s operations.

CRM, processes and the bank’s physical environment all help- but they don’t go far enough.

Hoteliers focus on the client - not the company.

That is the difference.

I spoke with the head of Customer Experience at one of the major Singapore banks the other day and she said that the banks’ staff ARE too focused on THE BANK. They are are tied up with too many regulations, compliance, rules, Etc.

Banks need to start focusing more on the personal side of the client, the relationship (the real experience),  to really add value and capture the audience.

Customer focus. Customer value. Customer Experience.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore.

Press Release! Hot off the wires..

Singapore, May 25th, 2009

Egyii, the Singapore based learning and development consultancy, has announced its launch into the Consumer and Retail Banking space, leading with a new perspective on “customer experience.”

Egyii will continue to focus on its current agenda of Priority and Private Banking but will expand into Consumer and Retail Banking with more thought leadership, web based material and customized, in-house curriculums.

Trip Allen, Egyii’s Director of Sales and Marketing, says “The Consumer and Retail space is a logical choice for us. In fact, the banks have requested that we move into this space. And with customer experience initiatives in banking being a top priority, it makes sense that we link all the different banking programmes together.“

James Irvine, Egyii Director of Programme Development, says “Financial organizations are struggling and it is the customer who is suffering, causing a break of loyalty and trust and a loss of business.”

“Bankers can continue to focus on re-engineering products, systems and policies. Alternatively, they can break the mold and focus on the customer and the customer experience.”

For the “Improving the Customer Experience in Banking” white paper: White Paper

Organisations are doing a lot these days to enhance the ‘customer experience’. They are training and motivating employees to engage their customers at a higher level; and they are putting in systems, processes and policies to make doing business easier and more enjoyable for their customers.

We at Egyii ask: how can our employees engage their customers so that they really ‘connect’ with them and leave them feeling great about the organisation?

What actually happens between the employee and the customer as they are interacting with each other makes one of the most lasting impressions. How a customer feels when she walks away from an interaction remains with her long after she has forgotten about the content.

 How can an employee create that customer connection that leaves them with such a great feeling?

First, the employee must be authentic.

This means he must be aware of his feelings when interacting with the customer. He must use this awareness to respond to his customer with his ‘truth’, the genuine emotion that he is experiencing.

Of course, if he is feeling irritated he does not show irritation, but he does acknowledge it himself and deal with it so that when he does respond to the customer the signals he sends are genuine. If he does not acknowledge his feelings he will communicate a ‘false’ persona to his customer which will be picked up, probably unconsciously. The result will be that the customer will leave with a slightly negative impression of the employee. There will certainly be no memorable customer experience.

This ongoing self-awareness on the part of the employee is crucial if the customer is not to feel that he is just ‘going through the motions’. Too many times customers experience employees as ’superficial’ and ‘insincere’ because they are just acting out and have no connection with their real selves.

Second, the employee must become aware of his customer’s emotions and connect with their ‘truth’.

Often a customer will communicate with a lot of words and gestures, most of which do not represent where they are really coming from.

If an employee wants his customer to feel truly understood, he must pay attention and find the words, gestures and emotion that tell him “I am here.” By acknowledging the customer’s real thoughts and feelings he creates a bridge between them that the customer appreciates. Finding the customer’s ‘truth’ requires paying close attention and using intuition to sense and interpret the signals they are sending.

Connecting with your customer, then, happens when the employee’s ‘truth’ and the customer’s ‘truth’ are in a dance with each other. When an employee taps into his real self and eliminates all the posturing and acting, then he begins to be authentic. And when he takes the trouble to really pay attention to his customer and discover their real self, then he connects and a great customer experience is enabled.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Kare Anderson titles her recent blog ‘Coddle and Keep Customers – Even in a Cold Economy’.  She talks about a cafe near her home in Sausalito, California that now offers fresh-baked pastries and coffee to drive-by customers.

Now let’s transfer this image of ‘coddled customers’ to the experience people have with their banks. My Collins Concise English Dictionary defines ‘coddle’ as ‘to treat with indulgence’. Wouldn’t this kind of experience be the kind of thing that would drive you to a bank and keep you there long term?

Yes, we know that banks are designing comfortable, even luxurious environments where their customers can lounge over a fresh-brewed coffee. But while coffee and pastries are a cafe’s product, coffee and sofas are not a bank’s product. To coddle us, banks must treat us with indulgence, not just provide nice furniture.

It’s time that banks put aside their product innovations and selling tactics and get to know what the words ‘treat us with indulgence’ mean in their context. Here are just three suggestions:

Firstly, treat your customers like the intelligent people that they are. This means knowing your area of expertise backwards and only offering the highest quality, well-considered advice.

Secondly, be one hundred percent present in the presence of your customers. Pay attention to them and respond to what they are communicating instead of your own idea of what you want to say.

Thirdly, get your own attitude sorted out. Make sure that you have a strong purpose and are clear about what your personal values are, so that you come across as sincere, authentic and caring.

Treating bank customers with indulgence means taking them under your expert wing and looking after them. That’s all we really want. We can get the coffee round the corner.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Your sense of identity determines how you interpret the downturn, how you interact with clients and colleagues, what you crave after…and so on.

So how do you identify yourself?

By the things you have? A fancy car?

By the things you do? A cool job?

By the people you associate with? One of the in-crowd?

By comparing yourself with others? A winner?

By the thoughts you have? I think, therefore I am?

By now it may just be dawning on you how limited these measurements are in defining your identity, and how much stress you give yourself by searching for yourself through them.

Once we all realise that we are just the person we are in every moment, and that we continually change from moment to moment, then we will stop our craving for more and enjoy being simply present.

So the next time you are in front of a client, forget about your sales target or your great expertise and just be there in your client’s world with them in that moment. Look at them. Hear them. And start building a truly authentic relationship.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

You are probably aware of the story of the fraud committed by B. Ramalinga Raju, owner of Satyam Computer Services in India. He falsified accounts to make it appear that his company’s performance was actually much stronger than it really was. In this he was definitely a risk-taker, and this aspect of his personality may have been his downfall.

Yet the story of how he got his first business break, also through taking a risk, has some useful lessons for all of us. I quote Monday’s Herald Tribune:

“The founder of Satyam Computer Services, B. Ramalinga Raju, made a risky proposition to win his first big client, the tractor maker John Deere: If you don’t like our service, you don’t pay.

With that pitch, which is now the stuff of legend in India, he persuaded John Deere in 1991 to allow his computer programmers to work just across the street from the client’s U.S. headquarters, in a house Raju dubbed ‘Little India.’ Working only overnight shifts, with no physical contact with John Deere’s executives, the programmers got the job done – proving Raju’s theory that they could work just as well from India, and helping give birth to the country’s outsourcing industry.”

Imagine what it must have felt like setting up an office in a foreign country and working without any assurance that a result will come from it. The truth is, doing this without any guarantee most likely made the prospect of success even more assured.

This is the power of uncertainty. Let go of your tight grip on the future. Make a decision with no guarantee of the outcome and then take action and enter pure space. Accept. And pay attention to each moment, letting them flow through you. When you are comfortable with uncertainty, great courage and power will come to you.

So if you are a banker or another leader caught in the vicious cycle of thinking that goes “What specific results and I going to get if I take this action?” then my answer to you is, “I don’t know. But whatever it is, your chance of pulling yourself out of the situation you are in is better if you think carefully about your plan and then just take action with no guarantees, than if you sit tight on your hands and wait for the government, your clients, or your grandmother to do something to change your circumstances.”

My advice to you is “Don’t wait!” Take 100% responsibility for winning the game at this turbulent time, make a decision and enter the void. Now.”

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore