We see it repeatedly in companies throughout the world. A sales representative identifies a large prospective customer and initiates pursuit. They fly to meetings and represent the company with carefully crafted product information. They qualify the customer’s needs, ascertain the budget, and begin navigating the customer’s decision-making hierarchy. They establish relationships with product users, purchasing influencers, executive sponsors, and others. They filter members of the organization to eliminate points of friction or dissent. Eventually, they assemble a compelling proposal or recommendation and makes a pitch.
At some point in this process, if the customer is serious about buying, a stream of questions begins to flow in the sales representative’s direction. The prospective customer asks about product capability, customizations, compatibility, scale, service levels, security, safety, and so on—more questions than the sales representative can answer alone. So, to strengthen the proposal and their company’s chances at securing a deal, the sales representative obtains support from their organization. A subject matter expert is assigned to help. Sometimes, if the deal is large enough, an entire team of SMEs is assembled. Complex products are almost always sold with SMEs participating in the deal.
When an SME participates in the selling process, things quickly get complicated. The sales representative, who has forged relationships for weeks, months, or even years, is now involving other people who will either help push the opportunity across the finish line or obliterate all chances of doing so. The SME could end up being either a blessing or a curse. And, as important as the SME may be to the deal, few SMEs are adequately trained in the sales craft.
Most SMEs, for example, believe that they are involved in the selling process to answer the prospective customer’s questions. Given the scenario I just described, why else would they be involved? As I mentioned, there are questions the sales representative cannot answer adequately and that is why the SME is engaged. That’s the typical process. But there is a big difference between when an SME becomes involved and why an SME becomes involved. The SME becomes involved when questions from the customer warrant it, but the SME is involved because they are needed to establish or maintain trust. The questions are the when; building trust (not just answering questions) is the why.
Questions reveal the customer’s sources of distrust in you, the sales representative, other members of your team, your product, or your organization. Therefore, great SMEs use those questions to target trust. Of course, the customer’s questions must be answered, but that is the easy part. You can answer questions perfectly yet fail to build trust. The difficult task, and the most important one, is the process of building a trusting relationship. That is why the SME is involved. Yes, SMEs should answer questions, but their purpose, first and foremost, should be to build trust, because it is foundational.
In this section we examine some of the key principles of establishing and maintaining trust with the goal to increase SME confidence with clients, decrease misunderstandings, and eliminate common gaffs. Let’s get going.
