Being genuinely curious, about prospects and customers allows us to see things from their perspective and understand the challenges they face. According to Isobel Rimmer, curiosity is at the heart of understanding, of being empathetic of caring about others
Curiosity is the desire to learn, to understand new things, to know how things work or why people do or say the things they do. Curiosity widens the mind and opens it to different opinions, ideas and lifestyles. As New York Times best-selling author Sir Ken Robinson says, ‘Curiosity is the engine of achievement.’
If that’s the case – then logically it must be in our interest to be more curious. But observe most conversations: Person A talks, Person B listens. Or do they? Follow a conversation and what you’ll hear is Person B listens – just long enough to unload. We see it played out every day.
‘Goodness I’ve been busy today!’
‘Busy? You should hear what I’ve had to get done…’
A typical ‘busy off’ lockdown conversation then follows – neither party listening or really curious about the other.
Understand customers better
To succeed in this post-Covid economy business leaders, more than ever, need to equip their people to understand their customers better, understand why a prospect or customer is doing what they’re doing – or indeed choosing not to do something we think they should. There is always a reason – we just have to be curious enough to find out why – and then, the better able we are to serve our customers and grow revenue.
I’m often asked to help sellers ‘close’ more business. Sales directors frustrated by their sales teams failing to ‘ask for the order’. What I find is not that they can’t close but they don’t know enough about their customer or prospect to be able to close. They’ve not been curious enough earlier in the sales process.
There is a natural sequence to business development and building relationships – whether or not we have ‘sales’ in our job title. We connect with people, we go through a phase of discovery, we share experiences and talk about what we do, and we then collaborate (or not) on future joint activity. The same is true in personal relationships – we meet, we connect, we discover common ground, shared values and beliefs, we talk about our experiences and views and we meet up again if the chemistry is right. And the more curious we are in the discovery phase, the more we learn and the better judgement we can make.
There is a difference between asking questions to try and sell something and being genuinely curious about your customers. Often sales training has focussed on the former, leading customers to feel tricked into buying. Post-Covid, that ability to connect ‘human to human’ is more highly valued – we are pack animals, we crave personal connections, emotional security. We may talk about our B2B strategies or B2C campaigns, but ultimately, it’s H2H – human to human.
Activate your radar
One of the simplest tools to help shift to a mindset of curiosity and to see things from the perspective of a customer is to use the concept of a radar.
Think about what’s on your personal radar today. What’s bleeping loudly, what’s not even registering? At any point in time you may be more or less worried, bothered or influenced by financial issues, family concerns, health, exams, relationships, children, elderly parents, schools, moving house, job deadlines, promotions, holidays, and so on, and the same is true of your customers.
Trying to have a conversation about something that isn’t even a blip on their radar, or is drowned out by everything else, isn’t going to work.
Think about a meeting that was important for you but got cancelled by the other person. If you are curious enough to reflect why, almost certainly something else came up, in that moment, as a higher priority for them. The hairdresser cancelled my appointment because her child was sick. My boss postponed my performance review when he was called to a board meeting. A customer cancelled our meeting to attend a budget discussion.
Look at what’s bleeping from two perspectives: tangible, measurable things (that we can usually talk about) and intangible, harder to measure things (that we don’t usually talk about).
Measuring customer KPIs
First, we need to be curious in order to understand what our prospects and customers are measured on. Their metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs). How do they demonstrate achievement and success in their role? How does their boss measure them?
You can probably apply some kind of measure or target to them: grow revenue, increase market share, reduce costs, deliver sales targets, manage cashflow, deliver projects on time, win pitches or save lives. What gets measured gets done, so anything tangible and measurable – any result that a customer is measured on – becomes a ‘blip’ on their radar. If it’s a high priority (big blip) it will be the focus of their attention, right now. It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s a big blip, it’s what they think. If you can help deal with it, you’ll be welcome.
I once had a meeting with a senior executive. She was an incredibly elegant Frenchwoman, always immaculately turned out and extremely polite. On that day she seemed concerned, distracted, worried about something – it was out of character. I sensed our time together wasn’t going to be productive. We’d worked together but only on one project – we were professional acquaintances, not friends. Something was amiss. I was, genuinely, curious and concerned what it was.
I asked her: ‘Are you OK? You seem to be distracted about something.’
I never expected this response: ‘Oh dear, yes… well… what do you do when you hear that the MD has been seen [doing something inappropriate] in his office?’
Clearly, she had other priorities to attend to – something else on her radar.
And we need to be curious enough to understand these, even if we can’t talk about them as openly. These are based on emotions, feelings, personal issues. I call them ‘personal wins’. A customer might be worried about their status within the organisation, whether they have the influence they want. They may feel insecure and want you to recognise the value and worth they bring.
They might worry about not knowing much about something that you’re an expert in. Perhaps they’re just looking for an easy life – but they won’t tell you that. Indeed, they won’t talk about their ‘wins’ as openly as they might share their ‘results’ (‘By the way, Isobel, I’d like you to know that I have a huge ego so please tell me how good I am at my job while we’re in this meeting’) but they’re important.
The results of curiosity
The more curious we are about our customers, both the results they look to achieve and their personal wins, the better we can deliver value that has relevance. When all things are equal people buy for emotional, not logical reasons. They’ll choose to partner with those who took the time, and were curious enough, to understood them personally.
I learned that lesson early in my career. A multi-million deal where the final choice of software (both short listed vendors’ products could do the job) was down to the CIO. I was curious, I asked him what tipped the decision in favour of one vendor. He told me ‘I couldn’t bear those other people being on site for the next six months – they were so arrogant. I told the Board there were technical issues but, frankly, it was all about the people.’
Being curious, genuinely curious, about prospects and customers allows us to see things from their perspective and understand the challenges they face. Being curious is at the heart of understanding, of being empathetic of caring about others. We may have the greatest products and services but people buy for their reasons, not ours.
Our goal must be to be curious to understand what those reasons are.
Isobel Rimmer is founder of training and development consultancy Masterclass Training and author of new book Natural Business Development: Unleash your people’s potential to spot opportunities, develop new business and grow revenue
