The concept of being One-Up in sales isn't just about knowing more than your client; it's about knowing the right things to guide the client through their decision-making process. To do this, you must create value for your client and position yourself as a trusted expert. This concept is crucial for effective sales conversations, especially when your clients are making high-stakes decisions and lack the experience to confidently choose the best option.
Why Being One-Up Matters
Salespeople interact with a wide range of clients and industries, which gives them far more information than their clients. Through repetition, you accumulate experiences and insights that allow you to recognize patterns in client behavior, challenges, and needs. This expertise helps you identify potential solutions quickly and provide guidance on complex decisions. When your clients face a decision about change, it’s a rarity for them, so they don’t have the same level of experience or context as you. They may know their business well, but they often lack the expertise to make informed purchasing decisions to support strategic change. In this dynamic, the salesperson's One-Up status is the edge that can lead to a more successful outcome for both parties.
The Dynamic of Being One-Up
The essence of being One-Up is using your greater experience and knowledge to help guide the client. Over time, as you engage in sales conversations, you start to anticipate client needs and questions. This is not just knowledge you learn through formal training, but through the countless interactions with clients over the years. These experiences give you the intuition and wisdom to recognize what clients need to know, the common challenges they face, and how to address their concerns.
But remember, this One-Up status doesn't mean that you should dominate the conversation or behave like an expert from the get-go. True expertise comes from a mix of educating and learning. While you possess valuable knowledge, the best way to convey it is through a discovery process that also allows you to learn from your client’s unique context, challenges, and aspirations.
The Role of Being One-Down in Discovery
When you're in the discovery phase of a sales conversation, you need to take a step back and allow the client to lead you through their world. This is where you are One-Down. While you may have the higher ground in terms of expertise, the client is One-Up when it comes to understanding their specific company, industry, and internal dynamics. You are at a disadvantage here because they have the knowledge about their business and the challenges they face, including the corporate politics that shape decision-making.
To manage this, you need to ask open-ended and high-gain questions that make your client pause and think about their situation in new ways. The questions you ask should help uncover the right insights to lead to a productive discussion. When you are One-Down, your goal is to gather the insights that will allow you to educate yourself and your client so you can provide value later in the conversation.
Educating the Client and Creating Value
You are truly One-Up when you are in a position to educate the client, offering valuable insights, solutions, and strategic advice. Your experience with other clients have given you a wealth of experience so you can identify patterns that your current client doesn't have access to. Through the course of the conversation, you can use your knowledge to help them identify blind spots, offer fresh perspectives, and guide them toward making the best decision for their business.
When you do this well, you create value for the client. The more value you provide, the more you position yourself as the trusted advisor who has the knowledge to help them succeed. This approach is crucial when a client is facing a complex decision or looking for a solution that will have a lasting impact on their business.
The Outcome of Making Your Client One-Up
The ultimate outcome of being One-Up is not just about leveraging your knowledge to close deals, but about making your client feel One-Up in their decision-making. When you provide the right information and support, you make them more confident and informed in their decision, which positions them as One-Up within their company.
In essence, the work of a One-Up salesperson involves both educating and learning. Through thoughtful discovery (where you are One-Down), you gather the information necessary to position yourself as the One-Up expert who guides the client through their decision-making process. The education you provide ultimately empowers the client, making them One-Up in their ability to make a well-informed decision.
This cycle of discovery and education helps create a collaborative relationship where you, the salesperson, not only guide the client but also learn from them and the context of their unique situation. This results in a partnership where both parties grow and succeed together.
