Chapter 6

Old Disciplines, New Behaviors

By changing the approach from slides to whiteboarding, my customers get the vision. The reaction is typically, “I get what you are trying to do.” The content used to be in a bunch of slides. The whiteboard just lets me frame it in a different way, as a cohesive story. The customer is engaged, they aren't messing around with their devices. And they always say, “Let me take a picture of the whiteboard.” I've never had a customer say, “I want to take a picture of that slide.”

—Technology Specialist, large software company

With “power of the pen” as a rallying cry, let's look at a new way of selling, using visuals to do five things.

Perhaps you're thinking, “This is nothing new—I've been through this a dozen times in various sales trainings and methodologies; listen, diagnose, ask questions, consult, adapt—I've heard it all before.”

And you'd be right—to a degree. These five sales disciplines—on their own—are in no way groundbreaking. But throw in some pens and a drawing surface and they take on new meaning and provide new opportunities. In other words, the whiteboarding discipline doesn't replace or conflict with a given sales methodology—it puts it on steroids.

Let's take a closer look at how these five disciplines play out in the world of selling with visuals.

Earn the Right and You'll Earn the Business

When we start out working with our customers, one of the first things we ask to see are their existing PowerPoint sales presentations. Next, we interview some of their salespeople to understand how they use them. Typically, salespeople aren't doing extensive customizations from presentation to presentation. They change the date on the opening slide, change names, and sometimes they insert, remove, or reposition slides, depending on the specific product interests of the customer. Why aren't they making more customizations? Are these salespeople inherently lazy? Some might be, but it's not just inherent laziness that prevents more customization.

Know Your Ingredients Before You Cook

PowerPoint is so good at making us much lazier than we already are. PowerPoint is to presenting what microwave ovens are to cooking. Why bother messing up your kitchen or learning to cook when you can just press “Start”? Do I have what it takes to be a good cook? Yes, probably. But why should I bother? If I'm a salesperson, I have a million other things on my plate—forecast calls, sales force tools to update, existing customer issues, and on and on. It's just too easy to pull out the microwaveable meal.

Salespeople who whiteboard or otherwise draw with visuals don't have this luxury. They need to know the ingredients—their prospect's business and major industry trends—before they start cooking. This requires doing some extra homework, but the benefits far outweigh the extra effort. If you begin a whiteboard discussion by establishing and writing up on the board what you already know (or think you know) about your prospect's current situation, business objectives, initiatives, and relevant market trends, the credibility boost will be enormous. You'll immediately earn the right to continue the dialogue to create a shared vision.

In later chapters, you'll learn possible whiteboard discussion structures and story flows, and how they should be developed. But the best whiteboarders take their company's standard whiteboard storyboards and create customer-specific templates before each and every sales call. They prep the opening steps of the whiteboard with their prospect's current situation by sketching it out on a piece of paper or on an erasable laminate. Then they practice this opening three or four times before they leave for the meeting. It's one thing to show your customers you know the most important elements of their business and existing situation. It's another thing entirely if you can write all of this up on the whiteboard from memory.

Bringing it home:

• Use the whiteboard to confirm what you know about the prospect's current situation and business objectives
• Visually demonstrate your knowledge of industry trends to enhance credibility
• Build a practice sheet with customized opening steps of each whiteboard

Prove You're Listening. “Shhhhh—These Whiteboards Have Ears!”

There's not a sales methodology ever invented that doesn't scream from the mountain tops, “Show your customers you know how to listen to them so you can understand what keeps them up at night, diagnose pain, and further qualify the opportunity.” Or something like that.

Because you've used the whiteboard to share what you already know and confirm whether you're right, you are in a great position to ask more questions, do the listening and qualification, and capture your discovery as the discussion progresses.

Using a whiteboard to drive interactivity is exponentially more effective than sitting across from your customer and taking page after page of notes as you ask questions. How does the customer know exactly what you are writing down? This disconnects you from your customer. The whiteboard as a listening tool requires you to be selective in what you capture, focusing on the most salient points. You no longer need to stress about having to write down every single word your customer says.

You'll also demonstrate a new physical dimension of customer intimacy by standing up at the whiteboard and capturing input for everyone in a well-lit room to see. The act of standing and drawing has a subtle yet powerful psychological impact. If the customer sees you writing what you are hearing, it signals that you are acknowledging their input and concerns. Not to mention that your entire body is in motion. Your arm is moving. The prospect can't really “check out” the same way they can if you are sitting across a conference table taking copious notes, or worse, presenting slides.

Bringing it home:

• Use the whiteboard to diagnose and drive interactivity
• Be selective when capturing customer input on the whiteboard
• Use physicality and gesturing to show you're listening

Be the Subject Matter Expert! You'll Never Write Something on the Whiteboard That's Not in Your Head

His knowledge on that topic is only PowerPoint deep.

—Anonymous US Army Major

Before you even think about getting in front of a customer or prospect to begin whiteboarding, you have to be comfortable with the skill of confirming and diagnosing with a pen, and you also must have complete “knowledge ownership” of the solution or service you are positioning. Without slides behind you as a crutch, you now have no excuse for not knowing your products and solutions inside and out. There will never be a case where some magical force takes control of your pen and you draw something on the whiteboard that's not in your head.

Better knowledge ownership shows the customer you are not only an expert in the field, but more of a trusted partner than just someone trying to hawk wares. When you become a trusted partner, you shorten the sales cycle and prevent lengthy product comparisons and “bake-offs.”

Yesterday [name] closed a deal at a new logo at [an international tire company]. The sales cycle started in early December with a Request for Proposal and subsequent shortlist. We then had one main presentation where [name] used a whiteboard based on the sales kick-off enablement, and using their annual report as initiatives and local customer stories. At the end the CIO took a picture of the diagram and from that checked out a reference—they had originally planned a proof of concept which was avoided and the deal closed against [competitor] within two weeks. Not saying all will be as easy but it's a nice story. Well done!!

—[name] Area VP

Knowledge ownership shortens the sales cycle and acts as a deadly differentiator against the competition. It also helps you rely less on technical or presales resources during the early stages of the sales process. Presales teams want to be leveraged in the right way and participate in qualified sales opportunities. If you can conduct initial sales calls without slides—using whiteboarding instead—then you can be more flexible when it comes to scheduling meetings. And that can compress sales cycles.

In the earlier story from the field, here's what happened after using the whiteboard in a structured fashion:

• The salesperson heavily researched the prospect's business using publicly available information
• Local case studies and references were integrated into the story
• The whiteboard lived on because the CIO took a picture of it
• The salesperson successfully differentiated himself from the competition
• The sales cycle was shortened considerably

Later in the book we will detail exactly how this salesperson was able to have such a dramatic impact on sales results using the whiteboarding best practices and approaches we advocate.

Bringing it home:

• Build trust with whiteboarding and you'll avoid bake-offs and proofs of concepts
• Reduce dependency on precious presales and SME resources through self-sufficiency in initial sales calls
• Shorten the sales cycle

Be Flexible—Go with the Flow

I'm terrible at story and structure, but I'm not so bad at writing dialogue.

—Steve Buscemi

The term “situational fluency” in the context of sales means a lot of things to a lot of people. From a strategic, solution-selling level, it could mean that salespeople should know what makes their customers tick and exactly why they need the salesperson's solutions. What exactly is it about the customer's current situation that makes the solution a perfect fit now, instead of in six months or a year? In this context, situational fluency also means being able to set the agenda for the next steps in the sales process.

Situational fluency means something different when you are making a presentation to your customer at a specific time and place—in the moment. You need to think on your feet and take the temperature of your prospect, changing direction based on what you are hearing and who you are hearing it from, and do so instantly. It means going a level up, down, across, or knowing when to stop the conversation altogether by setting up next steps.

If we define situational fluency as the ability to make in the moment adaptations depending on where your customer takes the discussion, then slides will fail. You cannot accomplish situational fluency with slides, even if you have an hour's worth of advance notice. This is where the “I'll get to that in five slides” syndrome kicks in. The whiteboard, on the other hand, is a match made in heaven when it comes to situational fluency because you can jump to the right part of the story, omitting elements that do not apply, or adding ones that do. When you are using “in the moment” situational fluency, you can bring in relevant customer stories, proof points, and references depending on the trajectory of the conversation.

The physical nature of the whiteboard also comes into play here and increases situational fluency. Not only can your prospects pick up on your body language, but you can also pick up on theirs. With the lights turned up instead of dimmed for slides, you can get good eye contact with them and gauge body language and level of engagement as you progress through the story. You can then pivot and navigate to a different topic based on your prospect's reactions.

Bringing it home:

• Be situationally fluent at both a strategic and in-the-moment level
• Get an instant read on your prospect's body language as you write on the whiteboard
• Be prepared to pivot and maneuver within the whiteboard structure and flow

Close for Next Steps. Only Then Put the Cap on the Pen

Successful salespeople don't leave a meeting until they have secured next steps. These can include additional meetings with other stakeholders, in-depth product evaluations, assessments, and demonstrations. Because whiteboarding helps you gain trusted advisor status, you might be able to avoid some of these steps altogether. Depending on the specific sales situation, though, you may have next steps, and the whiteboard is a particularly effective way to establish and agree on what those next steps are.

Instead of just writing down the next steps on a notepad or organizer, you can capture them on the whiteboard for everyone to see. By “memorializing” these next steps on the whiteboard and getting physical acknowledgment from your prospect through a head nod as you write, you have essentially made a pact with them that they will feel obligated to make good on.

Every sales methodology has its own style or prescription of how to ask for next steps. One that we have observed to be effective is:

“If what you see on the whiteboard resonates, I'd like to propose some next steps and capture them on the whiteboard. Would that be okay?”

In the following chapters we'll demonstrate how multiple whiteboard discussion frameworks and stories can support situational fluency, establish trusted advisor status, and shorten the sales cycle.