Whiteboard Logic
It’s fascinating helping more and more companies develop customer-facing whiteboards. This is pre-defined, visual sales storytelling that engages the customer and drives good sales discovery conversation.
The best teams do it; the best reps do it very well. When done right it’s the ultimate application tool for driving “Consultative/Solution/Challenger/Provocative/ Insight” Selling best practices across a sales organization.
Done Right
A well-designed Whiteboard for a top-performing salesperson is like putting a Ferrari or a hot Tesla in the hands an experienced driver. They quickly and literally get up to speed and maximize the output of their high-performance machine. An average salesperson/driver may be tentative at first, driving cautiously and certainly not to its full potential. In fact, it might even be dangerous. In the sales context it may truly highlight the rep’s limitations and inflexibility. But it is a teachable, behavioral skill.
A Beautiful Thing
After a strong and provocative point of view or statement of insight followed by an alignment of objectives from known information or previous discussions, a great Whiteboard conversation covers 3 key areas:
1. Current State – a description of things as they are, the reasons why they are as they are why they might stay where they are.
2. Problems with Current State – the costs, the loss, the challenges and misses associated with staying in the status quo.
3. Future State – a vision of a better way, the fix delivered by your product/service/solution as it addresses a broken world.
The magic is not in the drawing, it’s in the logic flow. The flow is rich with opportunities to engage the customer with questions and drilldowns. Great salespeople own the logic and so are deft in any sales call situation.
A Whiteboard Without the Whiteboard
Top sales producers do this all the time. They speak in painted pictures and have the pre-set logic flow nailed down. They can go in and out, high and low, short and long in any sales conversation along the sales cycle. They’re like a veteran musician who can play their instrument beautifully anywhere you put them. First master the mechanics, then flexibly apply the skills to optimized results.
Can you Whiteboard without a Whiteboard?
