For over a decade, too much of the focus in selling has been on the mechanics of the buyer-seller interaction. All efforts have been focused on the mechanics of the tasks sellers do, and to a much lesser degree, the mechanics of tasks buyers do. Tools and technology, focused on efficiency has enabled sellers to execute far more tasks than in the past. Sellers now send thousands of emails, make 100s of dials, efficiently scroll through social feeds with likes and the occasional “DM me.”
And something has been lost in those efforts—-but you already know that, so I won’t repeat the data.
We are ecstatic with AI/LLMs managing everything we do. They manage our inboxes, looking at past history for an email thread, drafting and sending a response, creating a follow up at the appropriate time. Our meetings are summarized, to-dos and follow ups put on our calendars, CRMs updated. Our days are on autopilot.
The sellers of these miracle tools cite minutes and hours saved with these mechanical tasks. As an aside, I still wonder, “What are people doing with those minutes and hours saved?”
But selling, work, engaging customers, colleagues, and partners is about more than the mechanics of the interaction. It’s about the underlying meaning–what happens in the interaction, how it happens, how people feel about it. It’s often an odd “connecting the dots” between disparate parts of an exchange, interactions we’ve had with others, the past history.
Let me walk through a couple of examples.
Yesterday, I had a fascinating call with someone. He had reached out and scheduled a meeting with me. We talked about issues sales professionals face, what they mean and how we deal with them. At the end of the meeting, we agreed to some next steps and a meeting date.
Literally, within seconds, a couple of items pop up in my inbox. An AI summary of the meeting and next steps, a calendar request for the next meeting.
I looked at the summary. I learned the conversation was 38 minutes, 45 questions were asked, 5 action items were detected, 21 dates and times were discussed. I was confused by the analysis, the meeting summary showed only two action items, and I wondered “How do we talk about 21 dates in 38 minutes? There was a summary, the next steps we had discussed were highlighted. Had I wanted, I could have signed up to this tool and gotten a deeper analysis………. I could have spent more time reviewing what we discussed….. Hmmm.
I looked at my notes for the meeting. There were only three or four sentences outlining key themes. I captured the things that were most important as we were speaking. Then there was an observation, “This individual really doesn’t understand these issues and what they mean. In our next conversation, I have to drill down and help him understand.” I captured that thought in my next step to-do for the meeting.
What the tool had missed were the things that weren’t said, but were clearly issues underlying the conversation. The tool was paying attention to what was said, but not the pauses, the facial expressions, the spaces and pauses between the words. And it is in those things, and my connecting the dots with similar conversations I have had with others where the real meaning of the meeting is revealed.
I had a second call, with a team of people. We’ve been working on a project for several months. We were doing a progress review, discussing challenges they faced, explored new ideas, next steps. While the call was being recorded and we had the transcript, we manually created the follow ups and next steps. It was a good meeting.
But something else happened in the call. I made notes, created to-dos and follow-ups with people not involved in the call. I needed to reach out to them, ask them to do somethings, get them involved with the team. Some of the conversation also provoked ideas that I could talk about with other clients. I captured those in to-dos, thinking, “Kevin, I was having this conversation with another client, an interesting idea came up. I think it’s something you are also dealing with….”
What we miss in these meetings, exchanges, interactions is why we are having them in the first place. It’s not about the mechanics of what we intend to do, what happened, it’s about the underlying meaning in those interactions.
We have become highly efficient in documenting activities, but have we gotten better at understanding them?
Have we gotten better at connecting the dots, between disparate conversations, experiences and applying them to the situation at hand?
When we lose these, are we really saving time? Are we really becoming more effective? Are we achieving what we want to achieve?
I continue to write my to-dos and follow ups using my keypad/keyboard. The thinking/reflecting time, during those few minutes I spend with the mechanical task, is critical. I continue to manually take notes in meetings. I don’t need a complete transcript. Often my notes have nothing to do with the words said, but have to do with thinking those words provoked. I continue to write followup emails manually. I type pretty quickly, but what I want to capture in the emails is something deeper than a response to the words expressed.
Which gets me to the concluding thought. All these things we do have little to do with the mechanics, the ping pong responses. They are about meaning. It is the meaning underlying these activities that drives what we do. And when we lose that meaning, why do we even need to do those activities?
Afterword: This is a really excellent AI generated discussion this post. I really like how they expand the concepts I talked about in the article. Enjoy!
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