SunCast 392: Listen to Your Customer

This SunCast episode is a five-minute jewel from the full episode with Clean Energy Associates' VP of Sales & Marketing, Darryl Parker. In this episode, Darryl focuses on understanding the customer beyond your average sales training. How can you really listen to the customer and structure your offer based on their real concerns?

Listen to the full episode here.

Audio Transcript

Nico Johnson

Hey there, solar warriors, I'm Nico Johnson. And this is Suncast. Each week. I pull back the veil on the life and business insights of Cleantech entrepreneurs, building the noblest and most impactful companies of our time. I hope what you learn from this conversation is a catalyst for your own growth. So thanks for tuning in and welcome to our tribe.

Nico Johnson

Hey, yo, solar warrior. Welcome to another tactical Tuesday, a short form conversation with a subject matter expert designed to give you practical tools, tips, advice for building your solar business or career and grow with us here on Suncast. I'm so glad that you've decided to join us again and level up your game. And in case you missed it, episode 390 was with my friend and sales Myra Darryl Parker. So I wanted to bring you a snippet from that episode that helps illustrate exactly why I just had to have Darryl on the show. Today's lesson is a masterclass on tapping into the most powerful tactic for great customer relationships. And it's one-word empathy. You see, Darryl brings more than three decades of extensive high-tech, manufacturing, and power electronics experience to this conversation. So if you love this snippet, you are gonna enjoy the longer episode.

Nico Johnson

I hope you'll go bookmark that as well. And if you listen carefully, I promise you're gonna come away today with at least seven key insights into developing empathy for your customers' concerns. And as a bonus, you'll get, Darryl's take on the most important questions to know exactly how a sales decision will unfold. Now, remember, you can always find the resources and learn more about today's guests and recommendations over@mysuncast.com while you're there. I hope you will subscribe to our newsletter so we can remind you gently throughout the week when we have new episodes coming out and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you feel so led and engaged, you can hang out with our phenomenal guests on our live streams and enjoy the replays of our many live events. Like the one, we have coming up tomorrow. The great debate, for now, let's get ready to tune up your sales skills, solar warrior. Here we go with another powerful conversation on Suncast Darryl. I think this brings up another area of conversation. And I wanted to ask a question based on your deep understanding of working with customers around the globe. Can you teach me a bit about your understanding of the customer how, how to go beyond the sales training to that point that you're actually listening to the customer. I know that you've got a lot of experience working with multiple sales teams in, in different environments. What does your experience suggest about how, how we could listen better to the customer?

Darryl Parker

Well, I think the first thing is the, it gets you into it is do you have empathy for their concerns? And, and actually, do you ask that, do you ask a customer, what are your concerns? And then not only listen but write it down and ask questions, qualify it, make sure that you really know how this impacts them. And when tell you, ask them again, how does this impact your business? What will happen if we can address this concern, what will be your outcome? Will you be successful? How successful will you be and really dig into it so that you understand? And if there's a part that you don't understand, you're in a position at that point to ask and say, tell me more about your business so that I understand how this concern really affects you and start learning their business and learning all.

Darryl Parker

And it really becomes critical when you're dealing with a large entity and they might have multiple divisions that are doing different things but understand that can really open your eyes to where the customer wants to go. And then you can also structure your business to help them go to that place. They want to go. It really starts with that first step, having empathy for their concerns. And if you don't you're doing what we, we call a lot of times in the businesses you, you show up and you throw up, which is you'll get there. And all you're doing is talking about you, you, you and your, your, your, and you're not listening to them and you're not playing it back to them to, to actually qualify that you truly understand, and they will stop you and tell you, you don't get it. Here's what I'm trying to say. And in that case, show more empathy and say, thank you. I really want to understand this. And then it flows from there. And then you'll start talking to the real person, not the person who has the wall up in front of him saying I'm in front of a sales guy. You know, no, you'll talk to the real person.

Nico Johnson

Hey, you're a smart person. So I am going to ask you to enroll in helping us debate the topic of net energy metering to help in that discussion on August 11th, I'm gonna be moderating a conversation between two energy lawyers. One in fact act was a Texas EUC commissioner. If you'd like to know who they are and how you could register to listen to the two sides of this argument of the value of net energy metering to the future of solar in the United States go over to my suncast.com/debate. Don't miss it. August 11th, 2:00 PM. Eastern. You can sign up at my suncast.com/debate. Tell me about the kinds of questions you might ask to gauge. Not only if you've heard the customer properly, but if you understand who's involved in the decision making who could blow it up, who could help it, et cetera,

Darryl Parker

You could ask them pretty directly who is going to make the decision and how do they then fit into that whole decision-making process. In some cases, they will be the recommender, in other places. They'll be the person that is supplying all the data, all the detail and they don't have a recommendation type role. In some cases, they'll be the actual doer. So what you're supplying to them is actually going to impact their success directly. And what you really wanna understand is how can I make you successful and how can I make your boss successful? And, and back when I was a young guy, I was, I don't do this today. But back when I was a young guy, I would actually ask people, tell me how you're measured. Just tell me, how are you measured? What is success to you? And that's what I'm dedicated to. And, and then they know you're aligned. They, they know you're aligned. I, I wouldn't do that today, but back when I was just starting out because I needed that information to really make sure I was doing the right thing I would just ask and, and what you'll find a lot of times is people care about you ask?

Nico Johnson

Yeah, because at the end of the day, they're focused on their families and their careers and correct. You worked at IBM, so you understand what it means to say nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM, right. That idea of listening to the customer you, you refer to it as listening to your own listening in a previous conversation. And we had, what do you mean by that? Right.

Darryl Parker

Well, what I mean by that is when you're sitting in front of someone, don't think about what you want to say next. Think about absorbing what they're saying. We all have this little voice in the back of our head, and this little voice is saying I've already told them about the product. Now I need to tell them about the specs. And then I need to tell them about the price. How do I get to that? How do I get to that? What do I do too, so I can lead into that, no, stop, listen to what they're saying and let that guide the direction of the conversation? And you'll have plenty of time to talk about the speeds and feeds. We would call it your product. That's not, what's important. What's important is fixing their problem and staying focused on that. And don't listen to your own listening.

Nico Johnson

I think a lot of folks may wrongly assume that that applies just to like the complex sale we were talking about where you have multiple stakeholders, et cetera, but it's just as true for the door to door, residential sales knocker as it is for the executive vice president managing, you know, multi a hundred-million-dollar infrastructure. That's really helpful. Darryl, thank you for expounding a bit on this idea. How do you really listen to the customer? I hope that's really valuable, for someone out there.

Nico Johnson

Alright, well that was a quickie, but I know that you are now armed and ready to engage with any prospect or customer and truly better understand the nature of that relationship and where it's going, and how you can be instrumental in taking it there. If you like what you heard today, then I hope you'll subscribe to the show as that will ensure that you won't miss out on any of our twice-weekly content, just like this. And of course, you can check out the nearly 400 additional founder stories in startup advice, archive@mysuncast.com. Hey, if you have any advice on who or what else should be featured on Suncast, well, you can just text me at 3 1 0 6 3 4 1 7 8. Oh. And let me know. I promise I will get back to you as quickly as I can. Finally, if you are on Spotify or iTunes and you, I have enjoyed this episode, I would truly appreciate your honest rating and review, which helps others. Just like you find Suncast a special thank you to our sponsors who help make this podcast possible and free to you. Learn more about them at my suncast.com/sponsor. You could follow the links there for any of the offers or demos and cool benefits from our partners. And that's also where you can find how you can engage with thousands of listeners here on the Suncast platform. Remember, you are what you listen to. Thanks again for showing up solar warrior. It's half the battle. See you Thursday.