It’s not as though a fourteen year old doesn’t have enough pressure in her life between trying to fit in with peers, other parents expectation of their kids, and all the emotional upheavals that comes with high school. My own childhood must have been so terrible, I have no recollection of what it – or at the very least high school examinations – were like.

So you’d have found me this weekend sitting with my daughter, trying to help her prepare for the first exam – Social Studies. This includes history, geography, civics, economics and disaster management (the last three somehow seem to be related). We got the idea of doing a mock test or two, so that she feels comfortable with the whole exercise.

Editing out all episodes of parental gnashing of teeth or screaming, occasional storming away from the study table by the child in question, we finally devised a three step process for her to do well in her exams. As we reviewed it one last time, I realized these exact same 3 steps would likely help all of us as marketers and sales folks do better with our prospects and customers. So here they are!

LISTEN CAREFULLY
(in my daughter’s case it was Read the Question Carefully) Many of us – my daughter and myself included – have a tendency to jump to answer a question we’ve just read or heard. But all too often we hear what we want to, rather than what the customer or prospect is actually asking.  So when a customer says “What about support?” it’s better that we stop and pause, to actually understand his question before answering the question. This way you are less likely to develop a taste for leather – which otherwise might be necessary if we frequently keeping putting our foot in our mouths!

OUTLINE
When my daughter needs to figure out how short or long an answer she should give to a question, she’s learnt now to check for how many marks the question carries. In real life such clear indicators don’t always appear. So rather than stumble, repeat yourself or worse yet ramble endlessly, in response to a customer question, it is always useful to outline in your mind or even on a piece of paper – the two or four points that you want to touch upon in your answer.

When you observe experienced sales hands, you will notice them use phrases such as “That’s an excellent question” or “I am really glad you brought that up.” These aren’t meant merely to make the customer feel good (thought that never hurts) but a harmless stalling tactic, to get their outlines done (largely in their heads). Such outlining and the pause that precedes it allows them to present a coherent and to-the-point response to the customers question.

USE PLAIN ENGLISH
Even when you know the answer to a question and have it neatly outlined in your head, as my daughter found out, you can be misunderstood. Unlike my daughter, who’s still trying to master grammar, we don’t have any excuse for not making perfect sense. Yet all too often we flub this – because we tend to couch our answers in jargon rather than in plain English.

So rather than say “Our widget’s or sonar-powered hyper-performance will result in a 4X ROI” if you can phrase it as “For less than $2 a day, the machine will pay for itself in 3 months” or something equally simple in plain English you are more likely to be understood and therefore successful.

So lets practice listening, outlining and using plain English – while my daughter and I go get ready for the science exam that’s coming up next.

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