What makes a good sales conversatiion?

I've been thinking about what makes a sales conversation 'good'

Because I've sat in plenty of technical conversations that were excellent

Interesting discussion

Lots of expertise

Customer engaged

Questions flying around

Everyone seemingly happy

And yet... nothing much happened afterwards

Perhaps that's because a good technical conversation and a good commercial conversation aren't necessarily the same thing

You can understand the technical issue perfectly without really understanding why it matters

That little niggle with the machine might be connected to something much bigger

Capacity. Cost. Risk. Operational change. Customer expectations. Growth

Or maybe nothing particularly important

We don't know

Which is why I've become increasingly interested in Commercial Curiosity

Not simply being curious about the technical problem

Being curious about the broader context and what is going on in the customer's world

The VALUE Framework gives a useful way to structure that thinking.

🔸 Validate = right opportunities

Is this technical issue connected to something important enough to act on?

🔸 Align = right research

What do we already understand about their business, pressures and priorities?

🔸 Leverage = right conversations

What else should we explore beyond the immediate technical requirement?

🔸 Underpin = right solutions

How does what we do connect to the wider problem we've uncovered?

🔸 Evolve = right outcomes

What actually needs to change for the customer to consider this successful?

The interesting bit is that customers can happily keep conversations technical too so sometimes we need to be the ones who zoom out

Not with some clever sales questions

Just genuine curiosity

Asking "What else is going on here?"

That's often where the more interesting conversation starts

A commercially stronger conversation