Editor’s Note: The Sapient Salesman began as a series of internally-focused sales coaching pieces written by SugarCRM team member Erin Fetsko. While initially focused on “selling Sugar,” Erin’s advice and wisdom have proven useful to Sugar partners, and well, anyone in the business of sales. Thus, we are happy to add her insight to the Sugar corporate blog. You can read all of Erin’s musings at The Sapient Salesman.

I arrived in Mexico to do a training last week and checked into the hotel just before sundown. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem, but it appeared that all but two of the light bulbs in my room were burnt out, and neither of the functioning fixtures resided in the bathroom. Having severely underestimated the English fluency of Mexico City, instead of trying to invent a gesticulation for light bulb, I attempted to resolve this myself. Luckily for me no one nailed down the desk lamp, and, much to my delight, the outlet in the bathroom produced power. I deemed this solution “good enough” for three days and went to dinner. Following some sarcastic remark on my part, the new guy, of all people, admitted he thought his lights were broken too, but he called the front desk who clued him into this secret magic slot in which you place your key to release the power to the lights. This particularly amused me because I sized up this mysterious 80s car pullout ashtray looking slot thing for a solid two minutes, and dismissed it after I determined it wasn’t going to budge and was most certainly not a button!

This “damn I’m a stubborn idiot” moment made me wonder how many customer have a similar experience when trialing software. You see, my lamp relocation initiative did illuminate the important spaces in my room, and while a little unconventional, it got the job done. But if I wasn’t one of those people that snarkily remarks about random things all the time, I would have left this trip with an unjustified negative opinion on my accommodations. Considering the different approaches in play: asking for help vs. figuring it out yourself, where both parties would answer “yes” when asked if they can see in their room, how do you decipher the truly successful from the apathetic achievers?

In my experience people will deliver the polite response the first two times you inquire. Unveiling the truth requires you look past this empathy driven auto-reply and dig into the three levels of “really?”. No one wants to burden you with their baggage, but if you poke hard enough that phrase at the tip of their tongue will slip out. It might go something like:

How’s your room? “Fine”

So, everything okay? “Yup”

What do you think of the hotel? “Well I think they should seriously consider investing in light bulbs!!”

… and voila, an adaptation of the three levels of “why?” proves useful once again.

So this week, try to identify flailing customers before they drown. Use pointed questions to help better understand how they use the application today; not only will you then improve your appreciation for their needs and how Sugar may address them, but you’ll poise yourself to politely snatch away the shovel before they dig themselves an inescapable ditch.

Editor’s Note: The Sapient Salesman began as a series of internally-focused sales coaching pieces written by SugarCRM team member Erin Fetsko. While initially focused on “selling Sugar,” Erin’s advice and wisdom have proven useful to Sugar partners, and well, anyone in the business of sales. Thus, we are happy to add her insight to the Sugar corporate blog. You can read all of Erin’s musings at The Sapient Salesman.

It wasn’t until college that I realized I, in fact, had an accent. Turns out, like most Chicagoans, I tend to pronounce my A’s as in the word “at” even when the preferred pronunciation called for a softer a-sound. Listening to all the different dialects of the English language really made me realize how much I took some Midwestern-isms for granted. How confusing it must have been for all the international folks trying to discern why I kept dangling prepositions when I’d ask if they “want to come with?” During my recent trip to Jamaica, however, I got a taste of what it’s like on the receiving end of grammatically questionable verbiage. Patois is an English-lexified creole language with West African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica. If you aren’t familiar, patios sounds like what would happen if the micro-machine man read your kids text messages word for word… with a Jamaican accent; it’s certainly English, yet remarkably difficult to understand.

All this variety in English vernacular left me pondering: Is there more value in a language pack than we might give credit? And for that matter, how often do companies with international markets run into roadblocks with their software because it can’t support the necessary character sets?

Most of us sell primarily in one or two languages, to companies with offices using a single linguistic footprint, but how often do those same offices employ some foreign staffers? Would allowing employees to navigate Sugar in their native language save them money on training and increase the overall productivity of their staff? I’d say so!

Now I’m not suggesting you further complicate your discovery process with a deep inquiry into the heritage of each of the prospective users, but with 6.1 entering the spotlight it might be time to give language packs another look. So this week if you have cause to believe Sugar’s teed up for use in a bilingual office point out the value added by our internationalization efforts.

We’ve all received an email or document from someone that contained characters, or encoding, or some other bizarre excuse Windows assigned to why we couldn’t open it properly, and these kinds of road blocks throw a wrench in your productivity. Even if your prospects don’t see the need today, they can certainly relate to the time-suck that accompanies restrictive regional software. Remind them that should their business one day expand internationally or even inter-culturally, Sugar will accommodate their CRM needs and grow with them every step of the way.