Is your sales messaging more like a “selfie”?

I’m often asked to comment on a corporate presentation or customer specific presentation, and the most common mistake I find is the “selfie”. They start out with a description of their company, a list of impressive logos, perhaps an industry analyst quote. That’s the selfie. It’s all about them, not the customer.

Unfortunately, its not in the proper sequence. Your prospect doesn’t care about this information until they conclude you have something that might help them. Using a selfie too soon lowers your chances of making this connection.

As a more effective alternative, start by describing the market trends in your customer’s business, and more importantly, the problems or challenges you help other customers solve as a result of these trends. Some or most of these problems should be selected to resonate with your intended audience. When your prospect identifies one or more problems from your list, now you have their attention. Then they will want to hear how you have solved these problems, where (logos), and who else can attest to it (analyst). Put your selfie in the proper place, at the end of your presentation.

Is Solution Selling Dead? Or Simply Resurrected?

Recently, the Corporate Executive Board published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled “The End of Solution Sales”. It received a lot of attention. At the date of this article, it is still trending at the most viewed article for the last 30 days. The core concepts are based on research they conducted and provocative selling tactics encouraged by Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm) which they have assembled into a model they call “The Challenger”. In essence, their message is that current sales professionals need to challenge the prospect with insight to sell more effectively. They propose that issues created by the current market conditions – including easy access to information on the internet – are making solution selling models obsolete. The foundation for their claim is that 60% of purchases have already scoped out requirements, ranked options, and compared pricing prior to ever engaging the sales representatives of the respective contenders.

For a look at the original article: ” The End of Solution Sales ”

So is their claim valid or not? I believe it’s a case of yes and no.

First, let’s qualify the foundation. While the claim that 60% of purchases are decided prior to a rep’s involvement could easily apply to certain sectors where solutions are well established and perhaps even commoditized, as their example of ADP illustrates, there are plenty of sales teams that are responsible for creating need to build a majority of their pipeline because the market in general is not be aware of their solution. While you might think of start-ups as an example, we see many $100M organizations still in the missionary selling stage and have yet to cross the chasm to mainstream buyers. Sellers in these situations for the most part are getting to prospects before they recognize a need for a solution because they have to.

But let’s assume that a majority of reps are selling products or services that are routinely evaluated by a prospective customer prior to engaging the rep in a dialog. The next claim made by the authors indicates that successful reps look for companies to target that are agile, meaning they aren’t constrained by bureaucracy or culture, and have emerging changes brought on by outside pressure or organization flux. Think disappointing results, regulatory changes and new leadership.

Here we have another dichotomy. We have many clients that engage our firm to improve their sales results. Many are organized in similar fashion, the major account or named account managers who may have 10-20 accounts, the corporate sales reps who may have 50-100 target accounts, and the development reps who are calling on a prescribed list that could include thousands of names purchased from a database vendor. Clearly, the named account rep may not have the luxury to pick and choose from a short list to focus only on the agile companies, especially if they are in a commoditized market. (And I won’t even dwell on the reps assigned to public sector selling where “agile” is not in the vocabulary of their local, state or federal customers.) While the corporate rep may have more flexibility here in numbers, they can be tied to a segment or geography where agile doesn’t exist. The sales development rep is usually goaled by the number of calls made, as my son is for his summer internship where 50 calls a day is the norm; sorting agile from non-agile may be too time consuming and leave them short of their potential goal. Not to mention difficult to ascertain unless you have the luxury to ask lots of questions or do research, while a majority of their activity is leaving voicemail or email.

On the other hand, their suggestion to look for prospects that have emerging needs brought on by outside pressures or changes in leadership lines up directly with the philosophies of many “solution selling” models; including ours called Enterprise Selling, where our first objective is identification of the Current Business Issue of the prospect. This tactic is not different from solution selling models; however, many reps are challenged to do this effectively. They get stuck at low levels in the organization where business issues are not clearly visible and they are not usually inclined to do research on the internet beforehand: More on this later.

They further caution against getting stuck in the trap of “established demand”. This is where the prospect has already concluded the problem set they want to address, the requirements of the solution, potentially even have a budget defined, and likely pursue the top contenders with a regimented RFP process. They suggest that the seller should reshape the challenges the customer should consider and therefore reframe the solution. This sounds a lot like Michael Bosworth’s (Solution Selling, Creating Buyers in Difficult Markets, McGraw Hill) version of “Re-engineering the vision” to me. We use the concept of something we call leading questions to execute this tactic, and the creation of leading questions matches up directly with the author’s suggestion to identify the key capabilities of their solution and create insightful challenges to cause the customer the stop and reconsider their vision. If we go back to limited territory opportunities such as major account reps, this skill is a must have for top sellers and many of our customers have been scaling this concept in playbooks for 10 years or more.

Next the authors suggest that sellers drop the age old concept of finding advocates – who might actually be time wasting “Talkers”, and look for “Mobilizers”, who will challenge the seller, teach their brethren and champion action. This sounds a lot like Jim Holden’s “Fox” in Power Based Selling, and many solution selling models have adopted the political analysis concepts in varying forms. I will also add my observation that this is a common challenge for sales people, overcoming the urge to engage the person who is willing to talk rather than look for the person with the gumption to make it happen. However, this is not a new subject. Getting reps to actually question themselves and tactically maneuver around a potential time waster is the real challenge. (Wait, wait… The answer to this is coming up soon.)

Lastly, the authors suggest that the notion of finding an advocate that can coach us through the sale be replaced with the behavior of coaching the sponsor on how to buy more effectively. I don’t disagree with this notion, but many have leveraged the concepts of Bosworth’s “sponsor letter” as a model for developing a close plan with the sponsor, much of which is coaching the buyer to line up the appropriate steps to get the purchase made effectively. Again, this tactic has been advocated in many forms of solution selling models.

So is the “Challenger” model different from solution selling models? I believe the answer is no. It simply highlights a subset of tactics that have been in solution selling models for years, but possibly not highly valued when the economy was stronger. Are these the right tactics to focus on in the current market? I believe the answer is yes. But, the traditional model of training workshops is not enough to change the behavior of a majority of reps; especially, sophisticated tactics like sizing up a contact and successfully navigating around them. Or uncovering a business issue and connecting it to existing challenges that could be used to reshape a prospect’s vision. These are advanced skills that require at least two additional actions from the sales leadership above and beyond hosting a knowledge and awareness workshop:

· Inspection/Review; not for the sake of beating up the rep as many of these exercises deliver, but to help the rep reflect on the suitability of their contacts, the identification of business issues that could be harnessed to drive action, the insightful challenges applied or not applied, and the mutual action plan developed to coach the buyer to execute the transaction more effectively. Although a form of coaching, this should not stand on its own as a coaching model.

· Coaching; listening to the rep execute a discovery call to identify areas to develop. This is a rare commodity when managers have 12:1 reporting ratios and live in quarterly driven cultures where closing meetings are valued over developmental coaching activities. Moreover, they tend to take the lead when they are in discovery meetings rather than listening to the rep lead and debriefing at a later time. This is symptom of the star sales rep turned sales manager problem.

This leads me to my counter argument. If you recall my answer to the question about the death of solution selling was yes and no. I believe I have shed plenty of light on the “no”, so here’s the “yes” part. Solution selling delivery models are focused on the rep. This model does not work. ES Research, an independent sales training research organization, suggests it fails 85% of the time or more.

So what’s the answer? It’s called sales transformation. People don’t change behavior after one workshop. It takes a village to change behaviors. The focus needs to include the sales leadership, their application of coaching, review, and role modeling; or augmentation when they are not capable of implementing these critical contributions. It also incorporates realigning the ecosystem of the selling organization or company, since many good and bad behaviors are reinforced by other parts of the organization. Consider the marketing organization that is spewing product features when the sales team is being tasked to address business issues. (For more on sales transformation models, see our article “Transforming from Product to Solution Selling”.)

In closing, I believe the Sales Executive Council has done a good job of highlighting several existing solution selling skills required in the current market and we should pay attention to that message. This is an application of “Dynamic Sales Process Adherence” as identified by CSO Insights, a leading sales research organization, where successful sales team change the focus of their sales methodology to tackle new challenges as they arise versus statically applying the methodology in the same fashion quarter after quarter. Much like changing your wardrobe for the different seasons, although you’re still wearing shoes, socks, shirts and so forth, their color and weight will vary.

What the Sales Executive Council has accomplished is to differentiate their offering against a competitive market, even though the competition has the same capabilities. Reminds me of toothpaste or laundry soap commercials that claim “new and improved” when it’s really the same old thing, or the razor supplier adding another blade to change the game. This tactic works and kudos to them for leveraging it effectively. But, I wholeheartedly believe that attending a workshop to learn the “Challenger” skills will not deliver results on its own merit. Sales leadership needs to lead in addition to manage, and that doesn’t get accomplished with a “new” workshop.

THE COMPELLING REASON TO BUY: PART I, THE CURRENT BUSINESS ISSUE

Whether you’re battling other solution suppliers for your unfair share of discretionary budgets or your company is striving to cross the chasm to the larger market of mainstream adopters, knowing how to articulate a compelling reason to buy your solution is a critical skill. Most sizable orders are scrutinized by multiple people with a penchant for asking questions in a
quest to stop the purchase before it happens. As we kick off the fourth quarter, let’s review some basic concepts for articulating the compelling reasons to buy your solution.

In the Enterprise Selling methodology, we identify three components that make up the compelling reason to buy: the Current Business Issue (CBI), the underlying people/process/technology Challenges that are impeding the CBI, and the Impact of not resolving the CBI. This article will be dedicated to the CBI, with two more on the Challenges and Impact topics to follow.

The CBI is defined as the most important business issue that is currently on the radar of the contact. This inherently means that there may be more than one CBI if there are multiple stakeholders involved with the purchase of your solution. For example, while the CEO may be reeling from a board meeting where s/he was chastised for letting expenses get out of control,
the CSO is still held accountable for hitting the revenue numbers on a quarterly basis and the VP of Engineering is still under pressure to make the committed product release schedule, among other issues for other stakeholders in the organization.  The more CBI’s we can address and the higher the level of CBI connection we can obtain will help our articulation of the compelling reason to buy our solution above other alternative uses of funds.

Let’s say you’re selling a Social Collaboration Platform for Enterprise customers. Given the example above, the vendor that is able to validate their solution will improve time to market by increasing collaboration in engineering, enhance the average contract value of new purchases by sharing best practices amongst the sales organization, and reduce expenses by capturing expert knowledge (instead of flying the waterwalkers to multiple meetings) is more likely to get approval than another vendor that simply articulates their solution as an interesting set of capabilities: “we can handle twice the Database size”, or “our code is certified by three independent industry coalitions”.

So how do we uncover the CBI’s? The first step is to do some basic research on the target prospect. It takes two minutes to look up a 10Q on the internet and scan for poor performance in a number of categories. It’s also a couple of mouse clicks to google “<Customer Name> News” producing a list of articles on recent news coming out of the organization. There are lots
of industry analysts, press reporters and bloggers doing this work for you. You simply need to find them. I also advocate googling the name of the contact to see if they have been quoted recently on any relevant topic.

The second approach is to ask. You could start by saying, “I noticed on your 10Q filing that expenses were up very high compared to last year. Is that a current sore spot?” Or
you could leave it wide open, “Before we begin, I would like to shape our conversation about the issue that you care about most, how would you describe the most important business issue on your agenda?” And finally, you could take an educated guess based on the contact’s
role, industry, or other profiling factor, “I talk to a lot of VP’s of Marketing who tell me that measuring the outcome of specific marketing campaigns is the most important issue on their agenda, is that the same for you?” (This is also an example of leveraging the bowling alley analogy in Crossing the Chasm. Leverage the knowledge about why others bought your solution.)

But don’t stop with the first contact. This conversation needs to be repeated with every stakeholder to uncover the constellation of business issues that they care about, and finding as many as we can that we can address to increase the compelling nature of our value proposition.

Last point! When you find one or more CBI’s, use them! Every conversation, presentation, proposal or other communication should include a recap of your understanding of the CBI’s. “Today’s presentation is targeted at how we can address your company’s need to reduce
expenses, get your product to market faster, and sell larger transactions.
Before we begin, are there any other business issues I should know about?”  The more you reconfirm the CBI’s the more likely the prospect will hear the compelling reason to buy your solution, and the more likely they will repeat your message to other stakeholders that you
don’t have access to.

In summary, the first leg of the compelling reason triangle is the CBI. Next time, I’ll examine the role that underlying Challenges play in the articulation of the compelling reason to buy your solution.

Uncovering Impact or Value; The art behind the science of motivating prospects

When I began marketing the first value selling course in the
mid 90’s, “value” quickly became a buzz word. The intent was to uncover the
value of making a change to motivate the prospect to take action faster and
bigger. Unfortunately, it quickly morphed into another way of saying
“differentiation”. “Our value is our ability to handle a much larger database”
for example (differentiation), versus “It sounds like you are spending $10K a
month to manually implement changes in your process” (value).

I have since renamed the subject “Impact” to denote the
actual concept better and distance it from the mislabeled but complimentary
skill of differentiating. Either way, the objective is to uncover the cost of
taking or not taking action in both measurable outcomes and intangible
implications. I’ve found that many sales people, when first introduced to the
skill, struggle to get the subject uncovered with their prospects. If they fail
the first few times, they tend to give up on the objective to the detriment of
their future sales cycles. To aid the first timer, I’ve gathered a few
suggestions.

To begin with, the visibility of impact can vary greatly
depending on the person’s role in the organization, their level in the
organization, their ability to translate tactical to strategic, and the
questions you ask. So it’s not always an easy task to uncover impact, but it
can be. I once met with a person from Apple Computer (as it was called then)
and he started the meeting  by telling me
that they were spending tens of thousands of dollars a day fixing manufacturing
problems on the shop floor, not in the design department where they should be
fixed. He had the ability to translate tactical activities into a strategic
initiative that required action and he shared it without my prompting. But
that’s not always the case.

So where do we start?

If you’re a student of the Enterprise Selling methodology,
you know that the discovery process includes diagnosing the problems or
challenges the prospect is living with, and connecting those unresolved
challenges to a business issue like revenue, cost management, market share,
etc… When that is done effectively, we have the starting place for uncovering Impact.

I suggest starting with the two most basic premises for
uncovering impact: 1) Uncover any currently known measurable ramification of
the challenges or business issue, and 2) Identify currently measured goals,
especially those that are proving to be troublesome.

In the first case, I usually ask the prospect to “size” each
of the problems or challenges that we’ve uncovered. Has there been a measurable
pain associated with each obstacle? I’m ultimately looking for dollars, but
could start with time lost or wasted, contrasts to best case or other
competitors, etc… And then try to work with the prospect to convert the
percentages or other metrics into dollars. For instance if I’m selling a
solution that could reduce the number of people required to manage a process
from four down to one, I would ask if they had a standard burden rate for this
type of personnel, scale it by three people and come up with a hard dollar
figure.

In the event that this path doesn’t produce results, or even
if it does, I would also ask if there are current metrics for the organization
that might be relevant. Here’s where it gets interesting. Some people are
motivated by a goal, and if they see my solution as helping them reach their
goal, then the goal itself is the motivating impact statement. i.e, My
understanding is that you want to achieve $1M in new product bookings by the
end of year”. However, some people are motivated by the gap. In this case, I
would ask what the goal is, but also what the current shortfall looks like. “So
what I’m hearing is that you want to achieve $1M in new product bookings by the
end of the year, but you’re only on track to book $750K, is that right?” I
might go further by restating it as “so it sounds like we have a $250K problem,
would you agree?”

How do I know when to ask about goals or gaps? I try to
determine from my conversation if the person is an innovator or a re-aligner.
Meaning, do they anticipate and change to meet opportunity before there is any
pain, or are they changing because they are feeling pain. The innovator is
motivated by new goals in a proactive sense; the re-aligner is motivated by
gaps in goals in a reactive sense.

Lastly, whatever the quantifiable impact, it can pale in
comparison to the personal impact. People tend to make a purchasing decision
with their own interests in mind, while using the quantifiable impact as the
rationale. With this mind, a follow up question that gets the prospect to think
about the personal value proposition is worthwhile. “So if we overcome this
shortfall, how will that impact you personally?” Or “If you are unable to
overcome this shortfall, how will that impact you personally?”, purposely
selecting the question based on the prospect’s orientation toward being
proactive or reactive.

To get the real answer, our trust, credibility and rapport
will have to be really high; however, even if they don’t answer the question
with a straightforward response, you will have caused them to go to that place
in their mind. We want them to recognize career implications (both good and bad),
prestige, eliminating frustration, getting accolades, etc… and be motivated for
their own reasons. Sometimes, its triggered by a question they won’t answer for
anyone but themselves.

Final thought: getting this information is only half of the
value to you as the seller. Now you want to make sure the prospect is crystal
clear on the impact of buying or not buying your solution. Recap the
information in an email, during the next presentation, or before beginning a
demonstration. The more we can have them recognize the impact, the faster they
are going to want to make a purchase. The only caution is that you can’t always
replay the personal impact component, especially in a public format. So
consider alluding to it with something like, “… and you also implied that this
was important to your personally as well”.

Try these basic approaches out, and let me know how it goes.
I’m also available if you’d like some advice on the current opportunity you’re
developing.

Use Early Wins to Create a Rally in Your Sales Transformation

A short note for today since I’m posting from my new tablet. As many of you know, one of the keys
to a successful sales transformation is to rack up some early wins. These are
successes that indicate your team is on the right track and can be achieved in
30, 60 and 90 days. If your transformation goal is to move from product
centricity to customer centric for example, the journey may take a year or more
until the culture is supporting the transition. But most people will lose focus
on a long term transformation if they don’t see short term gains. They need to know they are making progress along the way.  They can be simple milestones that are a subset of the overall objective. Some examples
might include achieving 3 sales calls on a new type of stakeholder (business
unit outside of IT for example), or an increase in the attach rate for a new
product.

Much like baseball, where base hits can create a rally: Early
wins help build momentum, keep people focused and create the basis for your
rally. I read a recent article connecting baseball rallies to transformations…  http://tinyurl.com/3wne9zr

To RFP or Not to RFP, That is the Question!

No matter what you call it, RFP, RFI, or RFQ… the success rate for winning unsolicited requests for proposals are dismal. If a buyer sends out 10 bid requests for an RFP, statistically each vendor only has a 1 in 10 chance of winning. That’s much worse than a normal 1 in 3 win rate for most line items on an average sales rep’s forecast.  But if the RFP is rigged for a single vendor, then all the other vendors have zero chance of winning.

So, back to the question, do you bid? I’ll say it depends. I’ve helped many companies improve their RFP win rate, usually very dramatically. But the strategy is very heavily dependent upon knowing which RFP request to ignore. The best way to ascertain if you should walk is to test the RFP. Here are a few of my favorite test points:

Posture

“As the leader in an industry that is growing dramatically, we don’t have the luxury to respond to unsolicited RFP’s. If you would like to evaluate our solution for your needs, we’ll need to engage in a dialog about your business in a more direct manner.”

One of the best methods for increasing your win rate and reducing wasted sales cycles on unwinnable RFP’s is to posture you way out of the process altogether. Although ideal, this strategy usually only works for the leaders in an industry and has to be truly aligned with a buying frenzy.  

One of my clients recently hosted a prospective CIO customer during a headquarters visit. After the VP of Sales gave a very energetic overview, the CIO implied that the next step would to tender an RFP for response. The VP of Sales responded with a solid posturing strategy, “As you know, our technology is in the perfect storm of opportunity, market leadership, and high growth. We don’t do RFP’s, we can’t afford to.” The CIO responded, “Yeah, I can see your point. OK, we’ll skip the RFP and go direct to an evaluation phase.” That’s how the posturing is supposed to work.

Test their Resolve and Intention

Of course, not everyone is a market leader in a perfect buying storm, and when a quota has to be met, every opportunity should be evaluated. (Notice I said evaluated, not pursued.) I suggest a series of tests to determine their intentions about your solution and to improve your position should you decide to pursue.

The Shadow Story

I worked with an experienced sales management professional who had a saying, “An RFP is the shadow of the story.” What he meant was when you receive the RFP it’s focused on the requirements. What’s missing are the reasons behind the RFP. What unresolved business issue is driving the RFP? What specific people/process/technology challenges were linked to each solution requirement? How big are these problems in terms of money, lost opportunity or other value proposition?

The first place to test an RFP is to ask the prospect if they can share the story behind the RFP. If they refuse, you’re not on solid ground. But if they agree, you have some indication that you are needed in their RFP process either as their first choice (good footing) or an important price/functionality reference point (not so good).

This is your opportunity to not only understand the story behind the RFP, it’s also a chance to change it. This is where the next test comes into play.

Adding Challenges and Requirements

If you have the opportunity to hear the story behind the RFP, you have an opportunity to change the story. This is where you look for problems or challenges that have not been identified, link to your differentiators, and have value for the prospect. There is always something they overlooked.

If they accept the suggestion to change the RFP to incorporate the challenges and associated required solution capabilities you suggested, you have another favorable data point. If they refuse, you have a negative data point.

Reprioritizing Challenges and Requirements

Sometimes you have a capability that differentiates your offering. Look for the opportunity to get a priority ranking of key capabilities. If you have a differentiator that is low on the list, ask about the pain associated with the challenge it addresses. The more pain the higher it should be on their priority list. Conversely, look for competitor’s differentiators. If they are higher on the list, a review of the pain (or lack thereof) behind the associated challenge could help to lower the priority of a capability that you can’t address as well.

If the prospect engages you in the reprioritization dialog and responds favorably to suggested changes in priorities, you have another favorable data point. If they refuse, note the negative data point.

Trade Offs

There will be occasions where you can’t address a capability as described in the RFP, or you address it differently. This is where you request a trade off. You’re trying to get the customer to accept an alternative capability or trade a different capability for the one they specified. If they accept, your position is stronger, if they reject the request, you have another negative data point on your position.

Stakeholders

Another test is to request access to the stakeholders that would benefit from the solution. If they allow the request, you have a stronger foothold, and you may be in a better position to influence changes to the RFP. If they deny the request, you have another data point that may indicate your solution is not valued.

Date of Submission

Another good test point is to ask the prospect if you can be late for the submission date, whether you need it or not. If they agree to accept your submission late, it may be an indicator that you are valued in their RFP. If they reject your request, you have another data point that doesn’t indicate a position of strength.

Conditional No-Bid

At one point in my sales leadership career, my sales team came to me with a very comprehensive RFP tendered by a large corporation. The sales team wanted to secure a large technical team to spend several weeks assembling our response. I said, “No”.  One of our competitors was the incumbent in the account and we had no role in building the specification for the RFP. So I asked for an audience with the RFP committee. My sales team relayed the request and the RFP committee agreed to meet with me.

During the meeting I requested the story behind the story. They declined to share any information. Then I asked if they could extend a longer period of time for our response.  They said if we wanted to compete, we had to play by their rules. Then I asked for access to the stakeholders that would benefit from the purchase. Once again they said, “No”.

I walked away from that meeting with the feeling that we were not their favored vendor. When I got back to my office, I wrote a contingent no-bid letter. I addressed it to the CEO of the company.

In my letter, I explained that we were the leader in our industry, that we were excited about the opportunity to potentially add value to their business, and so on. But, I explained that without more information about the circumstance that brought this requirement to the surface, we could not possibly tender a proposal that would hit their business needs as well as we probably could. I suggested that if the circumstances were to change, and they were willing to share the information, we would be happy to submit a proposal, but in the meantime, we had to decline the RFP. This is what I call a contingent no-bid. I leave the door open, but decline under the current conditions.

A few days later I received a phone call from the CFO of the company. He said the CEO had asked him to get back to me personally. He told me that there was no budgeted purchase planned. He also explained that this group of people were in-between projects and were being funded by a training budget until they were assigned to a project. In other words, there was never going to be a purchase. He apologized for the confusion and asked me if there was anything else he could do for me. I said, “yes, there is!” I asked for a meeting with the CEO and the CFO to simply describe how we could address their business challenges better than the vendor who was currently supplying their solution. He said he would look into it. (I eventually got the meeting). More importantly… I asked him to please not share the information he just disclosed with the other vendors involved in the RFP. He laughed and said he would let it run another 30 days before shutting it down.

A contingent no-bid is an effective test for determining if the prospect needs your response. If they do, they will call you back and attempt to talk you into the response. If they don’t, you were not going to win, and best case, you were only there for pricing comparisons. Better still, if worded correctly, it leaves the door open if the circumstances change.

Improving Your RFP Hit Rate

The quest to improve your RFP hit rate is highly dependent upon setting a goal to NOT reply to blind unsolicited RFP’s. If you can posture your way out of responses you’ll save a lot of resources and project yourself as the most attractive solution. But if you have to reply to win, you can use the strategies listed about to improve your position and test the reality of your chances for winning. If the tests indicate a weak position, you should feel good about walking away from the situation before you invest any resources into the response. After all, if there’s no way for you to win, the unsolicited RFP robs you twice. First because you can’t win this deal, but they also rob you of the time you could have spent on any opportunity that you could have won.

Let me know if you’d like a copy of our RFP response checklist and good selling!

“You All Are a Bunch of Coal Miners in a Gold Mine”

When I first heard these words come out of Hank Johnston’s mouth – they stung. I wasn’t sure why they stung, but I knew it was not meant as a compliment.

Hank was the new member on the board of directors. Our CEO had sent him to me to talk about our sales engagement process. Hank had recently retired from EDS and had spent many of his years there very close to Ross Perot. After I described our engagement process, he shook his head, lifted his feet up and rested his cowboy boots on my desk. He put his hands behind his head and said, “Son, we got some work to do”.

I asked him what he meant by the coal miner statement. He said, “Your sales people slog through this long, dark tunnel every day in order to hack away at the wall for a few sacks of coal. On their way through the tunnel, they keep kicking these yellow rocks out of the way. What they don’t know is those rocks are gold.”

What I came to learn and appreciate was that our sales people were closing $50,000 deals when there were $500,000 deals to be closed. They were tactically focused when there was a strategic opportunity.

That’s when I learned to focus on the business issues of the customer. If they have a business issue that you can help them solve, your solution is worth a lot more to them, and gets higher level attention. We started closing bigger and bigger deals. Soon $5M, $10M and $20M deals were coming in the door.

I conduct lots of opportunity reviews for my clients. Partly to add value to each individual sales rep, but also to reinforce the process I’ve previously introduced. Each review starts with a question about the customer’s current business issues. Most often I hear about the initiative they have to change THIS technology, or implement THAT capability. The concept escapes most sales people, even if they’ve been trained to understand the difference between a business issues and a technology challenge or solution.

I think it’s because they take their customer’s word for it. When they ask their customers what the most critical business issue is, the customer tells them what they think they want to hear… “we’re looking for a solution to do “X””. But that’s not what we’re asking. We’re really asking “why are you looking for a solution to do “X”? What’s driving this requirement? Is it tied to revenue generation? Cost management? Quality problems? Regulatory changes? We want to find the story behind the story.

Soon after my encounter with Hank, one of our top sales reps was delivering his territory plan for the year. When his largest account had a zero next to it on his spreadsheet I had to ask what was going on. This account had generated over $1M a year for several years, and now he was forecasting zero for the entire year. He went on to explain that they canceled 4 of their 5 products. As a result of their scaling back, a majority of their people were looking for new jobs. He concluded they would be quickly oversaturated with our products and the place would be a ghost town.

Our top tier sales rep was looking at this as a justifiable buying objection, but the more I dug in, the more I saw yellow rocks and concluded this as a business issue that we could solve. I told him to get an appointment with the general manager of the division.

When we met with the GM, he explained that the market had consolidated and their broad product line was no longer necessary, so they were scaling back to their flagship product. But a byproduct of this scale back was their best people were shopping their resumes. They concluded it was a sinking ship so they should get out while the timing was good. Now he was concerned about his basic ability to deliver the next generation of their core product.

We came back to him with a creative proposal: Sell us your entire team for $1. Then contract with us directly to design your core product. Your people will land in a growing and interesting company, they won’t have to relocate, we can have them work on other projects, and we can deliver your product to you on time. He was ecstatic. The result was a $75M services contract that set the bar for our largest deal size, and we found a staffing solution to our fast growing services business.

There’s hardly a day that goes by that I’m not reminded about Hank’s statement. There are lots of coal miners out there. The real question is, how much gold are you leaving on the table by not digging deeper for the real business issue?

Let me know if you’d like to see how much gold is on the table. I will conduct three opportunity reviews for $900. If I don’t earn that back for you in spades, you keep the money.

My offer alone has some implication. Are you the coal miner or the gold miner?

The Transition to a Better Economy Has Some Potholes for Sales

There are many signs that the economy is turning for the better; the Dow Jones index is at a three year high, consumer spending is also at a three year high and from my own perspective, my entire customer list exceeded their operating plans for 2010. No small feat for a group of companies that was responsible for over $3 billion in revenues for 2010. Surprisingly, as the economy continues to improve, the transition can catch many sales professionals on their heels if they don’t keep the contrast in perspective. Although it seems counterintuitive, their productivity can decrease as the economy improves. This article is about one of those potholes.

With purse strings loosening up, there are many B2B buyers who now have a little money to spend, but not always enough to warrant your time, or enough to cover all the solutions they need to improve their business. This creates a risk in time management and overall productivity. While these buyers may feel empowered because they now have the green light to start spending a little more, they could end up being a waste of time for many sellers.

During a slow economy, many sellers hone their qualifying skills, but during a positive economic transition, sharpening their disqualifying skills may be just as important. Disqualifying is the skill of determining when to walk away from a prospect, even when they are demonstrating strong interest. After all, a prospect who doesn’t buy is actually robbing the seller twice. First they take your time without a return on your investment, and second, they take your time away from another prospect that could have made a purchase.

To understand disqualification, we’ll start with the definition of a qualified buyer. In the simplest terms, a qualified prospect has to have enough money available (notice I didn’t say “budget”, since this can be overcome with higher authority levels), and has an urgent issue that needs to be resolved because it’s costing their company money or lost opportunity.

Using this definition, consider getting answers to the following three questions:

1. What business issue is driving you to look at this solution?
2. What underlying people/process/technology challenges are making this business issue difficult to resolve?
3. What’s the impact of addressing or not addressing this issue?

The first question helps to uncover if there is a strategic aspect to the situation. This helps to open doors higher in the organization to secure executive level sponsorship, especially if lower level budgets are not sufficient to cover the cost of your solution. The second question helps you to establish the basis for your differentiation in the face of direct competition. You are looking for problems that only your solution can address, or addresses better than the competition. And the third question helps to prioritize your initiative over other initiatives that may not be directly competitive to your capabilities but are competitive as an alternate use of funds.

Should you find yourself in the common situation where the prospect contact doesn’t have the answer to any or all of these questions there is a fall back question:

1. Can you introduce me to someone who could answer these questions?

The answer to this question is the true test of the potential for a wasting your time. If the contact denies an introduction and can’t answer all of the first three questions effectively, you have a high probability for a “no decision” outcome. This is a situation where you should finesse them back into the lead nurturing queue and target them for follow up next quarter or the one after. If they agree to take you to another contact in their organization, repeat the same process until you are able to qualify the prospect.

As the economy heats up, you are bound to have more people that are willing to talk to you than you probably encountered in the previous three years. While this may feel great and be an encouraging sign, it can also become a productivity challenge, especially if your quota assignment has increased significantly. Disqualifying those contacts that don’t have a high probability for a purchase can open up more time for prospects than can buy, and buy in higher amounts.

One of our clients is citing 20% more deals per rep as a result of their focus on disqualifying leads that can’t answer these basic questions or refuse to engage other stakeholders that can. They are also tracking 19% higher average contract value by focusing on opportunities where they are more strategic to the customer’s business. Imagine what your productivity would be if you closed 20% more opportunities than you did last year with a 19% higher contract value!

Are you committed to avoiding one of the most significant sales potholes in 2011? Then start disqualifying some of your prospects.

Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 eBook from CSO Insights

This ebook has 4 stories written by CSO’s who have led their teams through major transformations. I found three of the stories very compelling given the circumstances in the economy. I can forward a copy by permission. Please send me an email kevin@enterprise-selling.com for a copy.

The Perfect Storm in Sales

I was recently interviewed by Jeff Ogden, aka The Fearless Competitor. CSO Insights cites a perfect storm in sales because more sales people are not achieving their quotas than ever before. Here’s a link to the interview http://bit.ly/dNVzu7