The Sales Handicapper

"Nothing is dynamic....

...that isn't specific."  This quote is from an excellent story teller and filmmaker, Dan O'Rourke.   Dan was speaking specifically of the art of asking good interview questions.  But the meaning is especially poignant in today's sales environment.

When you're in sales, dealing with ambiguity is part of the deal.  In today's world it is even more acute. Prospects and clients don't always know what they want or why they need it.  Budgets can appear and disappear quicker than people with more than 10 items in the express check-out lane.  Decision criteria changes faster than a 14 year-olds Facebook page. Unfortunately, this condition will not change any time soon. That is why it is more important than ever that your plan for closing a sale be as specific as it can possibly be - and in writing!

A plan where the smallest of details is left to interpretation (or if it is not in writing) will most assuredly result in inertia and non-compliance.  In the old days, when people and processes were relatively static, you could "discuss" a plan for moving forward with a prospect and have a reasonable expectation the plan would be followed.  Today, unless you document a plan which requires some type of behavior from your prospect within short, defined period of time, there is an even chance the ball will get dropped and growing chance your prospect may be gone before they can execute.

Whatever plan you agree to, it must be dynamic in nature.  In other words, the plan must be specific and include contingencies. Ask them point blank, "what do we do here if we hit a wall", and document that contingency. Without a plan in writing, you will have nothing to hold your prospect accountable and no reason to contact them (from their perspective) asking why things may not have progressed.

It is no longer enough to ask your client to "go to the well and get a bucket of water". You have to share with them,"Pick up the bucket and hold it approx. 2 feet from the ground. Take 19 steps to the well. Pick the bucket up until it is over the lip of the well. Submerge the bucket into the water...." Why this detail?  Because you may very well know more about your client's purchase process than they do.  Why is that?  Because in today's world there is better than a 50/50 shot they are newer to the company than you are.  

Also, be sure and review every step with your client to discover any obstacles that could possibly emerge to keep them from completing the task in the required amount of time.  Not only is this plan specific, but it is now dynamic!  It has life and meaning and a purpose.  If they agree to it, you are well on your way to a "timely" sale.

If you don't, then you are allowing the winds of fate to control your sale; and we all know where that wind will take you.

Don't Confuse Courtesy with Commitment

If you're even half way good at selling, most of your initial sales meetings go pretty well.  The prospect smiles a lot and laughs at your jokes.  They engage in the normal dialogue around problem-solution.  They may even tell you openly they like what you're saying and are very interested.  Then why in heaven's name are they not returning your emails and phone messages to set up a second meeting?  You've told everyone, especially your boss, that you even talked about your kids and mutual interests.  You had a great meeting!  Unfortunately, you fell for one of the oldest cons in selling; the polite brush-off.

You confused courtesy with commitment.  Most likely, if you're truly honest, you allowed their courtesy to take the place of their hard commitments to you around the basic elements of effective selling:

• Did they clearly articulate "why" they are interested in moving forward?
• Did you really "hear" hard evidence of the severity of their pain?
• Did you gain concrete "agreement" as to the next steps and did you tell them you'd be sending a follow-up email confirming the agreement?
• Did you even try to secure a specific date for the next meeting with an agenda already "agreed" to?
• Did you even find out if budget was available? (see Five Most Important Sales Questions further down the page)

In today's environment many salespeople feel the need to soften their approach for fear they will alienate the few qualified leads they still have.  That could not be any more wrong!  In times like these, when leads are few, you have to qualify even harder for your prospects' true interests.  Why?  Because right now time is your fiercest enemy, not your competitor.  If you waste time pining away for a prospect who was just being courteous because they couldn't bring themselves to tell you that the budget authority they once had has been stripped from them, then you will not spend the precious time you have on the more deserving prospects who are not only committed, but looking for a real partnership.

Now is not the time to be timid.  In fact, be more aggressive; but make sure you're even more prepared than usual going into that first meeting. (We'll talk more about pre-call planning in a future post)  Who knows - if you spend more time in pre-call planning to find out what is really causing your prospect's pain, you may just find out they can be both courteous and committed.

Want to run a specific situation by the Saleshandicapper?  Just click on the Email Me link in the upper left corner.  I commit to get back to you quickly.

Best Story Wins - especially in today's market

A mentor of mine, Chuck Reaves, a godly man and one of the best speakers and sales trainers in the business summed up successful sales in three words, "best story wins".  He also knows the most powerful question in sales, but you'll have to ask him what that is.

Delivering the best story in today's market requires a level of creativity not seen (or practiced) in many years.  Creativity results when business knowledge intersects with product knowledge.  The more you have of both, the more creative your solutions will be and the more successful your sales efforts.  When combined with identifying pain, creativity will find both budget and a quicker decision.

Gone are the days when you can take a prospect's time to tell you "about their business".  Unless they are a very private company there is plenty of information available on the internet to become intimately aware of their challenges and opportunities.  To quote Chuck once more, "if the information is public, you are expected to know it when you walk in the door". 

When budgets are tight and careers are hanging in the balance, decision makers can come up with hundreds of reasons not to buy right now and sleep perfectly well at night.  Creativity finds pain and pain finds and spends budget today.  When you take the time to really learn your product and to really learn your prospect's business, you will be amazed at how creative you can be and stack the odds in your favor for making the sale.

Your Pipeline is your Lifeline

"Show me a salesperson who says they don't need a big pipeline because they have a high closing ratio and I'll show you a future customer service rep."

While size does matter, the quality of the pipeline is equally as important.  There are many factors that go into developing a qualified prospect and by extension a solid pipeline.  The one thing that doesn't change however, is the basic truth that the more qualified prospects you have in your pipeline, the less stress there is on any one prospect.  Why is this important?  Let's take a look at our friend below.

 
If you sell for a living, you have quota.  It doesn't matter if you sell computers, time shares, drugs or diamonds, someone has assigned you a required dollar amount to sell within a specified period of time.  Our friend above has a quota and he has a problem. 

His block of quota is putting way too much stress on the few qualified prospects he has.  Because he has so few identified "suspects" in his universe from which to build his pipeline, he worries incessantly about the few prospects he does have.  Worse yet, with so few prospects he has WAY too much time on his hands.  Rather than looking for new prospects be begins to pick away at the prospects he does have.  He has many ways to do this including, but not limited to:

• Sending 3 emails a day asking if "there is anything else you need from me in order to make your decision".
• Calling 3 times a day saying "my phone has been acting up so I was just calling to see if you had tried to leave a message".
• Texting every time you are on the phone with another prospect you are chipping away at to make sure that they know that if they call, you will "break away" to take "their" call.

This chipping away becomes a self-fulfiling prophecy.  I don't have enough prospects to hit my quota unless I close 100% so what few I have I play and pick at them like Chris Farley in Tommy Boy.  I chip away at the ones I have like a fresh scab - never giving the wound time enough to heal - that it never heals and ultimately dies of infection.   Because I don't have any fresh bodies to replace the dead, I miss my quota and.... 

The point of this story is that it is amazing what happens when you focus not on the destination, but the trip instead.  Believe it or not, your sale is not the top priority of your prospect.  Sometimes we just have to let nature take its course and let things play out.  When you focus on navigating the highway rather than worrying about what the weather is going to be like at your final destination, you don't miss the wonderful opportunities for sight seeing along the way.

Focus on building your pipeline and you can be as cool as our friend below:

Metrics? We no need no stinking metrics, do we?

As a salesperson, I hated metrics; unless they were in my favor.  As a manager, I can't live without them; well, the important ones anyway.  And therein lies the rub.

To me, there are really only 5 metrics you need to track to effectively manage a sales team without micromanaging:

1. Number of 1st meetings - tells how many new opportunities should be entering the prospect funnel (based on your typical conversion rate of 1st meetings to qualified prospects)
2. Six month rolling pipeline - tells me how many of the first meetings are converting to valid sales opportunities
3. Average Selling Price (ASP) - tells how well the salesperson is optimizing their sales opportunities
4. Closing Ratio - tells quite a lot about the salespersons closing and forecasting skills
5. Total Sales - at the end of the day, this is the number ALL salespeople are ultimately measured against.

Certainly, there are other metrics that come into play during the sales process, especially if you truly practice value selling.  Additionally, you can also use the Sales Handicapper (soon to be on this site) from yours truly to gain a more realistic view of the match between your products/services and your prospect's needs and culture.

In today's highly virtual world, however, when "management by walking around" is not as practical as in olden days, you have to come to grips with one very real truism; you can't manage work ethic!   That is why none of the metrics above measures "activity" other than the first meeting.   If first meetings are being reported and the results don't show up in the pipeline report then you have a salesperson who is either not reporting, lying about the numbers or can't sell.  In either case, you can gain a strong indication of their progress within the first 90 days!

Non reporting is easy to fix. Usually a simple reminder that the individual can either report accurately or have daily meetings with you is sufficient to encourage the proper behavior. Lying about their activity or lack of sales ability is a different matter.  Each situation needs to be handled differently and won't be addressed in this column.  Suffice it to say, if your time is tight and your task is large, then limiting your metrics to the ones above should give you all the information you need to tip the odds in your favor of hitting your quota .