Tag: goal

The Power of Decision Timelines in Streamlining Sales Processes

The Power of Decision Timelines in Streamlining Sales Processes

In situations where complex deals and large buying teams are the norms, the path to closing a deal often feels like navigating a labyrinth. My discussions with clients have illuminated the critical role of a well-structured approach in guiding selling and buying teams through this maze.

A pivotal element in this structured approach is the adoption of a Decision Timeline (DT): a collaborative project plan outlining action items for both parties to facilitate a decision that leads to a financial transaction for a product or service.

Understanding the Decision Timeline

A Decision Timeline serves as a high-level agreement on the activities between the sales organization and the prospect. It’s not about detailing every step with meticulous precision but about establishing a roadmap that guides both parties to a decision point. The timeline aims not to rigidify the sales process but to provide flexibility, allowing for negotiation and adaptation as new needs arise. It’s a tool to set expectations, with checkpoints for both parties to confirm their willingness to proceed. This approach fosters transparency and mutual understanding, addressing potential roadblocks early and ensuring alignment on the ultimate goal: a decision that culminates in an order.

A Decision Timeline is a strategic framework designed to address the buyer’s pain points throughout the sales cycle. By involving potential customers at every stage, DTs can significantly shorten sales cycles and increase the likelihood of closing deals. This collaborative approach aligns the selling team with the customer’s outcomes and actively engages the prospective customer in crafting the solution.

Benefits of Decision Timelines

One of the primary advantages of a DT is its ability to create a more engaging and collaborative environment for the prospective customer. Instead of being passive recipients of a sales pitch, customers become active participants in shaping the solution. This involvement can lead to quicker resolution of sales objections and a deeper understanding of the value and impact of the solution. Furthermore, DTs provide a clearer projected revenue forecast, allowing sales teams to predict deal closures with greater accuracy.

Implementing a Decision Timeline

Outline Roles and Responsibilities

A successful DT begins with clearly delineating roles and responsibilities, transcending traditional job titles. For instance, a salesperson might assume the role of project manager, while the primary contact might be responsible for data access and metrics. It’s crucial to define these roles within the context of the DT to ensure all needs are met and priorities are aligned, thereby facilitating buyer engagement.

Map Out Your Timeline

An explicit timeline is essential for guiding the mutual action plan to completion. This timeline should accommodate both parties’ deadlines, significant milestones, and any personal time off. Flexibility is key, as adjustments may be necessary, but proactive planning can mitigate potential disruptions.

Add Action Items and Deliverables

With the timeline established, the next step is to define specific action items and deliverables, assigning responsibility to team members. This clarity ensures accountability and facilitates progress tracking, keeping the plan on course towards completion.

Projected Outcomes and ROI

A critical element of the Decision Timeline is documenting projected outcomes and ROI calculations. This ensures that the expectations and interests of all stakeholders are addressed, reducing the risk of last-minute objections or deal loss. Engaging the buying team in this process is a safeguard, ensuring that the solution meets their needs and expectations.

Use Decision Timelines in all of your Complicated Deals

Adopting Decision Timelines represents a strategic shift towards a more collaborative and effective sales process. This tool facilitates better alignment between selling and buying teams and offers a structured approach to overcoming obstacles and achieving mutual success. By implementing these strategies, sales professionals can navigate the complexities of the sales cycle with greater clarity, efficiency, and predictability, ultimately leading to more closed deals and satisfied customers.

As we continue to navigate the evolving landscape of sales, the importance of mutual understanding, flexibility, and collaboration cannot be overstated. Adopting Decision Timelines is not merely a tactical choice but a strategic imperative for those seeking to thrive in the competitive arena of B2B sales.

5 Sales Success Tips By A Multi-Decade Sales Professional

5 Sales Success Tips By A Multi-Decade Sales Professional

My good friend, Dean Wiener, published the following post on LinkedIn about some of the “secrets” to his success over many decades. He was kind enough to allow me to embed his post into this article.

Let’s explore each of these items in a bit more detail.

1. I attach my solution to a big problem/pain/goal.

As a salesperson, it is your job to understand your prospect’s needs and offer a solution that meets those needs. However, simply offering a product or service is not enough. You also must demonstrate how your solution can address a specific problem the prospect is facing. Doing so will make you much more likely to close the sale.

Attaching your solution to a goal the prospect wants to achieve has several benefits.

  • First, it helps you to focus on the most critical aspects of your product or service.
  • Second, it allows you to position your solution as the best possible option for solving the problem.
  • Third, it makes it more likely that the prospect will take action and buy from you.

There are a few things to keep in mind when looking for problems.

First, ensure that you are addressing the prospect’s real problem. If you try to attach your solution to a problem that does not exist, or one that is not relevant to the prospect, you will not be successful. This is why I suggest that salespeople look for company goals to attach to rather than simply looking for problems. By looking for goals, you can be confident that the company will devote resources to achieving the goal. They may choose to live with a problem because other problems are more immediate or damaging. A stated goal that they want to solve that problem ensures that resources are applied to the problem.

Second, clearly explain how your solution can solve the problem. The more specific and detailed you can be, the better.

Third, ensure your pricing is aligned with the market’s expectations. If your prices are too high, prospects will be hesitant to buy from you. But if they are too low, they may not perceive your solution as valuable enough to solve their problem.

Finally, attaching your solution to a big problem is just one part of the sales process. You also need to build rapport with the prospect, establish trust, and address any objections they may have. If you can do all those things, you will be much more likely to close the sale.

Start by attaching your solution to the prospect’s most significant problem or goal to increase sales. This will help you focus on the most critical aspects of your product or service and position your solution as the best possible option for solving the problem. Just remember to focus on real issues that prospects are facing, and be sure to explain how your solution can solve those problems clearly and concisely. Do all of this, and you’ll be well on closing more sales than ever!

2. Early and consistent engagement with the decision maker

To be successful, salespeople need to have early and consistent engagement with the decision maker. This statement may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many salespeople make the mistake of trying to engage with the decision maker too late in the process. By then, it’s often too late to turn the tide and win the sale.

Why Is Early Engagement Important?

Salespeople who engage with the decision maker early on in the process are more likely to build a relationship of trust and respect. This is because they can establish themselves as a credible source of information and insights from the very beginning.

Early on, engaging with the decision maker also allows salespeople to better understand their needs, wants, and pain points. This, in turn, allows them to tailor their pitch in a way that will be most relevant and resonant with the decision maker.

Finally, early engagement allows salespeople to establish themselves as trusted advisors. Being there from the very beginning, the salesperson can help guide the decision maker through every step of the process and ensure that they’re making well-informed decisions.

Why Is Consistent Engagement Important?

Once you’ve established early engagement with the decision maker, it’s essential to maintain that engagement throughout the entire process. This means following up regularly, keeping them updated on your progress, and proactively addressing any concerns or questions they may have.

Consistent engagement reassures the decision maker that they made the right choice in working with you and instills confidence in your ability to deliver on your promises. It also allows you to continue building trust and rapport, which are essential for maintaining a good working relationship.

3. A strong and effective champion selling on my behalf

A Champion is not a coach (although the Champion might give advice). Champions have influence and may have power. Regardless of power, champions have respect among the top decision-makers. The ultimate Champion says, “I will quit if we don’t buy this product.”

You can have more than one Champion, but the Champion must be loyal. It is not just about achieving the goal but about achieving the goal with your product.

Every single purchase ever made in a business had a champion. Since salespeople are rarely present during the final decision when the Decision Group is asking, “Is everyone ready to buy this product?” the Champion is the person that says, “We should buy this product from that vendor to achieve the goal of the company.” Someone always makes that statement; therefore, there is always a champion for every B2B purchase. The issue is that you may not know your Champion.

Champions are respected stakeholders within your prospect’s business who meet very distinct criteria:

  • They have power and influence (power and influence are non-negotiable)
  • They are selling internally for you
  • They have a vested interest in your success

If your Champion has the other two qualifying criteria but is without power and influence, they are a Coach, not a Champion. Whereas you can work with your potential Champion to help them sell internally for you and to have a vested interest in your success, power and influence are non-negotiable. If they lack it, you can’t change this factor, and you will need to find a true Champion. 

Selling Internally is easily identifiable.

Often sellers think it is not easy to identify if their Champion is selling internally for them, but it is easy. You ask your Champion: “Has our solution come up in discussions with other stakeholders?” If it hasn’t, then this is a red flag for your deal, but if it has, then it is vital to understand how your Champion acted in the discussions. 

  • Did they talk about your solution positively?
  • Did they stick up for your solution if anyone had any criticisms? 

You can find out the answers to these questions by asking your Champion. 

Having a vested Interest doesn’t mean bias.

For a Champion to have a vested interest in your success, your solution’s value must align with your Champions’ goals. This can mean your solution will solve your Champion’s problem, making their job more manageable, or they’ll get a bonus or promotion. 

Having a vested interest doesn’t necessarily mean a bias towards your or your company—quite the contrary. Your Champion will lose credibility if they are seen to be biased.

4. Clear/differentiated solution tied to value/metrics

If you’re in sales, you know that the competition is fierce. To succeed, you must ensure that your selling effort has a clear and differentiated solution tied to your product’s value. In other words, your product needs to offer something unique that sets it apart from the competition and provides value to customers.

A value proposition is a statement that outlines the unique solution that your product offers and the benefits that come with it. Value propositions are essential for any sales effort. For a value proposition to be compelling, it needs to be clear, concise, and tailored to the specific needs of your target customer. It should also be differentiated from the competition so that customers can see why your product is the better option.

A compelling value proposition will do more than list the features of your product; it will also address the pain points of your target customer and show them how your product can provide a solution. For example, if you’re selling a new type of software, your value proposition might address the need for a more user-friendly interface or faster performance. Whatever it is, make sure your value proposition is clear and easy for customers to understand.

Once you have a compelling value proposition, you must ensure it’s communicated throughout your entire sales process. This means using it in your marketing materials, such as website copy, brochures, and email campaigns. It should also be incorporated into your sales pitch so that potential customers can see how your product can solve their specific problems. By communicating your value proposition throughout the entire sales process, you’ll be able to increase closes rates and win over more business.

An effective selling effort must have a clear and differentiated solution tied to the product’s value. This solution must be communicated throughout the entire sales process to increase conversions and win over more business. If you’re unsure where to start, begin by creating a powerful value proposition that addresses the specific needs of your target customer. From there, make sure to use it in all of your marketing materials and sales pitches so that potential customers can see how your product can help them solve their specific problems. By following these tips, you’ll be on your way to success in no time!

5. Committed compelling event (go-live) with a date attached.

To close a sale, salespeople must identify a specific event that will incentivize the prospect to purchase. This event is known as a “compelling event.” Without a compelling event, the prospect has no reason to act now and may never act.

Compelling events can take many different forms. For example, a prospect might face an impending deadline, such as the end of a fiscal year or the expiration of a limited-time offer. Or, a prospect might be experiencing pain points that your product or service can address. By understanding the prospects’ needs and identifying a compelling event, salespeople can close more deals and drive revenue for their company.

Types of Compelling Events

As we mentioned before, compelling events can take many different forms. Some common types of compelling events include:

  • An impending deadline: This could be the end of a fiscal year, the expiration of a limited-time offer, or any other time-sensitive issue.
  • Pain points: Is the prospect experiencing problems that your product or service can solve? If so, addressing those pain points can be an influential motivating factor.
  • A change in circumstances: Has the prospect recently changed their business (e.g., they’ve merged with another company, acquired, etc.) that has created new needs? If so, your product or service may be able to fill those needs.
  • Competition: Is another company trying to win over the same prospect? Positioning yourself as the better option can create a sense of urgency and help you close the deal.

Identifying Compelling Events

So how do you go about identifying a compelling event? There are four key steps you can take:

  1. Research the prospect: Start by doing your homework on the prospect. In addition to basic research like reviewing their website and social media presence, try to find out as much as possible about their specific circumstances. The more you know about them, the better positioned you’ll be to identify a compelling event. This research may require talking to others in their organization or conducting secondary analysis (e.g., reading industry reports).
  2. Build relationships: Once you’ve done your research, reach out and build relationships with key decision-makers at the target organization. The goal is to get to know them personally and understand their specific needs and challenges. The better you know them, the easier it will be to identify a compelling event.
  3. Listen carefully: When talking to decision-makers, ensure you’re really listening to what they’re saying (and not saying). Pay attention to both their words and their body language; they may give you clues as to what’s really on their mind. Frequently, prospects will provide you with information that will help you identify a compelling event without even realizing it.
  4. Ask questions: Don’t be afraid to ask probing questions that will help you uncover someone’s real needs and motivation for buying. For example, you might ask them what their top priorities are for the next fiscal year or what challenges they’re facing hampering their ability to achieve their goals. By asking tough questions, you’ll be able to get to the heart of what’s important to them and identify potential compelling events.

Compelling events are essential for closing sales; without them, prospects have no reason to act now and may never act. By understanding prospects’ needs and identifying a compelling event, salespeople can drive revenue for their company and close more deals. There are many compelling events—deadlines, pain points, changes in circumstances, and competition—and salespeople must identify the right one for each individual. Researching prospects, building relationships with decision-makers, listening carefully, and asking probing questions are all great ways to uncover someone’s real motivations and identify potential compelling events.”

Header Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash
If You Don’t Have Five Reasons To Buy Then Take It Off Your Forecast

If You Don’t Have Five Reasons To Buy Then Take It Off Your Forecast

I am always amazed that so many VPs of Sales do not interrogate their teams on the “needs gap” during pipeline review meetings.

A prospect’s “needs gap” is the difference between where the prospect wants to be (their goal) and where they are. The more significant that difference, the more likely the deal will get funded.

If a team cannot identify five reasons why the prospect has a gap between where s/he is and where s/he wants to be, there is a high likelihood that there will not be an order. You need to take it off the Commit List and put it on the Upside List. Organizations do not buy because of pain (“I wish we didn’t have to deal with this problem”); they invest because they want to change their situation – a “needs gap” between where they are and where they want to be (“We absolutely need to do this so that we can achieve nirvana”).

In a business-to-business (B2B) sale, there are many decision-makers. You need to have five reasons for a deal to happen so that one or two of those reasons don’t get killed by someone else in the organization. Your risk is that the one remaining reason to buy from you may not be enough. However, your risk is much higher if you depend on only one positive outcome to justify a purchase.

As depicted in the below image, not all of the reasons will be equally important. That is fine. The important thing is that you have at least five reasons to buy from you.

You should have at least five reasons why your prospect is going to buy from you

When people decide to spend their own (or their company’s) money, they do so because their goals do not align with their reality. They wish that they were in a different situation. Their desire to be in that situation is acute enough that they are willing to invest their time and money to get closer to that goal.

Many people discuss ‘pain’ as the reason that people buy. This belief is not entirely true. Pain is the result of not realizing goals. Therefore, ‘pain’ is a ‘lagging indicator’ of the situation. In a competitive situation where there are no Trappers, pain may be a tremendous driving force. Trappers try to get ahead of the problem and drive the buyer into a conducive situation to win the order. If you wait for ‘pain’ to occur, you run the risk of involving many more competitors and being much later in the sales process. Instead, you want to control the process, which means that you want to discuss the goals of both the organization and the individual people.

Pain is the result of unrealized goals.

In addition to ‘pain’ being a secondary and lagging situation, it also has very negative connotations. It is much harder to discuss an individual’s ‘pains’ than discussing the individual’s goals. Goals have a very positive feel and therefore make you a valued partner to the prospect.

A similarity from your everyday life: if you have knee pain, you may see a doctor. You and your insurance company will likely give the doctor money to cure that pain; the transaction does not give you a positive feeling about the doctor. You never had a goal of having surgery or physical therapy – it is more of a necessary evil. 

Another example is that you may have a goal of getting into shape and losing weight and, therefore, joining the local gym. You are more likely to develop a long-term friendship with that gym and its employees. You will likely have a better feeling about the gym than your doctor in the paragraph above, even though you may give them much more money over the term of your membership. The people working in the gym help you get to your goal, whereas the doctor is solving a problem or a ‘pain.’

Pain means that something is broken. It causes a negative feeling. While it may be prevalent in this age of social media to whine and complain about broken things, it does not create excitement or enjoyment. The excitement only comes when you are trying to achieve a goal.

The athletes on your favorite sports team don’t work hard in practice because they want to avoid the pain of losing. Instead, they work hard because they want to win. Winning is the goal. The desire to accomplish a goal allows everyone to be motivated and work hard. Talking about pain with an athlete is to talk about losses, strenuous practices, and injury. The athlete is much more motivated talking about the game wins and the plans to win the next games. The same is true with your prospect.

Pain is also not the reason to choose one product over another. Pain may justify the purchase, or it may start an evaluation process. If all the reviewed products solve the problem, then ultimately, price and ‘terms and conditions’ will be the deciding factors. However, most evaluations are more concerned about goals and achieving those goals. If your pain is that you have a broken TV, then any TV should solve your pain. Suppose your goal is to watch sporting events and feature films on the best-looking and best-sounding audiovisual system on the market. In that case, your list may be more detailed.

Similarly, suppose your pain is that you cannot get to work in the morning. In that case, hundreds of automobiles and some public transportation options will solve your problem. If you have a goal of getting to work in a sporty red convertible, you will eliminate many of those choices. In that case, you need a car salesperson to help you meet your goals. You will also pay more for attaining your goals than just solving your pain. 

The chosen product will match the goals of the prospect, not just the pains of the prospect.

In sales, we can use this to our benefit. We will center our initial questioning and needs development with our prospect on goals and the ability (or inability) to reach those goals. By doing this with the Discoverer (a role that we will discuss later in the book), we have the advantage of being a long-term and trusted ally. As the sales process evolves, other vendors are brought in to ascertain their possible remedies. Still, the prospect sees them as solutions to a problem (pain) that you have helped them identify because their reality was not the same as their goal. You, on the other hand, are a trusted confidant who only has their best interest at heart, and you are willing to guide them as they explore their goals.

The key points to remember are that you need to go after the prospect’s goals and document at least five reasons why you can help the company achieve those goals. One reason is not enough. The more reasons that you have, the more likely the deal will close in your favor.

Header Photo by Icons8 Team (Unsplash)

Too much event-based selling hurts your ability to close

Too much event-based selling hurts your ability to close

Many salespeople fall into the bad habit of depending on event-based selling to move their prospects through the decision-making process. A salesperson should spend a large percentage of their time doing personal selling, rather than event-based selling.

Before the above statement can sink in, I need to explain the difference. Event-based selling is when you have scheduled a meeting with multiple people from the prospect’s organization and maybe numerous people from your organization. Event-based selling identifies with such topics as demos and workshops. 

Personal selling is where the salesperson is simply sitting with the prospect discussing business and also maybe discussing family, weather, sports, or similar topics. This activity usually is one-on-one. 

Event-based selling is essential. It is the primary method of conveying information about your product. This is even more true if the product category is new to the prospect and is somewhat technical. You set up a demo, and you invite several or a dozen people from the prospect organization to attend. These are events. 

Events are important. You will never get the prospect to agree to buy many types of products if you don’t do a demo, a workshop, or a proof-of-concept event. You need to plan and execute these events successfully. They are critical for the success of you closing a deal.

However, events can be a crutch that hurts you in your sales campaign. Too often, a salesperson will try to “make something happen” by offering to do another event. Maybe that event is a “lunch and learn” for more people. Or perhaps that event is mini-demo of an individual feature not adequately explored in the original demo. If the prospect requests those new events, then, by all means, qualify them and do them to educate your prospect. But if you propose those new events as the salesperson, you may have a problem.

Start selling yourself instead of your product

Throughout my book, I discuss that you are selling three things during the sales campaign:

  1. your product
  2. your company
  3. you

You must sell all three things. However, if you are always offering to do additional events, you are likely to spend too much time selling the first two items and not enough time selling the last item – you are not selling yourself.

If you think about all of the sales calls you have made in your career, the questions fall into these three value offerings. At a high level:

  • The prospect wants to know all about the speeds and feeds of your product – a product conversation.
  • They want to know all about the pricing model of the product – a product conversation.
  • They want to know all about the support options and warranty of the product – a product and company conversation.
  • They want to know how long your company has been producing the product – a company conversation but also a product conversation.
  • They want to understand the roadmap for your company – a company conversation and a product conversation.
  • They may even want to meet some executives of your company to be comfortable with its management – a company conversation.

During these sales conversations, they are also learning about the value offering you bring to them. They are learning about you as a person. Are you reliable? Are you knowledgeable? Does the prospect trust the words that come out of your mouth? In short, they are trying to figure out if they should buy from you or, in essence, can they hire you as their representative for this kind of product.

Yes, you are for sale if you are in sales. You are a part of the value offering that the prospect considers in the evaluation. At a minimum, do you offer enhanced value to the prospect over just buying the product over the Internet?

Here is the rub; you are the essential value offering. It isn’t the product nor your company. They are secondary to the importance of you as a value offering.

Let’s be perfectly blunt, is your product that much better or worse than the competition? When you answer questions about your product, aren’t 90-99% of your responses positively responded regarding the customer’s concern? How often do you answer a question, “No, we don’t have that feature.” Obviously, you give that answer at times, but in those cases, you probably are not a good fit for the customer and will lose the deal immediately. If your product doesn’t have that required feature, you will not be talking to a qualified prospect for that product.

Isn’t your competitor’s product in a similar situation? Don’t most of their features match up reasonably well to your own product’s characteristics? I am sure that you do a little better at feature A or B. Although your competitor probably does a bit better at C. When you add it all up, it is probably pretty close to a dead-even tie. Worse yet, it is likely your prospect can achieve their goals perfectly well without buying the best product on the market (yours) because the second best or third best product will accomplish the goals. They don’t need the best; they need the product and company to be good enough to achieve their goals.

Similarly, how many times do you have to explain to your prospect that your company isn’t very good at supporting the product? Do you ever really lose a deal based on company longevity or commitment to the market? Of course not, and neither do your competitors.

As a Trapper, I continuously advise salespeople that features that do not differentiate do not matter. 

Does the car salesperson spend time explaining the value offering of the accelerator on the floor? Of course not, all modern cars have them. 

Does the TV salesperson explain that the remote will change the channel and volume? Of course not, all TVs have remotes with a value offering that does that. 

In both cases above, there was a time when those were unique and differentiating features, but not in today’s competitive market. The TV and automobile manufacturers have added those features as standard, and the features no longer differentiate the products. Since none of these features add a differential value offering, there is no reason to “sell” these features to the prospect. A salesperson that spends a lot of time talking about the value offering of these benefits is simply wasting valuable time.

So why do you spend so much time talking about your company and your product? You need to do the minimum amount to make sure you check off all of the checkboxes, but that is all you are doing. All you are doing is showing that your company and your product are good enough to match the competition. As soon as you achieve that parity, you need to sell the one benefit that only you can provide.

You need to sell you. You need to prove to the prospect that you offer more value than your competitor. You demonstrate this value offering by the information that you share with the prospect. You confirm this value offering by the benefit that you provide understanding your prospect’s business. By helping your prospect improve his or her skills and achieve personal goals, you make yourself irreplaceable.

If your product can help the prospect achieve a goal, your competitor’s product can likely do the same. If your company can support the product and the customer, then your competitor can do the same. You are the only genuinely differentiated benefit to the prospect, and you need to make sure your prospect understands this benefit (and the associated value offering).

You know that you have indeed won the deal if the prospect says they would buy either your product or your competitor’s product from you. You were the most valuable part of the sale. Have you ever heard those words from a new customer?

Suggestions to get out of the rut of doing too much event-based selling

It is quite easy to break the habit of pushing events rather than positioning yourself. Let’s break it down to two separate types of deals:

  1. Prospect is actively engaged with the next steps.
  2. Prospect isn’t calling you, but instead, you are always trying to do the next activity.

Prospect actively engaged

The first situation above is more straightforward. Your product is resonating with the prospect. However, this is a situation where it is easy only to do events and undermine the value that you bring.

In this situation, you must force yourself to engage with decision-makers. You must make appointments that allow you to interact with them without a demo or a presentation. A good rule of thumb is to do two or three personal meetings for every event based meeting that you schedule.

If your company and industry allow it, it is a great time to take the decision-maker to lunch. If lunch is not possible, ask them to meet in their cafeteria as it will at least allow a more casual conversation. 

Prospect is not actively engaged

This second situation is where the event-based trap typically happens. In this case, the prospect doesn’t seem to be “getting it” after your demos or presentations. You are frustrated as you have this opportunity on your pipeline, but it isn’t moving. 

The obvious, but the incorrect, conclusion is that you need to show them more so that they get excited about your product’s capabilities. Instead, you need to understand their goals and if your product can help achieve those goals. Too often, the customer isn’t returning your calls because you do not understand what is important to them.

A crude but effective opening for the personal meeting could be as simple as, “I am sorry, John, but the product we have been discussing doesn’t seem to impact you or your company. What am I missing? What are you trying to achieve by talking to us?” This open-ended question is something that is difficult to say with a group of people from the prospect or if you have an army of people with you. It is much easier to have this open and honest conversation if it is just the two of you.

The answer to that open-ended question will allow you to start selling the most important differentiator: YOU!

Header Photo by Free-Photos (Pixabay)
Focus on unrealized goals with your prospects and not pain

Focus on unrealized goals with your prospects and not pain

During my recent podcast with Colin Stewart of Predictable Revenue, I discussed the concept that people do not buy from pain but rather from missed goals. I want to build on that topic in this post as it is a critical concept in your thought process.

When people make a decision to spend their own (or their company’s) money, they do so because their goals do not align with their reality. They wish that they were in a different situation and their desire to be in that situation is acute enough that they are willing to invest their time and their money to get closer to that goal.

Many people discuss ‘pain’ as the reason that people buy. This belief is not entirely true. Pain is the result of not realizing goals. Therefore, ‘pain’ is a ‘lagging indicator’ of the situation. In a competitive situation where there are no Trappers, pain may be a good driving force. Trappers try to get ahead of the situation and drive the buyer into a situation that is conducive to them winning the order. If you wait for ‘pain’ to occur, you run the risk of involving many more competitors and being much later in the sales process. Instead, you want to control the process, which means that you want to discuss the goals of both the organization and the individual people.

In addition to ‘pain’ being a secondary and lagging situation, it also has very negative connotations. It is much harder to discuss an individual’s ‘pains’ than it is to discuss the individual’s goals. Goals have a very positive feel and therefore make you a valued partner to the prospect. 

A similarity from your everyday life: if you have knee pain then you may see a doctor. While you and your insurance company will likely give the doctor money to cure that pain, it does not give you a positive feeling about the doctor – it is more of a necessary evil. However, you may have a goal of getting into shape and losing weight and therefore join the local gym. You are more likely to develop a long-term friendship with that gym and its employees even though you may give them much more money over the term of your membership. The people who are working in the gym are helping you get to your goal whereas the doctor is solving a problem or a ‘pain.’

Pain means that something is broken. It is a negative. While it may be common in this age of social media to whine and complain about broken things, it does not create a feeling of excitement or enjoyment. The excitement only comes when you are trying to achieve a goal.

The athletes on your favorite sports team don’t work hard in practice because they want to avoid the pain of losing. Instead, they work hard because they want to win. Winning is the goal. The desire to accomplish a goal allows everyone to be motivated to work hard. Talking about pain with an athlete is to talk about losses, hard practices, and injury. The athlete is much more motivated talking about the game wins and the plans to win the next games. The same is true with your prospect.

Pain is also not the reason to choose one product over another. Pain may justify the purchase, or it may start an evaluation process. If all the products solve the pain, then ultimately price and ‘terms and conditions’ will be the deciding factors. However, most evaluations are more concerned about goals and achieving those goals. In my book, I give an example of buying a TV, if your pain is that you have a broken TV then any TV should solve your pain. If your goal is to watch sporting events and feature films on the best-looking and best-sounding audiovisual system on the market, then your list may be more detailed and more demanding. 

Similarly, if your pain is that you cannot get to work in the morning, then hundreds of automobiles, along with some public transportation options, will solve your problem. If you have a goal of getting to work in a sporty red convertible, you will eliminate many of the choices, and the car salespeople must help you meet your goals.

The chosen product will match the goals of the prospect, not just the pains of the prospect.

In sales, we can use this to our benefit. We will center our initial questioning and needs development with our prospect on goals and the ability (or inability) to reach those goals. By doing this with the Discoverer (a role that we discuss more in my book, Eliminate Your Competition), we have the advantage of being a long-term and trusted ally. As the sales process evolves, other vendors are brought in to ascertain their possible remedies, but the prospect sees them as solutions to a problem (pain) that you have helped them identify because their reality was not the same as their goal. You, on the other hand, are a trusted confidant who only has their best interest at heart and you are willing to guide them as they explore their goals.

If you are curious about some of the terms that I use in this post, you may want to read my book. You may purchase my book, Eliminate Your Competition, from your favorite book retailer. The ebook version is available at the most popular retailers such as Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. The paperback version is also widely available at such retailers as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books A Million.

Photo by Tumisu (Pixabay)
Five Habits of the Best Salespeople (and how they differ from their underperforming peers)

Five Habits of the Best Salespeople (and how they differ from their underperforming peers)

Are you doing things every day to make you a successful salesperson? Are you following the best practices of top salespeople?

For managers, do you know which traits to encourage in your reps? Do you have a plan to make them better by pushing them in the right direction for success?

1. The top salespeople spend more of their time selling. High performers spend 36% selling than their peers. Top salespeople spend 19-23 hours selling per week, but average salespeople only spend 14-18 hours selling per week. Spend time focusing on activities that generate revenue. 

If you want to be a top salesperson, you need to spend time focusing on activities that generate revenue. It is not uncommon that salespeople will complain about being dragged into non-revenue generating activity, but few maximize their time. This also means that you need to understand that being a top salesperson is not a 40 hour per week job. You need to delegate the time-draining activity to weekends and after hours. When are you doing your expense reports (hopefully on Saturday morning)? When are you sending thank you notes and follow up emails (hopefully in the evening while helping the kids with homework)?

2. Top performing salespeople don’t give up easily. Top performers will try to contact a lead nine or more times before giving up. Average performers will only try to reach a non-responsive lead five times before moving on.

This activity doesn’t have to all be once-per-day phone calls. As I explain in my book, Eliminate Your Competition, you should be developing your own newsletter for maintaining a relationship with your customers, your top leads, and your cold leads.

3. Top performers are driven individuals. When asked to discuss their traits, 81% of top salespeople rate “being driven” as being very important. Average reps only said this 57% of the time.

4. Top performing salespeople think critically. When surveyed, top performers rate “critical thinking” as being essential to their success while only 40% for their average performer brethren.

5. Surprisingly, high performers tend to be more independent. Top salespeople solve their own business problems and are not needy of their manager. Sales managers report that they spend 30 minutes less time per week than their average performers.

Part of the reason that sales managers spend less time with their top-performing reps is that every manager wants at least a moderate improvement in rep productivity. By definition, it can be easier to get more net growth from a low performing rep than a top-performing rep.

However, to be a top salesperson, you need to be able to run your business. You can count on your manager for “air support” in times of need, but you need to have your own plans for moving your prospects through the pipeline and making small customers into big customers.

Following is a video that gives a few more details to these five critical traits.

Header Photo by OpenClipart-Vectors (Pixabay)
The Ten Things Sales Manager Need To Understand About Sales Performance

The Ten Things Sales Manager Need To Understand About Sales Performance

Knowledge is power! Having access to the best available information is a vital aspect of almost any operation, but especially important in the competitive sales environment. The following are key statistics every smart sales manager should know…

Header Photo by typographyimages (Pixabay)

Time Is Your Enemy. Here Are Some Tips To Eliminate It As Your Competition.

Time Is Your Enemy. Here Are Some Tips To Eliminate It As Your Competition.

Time will beat you in every deal if you let it. It is a constant competitor. It is relentless. It never takes a break.

In every deal that you lose, you could possibly say that you just ran out of time to convince the prospect that you had the best solution. Whenever you do a post-mortem on your lost deals, it usually comes down to a simple realization, you didn’t spend enough time on with key decision makers. Sometimes you were blocked from spending time with the decision maker that turned the deal against you, but we all know that those blockers can be defeated given enough time.

We also know that time kills good deals. On old manager told me a statement that I often repeat, “The only things that get better with time, are cheese and wine.”

Using your time effectively is critical to your success as a salesperson. Hopefully, I can give you some tips to encourage you to do a better job, but I do have some bad news. You have probably heard all of these tips before. There is nothing new I can tell you. The only difference is that you decide to do something about it this time, or you don’t. You can always procrastinate about getting better with time management.

Here is the reality, if time is your biggest competitor, then procrastination is his coach and champion. Procrastination will help you become a very mediocre salesperson. Procrastination helps time eliminate you in your deals. You need to overcome procrastination.

To beat procrastination, you need a friend/coach/champion for yourself. That friend/coach/champion is urgency. Sometimes urgency can come from your manager, but when your activity becomes so low that you need your manager to give you urgency, then there is a good chance that your job is in trouble. That is not a good thing. Try to be urgent without your manager helping you.

Maybe your urgency comes from your spouse and family. That is good urgency. That means you are staying on top of your business for the benefit of others. You want to close all the deals that you can find so that you can provide for your family. You want to give them all of the great things in life that they desire and deserve.

I know salespeople that keep a picture on their desk or as the background of their computer merely to establish that urgency. To remind themselves that they are working hard so that they are providing a great life for their family. That is a good urgency.

How urgent are you?

Here is a bit of math to help you increase your urgency and eliminate procrastination as a competitor which in turn will help you beat time.

Assume that you have a 1 million dollar quota. Also, assume that the average product sale for your company is $50K. To continue this scenario, lets assume that you have learned from the most successful salespeople in your company that in order to consistently do 150% of quota (or $1,500,000 – remember that you should always think of your goals as a complete number!), you will need to close at least three deals for four times the average deal size. In other words, you need to close three large deals of 200K each.

While you have an annual quota, it is best to think that you always have to do 150% of quota in any given 12-month window. So in the next 12 months, you need to close:

3 – 200K deals for a total of $600,000.

18 – 50K deals for a total of $900,000.

You need to close 21 deals, and three of them need to be large deals to achieve your goal of 150% of quota.

The Power Matrix that I describe in my book Eliminate Your Competition suggests that you should cover 9 people in your small deals since they are less than 10% of your quota. It also tells you that you need to reach 25 people in your three large deals.

Some of those people that you need to cover in the Power Matrix you will meet with only once but others you will visit with many times. Some of your meetings will have multiple people in them. For rough assumptions, let’s assume that you need twice as many meetings are there are people that you need to cover. Therefore, you need 50 sales calls on your big deals and 18 sales calls on your smaller deals.

The above math means you need to make 150 (3×50) sales calls on your big deals and you need to make 324 sales calls on your small deals. That is a total of 474 sales calls or just shy of 10 per week. It also means that roughly ⅓ of your sales calls are going to be on large deals.

If each sales call is 45-60 minutes, then the overall time for each meeting is about 90 minutes from parking lot to parking lot. That is 42,660 minutes of sales calls every year for the deals that you win.

You will never win every deal. If you follow the suggestions of my book, Eliminate Your Competition, then you will eliminate your competition far more frequently than you will be eliminated. Let’s assume you win 75% of your deals. This means you will work just as hard on the deals you lose as those you win. That means that you need to increase the 42,660 minutes by 25% which is an additional 10,665 minutes. That is a total of 53,325 minutes of sales calls per year and approximately 12-13 sales calls per week.

There are approximately 120,000 work-minutes in a year. You can do this. In fact, you can easily do this. The only issue is if you procrastinate. If you procrastinate then procrastination’s friend, time, will eliminate you from some of these victories and from achieving your goal.

I talk in my book, Eliminate Your Competition that you need to be making sales calls before the customer starts their decision-making process. Assuming that means you are calling on the customer 36 weeks before the order (the assumption that I make in the case study in my book Eliminate Your Competition) then today, you need to be calling on 19 opportunities (21 divided by 50 working weeks in a year times 36 weeks decision-making timeframe multiplied by 1.25 because you lose 25%). At least three of those opportunities need to be candidates for big deals.

More math, you have to make 12 sales calls this week. Above, we determined ⅓ of those have to be on deals you think could be large deals. That is 4 per week.

Hopefully, this math (modified to match your quotas and average sales metrics) helps you create the urgency to achieve your goals.

You may purchase my book Eliminate Your Competition from your favorite book retailer. The ebook version is available at the most popular retailers such as Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. The paperback version is also widely available at such retailers as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books A Million.

Here are some tips that will now help you develop your time management.

1 – Set goals

I discussed in an earlier article on how to set your goals, but now you can amend that with the math above. For instance, in this article, you need to make 12 sales calls this week. Also, you need to make four sales calls this week on opportunities that are going to be large deals.

2 – Find a good time management system and use it.

Everyone is different in how this works. There are lots of blogs out there to help you. Pick one and stick to it.

3 – Tackle your biggest tasks in the morning.

The different systems out there will give you different advice. However, as a salesperson, your day will almost definitely get crazier as the day goes on. Therefore, every morning you need to make sure you accomplish your number one task before you do anything else. In my opinion, your number one task every day is to make sure that in the next two weeks, you have 12 appointments scheduled with four of those appointments being for deals that are expected to be substantial.

4 – Follow the 80-20 rule. Another great time management tip is to use the 80-20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle.

In this case, 80% of your revenue is going to come from 20% of your activity. The Pareto Principle reinforces that you need to focus on your big deals as you need to have your 25 people in the Power Matrix covered and comfortable with you, your product, and your company.

5 – Schedule email response times.

Don’t respond to incoming emails until you accomplish your top goals for the day. Yes, this is difficult, but you need to ignore the marketing emails and even the emails from your boss until you get your top goal accomplished – get your appointments scheduled for the next two weeks.

6 – Take frequent breaks when working.

If you have an office day, you need to stand up and walk around every 45 minutes. Get a coffee or water. Look outside for a few minutes. Please don’t go out and smoke though because smoking is an almost guaranteed trip to the hospital or the morgue when you get older.

7 – Meditate or exercise every day.

Some time-management gurus will tell you to do this first thing in the morning. This may not be possible for some sales professionals due to interactions with customers or maybe the home office in other time zones. Instead, either workout or meditate (or both) sometime during the day. If morning works for you, that is better, but daily is essential.

8 – Make to-do lists in the evening for the next day.

Before you check out of work for the day, update your task list. If you prefer a piece of paper, then rewrite a clean version for the next day. If you prefer a software-based task list, review it and make sure it is accurate. Make this the last thing you do every day. Make sure that making your goal for appointments per week is one of the top one or two things for the next day.

9 – Turn off social media app alerts.

Every day you will log into social media to make sure you are appropriately communicating to your prospects. You need to create a reputation that you are making them smarter. However, confine this interaction to once in the morning and then once in the afternoon. For your personal social life of looking at cat videos and pictures of your niece – do that in the evening on your own time.

Header Photo by ۞DLB۞