Julie’s Blog

Guest post by Steve Richard of Vorsight

Picture in your mind the classic sales funnel.  People pour a lot of stuff (good, bad and ugly) into the top of the funnel and over time (and with structured process) it spits out paying customers and clients.  As you progress toward the lower stages and the spout, there are fewer prospects and hence more order and control for the salesperson.  ValueSelling does an amazingly good job of giving you a framework for getting through the stages of the funnel.   What about the top of the funnel?  Before you set the first meeting what do you really have with your prospects…NOTHING!  Even if you get a perfectly completed web form from marketing, before you call or email this person you have absolutely no chance of closing a deal.  In the top of the funnel, chaos rules because there are a lot of prospects and tons of potential outcomes.  What you need to enhance your ValueSelling approach is a corresponding pre-sales process prior to even having a meeting.     So people always ask me, “Yeah, I get that I need to structure activities before the first meeting, but what does that look like?  What are the pieces that my team needs to get good at to be successful?”  Good news: the first third of the sales cycle breaks down into five easy to understand components: 

1. Prospecting – How do I treasure hunt and assemble the puzzle of identifying the correct buyer with direct line and email and seeing where he/she fits into the org chart.  What are some good unconventional research approaches?
2. Pitching – How do I write compelling talking points to pique interest and tease out a dialogue to get my prospects talking?
3. Handling Objections – How do I overcome knee-jerk reaction objections over the phone and get my prospects to agree to a first meeting?
4. Emailing and Leaving VM – How do I map out a contact plan with unique emails and voicemails to get past all the vendor noise and increase my prospects’ replies?
5. Establishing Process – How do I plan my time, activities, data, and practice to be as efficient and effective as possible?

 This is why cold calling is not dead.  No matter how good your marketing engine is, you still need to pick up the phone and engage.  YOU are the missing piece to success!   Getting in the door is all about momentum.  Talk can only get you so far, so rather than discussing it, I encourage you to get out there and do it.  Please feel free to contact me or Julie with any further questions or insight.

Last week, ValueSelling Associates hosted a complimentary webinar on How to Sell Effectively in Turbulent Times.  It was very popular and well attended.  A number of questions came from the participants during the 60 minute session.  Many of those questions along with their answers are provided in this post.

 What is the best approach to overcoming the objection that the customer already perceives your competitor has differentiation that is the most important issue to them in driving their decision?  In the ValueSelling Framework, the scenario you are describing implies that you do not have a differentiated VisionMatch.   A VisionMatch is a confirmation between the buyer and the seller that there is linkage and connection between the buyer’s critical issues and problems and your solution.  In a differentiated VisionMatch, your solution is perceived to the buyer to be superior to any of the alternatives available to them. When you have a prospect that has a VisionMatch with a competitive alternative, your strategy must be to break their current vision of the solution and replace it with your own.  There are a couple of key tactics to achieve that strategy: 1.        Surface additional problems and issues that are better suited for your solution.  If you expand the prospect’s view of their need, you may have the opportunity to reposition your solution in this new context.2.        Work with the client to reprioritize their issues and problems that will put you in a more favorable position.3.        Uncover Anxiety or Risk with the competitor’s solution.  Breaking a competitive VisionMatch may require you to use well crafted Anxiety questions.  An Anxiety question is one that will evoke and emotional response and enable the prospect to momentarily experience the consequences of their decision.  Anxiety questions can be used to uncover issues that the client may not be acknowledging in order to create  a new VisionMatch with your solution.  Risk can be fairly easily addressed qualitatively - so what’s the best way to present it in a meaningful quantitative manner?  The first step in understanding how to present risk mitigation to a prospect is to understand what risk is meaningful to him or her.   It is important that we drive our conversation to be very specific with our clients and prospects regarding risk and/or implications in this economic environment. Specific questions that you may want to ask are:               

• Can you describe the impact of not resolving this issue?
• Can that be quantified?               
• What would happen if this initiative is not successful? 
• Can that be quantified? 

The key to delivering a great sales presentation is the sales person’s ability to make that relevant to the audience.  If you seek specific and targeted information before the presentation, you will be able to present the quantitative and qualitative information back in a relevant contact.  It is relevance that drives the meaningfulness of the information. What is the best way to address the issue that is often raised, which is the technical qualification is your admission ticket to the business issues dialog?  Each of us has to have the skillset and ability to give an executive a reason to meet with us in the first place.   Most sales professionals request meetings with executives to fulfill the sales person wants and needs.   A better strategy is to ask for a meeting to satisfy the executive’s wants and needs. One way to demonstrate that when you are campaigning for access is to have a credibility introduction which includes a brief story of how you have solved business problems with your technical solutions for other companies.   This credibility introduction often provides the admission ticket to have a business discussion.  In order to prepare this introduction and reference story, you first need to understand the linkage between your technical solutions and the business issues facing the companies and industries that you work with.  What is an effective, non-invasive way to discover Personal Value with your prospect?  Just do it – ask the personal value question.  If you have effectively built a good relationship with a prospect, you have earned the right to ask this question.  Most sales people don’t ask the personal value question, not because they don’t think the answer would be valuable but because those specific questions make the sales person uncomfortable. To be a successful sales executive in this economic environment, you are going to have to be disciplined and force yourself to be uncomfortable.  Examples of opening the personal value conversation are: 

• How will this project impact you personally?
• What is resolving this issue worth to you, personally? 

The worst thing that happens, is that the individual say “I don’t know” or “I won’t tell you.”  Neither of those responses will kill a deal.   What is an effective, non-invasive way to discover Business Initiative/Goals of your prospect in a short-cycle sale? Having an effective conversation and bringing discipline and structure to sales calls can make a difference in both short sales cycles and long sales cycles.  In a short sales cycle, a disciplined approach is critical because you may not get a second chance at the decision maker. If a prospect proactively contacts you to initiate a sales cycle, a question that I want worked into the conversation as quickly as possible is why?  Why now and Why us?  By being curious as to how they reached the conclusion to contact you can give you information and insight to their issues, goals, and problems.   If you are contacting a prospect to initiate a sales call, you may not need to back the prospect up in their buying process to get information.  So you will want to be prepared with questions that enable you to get meaningful information and insight on their business.   In my experience, I find that it is effective to be very transparent in this discovery process.  Letting the prospect know that the more information you have about their specific and unique business will enable you to be more effective in helping them achieve their goals and resolve their issues. If we are skilled as conversationalists and well prepared, this discovery process is not an interrogation and is typically not resisted by prospects. What do you say when prospect says, “We see the value but we just don’t have the budget, and your pricing is just too high.”This is two different questions.  Let’s tackle the first one:  We see the value but we just don’t have the budget. As sales professionals, what we really provide is investment opportunities for our clients.  In this economy, your ability to focus on real value and return on those investments will be the difference between winning and losing. If all of the expenditures that this prospect has must be budgeted, I would want understand the budget process.  How was this budget created?  What is the process to change the budget?  The reality is that budgets change every day – so the first objective you have is to determine if this is a real objection or a polite way to push you aside. When budget is an objection, as I understand the budget process, I also want to understand who can change the budget.  That person may turn out to be the ultimate decision maker that I need to gain access to and create a VisionMatch.  If you are resolving a critical business issue that is important to the executive, they will find the money.  Even in this economy, companies are spending money every day. I would also want to be very specific in quantifying the value.  What value do they see?  What do they think they can achieve?  If that value is real – why wouldn’t a rationale person look at the return on investment? The second question is how to handle the objection;  Your price is too high? The root of every pricing objection has to do with value.  First, I would want to understand – to high compared to what? Once I understood the answer to that, I could refocus on creating and confirming a differentiated VisionMatch and the ensuing differentiated value.  Second, I would want to go back and confirm value.  In many cases, when price becomes the objection, the sales person has not effectively confirmed value to begin with; therefore they have nothing to go back to.  Your price should never be introduced in the vacuum of not understanding the return on that investment.   What are the best ways to get a customer to make a decision before the end of the year? Our timelines may not be the same as the customer’s timeline. The first step is to focus on creating  a mutual timeline.  I work with sales executives every day who have no idea when a client may buy from them because they have never asked the right questions.  They hope it will be soon – but have never driven any specificity into the dialog with a prospect. To create a mutual timeline, focus on the perceived and expected value with the prospect.  When do they need to have this issue resolved?  What is the impact of waiting an additional 30-60 days?  You can begin to build a reverse timeline that to about achieving their value – the purchase of your product or service is just a means to an end. Once you have an understanding and a mutual timeline in place, you can look for opportunities to accelerate that timeline that are meaningful to the prospect.  Do incentives exist that a client can take advantage of which would add value to them and motivate them to act sooner or later? Is it better to qualify in person or over phone?  If you are an outside sales person, the phone is a tool to obtain an appointment.  If you are an inside sales person, the phone has to be used to actually qualify, position, and close. I do not agree on PV and BV. That during economy downtimes BV is less important for selling. If there is PV and a smaller BV, then when he needs to ask for budget, he will not get it. Even if it is a strong PV. In a down economy, people are still people.  All people are motivated and our job is to understand that motivation so we can tap into it and leverage it.  The key is to uncovering the personal value with the power person or ultimate decision maker.  If that individual does not see any personal value in you and your solution – you will lose every time. There are projects every day with high ROI that do not get funded.  Why – because they are not perceived as critical to the senior executive.  To be successful in this economy, you will need to qualify your prospects with rigor, often call higher in organizations, and understand what is important to the power people. How do you negotiate the right power to the table even though the person you are with say they are the only power? First of all, they may be telling the truth and you could be working with the ultimate power person.  I am assuming that by the very nature of your question, you question whether or not this is reality. I have been blindsided with this scenario a few times  over the years.  I am told I am working with power and the ultimate decision maker, only to find out that someone else actually had to approve the funding.  I have minimized this risk by getting very specific with the prospect about what happens after they make a decision to move forward with me?  How does that purchase actually get executed?  Who else gets involved after your decision is made.  This series of questions has not been disrespectful to the person that I am working with, and gives me a lot of information about who else I may need to involve in the sales process. The second strategy is to use triangulation.  Triangulation is the process of meeting with at least three people within your prospect organization and asking them the same questions:  Who makes this decision?  Who can veto this decision?  Who is impacted by this decision?  With multiple data points, you can get closer to the truth with more data points in an organization. Selling in this economy is difficult yet not impossible!  Your ability to successfully qualify opportunities will be one critical factor in your success.  For many of us, there will be fewer opportunities in our pipeline during these difficult economic times.  To be successful, our win rate will need to increase and we will need to be very deliberate with our sales process. What is working or not working for you in these economic times?