The #TransparencySale: The #ChallengerSale was a needed sales evolution. Another evolution is coming.

(repost from an article I wrote for OpenView Labs on May 31st, 2017)

One could argue that the oldest profession in the world is actually sales. Since the first time a caveman sold a wheel, certain core elements of the profession have stayed the same, however, the intricacies of the methodology have evolved. And they are about to evolve again.

Although there have been many methodologies, including everything from snake-oil sales, pyramid sales and door-to-door selling, the traditional approach was rooted in “feature-benefit” selling; A vacuum salesperson would ring a person’s doorbell. The resident / potential buyer would open the door. The salesperson would greet that person by throwing a handful of dirt into their doorway. Then, while describing the features of their product, they’d plug in their product, cleaning up the mess they made, in hopes that the features and proof would lead to a purchase.

Around 1980, the evolution of selling began to accelerate. It was then that Solution Selling became the rage. Piles of books including Strategic Selling & Solution Selling hit the shelves over the next 20 years, with a whole host of associated books including Customer Centric Selling & SPIN Selling. In this era, the sales process consisted of an extended “discovery” phase, designed to help the seller diagnose the buyer’s problems or needs, focused on how the buyer does what they do today. Then, the seller would prescribe the solution to the buyer’s unique situation, framed by helping them do what they do today, but better.

In March of 2009, coming off the heels of the worst recession in 26 years, Harvard Business Review published the article, “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers” (by Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin & Geoffrey Moore), and things changed again. From the momentum of this provocative sale rose The Challenger Sale in 2011, which represented a big change in the approach sellers took to buyers. Given that buyers now have so much access to information, earlier in the sale…delaying initial contact with sellers, and requiring greater consensus to move forward, sellers would need to lead with “insights” based on a buyer’s unrecognized problem, need or assumption.

In every change, the “traditional” approach to selling did not get thrown to the curb. Instead, each new era in selling was an evolution of the previous approaches.

Now, 8 years after the “provocative” approach to sales hit the HBR, the way sellers approach buyers is about to require another change.

The data is pointing to the realization that by 2020, a new evolution of selling will emerge. This one will be represented by the rise of the “Transparency Sale”.

What is it, and why do I believe this to be just over the horizon? Let’s start by thinking about how buyers, when left to their own devices, buy the things they need online today. According to PowerReviews research:

• 86% of shoppers consult with online reviews before making a purchase, as consumers now trust other consumers more than they trust the brands themselves.
• Purchase likelihood peaks when the average star rating of a product is between 4.2 and 4.5 stars. A shopper is more likely to purchase a product with an average of 4.2 stars than one with a 5 star rating.

The human brain is wired to resist being sold-to…it’s an inherent defense mechanism. A buyer is resistant to the unknown, which has always been in conflict with the way sellers sell. Sellers have always sold as though their solution was a 5 (on a 5 point scale), but buyers know better, and it’s becoming easier for them to find out why you are not a “5”. A buyer doesn’t believe a perfect score, and will seek dissenters for a full picture of the pros and cons of a solution before making a purchase of substance.

Buyers have always relied on more sources of information than just that provided by the seller. For many years, the prominence of analysts in technology evaluations was key. As a seller, your position on the “magic quadrant” of whatever applicable analyst report was one of the determinants of your success or failure. Buyers also check references, and do “back-channel” references to avoid the 5.0 score speak they receive from the references the sellers provide.

Today, information is everywhere. Your customers are talking about your products and services. In some cases, they are now sharing feedback on your products and services to independent entities (like a Yelp for the B2B world), collecting and displaying reviews of products to help spread the voice of the consumer, aiding buyers in making smarter purchases.

This growth in “the feedback economy” will force sellers to change the way they approach buyers. Sellers will need to own that dialogue and lead with those vulnerabilities. In the Transparency Sale, sellers will begin to present themselves as less-than-perfect to help a buyer understand why they’re a 4.2 – 4.5, and not a perfect 5. They will disarm the buyer with this information, and engage in a true conversation about the value of their solution. They will still challenge, they will still discover, they will still position features and benefits, but they’ll also present applicable shortcomings. They’ll present reasons customers churn. They’ll present their customer survey results, and why their net promoter-score isn’t a perfect 100.

Sales cycles will shorten, as the relationship between buyer and seller will include more trust. Sellers will spend less time on opportunities they should have qualified out in the beginning. Buyers will be less likely to believe false claims of a competitor, because that trust and openness will be established from the beginning. Sellers will differentiate through their honesty and openness, and develop longer lasting partnerships.

To win in the future, sellers will need to become the source for information the buyers cannot get anywhere else…their own customer feedback data. Sellers will collect it, analyze it, act on it, but more importantly, share it.

Just like brands and retailers displaying positive and negative ratings and reviews on their own web pages online, the successful future sellers will lead with transparency.

(for more information, check out www.transparencysale.com)

Advancing Your Sales Career - my chat w/ @Jim_Brown on this week's @SalesTuners podcast

This week, I was invited to the Sales Tuners weekly sales podcast. Cool chat with Jim Brown, talking all things sales.  Here's the link to it...and I'd encourage you to check out the other episodes...all great stuff!
  
https://www.salestuners.com/caponi/

Todd Caponi, (@tcaponi), SVP of Sales at PowerReviews, knew he wanted to be in sales after watching his Dad come home after work every day with a big smile on his face—a smile Todd now shares. Knowing where he wanted to go made all the difference in his career. After starting out as an average rep, Todd realized his passion for sales was in teaching. He took a risk by venturing out on his own and buying a sales training business. His thirst for learning and passion for understanding buyer behavior continues to define his success.

With a learner’s mentality, Todd trains his sales team to teach prospective clients about their services. He’s found that customers want to learn, they want to get better, they love free information, and he makes sure his team is willing to share it. Following this approach Todd encourages his reps to align sales activities specifically to their buyer’s behavior.

By truly learning about their prospect, a rep can share ideas with they may not have thought of otherwise. The ‘art of the possible’ is the illumination of unexpected opportunities. Communicating these possibilities with a buyer forms trust, teaching moments for the rep, and a sustainable relationship that helps hit sales goals.

Takeaways

1. Ask for Time on the Calendar: The best evidence a customer is truly engaged is their willingness to put you in their calendar for another discussion. Reps lose control of deals because they’re not getting on the customer’s calendar. Before you hang up or step out of the meeting, secure the follow-up.
2. Develop a Thirst for Learning: To continue improving, stay engaged in your own education. Whether it’s reading books, listening to podcasts, subscribing to trade magazines or just participating in discussions, you have to stay current with both your buyer and your industry.
3. Don’t Pounce: When handling objections, let the prospect believe that it’s the first time you’ve heard that issue and attempt to solve it specifically for them.

Book Recommendations

• The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
• The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge
• What Great Salespeople Do by Ben Zoldan and Michael T. Bosworth

Sponsor

• Octiv – Transform the way your sales assets are created, distributed and tracked around the world. Because a better sales process is a better buying experience.

"The Five Fs of Driving Revenue Capacity": My (podcast) interview on the B2B Growth Show

I was recently a featured guest on the B2B Growth Show podcast. Quick, 15 minute audio podcast discussing the categories used to organize and drive revenue capacity for sales organizations.

Here are the details:  http://sweetfishmedia.com/driving-revenue-capacity-todd-caponi/

"The effectiveness of your sales team to drive revenue determines if everything else in your business will be successful.

It’s easier to keep track of the status of your sales team and what needs to be tackled next by using the Five F’s: Field, Focus, Fundamentals, Forecast, and Fun.

By keeping these categories in mind as a sales leader, you can see where your team is working well and where things need to be improved.

In this episode, Todd Caponi, Senior VP of Sales at PowerReviews, talks about how he uses these five categories to create scalable growth in the sales organization at PowerReviews.

You can find this interview, and many more, by subscribing to the B2B Growth Show on iTunes. If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode by clicking here."

The Antithesis of Sales Process: Successful Selling Requires Creativity (via @SeismicSoftware)

Republished from Seismic Software's blog found here:  http://www.seismic.com/blog/post/the-antithesis-of-sales-process-successful-selling-requires-creativity

This is a guest post from our friend Todd Caponi, an expert in sales enablement and operations. He shares his tips for successful selling below.

I was out to dinner with clients a few weeks ago, when we inevitably got to talking about kids. One woman at the table mentioned that she has triplets. During the conversation, she explained that each of the three are completely different: different personalities, likes, dislikes, et cetera.

Being a geek for sales methodology, my mis-wired brain immediately started thinking about sales process. Each of these three children are obviously born from the same parents, at the same time, and growing up in the exact same environment. How could all three be so different? But, again, what does this have to do with sales?

It’s about sales process. Historically companies create sales processes to attempt repeatability and scale within their organizations. “We sell X product to companies, so here is the process each sales person must complete to create efficiency and optimization.”

But, much like my client’s three triplets, every sales engagement is different. Each has unique customer requirements, perceptions, organizational limitations, budgets, timing, go-to-market strategies, and more, and they’re each likely at different stages in the buying cycle when the client brings you in.

With that, traditional sales process needs to be rethought:
- Successful selling demands creativity and innovation, and
- Seller-focused sales processes restrict creativity and innovation.

Here are three things you can start doing today:
1) Per another one of my blog posts titled “The Modern, Simple Sales Process,” focus your sales process on prescribing seller behavior based on recognizing and driving buyer behavior. Think about today’s environment when creating it: where the client has access to more information than ever before, prior to engaging with you.

2) Make sure every one of your sales people are students of history. Innovation is accelerated through knowing history. Client stories— both in terms of the customer’s unique requirements and the solutions to match— but also the journey, should be the foundation for enablement (whether they were successful journeys or not). Think about the greatest inventions in our history; like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, the best ideas and innovations often come from combining multiple potentially unrelated ideas.

3) Collaborate often with a diverse group of individuals within your organization. We used to call these “Key Deal Reviews.” We’d bring 5-10 diverse individuals from within our organization. The rep is not allowed to prepare a presentation or Powerpoint, but must be ready to answer questions about the opportunity (which reduces the amount of “B.S.” dramatically, replaced with more “I don’t knows,” which is what you want during these calls). One person would ask a list of assessment questions about the deal, then, once the account team or rep have had a chance to answer all of them, each person on the phone would weigh in. The result is an honest assessment on where the holes are, and an offering of creative ideas to fill those holes and win opportunities.

We'd like to thank Todd for his contributions! Connect with him on his website or on Twitter: @tcaponi.

The Modern, Simple Sales Process

Take a look at your sales process.  Is it a 12-step program?  Does it have so many steps, you need a FitBit to measure it?  Does it rest on the foundation of 1980’s sales theory?

It’s 2014.  The way buyers buy has changed dramatically (See my earlier blog post called “Your ‘Cliff'sNotes’ Guide to The Challenger Sale”).  With that, your sales process has to change with it.  And, for it to be scalable & repeatable, which is typically the purpose of a documented process, it must rest on a foundation of simplicity & intuitiveness.  If a rep needs a 10-slide PowerPoint deck to know where they are and what they need to do, two months after you force-march everyone to learn it, you’ll have less than a 10% adoption.

How do we change the process to fit today’s buying environment, and keep it simple & intuitive?

Simply put, keep it under five steps, and structure it around recognizing and driving buyer behavior…not seller behavior.

Here’s a simple place to start.  Think about your sales process with three sections, which match how a buyer buys: 

• Section 1:  “Why Change?”  To start, you want the buyer to decide that their status quo is no longer sustainable.  At the end of this section of your sales process, you & your prospect should be able to mutually answer the question, “Why change?” 
• Section 2:  “Why You?”  Once the buyer has been triggered for change, the focus now is around why, if change is necessary, change with your company is the best path forward.  Mutual discovery intensifies…and at the end of this section of your sales process, you & your prospect should be able to mutually answer the question, “Why (insert your company name here)?” 
• Section 3:  “Why Now?”  As the buyer has opted for your company as the one they will partner with going forward, this section is now a chase to the finish line…focused on mobilizing the prospect to act now versus later.  It’s focused on finalizing terms, securing final approvals and signing contracts.  The risk in your sales cycle is always more present at the end of the cycle…when approvers who haven’t necessarily been involved ask that same question…”why now?”.    

Think about your sales process.  Is it buyer centric?  Does your sales team need a 10-slide deck to understand it, or can they recite it in their sleep because it’s so simple & intuitive?

Your "Cliff's Notes" Guide to The Challenger Sale

As a big fan of The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, and as someone who has taught the Challenger content / approaches to selling many times over the past couple of years, I thought...wouldn't it be cool if there was a "Cliff's Notes" type guide it?  Although I've seen a few versions over the web, I pieced this together the below (in under 1000 words) using some of their own language along with some of my spin.  I hope it can serve as a reminder to those who have read the book, and as an initial foundation for those who haven't.  (This does not excuse you from reading the book!)

Your “Cliff’s Notes” Guide to The Challenger Sale

The traditional approach to selling no longer works in today's buying environment. Our deals are increasingly complex and customers have access to more information earlier in the sale than ever before.  As a result, customers are buying in new ways, delaying initial contact with suppliers and requiring greater consensus to move forward.

Because the current buying environment is outpaced by the old sales playbook, the Corporate Executive Board conducted extensive research, from both the seller and customer perspective, into what it takes to win today. Simply stated, winning organizations lead with insight and challenge customer assumptions to mobilize customers around a purchase.

The Right Seller Profile

The Challenger model is a research based approach that classifies sales representatives in the following five types:

1. The Hard Worker
• Always willing to go extra mile
  
• Doesn't give up easily
  
• Self-motivated   
  
• Interested in feedback and development


2. The Challenger
• Always has a different view of the world
  
• Understand the customer's business
  
• Loves to debate
  
• Pushes the customer


3. The Relationship Builder
• Builds strong advocates in customer organization
  
• Generous in giving time to help others
  
• Gets along with everyone


4. The Lone Wolf
• Follows own instincts
  
• Self-assured
  
• Difficult to control


5. The Reactive Problem Solver
• Reliably respond to internal and external stakeholders
  
• Ensures that all problems are solved
  
• Detailed oriented

One clear winner – and one clear loser:  Challenger sales reps are 4X more likely to be high-performers in complex selling environments based on their ability to teach customers new insights, tailor their messages to varying customer stakeholders, and take control of the commercial conversation. These reps successfully make customers-instead of just finding them.  The least likely to be a high-performer in a complex selling environment?  The Relationship Builder.
The Right Commercial Conversations

The biggest incremental opportunity for driving customer purchase and loyalty lies in the rep's ability to differentiate the sales experience. Challengers lead with insight, reframe the way customers think about their business, and offer solutions tied to the supplier's unique strengths and capabilities. This is called Commercial Teaching.

Teach:  Lead To, Not With, Your Unique Differentiators

Common Rep Approach: Reps are most comfortable talking about what they know best—their organization. They typically start their pitch describing their company’s capabilities, history, or products’ features and benefits. In other words, they lead with their unique strengths.

Shortcoming: In the Challenger research they’ve found that, in the minds of customers, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell one supplier from the other in terms of what they sell, brand, product quality, and even price.

What You Should Do Differently: Lead to, not with, our unique differentiators. Challengers do this by first teaching customers something new about their business and their needs.

Tailor:  Modify Pitches to Account for Individual Stakeholders' Role and Function

Common Rep Approach: Reps often spend a lot of time memorizing their pitch, and then re-using that pitch with various customer stakeholders, regardless of the individual's role or function.

Shortcoming: Customer stakeholders have different functional responsibilities, goals, and day-to-day worries. As a result, their priorities and measures of success differ. Even the best insight, if positioned poorly, will have little commercial impact.

What You Should Do Differently: First focus on uncovering and understanding the outcomes each customer stakeholder is trying to accomplish. Then create a sense of urgency with each customer stakeholder by framing the implications of action vs. inaction in terms and objectives that are relevant to that individual.

Take Control:  How Challengers Take Control of the Buying Process

There are three distinct ways their research has shown that Challengers take control of the buying process. These differences are highlighted in how Challengers negotiate, how they drive momentum into a deal, and which customer stakeholders they choose to engage.

Negotiation

Common Rep Approach: In a customer interaction, reps often err on the side of being too passive, avoiding tension at any cost to make situations more amicable and encourage collaboration.

Shortcoming: Customers control the interaction and often force price-based negotiations, or delays decision making.

What You Should Do Differently: Prepare to take charge of the buying process and focus the conversation. Customers likely focus on a limited set of negotiables—mostly driven by price—Challengers help broaden the customer perspective.

Stakeholder Selection

Common Rep Approach—Reps either try to find the “true” decision-maker (or economic buyer) who can overrule an indecisive group, or to find an advocate (or coach) who can guide them through the organization and champion their solution internally.

Shortcoming: CEB Sales research has documented that senior decision makers are increasingly unwilling to make a decision without broader organizational consensus. Faced with the task of building consensus, sellers often turn to advocates/coaches in the customer organization. However, CEB Sales research reveals that true advocates rarely exist (<1 individuals="" of="" span="">

What You Should Do Differently: Their research shows that customer stakeholders fall into one of seven distinct profiles. Not all of the profiles are equally useful—some excel at rallying their organizations around a purchase and ultimately driving consensus. These are the customer stakeholders that your high performing reps target; which are referred to as Mobilizers. Rarely are these Mobilizers supportive of a given supplier—rather, they are supportive of good ideas for their organization.

Driving Momentum into a Deal

Common Rep Approach—Reps tend to seek out a "coach" or advocate on the customer side to help the deal move forward and build consensus.

Shortcoming: Customers faced with new or complex purchase decisions are often unable to articulate the full set of stakeholders, timelines, decision milestones, or likely objections, and as a result, good business easily loses momentum.

What You Should Do Differently: Prepare to take control of the sale by coaching customers through the purchase process. Actively guiding customer stakeholders through the consensus building process via a mutual sequence of events document is a clear high-performer approach.

What Diets and Sales Have In Common

Are you on a diet? Have you ever been on one? I’m going to guess the answer to one of those questions is "yes", considering that the Boston Medical Center approximates that over 45 million Americans diet each year…


With that, what did you measure? How did you know you were on track to accomplish your goal?

I’m going to assume that you set a goal to lose a certain number of pounds within a certain timeframe, as measured by your numerical weight. But then, did you just go about doing what you always have done, then measure your weight at the end of the timeframe to see how you did? Or, did you start to look at your metrics day one…like calorie intake and/or carb / sugar intake. Did you start to also look at your ratios…like the number of calories burned in a day through exercise compared to the number of calories you consumed?

Why did you measure? Was it because your partner / spouse made you?

Let’s shift the conversation to your sales world. Your goal is your bookings / quota. However, how many of you actually measure metrics and ratios that contribute to your ability to achieve that target? Or, do you just get to the end of the quarter, get on the scale (i.e., look at your CRM dashboard), and say to yourself, “Oh, crap! Didn’t make it…”

So often, we think of metric and ratio measurement as a big-brother activity, where our bosses use it to understand whether we’re actually doing our job when they’re not watching. However, metrics drive your ability to control your own destiny. Much like the ratio of calorie intake to calorie burn controls your ability to hit your weight loss goal, there are activities and ratios you can measure immediately that control your ability to hit your targets.

How many outbound prospecting calls do you make per day? How many result in scheduled appointments (and what’s the ratio)? Of those appointments, how many result in qualified opportunities (and what’s the ratio)? Then, how many of those qualified opportunities result in closed deals (and what’s the ratio)? Finally, what’s your average sale value?

From there, it becomes a relatively easy activity to work backwards from the target you want to achieve. When you know those ratios, you begin to know exactly how many calls you’ll need to generate the results needed. You also immediately know what ratios you can focus on to improve yourself professionally.

Metrics play a key role in that for your overall business for many of the same reasons…your company’s ability to proactively predict and adjust to help achieve the business targets. The business knows what proactive measures it needs to look at, and often drives those measures down to the sales org.

In your diets, and in your focus to attain your 2013 targets and beyond, control your destiny by focusing on your metrics and ratios today. Happy to help you figure out where to start…

Todd

Four Fundamentals of Building Presentations

Every presentation has a person who is speaking, and an audience that is listening. To be successful, knowing how the human brain works is vitally important. The more you know about human cognitive function, the more likely you'll be able to put together a presentation that inspires, challenges and motivates your audience to take some sort of action…which is likely your ultimate objective.


Over the past few years, I've collected some nuggets that can quickly help you put together a vastly improved experience for your audience. Here are the four primary areas to keep in mind when creating and structuring a presentation that will ensure it has the greatest impact:


Number 1: People learn in small chunks…not a long firehose of PowerPoints. I encourage you to check out www.ted.com. It's a collection of great talks by people on a whole host of topics. You'll notice that the majority of those talks are less than 20 minutes long. Why is that? Realize that the "sustained" attention span of an adult is thought to be no longer than 15-20 minutes. And, that's for someone performing surgery, handling fragile objects, or anything else requiring consistent results on a task over time. Listening to your presentation likely isn't one of those things…so count on your audience's attention span being much less.


With that, when a person loses focus, they can choose to re-focus as well…but it's our job to create that re-focus. When putting together your presentation, think about that. If the presentation has to be longer than 20 minutes, then think about how you can give the audience a brain rest every 5-10 minutes. The best ways to do that are to tell a relevant story, engage the audience with a question or an activity, or anything else that forces the disengagement then re-engagement.


Number 2: Remember that most people can't read and listen at the same time. If they're reading your text laden slides, they're not listening. If your slides are covered in text, it will take a while for your audience to start listening to you. When possible, use pictures to emphasize your points rather than words. When putting together a presentation, try to build it out without using ANY slides first. Then decide what a slide can do to emphasize the points you're making.


If you have to use text, keep them short. Don't use sentences unless you're showing a quotation or a definition. Also, keep in mind that most people can only hold around 5 items in short term memory.

If you have more than 5 bullets on a slide, the majority of the audience won't be able to remember them without re-reading the slide…which means they're not going to be listening to you. Remember, your slides aren't your speaker notes.


Number 3: If you want people to act, you have to call them to action. At the end of the presentation, be specific about what you want your audience to do. Will your audience be motivated to do something at the end of the presentation? If so, what is that something?


Number 4: Have passion for your topic. The words you use only equate to part of your audience's engagement. If you're passionate about the topic, don't bottle that excitement up…let it flow. Your audience will mirror your emotion. If you're excited and passionate about a topic, they will be more likely to be excited and passionate about it as well.


So much of that passion needs to come through in your first two minutes…when the audience is deciding whether to invest the cognitive attention to listen and engage. When practicing, record your first few minutes, then ask yourself while playing it back, "Would I want to listen to me for the time allotted?"


Take these four learnings to heart, and I promise you your next presentation will do more to inspire, challenge & motivate your audience.


Todd

Say "No" to BANT, & Take Your Prospect’s TEMP Instead

I published this on my blog three years ago this week, and I just heard BANT come up again, so I thought I'd republish.  

Since the beginning of time, the acronym BANT has been the basis for qualification of potential opportunities.

B – Budget
A – Authority
N – Needs
T – Timing

With the changing of the selling "era" comes the necessary change in the way we decide what opportunities to pursue. It's time to throw out BANT. In its place, I'm coining and proposing the creation of a new acronym. We should start taking the TEMP of our opportunities instead.

Waiting to check off all the boxes on BANT will inevitably either (a) cause you to pre-maturely decide not to work on / disqualify an opportunity, or (b) result in a highly competitive, highly discounted, low margin deal.

The primary issue with BANT is in terms of B – Budget. Let's think about "Challenger" selling for a moment:

1. When a customer is already in-the-market (IMP) for our category of solution, they can find their way to just about any piece of information about us without ever talking to us. When we engage, our role is often to reframe and disrupt their thinking…to teach the customer that a potentially better solution exists versus the one they had in mind. By doing so, we often open the eyes and minds of the customer to a much bigger potential outcome, too. If we're working with or have access to the right people in the organization, the budget-creators versus the budget-spenders, budgets get created for high impact, high ROI projects attached to high priority business issues.
2. When a customer is not in-the-market for our category of solution, and we're trying to teach them about an under-appreciated problem they don't even realize they have, they probably haven't created a budget for that unrecognized problem, right?

T-Timing is also an issue with BANT. In my opinion, it's a senseless metric in analyzing whether a potential opportunity is "qualified". Timing changes. The timing identified at the beginning rarely matches the end result. Again, this is a senseless metric.

Thus, the creation of a new acronym…which should lead us to taking the TEMP of our customers and prospects regarding potential opportunities:

T – Trigger
E – Engagement
M – Mobilizer
P - Profile

T – Trigger: Simply put, has something occurred in the buyer's world that has them looking for a change? Whether we've created that trigger or not, this is also known as the "compelling event" or the understanding of what happens if a change does not occur.

E – Engagement: Is the customer / prospect Engaged? Do we have a scheduled next step? Evidence of a qualified opportunity is shown in the customer's willingness to set aside time in their calendar and start to create a plan of the buying journey with you. If they say they'll "call you next week" or you have to chase them down, you don't have the customer's engagement.


M – Mobilizer: Have we connected with the individual or individuals capable of Mobilizing an organization to make a change? This is a big shift in the way customers buy. We can't always get to the executive suite, but if we find "mobilizers" within an organization that have the trust and confidence of the executive suite, and can make change happen within an organization, you have the makings for a strong opportunity.

P – Profile: Does this customer fit the ideal customer Profile within a standard deviation or two? For example, if you're selling to large retailers, one can assume that a senior leader from Wal-Mart if a fit.  Sometimes this is a no-brainer, while other times it takes a question or two…but if you know where your solution has high impact and where it doesn't, then does this target fit the profile?

Like the new acronym for qualification? Make sense? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject…

Thanks,

Todd



​

How the Fear of Inaction Drives Top Software Companies' Growth

I do a lot of work for software companies, which is the primary area of my background. I’m now working for a smaller software company, and realized a connection to how these small software companies create action in their prospect base and eventually experience explosive growth.

They sell to the fear of inaction in their prospect base.

If you go to Hoovers.com, which is a company database service that serves as a key pre-calling planning tool for researching your targets, you’ll find almost 3,000 companies in the United States whose primary industry is Computer Software. Every one of these companies will claim to have a strong value proposition – otherwise they wouldn’t be in business.

Now, think about some of the big software companies in the world – companies like SAP & Oracle, who have experienced explosive growth. Take a look at a company like Hyperion who was acquired by Oracle for $3.3B. They have strong value propositions, right? However, what was it that made them what they are today? Was it that SAP’s marketers and sales professionals focused on how they could automate and integrate back office functions? Was it that Hyperion’s marketers focused on how they could tackle the vexing problem of information availability throughout the organization? In some ways, the answer is “yes”, but the reason these companies have the value they do is because they found the fear of inaction in their prospect base, and focused on that.

SAP really took off in the late 90’s, where it was like selling at a drive-thru window (Companies basically came to the window, told them they needed their technology now, and handed over millions of dollars). It wasn’t because these companies wanted to enter sales order information only once, and have that data flow seamlessly to finance, manufacturing, distribution and human resources. It was because SAP found the fear of inaction in their prospect base – Y2K (the result of a practice in early computer program design that caused some date-related processing to operate incorrectly for dates and times on and after January 1, 2000, scaring the world to believe that the world would end, planes would fall out of the sky and cats & dogs would live together in harmony because systems would think that January 1, 2000 was actually January 1, 1900).

Hyperion had a value of $3.3B not only because of how they help organizations do their financial consolidations better – it was because they found the fear of inaction in their prospect base – Sarbanes-Oxley (a United States federal law passed in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom, thus creating a scare within publicly held companies that has them believing their executives would live the rest of their lives in an orange jumpsuit if they don’t comply).

What fear do your customers have if they don’t act NOW? Is simply doing what they do now, but better, enough for them to take action? If it was, then companies all over the world would be spending all of their money on software.

For whatever solution you’re selling, think about the “what if”. What if my prospect decides to keep doing things the way they currently are at the pace they’re currently doing it? If the answer is basically “nothing”, then you could be facing slow growth, or eventual slow decline. People DO, in fact, buy things because it will make their lives better. But companies spend lots of money fixing problems that cannot be ignored.

This isn’t an easy thing to figure out – but if you can make the connection, your sales cycles will shorten, your deal sizes will rise, and you may have a company that we will all have heard of.

A simple way to shorten sales cycles...

Sometimes it's ultra important to go back to some of the basics. One of those basics is the simple act of asking for a commitment to a next step before you leave the prospect's office during a meeting. These six reasons should be more than enough for you to work this discipline back into your cycles.

1) To shorten your sales cycles: Most salespeople (and I'm not saying you are "most salespeople"), at the end of a meeting, say something like, “I’ll call you next week”. They end up wasting tons of time playing phone tag. Why not schedule the next step while you’re still face-to-face? You can shave 1-2 weeks between meetings, and as much as a month off the total sales cycle. “Just so we don’t end up playing phone tag, can we schedule a time to talk next week? How’s Wednesday at 10am?” Or, if your contact suggests that the next step is with someone else, why not ask, "Can we give Ms. Big a call right now to schedule something for next week?"


2) To better manage your travel: Once you have that scheduled meeting, you can immediately start to schedule other meetings with others at that location, or other prospects in the area. “I’m meeting with Freddy Paycheck at your location on Monday at 2pm. Can we get together at 3:30pm?”


3) To better manage your time & your prospect’s attention: Think about the way you work: When a proposal is due “sometime next week”, it moves to the bottom of the priority list. If it’s due Friday, May 27th at 10am, it suddenly becomes more important. Your prospects go through this as well. If it’s on their calendar, it suddenly becomes more of a priority.


4) To better understand who’s a priority for you: Back in my single days, when a girl used to tell me, “I’ll call you”, I used to believe it. It could be a “no” without you hearing the word “no”. When a prospect is willing to give you another slot on their calendar, interest is demonstrated by that action.


5) To send the right message: Your time is valuable, too. “When are you free?” translates to, “I’m willing to spend hours traveling each way to spend 10 minutes with you.” Instead, be specific in requesting that next step: “I’m available at 3pm on Wednesday afternoon. How does that work for you?” A surgeon with an empty calendar is probably not a good surgeon. Create the impression that you’re in-demand.


6) To get what you deserve: You spent all kinds of time prepping, traveling, and meeting with this prospect. Why would you leave the meeting without some sort of commitment / agreement to proceed from that prospect?