Tips to get access to the real decision makers
By Pascal Persyn on September 01, 2009 @ 08:54
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Tags: , buyer-aligned messaging, funnel managment, know your customer, Sales effectiveness, Sales management, sales skills, sales tactics, solution selling
I’ve seen and heard it over and over again. It’s difficult to get access to real decision makers. It’s even more difficult to keep them in the loop.
Entering late in the buying cycle is probably the single most important reason. A project manager is taking the lead once an opportunity is in the closed minded phase (in some businesses when the RFQ/RFP has been send out). This means that all requirements have been gathered and translated into buying criteria. Therefore real decision makers and those faced with the business problem are no longer involved in the market research phase. They will of course come back into the loop at decision time but that’s way to late to build a meaningful relationship for this opportunity.
5 tips to help overcome the main obstacles:
- Research the power structure and contact the highest ranked person faced with the business problem:Marketing should influence all decision makers faced with business problems you can solve. See: how to influence key decision makers And the one with the biggest impact should be contacted by sales to make an appointment based on a value proposition adapted to the business problem you want to discuss. They will only accept an appointment if their ‘readiness to buy’ is far enough developed but not yet to the state that they’re already convinced to know the buying criteria the solution must meet.
- Speak their language: Sales people are often pushed down or don’t get access to them because they’re unable to have a value add business conversation. Decision makers are not interested in a product or technology pitch. Nor are they interested in knowing more about your company. Remember: Decision-makers believe they know the destination but they have a problem getting there.
- Understand the psychology: Your contact will probably have cold feet of introducing you higher up in the organisation. They’re not sales people and therefore be reluctant to sell the idea to their boss. Afraid of the impact in case of a wrong judgement or setting up an appointment with a sales rep that doesn’t speak the right language.
- Get agreement on value chain impact: Showing that the business pain has an important impact on other key people in the organisation will help you to get access even higher in the organisation. the reasons are:
- You helped your contact to build the needed story to sell the appointment
- You proofed that you understand and have experience dealing with the business problem
- You proofed that you speak the right language.
- Negotiate access: You have to negotiate access if all of above has been insufficient to get access. Remember to check the status of the opportunity in terms of readiness to buy. All of above will probably fail if you came in via the project manger or buyer because the opportunity is already too far down the buying cycle. So if you came in at the right time you will get access when agreeing on certain work or commitments from your side that are of value to your contact in exchange for that meeting.
Closing tip: Be careful with your forecast if you put in opportunities without having access to the real decision makers. These opportunities will drag on and on in your pipeline. Quit normal of course since you have very little insight and control over the ‘real decision’.
5 strategies to improve sales performance
By Pascal Persyn on June 03, 2009 @ 19:59
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Tags: , funnel management, hit-rate, lead generation, marketing effectivenes, Sales effectiveness, Sales efficiency, sales skills, sales tactics, value chain alignment
You typically have 2 main reactions of sales reps having problems to reach their quota. They start to:
- take excessive actions on their existing opportunities. They hope or are convinced to influence the outcome and decision date. These sales reps are typically faced with a starved pipeline. They will never experience the benefits of a balanced pipeline because of this. Moreover, they risk on ruining good opportunities by their behavior.
- call on more and more potential customers. They will take massive actions on each of them willing to have a meeting. This will lead to too many unqualified prospects in the pipeline and create time shortage at the same time. It will lead to a lot of good actions on the wrong prospect and/or wrong timing.
So in other words, both actions will never deliver consistent resolution in the long run.
5 strategies to overcome typical quota issues:
- Continuously qualify your opportunities:Is this really an opportunity? Will I be able to differentiate myself. Woun’t I be used to put pressure on the preferred vendor? Do I see a lot of similarities with already won projects? Will I be able to influence the buying criteria? Is a budget available or can it be made available. Can I get in contact with most or all decision making people? All of these are examples of qualifying criteria to make sure you spend time on the right accounts.
- Reduce your sales cycle: Stop using a sales-process. Use the buying clock. Think in terms of readiness to buy and adapt your actions and time between 2 actions. Who should be your next step contact? Use a structured way to prepare yourself. Think and report based on the outcome of your next steps instead of tracking the content of the next step. Keep all DMU members synchronized on their readiness to buy. Figure out typical time delays in the buying cycle and work ahead of time to overcome them.
- Increase your actual selling time:Figure out a way to decrease your admin time. Stop writing visit reports but send bullet-based short emails to your contact. Save them in your CRM and ask for feedback in order to stay in sync with your contact. Use CRM as your central repository allowing you to self-coach and become more effective.
- Build a pro-active opportunity pipeline over time:Make sure you work with marketing to create leads early in their buying cycle. This will allow you to educate them on their specific needed capabilities and link them to your differentiation. This will put the competition on the defence. It will lower your overall time spend per opportunity and increase your hit-rate at the same time.
- Improve your hit-rate: Get to know the impact your solution has on different people. Find the link between their specific problems, needed capabilities, benefits and results. Use that knowlegde to adapt your questions, value proposition and sales pitch to each of the individual contacts. Make sure you talk to decision makers (Source of Power), people negatively impacted by not having your solution (Source of Dissatisfaction) as well as influencers. Don’t make the mistake of having the project manager as your main contact. This is another reason why you need to get in early in de buying cycle. Add strategy 2 to the equation and you will experience massive improvement in your hit-rate.
The nice thing about these 5 strategies is that they create a snowball effect if you work on all of them at the same time. Make sure you share these ideas with your colleagues and help each other to become more effective with these strategies. Get pre sales support and marketing involved and create a value chain instead of trying to do all things by yourself. After all sales has become a team-sport.
Want to sell more: Pitch a reference story
By Pascal Persyn on April 08, 2009 @ 10:13
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Tags: , reference stories, sales skills, solution selling, trusted advisor
It’s amazing how many sales people enter a first call and make the 2 biggest FATAL mistakes:
- Pitch their company story on how big, great, superior, experienced, financially stable, oldest in the market,…. they are.
- Can’t wait to demonstrate their product convinced that the product is so good it will make the difference.
This is the best way to decrease your hit-rate and create a bad corporate brand despite the money and energy you put in corporate branding.
This is why:
This picture clearly shows the impact of field-driven activities on your brand in a B2B environment based on research
by sales & marketing management in 2006
So what should one do to increase your hit-rate and improve your brand perception:
Telling a story was definitely the right way. We all know that stories, pictures and metaphors are a great way to communicate a message.
Yet the story should be on ….. a customer.
So here’s a great way to open a first face to face meeting:
- Present the goal of the meeting and get buy-in
- Propose an agenda (and check available time dependant on the country culture)
- Present yourself
This is the part where the story kicks in. The story starts with your value proposition adapted to the prospect in front of you. followed by telling a story about a customer (don’t use the name)who was faced with several problems,…….. Together you found a solution which would enable him to …….. and this resulted in an improved…. decreased by ….. (use numbers!) after a certain time of use. This story should be adapted to the prospect and the role of the person in fromt of you.
- Transition into needs analysis through questions
The story you just told is proof of your expertise and shows the prospect that you’re used to hear and handle confidential information. That’s why you should not give the name of the reference at this time since you would otherwise implicitly say that you will use his confidential information to other prospects in the future. It will create enough trust for the customer to start telling his story and explain the specifics of the problems their faced with. A better insight in the specifics will allow you to create a vision of an improved future based on capabilities they will acquire without mentioning your product nor its features. You need to wait to speak about your product until you get confirmation on the vision. We call it getting Vision-Lock.
Tip: Check your PowerPoint’s used by sales and adapt them in a way to facilitate the above scenario with quotes and pictures. It’s a great tool to be used in meetings with multiple people for the first time.
Remember what happens in a doctors cabinet: First diagnose then prescribe!
