What’s the Status of That ‘Sure Thing’ You Forecast
By Gary Walker, Managing Partner, CustomerCentric Systems, LLCIt’s the middle of the month and you are sitting at your desk reviewing the preliminary monthly sales forecasts submitted to you by your sales representatives. You note for about the eighth month in a row, you see the same prospect you’ve seen lingering, month after month, again, forecast to close. This is the same prospect you authorized the multiple ‘four-legged’ sales calls, prototyped the ‘must have, or we won't buy’ reports and hosted a full day visit at your corporate headquarters. Your company has put a lot of time and expense into selling this account. You are under increasing pressure to close this sale. Having considered all these things, you decide to place a telephone call to your sales representative to determine what else needs to be done in order to ensure that this prospect closes this month… as forecast. Upon reaching your sales rep, she informs you that, even though the prospect had assured her that this sale was a ‘sure thing’, she has just spoken with the prospect and they have informed they are going to conduct business as usual; they have simply elected to do nothing. She goes on to tell you that she has been encouraged to follow-up in about three months. This opportunity has just been lost to ‘No Decision’.
Have you experienced this lately? If you have, you’re not alone. One of the chief concerns we continue to hear from the senior sales executives with whom we have worked is, their frustration with the large number of qualified sales opportunities that are lost to ‘No Decision’ after long and expensive sales cycles. Our research shows that between 60 and 80 percent of all losses are due to ‘No Decision’. That’s more losses to ‘No Decision’ than to any single named competitor, making your number one competitor… No Decision, Inc.!!
Why do your prospects elect to do nothing, despite you and your sales representatives’ best efforts? We see primarily four major reasons.
1. No Goal
CustomerCentric Selling is helping the buyer achieve a goal, solve a problem, or satisfy a need. It should go without saying that if a buyer is unwilling to share a goal with a sales person (much less a problem), then the seller doesn’t have a prospect. It is as simple as that.
When we help our clients define their sales process, an opportunity typically goes from ‘Inactive’ to ‘Active’ status when the buyer shares a goal. We use it to define a prospect as a buyer who had admitted a problem or ‘pain’. Over the years we discovered there were very few sellers (particularly young sellers), who were able to get a C-level executive of a public company to publicly admit a problem.+ As my partner Mike Bosworth likes to point out, as we approach middle age, it is much easier for us to ‘volunteer’ that we’d like to lose a few pounds (a goal), than to get us to admit that we’re fat (a pain). Think about it.
Business executives don’t authorize the spending of large sums of money just to be the proud owners of whatever it is you are selling. As a result, we subscribe to a core concept, ‘No goal, no prospect’. At the very minimum, the buyer must be unhappy with some aspect of his business, and want to fix it, to engage and initiate a ‘buy cycle’ with a sales person.
Sales people who fail to take the time to diagnose and understand their buyer’s goal and the business issues/obstacles that are preventing them from achieving that goal, either lose the sale to no decision or get outsold by the sales person who does.
2. No Solution
Despite your best efforts (the four-legged sales calls, the ‘must have, or we won’t buy’ reports, corporate visits, etc.), the buyer still does not have a clear understanding of how he will achieve his goal(s) by purchasing your product or service. Again, this is a result of the sales person leading with product feature and function, before first taking the time to understand the goal that the prospect wants to achieve, then diagnosing and understanding the business issues and obstacles, and then relating how the capabilities of the product or service can be used to eliminate the prospects business issues/obstacles allowing them to attain their goal.
The key to selling is the ability to converse. If your salespeople are unable to have a meaningful conversation, ‘an intelligent two-way dialogue’, with a targeted decision maker about the use of your offering to achieve a goal, solve a problem or satisfy a need and document that conversation succinctly, then all the training on prospecting, qualifying, presentation skills, closing, handling objections, negotiating, etc., are a waste of money! The conversation is where the sale takes place.
3. No Power
How many times have you spent months selling to someone who told you early on that the decision to purchase your offering was their decision, only to find out later they couldn’t purchase ten sharp pencils without someone else’s approval? While end-users and recommenders are fun to sell to, their needs and requirements may be altogether different than the ultimate decision maker, ‘the person with the power and authority to buy’. If they don’t have the authority to purchase your products and services, you’re not selling; you’re simply providing this person with a free (but expensive for you) education.
Senior executives are charged with identifying and solving problems. Gaining access to the decision maker(s) early in the sales cycle can help eliminate the risk of no decision, protect your expensive corporate resources, cause unbudgeted money to be spent and dramatically shorten the sales cycle.
4. No Value
We’ve already established that for a company to change how they are currently doing business, there has to be a goal. Remember, ‘No goal, no prospect’. The goal has to be related back to dollars – reduced cost, avoided cost or increased revenue, among other factors. If you are asking a company to pay $100,000 for your product, the value of achieving the goal(s) better be at least $200,000. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Would you spend $100,000 to solve a $50,000 problem?
I’m amazed at the number of sales people who don’t take the time to understand the value of their products and services to their prospects and, more importantly, don’t actively participate in helping their prospect prepare a cost / benefit analysis. Your prospect is not the only one who is competing for his / her company’s potentially limited funding. You need to equip him with the logic and rationale to support his request for funding.
Think of the tactical advantage a sales person has while going into price negotiations when he knows exactly how much his prospect will save and when he will achieve a return on his investment. It makes it very easy to say ‘No’, in response to a request for a discount.
Now, let me ask you a question. Think of all of your ‘year-to-date’ missed opportunities. What would it have been worth to you and your organization if your sales people could have reduced their losses to ‘No Decision’ by twenty, fifty, or even seventy-five percent?
Gary Walker is Managing Partner of CustomerCentric Systems, LLC, in Littleton, Colorado. He is a co-author of the Customer Centric Selling sales methodology.Gary helps drive the overall direction and strategy for CustomerCentric Systems, LLC. His ability to identify trends and changes in the sales environment has helped change the dynamic of interaction between sellers and buyers through the development of CustomerCentric Selling and Sales Ready Messaging. Gary’s perspective has helped propel CustomerCentric Systems, LLC to one of the preeminent providers of sales process consulting, sales training and Sales Ready Messaging. He has worked with companies such as Adam Aircraft, L3 Communications, GEAC, Hitachi Software, Space Imaging, IntraLinks, and RedDot Solutions to name just a few. He has personally trained thousands of salespeople in North America and Europe. For article feedback, contact Gary at gwalker@customercentricsystems.com
