sales
Sales Discussions that Work
Selling is challenging work, and often, “we” (sales and marketing teams) make it even more challenging than it has to be. How many times have you seen a selling script, elevator pitch, or initial presentation that is long, boring, and undifferentiated? People have a short attention span, and nobody wants to interact with someone who does not listen to them or is pushy.
Your initial discussion is crucial to your success. Instead of going over a list of features, reading a slide deck, and telling why you and your product are so great, let’s try something else.
1. Understand why people buy. Any change has the potential to be difficult, risky, and painful. So, the pain they are facing has to be even greater, or they won’t bother changing. Your main job early on is to listen and try to learn what their pains are. You may have a perfect solution, but if it doesn’t solve their pain, it isn’t worth much.
2. At the start of the meeting, ask, “What would make this time well spent for you? What would you like to walk away from this meeting with?” Get them thinking about their problems and the value you may be able to provide, even if they don’t fully articulate it.
3. Ask questions and follow-up questions. People don’t lead with their significant issues, and someone unwilling to divulge anything likely isn’t a buyer. The more the prospect talks, the more you learn. So many people do not understand this simple concept.
4. Once you think that you have identified a pain, qualify and quantify that. For example, “You mentioned that your product release cycles are too long and complex. What is the business impact of that, and what would the impact be if you could reduce that time and effort by 50%?” Write that down because it could be vital later.
5. If you are giving a presentation, pull up the most relevant slide (customer problem/benefit slides work well here) and ask if this sounds similar to the problem they are facing.
6. Don’t worry if you are not able to cover everything you intended, as long as the meeting is productive. I’ve also seen salespeople cut someone off and move on to a new slide rather than discussing something of substance.
7. Next steps. Keep in mind that your time is valuable, and qualifying out a prospect that is not a good fit is essential – it helps you avoid false hopes and lets you focus on people who might want your help. There are many ways the next meeting could go but ask the prospect. Would they like to expand the audience? Is there a specific problem they would like to focus on? Would they like a product demo or a technical discussion? Is something like an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) keeping them from opening up?
Here is a mini success story. In 2010, my team and I began selling the first commercial vector high-performance analytics database. There were several products already out that claimed to be 70x-100x faster than other products. Our pitch was supposed to be that we were 70 times faster than other products. That was self-limiting before we even started and likely kept people from contacting us.
After two months of minimal success (I closed a deal to a small hedge fund, which was the only sale in all regions), we started a weekly webinar called “Why Fast Matters.” The focus was on positive business outcomes rather than specific technology and features (“speeds and feeds”). We opened with some “What if?” statements, such as: What if you get answers from complex queries faster than your competitors? What if you could do that without the cost, complexity, delays, and limitations of a Star Schema or pre-aggregated data? What if you could do this on commodity x86 hardware? We would then briefly cover the breakthrough technology (which was a precursor to Snowflake) and offer a free half-day meeting with a consultant.
Within the first two weeks, we met with a company that was later acquired by PayPal a few months before eBay acquired PayPal. This company was about to spend $500K on a proprietary hardware expansion that would have only provided additional capacity for the following year. Their customers bought advertising based on queries against the last six months of their data. I asked the question, “What if they could query against five years of data and get answers faster than they do today? Do you think that would help them buy more advertising? Do your customers ever ask for this?” The response was that their customers frequently ask for 12 months of data and would be willing to pay more for these capabilities. Still, they did not have a way to do this cost-effectively.
I closed a $250K ARR subscription deal in less than two weeks, and they purchased $140K of commodity Dell hardware for our software to run on. They saved 20% over their planned purchase, and more importantly, they rolled out advanced querying capabilities (against six years of data) in less than a month. There was incredible value to them and their customers, which we would not have uncovered if we focused primarily on features and technology.
As an aside, I was initially chastised for going off message, but after the Australian team adopted our approach and began closing deals, it became the new corporate standard. If something isn’t working, focus on finding ways to improve it.
In the words of Tony Robbins, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
Finding the Right Fit in Sales
I won’t sell a product or service if I don’t believe in it or in the company behind it. But that is only part of the picture. Not all products or services fit everybody, but most are a fit for somebody. Whether you are a seller or leading a sales team, understanding the best-fit use cases helps you create a repeatable sales motion that allows you to:
- Find and prospect the best candidate companies.
- Demonstrate benefits for a credible and relevant use case.
- Find a sponsor who benefits from your offering.
- Accelerate the deal velocity – even in a large enterprise business.
- Close large deals faster – and more of them!
When I started at my last company, I was told that the typical deal size was $75K-$80K, having a 9-12 month sales cycle with a midsize company. I was selling a Kubernetes Fleet Management platform, and I quickly found that most midsize companies lacked the containerization needs that Kubernetes provides. Most also needed to gain the skills required for fairly complex solutions, which can take months.
Large Enterprise companies had the need and the expertise to support Kubernetes, which started my profile development exercise. Large companies with a corporate standard containerization product were less likely candidates with a much longer sales cycle. Financial Services companies require strong end-to-end security and cannot afford breaches (reputationally and actual costs). Therefore, they had larger budgets and immediate needs, so they became a primary focus.
While looking at the environments for these companies, it became clear that an initial deal size could easily be in the $500K – $1 million range. And, if you successfully delivered what you promised, there could be several more significant follow-on deals. The icing on the cake is that by selling those companies what they need, solving significant problems or concerns, and treating them like the valued customers they are, they would reward you with loyalty and long-term business.
Finding the right fit for your product or service takes analysis, investigation, testing, and time. Getting this right provides the perfect opportunity to be successful and scale the results through the entire team. It also provides credibility when new customers are willing to speak with prospects and sing your praises. Success breeds success.
Success is a Mental Game
This assertion is as true in business as in sports, individually and in teams. So, let’s break it down.
When I watch my local football team, I occasionally see a shift in facial expressions from excitement to frustration – often right before the end of the first half. Sometimes, they recover during halftime and come out renewed and ready to win, but the “gloom and doom” expressions usually translate into suboptimal performance and mistakes. It is frustrating because you know they have the talent to win.
The same thing happens in business – especially in Sales. Sometimes it occurs in the middle of a sales cycle, similar to the example above. Unfortunately, too many people allow a few data points to determine their future trajectory. Why is that?
Whether you own a company or manage a group of people, good leaders aim to optimize their workforce by balancing factors that result in happy and loyal employees doing their best for themselves, their customers, and their company. Many motivational theories exist, such as Expectancy Theory, Reinforcement Theory, the Role of Instrumentality, Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation, and more. Since one size rarely fits all, the challenge becomes an effort of reward-focused personalization, which can be a lot of work.
People will often win or lose before they even start. Their negativity, self-doubt, and anticipation of failure become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This post focuses on self-motivation, attitude, mindset, and creating the habits that lead to better success.
Below are four simple questions that someone should ask themselves when they question their ability to succeed in a position, company, or industry. There are always many ways to point the finger of blame elsewhere, but the first step should be to look in the mirror.
- Do you believe that you can win where you are today? If not, why are you still there? Customers and prospects can sense insincerity, so if you don’t believe in yourself, you shouldn’t expect them to believe in you. Maybe the company is terrible, and everyone is failing. If that is true, then it is probably time to look elsewhere.
- What have you learned from past successes and failures, and how have you adapted based on those lessons learned?
- What are some early indicators of success or failure that you have identified? Are you adapting to the situation if you run into those indicators now? It could be that the best approach is to cut your losses on this attempt and move to the next sooner rather than later (i.e., qualify out quickly).
- What are you doing to improve your skills? It is funny how small, continuous improvement efforts lead to a greater sense of confidence. Greater confidence often translates to increased success.
I have found that consistently doing the right things is the best way to maximize my success. Start developing habits and routines that have led to winning in the past, but don’t expect them to work forever. Everything changes, and you should change, too. Look for things that are working for others, try them out, and if they work, incorporate them into your routines.
Success truly is a mental game, and everyone can win. The person who continues to win over time is the person who does not get stuck in time. Be curious, get excited, and adapt. And once you get there, start helping others. Having mentors is nice, but it is also great to become one.
As the saying goes, The rising tide lifts all boats. Winning can be a team sport, but it begins with individual contributors having winning attitudes. Unfortunately, the same can be said for losing, so decide now what you want and go forward with energy and confidence.
Sales Success for the Individual Contributor
Let’s start with two of my favorite personal quotes:
“Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity.” – Seneca, Roman Philosopher.
“Become the person who would attract the results you seek.” – Jim Cathcart, Author of “Relationship Selling”
Why are those quotes important? Because they point out that you are responsible for your own success.
Great companies with great products or services and great management teams make it much easier to be successful, but anyone who is prepared, curious, focused, motivated, and has a system they follow can succeed anywhere.
My experience has shown the following to be true:
- You are unlikely to succeed without preparation and understanding of your prospects, their customers, and their competition. This understanding provides the foundation for asking relevant questions to understand the real need and effectively qualify a deal in or out.
- Most sales occur because a Product or Service solves real and immediate business problems or ties into strategic business initiatives.
- Your early goals should be around getting the meeting, having real discussions, understanding problems from your prospect’s perspective (including the terminology they use to describe those problems), and helping them describe what success “looks like to them” and why that is important (logically and emotionally). At this stage, you are learning and positioning, not selling.
- Deal qualification is an essential skill that enables you to focus your time and efforts where you are most likely to succeed. The faster you can “qualify out” a prospect that is not a good fit, the better it is for you and that prospect. Eternal optimism is not a plan for filling your pipeline.
- If you have a supporting team, ensure that everyone understands the situation, their role and contribution to success, and what you want them to focus on. Never assume that things will just fall into place on their own.
- Have a repeatable process to track activities, measure progress, and identify the best next steps. Remember, “To measure is to know.” (Lord Kelvin)
- The sale is not over until your new Customer is happy. Become their internal advocate within your organization, and you will be rewarded with the customer’s trust, loyalty, and repeat business.
Ideally, your Sales Leadership Team has defined a Sales Strategy and created a couple of repeatable Sales Plays and compelling supporting materials such as Success Stories; Case Studies; ROI and TCO charts; brief but targeted Demos; and realistic Product Comparison information for internal use. These become the foundation for repeatable and scalable success.
But, if that is missing, collaborate with your peers, seek guidance from your leadership, and get creative. Remember, you are ultimately responsible for your success, so don’t allow things to become excuses or a crutch. In the words of the Buddha, “There are three solutions to every problem: Accept it, Change it, or Leave it.”
To help ensure success, you will need to follow a Sales Methodology. Here is a link to a good high-level overview from Spotio.com. I’ve used several and there are pros and cons to each. None of them effectively addresses the successful progression from:
- Initiation, Understanding, and Qualification.
- Defining a compelling Solution and successfully positioning it against the competition.
- Closing the Sale is an area in which many salespeople fall short.
The sales methodology that I personally believe is one of the easiest to use and most effective is MEDDIC. It is a Deal Qualification process, which is more encompassing than a simple Lead Qualification approach. The biggest blind spot is that it fails to address these four key areas:
- Influencers within a buyer’s organization. Knowing who these people are and their biases will allow you to direct various resources towards each and ideally provide a multi-threaded approach for each deal.
- Incumbents and the sentiment towards those vendors and their products. This is key to not wasting time on an opportunity you would unlikely win.
- Related/Adjacent needs. Being able to tie success to multiple areas provides leverage and increases the value of your solution.
- Timeline/Urgency. This allows you to work backward from milestone dates for efforts like typical lead times for Legal and Purchasing, Integration Testing, QA/QC, Training and Documentation, etc.
Being prepared, creating a common vision of success based on the outcome rather than the approach, being responsive, and developing relationships and trust based on knowledge and a desire to help are easy ways to differentiate yourself from many lesser salespeople. Invest in your skills, set aggressive goals, and always hold yourself accountable for success.
Do this and you will become part of the 20% of any sales team that ‘moves the dial.’
Could a New Channel Model Lead to Sales Amplification?
Over the years, I have helped successful companies and start-ups improve and strengthen their Channel and Strategic Alliances programs. Those companies do a great job closing deals but usually have concerns about not generating or receiving enough new business leads. Or, they develop strong relationships with one or two vendors, only to find later that a key vendor has been sending deals to a competitor.
Most traditional channel models support Distributors, Resellers, OEMs, and ISVs. The business mainly flows upwards to the main vendor. If that vendor has popular and widely used products, then business can be good because of sufficient demand. But when that is not the case, your sales pipeline usually suffers.
Doing something the same way as everyone else may not be a bad approach when there is enough business for everyone, and your growth goals and aspirations are aligned with your competition.
Sales Channel business is usually not the main source of revenue for most companies, but it does have the potential to become the largest and most scalable revenue source for nearly any business. Just think about the money left on the table by not adopting a growth mindset and executing a new and better strategy.
In the summer of 2016, I attended the “Sage Summit” in Chicago. It was impressive to see the Sage Group’s efforts to build, strengthen, and protect their Customers and Channel Partners community. They tried to foster higher levels of collaboration between the various types of partners – implementation services, consulting, staff augmentation services, complementary product vendors, etc. They had created their own highly successful Business Ecosystem, which is an excellent proof point.
When designing a channel partner program, my focus has always been on finding the balance between promoting and protecting the partners’ business and helping ensure that the end customers have the best experience possible (and have some recourse when things do not work out as expected). There are a variety of methods I have used to accomplish those goals, but the missing component has always been the inclusion of a systematic approach to seed relationships between those partners and facilitate an even greater volume of business activity.
Nearly a year ago, I began working with a management consultancy run by Robert Kim Wilson, which has a business vision based on his book, “They Will Be Giants.” I will provide links for this book and other relevant resources at the bottom of the post. Kim asserts that Entrepreneurs with a Purpose-Driven Business Ecosystem (PDBE) are more successful than those without one, providing examples to prove his point. Having experienced Kim’s PDBE, I see how purpose fosters trust and collaboration.
As I did more research, I found that, especially over the past two years, a lot of focus has been placed on Business Ecosystems and Business Ecosystem Organizers (such as Sage in the earlier example). Those findings reinforced the PDBE approach, and external validation is always good.
It is just as important from my perspective that this concept applies to businesses of any size, and it is especially helpful to small to midsize businesses. The fun part for me is exploring a specific business, analyzing what they do today, and quantifying the benefits of adopting this new strategy.
So, how does this new type of Business Ecosystem work?
- The Business Ecosystem Organizer expands the overall network, vets new “Business Ecopartners,” and provides a framework or infrastructure for the various Business Ecopartners to get to know one another, exchange ideas, and discuss opportunities.
- This can become an incredibly sustainable revenue source for companies willing to invest in the necessary components to grow and support their Business Ecosystem.
- Business Ecopartners will have access to trusted resources to augment existing business and take on new, bigger projects by leveraging the available expertise.
- Suppose that you have products or services that work with commercial CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), or SCM (Supply Chain Management).
- You have seen a growing demand for functionality that relies on highly specialized technologies like:
- Cryptocurrency support.
- Blockchain for financial transactions and things like traceability in your supply chain or IoT data.
- AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to detect patterns and anomalies – such as fraud detection, Deep Learning/Neural Networks for image recognition or other complex pattern recognition.
- Graph databases to better understand a business and infer new ways to improve it.
- Knowledge Graph/Semantic databases to assist with Transfer Learning and deeper understanding.
- Building these practices in-house would not be practical or cost-effective for most businesses, so partnering becomes very attractive to your company.
- This type of business can also be very attractive to a Business Ecopartner because someone else handles sales, billings, account management, etc.
- Other Business Ecopartners could leverage your products or services for their projects and engagements, thus becoming another source of revenue.
- By leveraging this network, your business can compete on imagination and innovation – which could become a huge source of differentiation from your competition.
Value realized from this New Business Ecosystem model:
- These new sources of business and talent can become a real competitive advantage for your business.
- This becomes the source for Sales Amplification because your business is, directly and indirectly, expanding its reach and growth potential.
- The weighted (based on capabilities, capacity, responsiveness, and Ecopartner feedback) Business Ecopartner network model could lead to exponential business growth – a winning strategy for any business.
References:
- https://kimwilson5.wixsite.com/theywillbegiants/the-book
- https://www.bcg.com/publications/2019/emerging-art-ecosystem-management.aspx
- https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/8-dimensions-of-business-ecosystems/
- https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-myths-and-realities-of-business-ecosystems/
- https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/operations/articles/business-ecosystems.html
- https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-56/accenture-strategy-your-role-in-the-ecosystem.pdf
- https://www.bain.com/insights/shifting-from-assets-to-ecosystems-video/
- https://hbr.org/2019/09/in-the-ecosystem-economy-whats-your-strategy
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 