Last month, Shannon’s blog was about Taking Control of the Sale as a way to free stalled deals. For some sellers including account managers, technical pre-sales reps and even CEO’s, the prospect of direct and sometimes uncomfortable conversations to uncover the reason a deal is stalled can be unnatural or intimidating. This can be especially difficult if you have established friendly, helpful rapport with your client. Some feel direct questioning is rude or disrespectful, particularly to someone in a position of authority. It also may raise insecurities and fear of the customer’s response.
One example is Kylie, who sells unified login solutions for a tech company. It is a popular product category with several competing companies in the space. She tends to sidestep asking her prospects directly about what competitors they are exploring and how her product compares to the competitor. She finds the question awkward and feels like she is being unfriendly by raising the question. This hurt her in the past when a deal stalled for several months while the prospect did not respond to her emails and calls. Kylie eventually realized that her prospect was evaluating a competitor during that time. After three months, the customer issued an RFP with the competitor’s features. It was a disappointment and became nearly impossible for Kylie to win the business.
Another example is Pete, CEO of a drone software start-up focused on infrastructure assessment. His customer base includes large entities like railroads, utilities, state and local government. Pete needs to close $2 Million in sales this year to acquire his next funding round. While prospects love his product, which is very innovative compared to the competition, the sales cycle is long even for pilot projects. The pressure is building for Pete. He needs to close several large opportunities to prove his business viability to investors. Pete has some opportunities where he waits for weeks without a response from mid-management level sales contacts. His opportunities that once seemed on the cusp of closing, stall. Pete has met the executives, yet he is reluctant to bypass his main contact to query them directly about the purchase status, timing and process. He does not want to offend, nor does he see himself as having equal authority even though he is a CEO.
A solution for stalled opportunities, like those of Kylie and Pete, is to reframe the sales process as project management. The sale is a project. Sales people are project managers. Their mission is to complete the project or close the sale. Project management is objective rather than personal and the emphasis on process replaces discomfort, insecurity or intimidation with purpose and professionalism.
The first step to cutting loose stalled opportunities for Kylie and Pete is to build a project plan for it. Here is an example plan for Pete :
Step 1: Define what is stalled about the opportunity: non-responsive contact, communication occurs but nothing changes, etc. For both Kylie and Pete, the contact is unresponsive
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Step 3: Use the influence map to prepare an outreach plan for important influencers whether they have been previously contacted or not. Pete notes when he will contact each person and what his message will be, what questions he will ask and what information he will gather and how often he will continue follow-up.
Step 4: Confirm the budget, timeframe, and purchase process. Pete arranges a call with his main contact to answer these questions. The response will tell Pete a lot about whether the sale is realistic. Does the contact know the details and provide them willingly? If not, Pete needs to query others for the information.
Step 5: Make a flow chart of the decision process and involved parties and meet with those that are instrumental. Pete draws the decision flow and timing, which his contact has provided. Pete learned that two key people, one in finance and one in maintenance will have to agree before the purchase will progress. He adds them to the CRM and calls for a meeting.
Step 6: Revisit the business reason for the purchase and the level of urgency. Has something changed? When meeting with the new parties in finance and maintenance, Pete adds to his meeting plan a question about the business reason and how quickly it is needed.
After working the project plan, Kylie and Pete now know whether they can count on the deals this quarter or year. Or if they should invest their time and resources elsewhere. Reframing the sales as a project, Kylie and Pete now Take Control of the Sale and sell like Challengers!
