Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

The start of any undertaking is obviously the most important step.

"Every journey starts with the first step" 

"If you want to run a marathon, you have to start with the first step"

"Putting yourself in a position to win means you have to start competing"

When it comes to building the confident and trusting relationship associated with a strong seller / buyer relationship,  the start is especially true. I'm not just talking about the immediate "bonding and rapport" part of selling.  That is important, but the "start" isn't a 5-minute segment of chitchat talking about the sailfish on the wall or the soccer pictures on the credenza.  No, the start is the entire first contact process.  It doesn't matter if it is a phone call or a meeting at a chamber meeting or the initial meeting after the phone call.  It's the start that will often, if not always, determine your finish. In today's post, I focus on the initial face-to-face meeting with a suspect.

I want to describe this segment via the "HAVE-TOs"

• You have to be prepared (pre-call strategy).  Aside from your internet research, you have to prepare for the sales process.  In other words, you have to know what questions you are going to ask that are going to move the sale forward, not just questions about the technical aspects of their current position or status.  You have to anticipate the suspect's answer to those questions and then be prepared with your follow up dialog.  Too many sales people take this step for granted because "they've been in the business for ... years."  You have to be prepared for their questions and how you will respond to them.  And finally, you have to be prepared for curve balls.  Suspects / prospects always throw them, and when you are unprepared, you will always miss them or certainly never get a clean hit.
• You have to identify clearly what your preferred outcome is.  In the book, Getting to Yes, the authors do a great job of explaining how defining your preferred outcome helps guide you through any meeting that you have.  In selling, and specifically for the initial call, most sales people define the objective of the first call as "to get a second call".  I will change that and suggest that your objective be to make this the only call.  Try to disqualify your suspects instead of trying to qualify them.  I guarantee you will end up with more qualified opportunities.
• You have to demonstrate your credibility, not by what you say, but by how you conduct yourself.  Make yourself different (see first blog in this series). You will do this by the questions you ask, by your focus on the prospect and what is important to them, and by your reluctance to get into a sales pitch and do a data dump in their lap.  You demonstrate your knowledge of the industry by the stories, analogies and metaphors you use about their business.  You demonstrate your professionalism by the way you ask professional penetrating questions and by how you don't look, act or sound like every other sales person that has met with this executive.
• You have to have the courage to ask the tough questions and have fierce / honest discussions.  Everyone reading this probably knows the questions that you are supposed to ask and how you are supposed to ask them and when you are supposed to ask them. Yet, every one of you most likely leaves initial calls having failed to ask the tough questions like, "How will you make this decision?  When do I meet the decision maker?  If you don't have a budget, then how will you pay for this?  If you are shopping for low price, then what happens if I show up and I'm not the low price?  Who wins a tie?  When you told your current provider that you were unhappy with the current situation and you were shopping to replace them, what did they say?"  And finally,  "When I show up to make my presentation, I need for you to be in a position to tell me 'yes' or 'no', what objections do you have to that process?"  You all know that you should ask those questions, but time and time again, you fail to.  How come? 
• You have to leave your need for approval at the door when you leave the house in the morning.  You have to re-write your record collection about how people buy in your industry. (Let your sales manager stew over that one.) You have to leave your personal buy cycle at the car lot where you debated for the last three weeks on which make and model to buy and where you negotiated with the manager for 2 hours.
• You have to qualify suspects / prospects to do business with you rather than you attempting to qualify to do business with them. Too many sales people still go to a meeting feeling like they have to qualify to do business with someone.  No, you don't.  You have to make sure that the person you are meeting with qualifies to do business with you.  Not just from a profile perspective or from an underwriting or credit perspective.  Also, qualifying is more than, "Did you do a needs analysis, discuss the features and benefits, get a budget and agree to a decision making process?"  In our world, in our effective selling system, it means the following:
• Do they have a compelling reason to take action quickly?
• Will they invest the time, money and resources to solve a problem they have or the problem they see coming?  Will they invest that time, that money or those resources in a timely fashion or are they in the "seeking" mode of buying?
• Will they tell you "yes" or "no" when you present?  In order to do this, you MUST have eliminated the current provider.  You MUST have heard them say they want to "fix it", whatever "it" is. And you MUST have a solution that is appropriate for their problem.  You cannot make the mistake that, even though your solution isn't exactly right, you are good enough to sell them on buying something that doesn't fit their exact specs.
• You have to close.  Not close the sale, but close this step and get a clear next step.  There is always a next step even if you are in a "one appointment close" business.  It doesn't matter if your business requires multiple meetings, or one and done.  Always close what you came there to do and then move on.  I promise you that, if you get masterful at this step, you will have fewer meetings and your close ratio will improve.  Ask for closure, ask for a clear next step, ask for the business.

I will not pretend to imply that these are the only "HAVE-TOs" in the start of building your relationship.  I will suggest to you that, if you get these 7 "HAVE-TOs" right, you will close more business, more quickly at higher margins.

Let's make this simple.  When it comes to closing and selling there is no sure thing or to use a basketball term "lay up".  Nope.  Especially in today's economy.  Now for those of you that know me from our sales training and sales management work, you know that I'm the last guy in the world to make excuses for you or for myself.  When you screw up, admit it.  When I screw up, I'll tell you.  So, here are my 5 lessons so far this year when it comes to opening, qualifying and closing deals in today's market environment.

1. You have to work harder at creating opportunities.  The market shrunk but you didn't own 100% of it so your market only shrunk a fraction. Get on the phone, see people, and good things will happen
2. Develop channels.  Distribution has changed.  If you have any plans to be scalable or to leverage yourself, you must use technology and develop relationships with those that occupy your same space but with different products and services.
3. When you get to see someone, make sure that your expectations are realistic.  No matter how much pain you think you hear.  No matter what the compelling reasons that the prospect gives you to take action - slow down.  Make sure you address anything (qualify urgency) that could "go wrong" or keep the deal from moving forward.
4. Discuss money and be prepared to sell smaller deals. If you've always been good at getting budget up front, realize that now it is more important than ever.  Don't worry about discounting; just work on providing different packages of solutions that are in different price points.  Capture market share today.
5. Don't assume.  When you get a call from a current or previous client and they want to talk business, make sure you put them back into the prospect box and treat them the same way. Qualify them.  Take them through all of the steps of your sales process without taking short cuts.

If you do these five things, you will be in a position to sell more business, more quickly at good, if not higher, margins.  And today, that is a really good thing.