It has been almost a month ago, but real fans will remember. It was a game for 45 minutes and then it wasn’t. I am talking about the Michigan, Ohio State rivalry football game played November 26, 2022.  Up for grabs was the Big Ten Football Championship Game and a shot at being in the NCAA football playoffs.

As I watched the game, I thought about all those sales opportunities that were close to being won for 45 days and then, they weren't. Up for grabs was a sale that would make hitting goal ‘easier’ and a chance to be identified with the other top salespeople in the organization.

Here are the 10 key lessons to take from this game and apply to your life or the lives of your sales team as you / they pursue wining sales opportunities.

1. Follow the game plan.  Obviously, this requires that you and or your sales team have a milestone-centric sales process in place AND you have processes in place to manage execution of the sales process.
2. Don’t panic. Things will go wrong.  

• The prospect won’t always be completely honest with you about pricing, the competition, the budget, decision makers, timeline, commitment to take action or the decision-making process.
• Your backroom may not be able to underwrite / approve / support this type of sale in the fashion to which they are accustomed.
• The competitor may undercut your pricing or make other concessions to keep the business.

3. Make sure you coach or get coaching every step of the way. It DOES NOT matter how many years you’ve been in the business. Great salespeople become great salespeople because they consistently hone their skills (practice) and they understand there are things that they don’t know.
4. Be patient. You are not in control of the timing of the prospect’s process. You can do your best to influence timing by asking questions about the value of acting or the potential cost of waiting but, be patient and stick to your plan.
5. Don’t be afraid, GO FOR IT! Get to decision makers, ask about budget, find out if the prospect will in fact leave their current provider if you solve their problem and /or provide a better solution.
6. Keep track of everything. There isn’t anything that happened in the OSU / Michigan game (any competitive game) that isn’t tracked.  The information / data you get helps you make better decisions within the overall framework of your sales process. Pre and post call planning and weekly huddles are effective tracking strategies.
7. Stay clinically detached. This is easier to do when you have a plan. Remember SW3N.  Some will, some won’t, so what, NEXT!
8. Avoid feeling pressure to ‘score’ or win every sale by having a consistently full pipeline of opportunities.
9. 9. Be discerning as to what you listen to from others. (The announcers were commenting early in in the game on how Michigan couldn’t win if they didn’t establish the ground game.)  Michigan threw an 80-yard touchdown pass to go ahead 17-13).  Lesson, take what the prospect gives you vs trying to force your game plan. Eventually MI did establish the ground game – stuck to game plan – and ou trushed OSU 252 yards to 143 yards.
10. Be better than your competition.

You may not win every sale. But you have to be in the game every time you decide to move forward in your sales process AND it is critical that you have GREAT confidence that you will win BEFORE you present your solution.  In other words, reviewing your game plan score card, you must have a 75% chance of winning before you present your solution. Anything less than that will make you vulnerable to think it overs, second guessing by the prospect, price adjustments by the competitor and loss of momentum by the buyer. 

The start of any undertaking is the most important step. 

When it comes to building the confident and trusting relationship associated with a strong seller / buyer relationship, the start is especially important. I'm not just talking about the immediate "bonding and rapport" part of selling or a 5-minute segment of chitchat. The start I’m referring to is the entire first contact process whether it is a phone call or an association meeting or the initial meeting after the phone call.  The start will often, if not always, determine your finish. 

The 6 Steps to Start the Sale:

1. Pre-Call Plan
2. Have a Unique Value Proposition
3. Ask Thoughtful, Open-Ended Questions
4. Check Your Sales Attitude
5. Get a Clear Next Step
6. Qualify vs Disqualify the Prospect
   
   

1. Be prepared (pre-call strategy).  Be prepared for the sales process. Know what questions you are going to ask to move the sale forward. These are not questions about the technical aspects of your prospect's current position or status.   Anticipate the suspect's answers to the questions you ask and be prepared with follow-up dialog.  Too many sales people take this step for granted because "they've been in the business for __ years." Don’t fall into this trap. Also, be prepared for the inevitable curve balls the prospect will throw at you. This is your chance to build credibility.
   
   
2. Demonstrate your credibility by what you say and by how you conduct yourself.  You’re your value proposition different. 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. Avoid doing the typical product dump.  Demonstrate your knowledge of the industry by stories, analogies and metaphors that work to show you understand their business. Demonstrate your professionalism by the way you ask penetrating questions.  Demonstrate your focus on their issues by not looking, acting or sounding like every other salesperson they have met.
   
   
3. Have the courage to ask tough questions and have fierce/ honest discussions. You probably know the questions, but do you often leave an initial call having failed to ask:
      
• How will you make this decision? 
• When do I meet the decision maker?
• If you don't have a budget, how will you pay for this?
• If you are shopping for low price, 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, what did they say?
• 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?
4. Check your sales attitude – the head stuff will drive your sales behaviors so leave your need for approval at the door when you leave the house in the morning.  Re-write your personal beliefs about how and why people buy.  Think about the impact of your personal buy cycle at the car lot where you debated for the last three weeks over which make/ model to purchase and where you haggled over price with the manager. Go out expecting people to buy.
   
   
5. Qualify suspects / prospects to do business with you rather than the other way around.  Don’t go to a meeting feeling like you must audition for the business. You don't.  You shouldn’t. However, you should make sure that the person you are meeting with qualifies to do business with you. In an effective selling system, qualifying means the following:
• Does the prospect have a compelling reason to take action and when?
• Will they invest the time, money and resources to solve a problem they have or a problem they see coming?  Will they invest that time, money or resources in a timely fashion or are they in the information collecting mode of buying?
• Will they tell you "yes" or "no" when you present?  In order to accomplish this, you must have eliminated their 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. 
6. Get a clear next step.  There is always a next step even if you are in a "one appointment close" industry.  It doesn't matter if your business requires multiple meetings or is typically "one and done".  Always close per your identified objective for this meeting. Then move on.  I promise you, that if you get masterful at this step, you will have fewer meetings and your closing ratio will improve.  Ask for closure. Ask for a clear next step. Ask for the business Yes or No.

Master these 6 Steps to Start the Sale and you will close more business, more quickly, at higher margins.

Sometimes that means just go do the work! Early on in our business, I established rules for our sales success. One of my rules was No Cold Calling. Even though there is lots of information on effective cold calling, by having that rule, I was forced to get introductions and network with centers of influence. This has worked well over the years and our entire team follows that path. Occasionally, you need to change your approach to maintain your success. Here is one approach I tried and have adopted to set and reach our sales goals.

Lesson 1 - Have a plan, think through the plan, go do the activity.

Recently I grabbed a business card from a prospect that attended a Cincinnati Chamber session that I delivered earlier this year.  I decided to just stop by his office, hand the receptionist his card and my card and ask "Is this guy in?" I was going to be in the area so I decided today would be a good day to just drop in.

The receptionist left with my card in hand and then came back out saying, "Rich will be with you in a minute." Rich came out with a big smile on his face, greeted me and said that it was great that I would stop in.  I told him that if I didn't have the guts to stop in and see him, then he shouldn't hire me to begin with. 

You see, I'm a bulldog when it comes to prospecting.  Once I get a sense that there is something we should be talking about, I just keep calling, writing, and in this case, really get outside of my normal box and drop in.  I didn't have on a suit or blazer with a tie.  My first meeting was very informal; I was clad in blue jeans, cowboy boots and polo shirt.  I was, as Seth Godin would put it, a Purple Cow.

Lesson 2 - Be unique.  It is what clients are looking for today.

We spent an hour together and I learned a great deal about their business - what is working and not working, how the business has changed and what is keeping them from performing at a higher level.  No sales pitch, no sales talk, just asking questions.  I asked them questions that went well beyond areas that I specifically could help them with, because I am interested.  And the best way to help anyone is to be sincerely engaged in their business and courageous enough to ask sometimes tough and unusual questions.

Lesson 3 - Have courage.  What is the worst that could happen?

Rich took me on a tour and we just happened to go by the VP of sales office where he introduced me to Jim.  He told Jim about our history, our conversation that morning and that Anthony Cole Training Group had some really "good stuff" for sales and sales management.  Additionally, he suggested that we have a meeting to discuss what they do, what they need to do, and how "maybe" we might be of help.  Jim said yes.

Lesson 4 - If you ask enough times and be persistent, sooner or later someone will say yes.

Additionally, given the nature of their business - B2B, with lots of dropping in and cold calling - the VP was very impressed that the President of the company would be out on the road dropping in on prospects. What I did not mention before is that I had dropped by six other businesses and the person I wanted to see at each of those firms was not in. I left my card and perhaps, made an impression.  In today’s world of virtual touchpoints, you may just find that an in person drop and stop can set you apart. Can you do that virtually somehow?  Are you making full use of Zoom and other video devices? Be creative and look for ways to be different and unique. Be a purple cow.

Lesson 5 – Go Back to Lesson 1 and Go Prospect.

Conversation is much more pleasant than interrogation.  This is important for an effective coach to remember because after two or three questions, a salesperson is going to feel like they are being attacked.  This is also true for prospects.

Great coaches ask great questions like “Bill, how did that linebacker get past you?”  If the coach tells him, “You’ve got to keep that linebacker from getting past you”, does Bill learn anything? Chances are he already knows he shouldn’t have let this happen.  By asking the right question and reviewing via the post-call debrief (similar to viewing the game film together), Bill will better analyze his own actions and discover what he failed to do. 

Note that the coaching question, “Bill, how did that linebacker get past you?” is an open-ended question.  In sales and sales management, it is best to avoid asking “yes” and “no” questions. They are not effective during the sales process or when working with and coaching salespeople.  Phrase your questions as open-ended. This will help to engage the salesperson, make him/her think before answering and get him/her involved.

Let’s say that you have a sales person who frequently fails to uncover the competition during the sales process.  You could ask him/her, “Did you find out about the competition?” or “When you asked the prospect about those firms being considered, what did he say?”

Can you tell which question is going to get a better answer and provide more insight?  Open-ended questions make coaching sessions more conversational and more engaging.  Open-ended questions will help the salesperson identify the gaps between what they are doing and what they should be doing. Open-ended questions gather more information.  

Let’s parallel this to a conversation with a sales prospect. Your salesperson has secured a first meeting and over the phone, identified a specific issue or pain that is the reason for the meeting. Are they equipped with a meaningful series of open-ended questions that are conversational in nature, so that the prospect does not feel like they are being interrogated?  Here are some of the open-ended questions we recommend in a first meeting sales conversation:

• What has to happen today so that you feel that this was a great meeting?
• Tell me more about that (assume you have uncovered some problem or issue).
• How long has that been going on?
• What have you done to fix it?
• When you spoke to your current provider, what did they say? or
• What has your current vendor done to make this problem go away?
• What happens if you don’t fix this?
• What is this problem costing you?
• Is that a problem?
• Do you want to fix it?

While there are several Yes/No questions at the end of that series, for the most part, that questioning technique is conversational and open-ended. The salesperson is genuinely interested in the answers to these questions so that they will understand if they can help the prospect.

Now back to the coaching parallel. Once the gaps between expectation on the call and actual execution during the call are uncovered with your salesperson, you need to gain agreement from the sales person that there is a gap before moving to the next step. Sometimes the salesperson will not see this immediately. Upon agreement, identify specific solutions and objectives to improve performance.  The key here is to identify solutions that will help the salesperson learn and grow. Do not just set data or results-based goals. 

An example of a learning objective would be to improve the percentage of contacts to appointments.  An increase in this percentage would indicate improvement in an initial-call skill. Improving the quality of initial calls would be a measurable objective because there would be a corresponding increase in opportunities created.  Be sure to document the identified, agreed-upon objectives and note the specific action items and corresponding necessary behaviors so that you enhance the salesperson’s probability of success.

In analyzing those salespeople who are successful year after year, we find significant consistencies in prospecting behavior and practice management. These top sales producers adhere to “The ONLY "A" priority is prospecting” principle. Successful salespeople service accounts just like everyone else. They also have fires to put out and meetings to attend. But nothing gets in the way of consistent prospecting.

So, following their lead:

1. Schedule a time each day to make phone calls and stick to the schedule. First thing in the morning works well. The longer you procrastinate, the better chance there is of something getting in the way of this critical activity. You don't have to like prospecting; you just have to do it. Every day. The more of this activity you do, the more proficient you will become.

2. Don't look, act or sound like every other salesperson. Create a unique approach – Don't just say that you are different. Put yourself in your prospect's place. Would you take your phone call and be responsive? If not, work on your strategy and script. For example, when you get your prospect on the phone, say “Hello.” and be silent. Wait for the prospect to respond.

Buyers are conditioned to hear “Hello. This is Joe from ABC Company and I am calling you to ….” Prospects hear this, immediately recognize a sales pitch and quickly disconnect.

3. Successful prospectors understand that the purpose of a call is to set an appointment with a qualified candidate. Stop selling on the phone. Stop seeing just anyone who will see you. Make sure the prospect qualifies to do business with you. On the phone call identify that the prospect has a problem and get him to invite you to come and talk about it.

The quality of the phone call determines the quality of the appointment.  At this point, your goal is to identify if your prospect has a problem that you can solve. Ask questions like “Can you tell me about the problems you are experiencing?”

Ask the question “Why is this problem a problem?” so that the prospect reinforces, in his own mind, that this is something he needs to address. If he can’t answer this question, chances are the problem isn’t big enough for him to spend time and money on it.

Ask the question “How much is this problem costing you?” Asking this will make the client put dollars to the problem. If the money involved is more than or equal to the price of your product, he is more apt to invite you to visit. Establish that he would like to fix the problem.  At this stage, you are trying to get enough information and “pain” to justify a meeting.

Keep the following questions handy when you are on prospecting calls. They will help you weed out the “tire kickers.”  

• Tell me about your current problems… in administering your 401K (for example).
• How long has this been a problem?
• What have you done to fix it?
• When you spoke with your current provider what did he say?
• What has he done to make this problem go away?
• What happens if you don’t fix this?
• How much is it costing you?
• Is that a problem?
• Do you want to fix it?
• But not today?

4. Understand that prospects want to meet professionals through introductions, not cold calls, so always ask for introductions as your first prospecting strategy. Ask your best client advocates the simple question “If you were doing what I do, who would you talk to next?” Then ask them if they would be willing to make a call on your behalf. You can find more information on How to Get Introductions here.

You know that prospecting is essential to your selling success. And you know that you can't consistently grow your business unless you consistently prospect. You can't count on market conditions or new products or low pricing to create opportunities. You must find prospects that fit your profile and qualify to do business with you.

So ask yourself which of the above might help you most today. Implement this change for the next 30 days, until it comes naturally. Commit yourself to changing one prospecting behavior or business practice that will dramatically impact your business.