One of the biggest challenges in sales is outplaying your competition, especially if that competition currently has the business.

When you are playing against the incumbent relationship make sure you ask the following question: “Who wins a tie?”

If you are a football fan, you will clearly know what I’m talking about when I mention the Overtime Rule in the NFL. What the NFL’s Overtime Rule boils down to is:

• If the game ends in a tie after regulation time, then an overtime period will be played.
• The official flips a coin, and whoever wins the toss decides if they want to be on offense or defense.
• If the team that has the first possession in overtime scores a touchdown the game is over, the scoring team wins.

This is what happened in the Chiefs vs Bills Divisional Playoff game Sunday, and the Bills lost. This is also what happened in the Chiefs vs Patriots AFC Championship game three years ago, and the Chiefs lost.

What does this have to do with selling and losing to the competition? Everything.

It almost never fails. Of the over 2 million salespeople tested by the Objective Management Group Sales Force Evaluation, 90% of the top 7% of all salespeople take responsibility for their outcomes. They don’t play the blame game. When you ask them why they didn’t get a sale, close an opportunity, or hit their quota, their answer will start with “I”.

Based on the research we’ve done over the last 25 years using the OMG tool, we know that at least 66% of the non-elite salespeople (93% of all salespeople evaluated) blame either the competition, the economy, or their company for lack of results or failure to close an opportunity.

It sounds something like this when a deal doesn’t close: “What happened?” “The incumbent came in and matched our price and kept the deal.”

Translation – I lost the toss of the coin, the other team got the last look, and they got the deal across the goal line and won.

What happens when we are in competition and it’s our own client that is shopping the market: “What happened? They looked at a competitor, told me what they were offering, we sharpened our pencil a little, and got the deal.”

Translation – I won the coin toss, saw what the competitor was doing, altered our original proposal, and won the deal.

When we win the toss, we don’t complain about a prospect shopping and picking us. When we don’t win the toss and don’t win the deal, we complain that the prospect wasn’t honest with us, used us to get a better deal, or the competition simply won on price.

You can’t have it both ways. I assure you that if the Buffalo Bills had won the toss and won the game no one in Buffalo would be complaining about the Overtime Rule.

The best way to deal with the overtime coin toss is to avoid getting there. When you are in competition against the incumbent make sure you ask 100% of the time the following question: “Who wins a tie?”

The answer will help you determine if you should risk a loss by going into overtime against an incumbent relationship that has already won the toss.

To improve your outbound selling success, you must have a process that you strictly follow and regularly improve upon, be a continual learner, and focus on building relationships.

If you are a sales leader or a salesperson in need of an outbound sales strategy, here are our 7 steps to improve your success.

Most of the companies and salespeople we work with must do outbound lead generation and relationship building and many do not have the luxury of filling their sales pipeline with inbound leads. Like most things, if you have a plan and stick to the plan, outbound selling will be more effective. If you are a sales leader or a salesperson in need of an outbound sales strategy, here are our 7 steps to improve your success:

1. Know and Focus on Your Target: If you are familiar with the 80/20 Rule, you know that the majority of your revenue comes from about 20% of your clients. Spend time defining their profile and determining how to go about finding and reaching more of them. You may have several profiles, for example, we work with both Banks and Insurance firms. In my outbound sales efforts, however, I must focus and put on one of my profile hats. If I am looking to increase my outbound lead generation with banks, I need to think about where bank CEOs hang out, what they read, what are their biggest problems, and what my message to them will be. LinkedIn, Google, associations, competitors are all great resources to help you put your best prospect hat on. This is not a one-time event of course; you should always be gathering industry information about your Target.
2. Do Your Research: Think about all the irrelevant emails that you receive and dedicate yourself to not being one of those. There is a place for mass emails, but for now, I am speaking of one-to-one outbound lead gen. Once you have determined that a particular company is worthy of outreach, find out everything you can about them. If you have a resource like HubSpot, you can see other connections within the company. If you utilize ZoomInfo, you can pull down contact information and even org charts to help customize your outbound sales efforts.
3. Customize Your Outreach: We are not big proponents of systematic emails – you will have a greater chance of being noticed if you customize your email or call with something you know is on your prospect’s mind. I do outbound calling on bank and insurance associations and every single time, before I reach out, I visit their websites and see what is new and what events they are working on. It takes time, but it makes my message more relevant. If you are working within an industry, you can use information you have learned from one company for another. I religiously read our industry newsletters and our competitor’s marketing messages to my target as it helps me be smarter and more relevant with my outbound sales outreach.
4. Don’t Expect a Response: So, we all know that our increasingly virtual world has increased the likeliness of being ignored. Yesterday I sent out 11 custom email outreaches. I heard back from 1. I will do a call follow-up to all 11 today and send out 11 more. Then in a couple of weeks, I will reach out again, further refining my message. There are some prospects that never respond which may mean they are not a prospect, or at least not right now. Your outbound sales strategy has to include being resilient and persistent. Let’s face it, you have to prove your way in the door, find a connection, some reason for that person to engage with you. Don’t expect a response but be thrilled if you get one.
5. Respond Quickly and Efficiently: Maybe this goes without saying, but your level of enthusiasm and timeliness of response is critical but don’t go overboard and send them everything you have! Answer their question and maybe offer one additional helpful suggestion – what has worked for others is always good. This is a conversation, not a sales pitch so find out how to help. If that is always your goal, to help your prospect solve a problem they have, your outbound sales strategy will be effective.
6. Be Excellent with the Details: I try my best to minimize the back and forth needed and try to anticipate what the prospect will need. Make it as easy as possible on them once they are engaged. Be the resource they think, Wow that was a great experience and I got what I needed. Deliver what you say you will and remember the adage: don’t overpromise and underdeliver. Give them more than they asked for.
7. Don’t Forget to Thank Them, Follow up and Build the Relationship: Seems obvious right but think of your outbound lead generation strategy as a pipeline to others. Thank them, ask them for feedback, ask them if you can help in any other way. If you feel confident that they were/are very pleased, ask them for a testimonial, or a Google review, or an introduction to another company. If a salesperson really understands your business, provides an excellent solution, is easy and efficient to work with, wouldn’t you want to help them build their business?

To improve your outbound selling success, have a process, follow and improve the process, be a continual learner, have some fun along the way and remember, these are relationships we are building. Relationships take time and genuine and ongoing interest to develop trust and longevity.

One of the biggest sales challenges to overcome is a prospect who becomes indifferent when they decide that doing nothing is the easiest thing to do.

How do you challenge the decision and not the prospect to help them overcome their choice to maintain the status quo?

There is no question that the most disappointing outcome for a salesperson to receive after their presentation is the outcome where the prospect does nothing. Not only did you not get the business…neither did any of the other firms that pitched the deal. The prospect simply stayed with the incumbent provider. They did nothing.

Before we go any further, let me give you two acronyms:

PI = Prospect Indifference
CSQ = Cost of Status Quo

I would argue that those two things are perhaps even more powerful than the other firms that provide you with ongoing competition. Just like Reese Cups, potato chips, and certain adult beverages, the gravitational pull of doing nothing can be hard for prospects to resist. Prospects become indifferent when they decide that doing nothing is the easiest thing to do. But here is the reality – while it may be the easiest thing to do, it is not often the right thing to do. Here is a general life principle: the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are often the same things.

You have two options when your prospect does nothing (they simply stick with the incumbent):

1. Eat another Reese Cup and do nothing yourself (walk away)
2. Challenge the decision (challenge the decision, not the prospect)

How do you do that? You do that by asking the prospect if they have calculated the cost of maintaining the status quo (CSQ). Ask them what their tolerance is to continue to deal with the problems you uncovered during your discovery process. Ask them what those problems will likely cost them going forward.

I will close with two questions: when do you want to know about the likelihood of your prospect maintaining the status quo? And when do you want to know that the pull of resistive inertia will just be too powerful and will likely prevent the prospect from making a move? Don’t forget the set of questions you should be asking towards the end of your first call: does your prospect have a problem that they have to fix, and who gets to fix it?

Or you can do nothing. Just take a bag of candy to snack on during your ride back to the office.

One of the top challenges we discuss with sales managers and leaders is how to get their salespeople to start selling value and stop caving on price.

In this blog, we will discuss the best way to respond to a prospect who tells you that your competition has a lower or better price.

The death of value has come slowly…but you could see it coming for quite some time. Some might blame the economy. Others might blame technology or even hyper-competition from other providers. But do you know who rarely gets blamed? Salespeople.

When we are in front of sales leadership teams the number one challenge we wind up discussing is getting salespeople to start value-based selling and stop caving on price. Let me be clear about something – selling based on price is a sales strategy. It’s just not a very good sales strategy (unless you are Walmart). Seth Godin called selling on price “the race to the bottom” and he went on to say it is a race you can’t win and it is a race you don’t want to win.

John Ruskin wrote these words that will forever be true: “It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.”

So, what is the best way to respond to a prospect who tells you that ABC Company has a lower or better price? If you believe in the power of gradual self-discovery then you should ask the prospect one simple question – “why do you think that is?”

Or what about simply responding with “thanks for sharing that with me…what if I tell you I can’t do that…where would that leave you and me?”

I may have been born yesterday but I stayed up all night studying so here is my question for you: is it possible you wind up fighting on price because you offer to fight?”

And if you need to walk away, perhaps you should suggest to your prospect that they add a contingency factor to the lowest priced bid for when they figure out that what they bought is not capable of doing what they need it to do. Of course, if they do that, then they would probably have the money to buy your offering instead.

There are specific traits that skilled salespeople possess in order to build strong relationships with prospects or clients.

They create a great client experience by providing value, asking the right questions, listening to understand, and demonstrating patience.

Client service or selling, what is the difference? If you will think for a moment about your own buying experiences. When I shop on Amazon, I actually now look for the recommended and related items and often will purchase them. Recently I was at a big box store making a tech purchase and had the benefit of working with a great salesperson who asked all the right questions to steer me to the right item. Ray (the salesman) didn’t “sell” me the item, however, he did help me explore what features I needed and provided options. With his knowledgeable questions, Ray helped me come to the right choice and purchase decision. Some may call this service, but this is really selling because service is in the heart of all great salespeople.

I am going to borrow from the wonderful book Go-Givers Sell More by Bob Burg & John David Mann for this post. Bob and John David have identified The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success and these include: The Law of Value, The Law of Compensation, The Law of Influence, The Law of Authenticity, and The Law of Receptivity

Let’s look at the Law of Value first. Here is what Bob and John David say about that: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. Now that is a wonderful definition. In addition, we know from our sales data source Objective Management Group that there are specific traits that skilled salespeople demonstrate when they build value for a prospect or client and these are:

• Focused on value over price
• Knows & believes in their value
• Comfortable discussing money
• Always positions value
• Sales process supports value
• Learns why prospects will buy
• Asks enough & great questions
• Avoids making assumptions
• Not compelled to provide a term sheet

Think about your own best salespeople. Do they build a great client experience because they ask enough of the right great questions and do not assume anything? Value-based selling is trainable and should be a focus for your organization’s customized sales training in the future.

Let’s look at one more of Bob and John David’s Five Laws – The Law of Influence, which they describe as; Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first. All organizations recognize that the days of showing up with your box of products are over, in large part because the buying process is in the hands of the prospect now. So, if everything can be found online, how do you differentiate as a banker or an insurance or investment advisor? Consultative sellers put other people’s interests first with their core selling skills and behaviors. Borrowing from our 30+ year sales data warehouse again, here are the skills and traits of consultative and caring salespeople:

• Able to stay in the moment
• Uncovers compelling reasons to buy
• Able to listen/ask with ease
• Will build trust
• Able to ask tough questions
• Takes nothing for granted
• Has appropriate amount of patience
• Develops strong relationships
• Presents at the right time
• Has a healthy skepticism

How good are your client-facing people with listening with ease and demonstrating the appropriate amount of patience? Are they building relationships or are they taking care of the transaction at hand?

As you evaluate your sales team and your client servicing, it makes sense to think about how your sales process integrates with a great client experience. According to Bob and John David, “Selling is not at its core a business transaction; it is first and foremost the forging of a human connection.”