If you consider the tactics that are generally covered in sales skills training, you can probably think of a handful of happenings that can steal, or make you lose, your prospect.

In this blog, we will discuss the top 4 situations you may encounter that will cause you to wonder; "where are you, prospect?"

From the year it first appeared in 1966 until now, “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” has remained a holiday classic. Narrated by Boris Karloff, it contains so many scenes that quickly rush to my mind. Who can forget the scene of the Grinch talking with Cindy Lou Who…or the scene where the Grinch turns his dog, Max, into a reindeer?

But let’s talk about another grinch – and this one is much meaner. I’m talking about the one that steals your prospect. You know – the prospect you were chasing that you were sure you were going to win right up until the point that you didn’t. If you consider the tactics that are generally covered in sales skills training, you can probably think of a handful of happenings that can steal, or make you lose, your prospect.

I think there are four different types of grinches that steal your prospect:

1. Lack of compelling reasons to make a change. This surfaces when your prospect has no pain/compelling reason to make a change, but you decided to pursue the opportunity anyway.
2. Lack of capacity. This comes to you when you do establish a compelling reason for the prospect to make a change, but you fail to ask them about the timing of such a change. It only appears after the presentation when your calls or emails are not being returned because the prospect isn’t ready to make the change.
3. The incumbent. This shows up when you fail to drill down into two things: 1) the reason why the prospect will leave the incumbent and 2) what they will tell the incumbent when they make the change. Changing providers is a big decision. Probably the toughest decision the prospect will ever have to make.
4. Not receiving a decision (within a mutually agreed-upon timeframe) after you present your solution. Why does this happen? Because you did not get them to agree to make a decision. You simply presented without any kind of upfront agreement.

So, to all of you faithful readers of this blog: could the actual grinch who stole your prospect be you? Think about it…and Happy Holidays to all of you along with wishes of peace in the New Year.

In Part 1 of "Negotiating on the First Tee, we discussed the practice of negotiating with your prospect before you begin your presentation.  In Part 2, we continue this discussion and add more to the conversation.

In order to increase sales and close more deals, you must understand the client's business strategy, build a strong foundation for negotiation, and cross off all the boxes for a killer Sales DNA.

1. Establishing the ground rules for time of presentation are critical. Before we get to that though, you must have a transitional discussion
   • "Let me take a minute to review where I think we are..."
   • "You have the following issues a,b, and c that if not taken care of within this time frame will cause the following to happen and this outcome is a have to fix problem"
   • "Your capacity to invest time, money and effort to fix the problem is this…"
   • "And I’m assuming for a minute that if we are able to fix this for you, in the budget you’ve identified with the right criteria and priorities, you would also want me to be in a position to answer any and all questions at that time"
   • "Did I get this right?" (Buyer says yes)
   • "Good, assuming we can do this I will be prepared to do all those things. If I can’t, I will call in advance and cancel our presentation meeting.  Fair?" (Fair)
2. Ground rules discussion:
   • "It may not be effective here, but there is a process that we recommend to make sure we are all on the same page, can I share that with you?" (Yes)
   • I need for you to be prepared as well:
     • "As I am going through my presentation, you will be thinking one of 2 things: 1) this makes all the sense in the world; let’s do this, 2) This won’t work for me, the money is wrong or I don’t think there is a fit"
     • "When I’m finished, I’m going ask you which one you are thinking. What objections do you have to that process?"
   • Anticipate and prepare for objections when you complete step six. Keep in mind that  an objection, stall or questions does NOT mean they are telling you no. They just need more information or you need to find out more clarity about compelling issues, capacity to invest or clarity on decision making. At the end, you do your best to eliminate any TIOs (Think It Overs)
   • Let's assume for a minute that this works for you. You are not done minimizing the opportunity for negotiation at time of presentation.  When you finish this discussion, you must return to your  office and write out and send the "As we agreed to letter" that covers the 3 “Cs” and inform the buyer you will call to confirm the information you’ve sent.  Then call to confirm.
   • Presenting to get a decision is as much of a mindset as it is a process:
     • Review what you’ve discussed
     • Review the as we agreed to letter including money and decision process that will take place today
     • Ask, “What’s changed?”
     • Make the presentation starting with their priority item not the first page in your presentation
     • Answer all of their questions about each solution, get them to score that solution on a scale of 1-10. If you are 7 or better you are in good shape but still you need to get them to a ten.  Once you get the ‘10’ you check that item off.
     • Ask our closing question:
       • "What where you thinking as I went through this. Assume for this discussion they said, This is really great we should do this! 
       • You ask, what should we do now?

• Or your alternative is:
  1. Do you believe based on what we presented that we understand your business and what you are trying to accomplish?
  2. Do you feel we can help?
  3. Do you want our help?

6. Despite this great process and effort, you can expect buyers to ask you questions that they haven’t asked yet, raise objections, or present you with stalls.  The first thing is this: Be prepared by conducting pre-call strategy meetings and role play these challenges.  Always understand that prospects are looking out for their best interests and not yours. Do not get emotionally involved when they throw you the curve ball!

Now I bet you are thinking, Tony, where is all the negotiation stuff?  Well that’s it right there. You win the bet on the first tee.

In this article, we discuss the 3 challenges facing salespeople today: 

1. Will to Sell
2. Sales DNA
3. Sales Skills

During training discussions over the course of more than 20 years, the #1 most common answer when asking sales leaders how their teams could sell more consistently over the years has been, “If I had more / better prospects to call on.”

In order to address the problem of getting more qualified leads, sales leaders and salespeople need to first understand these three challenges.

In the last 30 days, I’ve talked to more than a dozen company executives, sales people and sales managers.  I’ve asked them, “What is the #1 constrictor to hitting your sales goals?”  The answer every time was: getting more qualified leads.  I know this is not a large sampling and I would be concerned about the validity of this finding if only 25% of them said that getting more qualified leads was the main problem. But that isn’t the case.  The consistency of answer in this survey indicates a trend to focus on.

There is further validation of the current finding:

During training discussions over the course of more than 20 years, I’ve asked sales executives, presidents and sales teams to complete the following statement:  I (we) would sell more, be more productive, more effective if only I (we) … 

The #1 most common answer consistently over the years has been “If I had more / better prospects to call on.”

In order to address the problem of getting more qualified leads, sales leaders and salespeople need to first understand these three challenges:

1. Will to Sell
2. Sales DNA
3. Sales Skills

Let me use an example to explain.  We are currently working with a financial institution that is hiring a new private banker in an expanded market.  Using the pre-hire assessment from our partner Objective Management Group, we created a ‘tailored fit model’ based on the performance of the top and bottom current private bankers.  Then, we assessed the 5 candidates they were still considering.

Take a look at these findings:

Figure 1 – How well did the candidates match the clients’ work history criteria for success?  The client created a profile that indicated that the non-negotiable sale success criteria where: 1) must be competition resistant (successfully sold in a competitive environment), 2) Successfully sold value rather than price, 3) Sold to executives, 4) Has successfully hunted and sold new business (this addresses challenge #3 sales skills – specifically skills for hunting/ prospecting), 5) Is an entrepreneurial seller.  As you can see all the candidates being considered marginally met the client criteria for success with 3 of the 5 having an 80% match.

When we look at other findings, we find the 3 challenges most common to organizations that are trying to consistently hit / exceed their sales goals.

Figure #1 -When we look at Challenge #1 – ‘Will to Sell’ we find the following:

Only 1 candidate meets all the criteria for Will To Sell. The question becomes:  How important is the will to sell when attempting to overcome the challenges of finding qualified prospects to talk to?

If 1/3 of your current team lacks the will to sell, what is the likelihood  - despite all the ‘prospecting’ training you provide them – that they will actually execute?  Also note that one of the candidates with strong desire, commitment and outlook will still be prone to making excuses for not prospecting, asking for introductions and networking. (Desire for Sales Success)

Figure #2 – Sales DNA (Sales DNA Audio) findings for the 5 candidates looked like this:

This post won’t go into the definitions of all the criteria you see here, but understand that green is good, and red is not so good.  If you look to the right of the graph and look at the Total Sales DNA, the scores in green and red told our client what they needed to know.  If everything else is equal in the equation, then your people with strong sales DNA are more likely to do the activity of prospecting and will be more successful.

*Candidate #2 meets the criteria of the client, has a very strong will to sell, and has the highest sales DNA score.  How many of the people on your sales team measure up to this ‘elite’ candidate?

The world of selling is certainly different today than it was just 5 years ago.  Your prospects in the marketplace have more ways to find more information about you, your products and services. They have more ways to compare you against your competition and all of this happens without you or your salespeople even making contact with them.

To meet the challenges of today, you need a sales team with the right stuff to get the job done!