Posted by Bob Apollo on Sun, Jul 25, 2010
BANT, in case anyone is unfamiliar with the acronym, stands for Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline. It’s commonly used in the sales qualification process. But I’ve come across a few too many situations recently where sales people were routinely rejecting marketing leads because they weren’t “BANT Ready”. I’ve also been pitched by telemarketing agencies offering “BANT-qualified deals”.
I want to explain why that’s a really bad idea.
But before I do, it’s probably worth confirming that I'm thinking primarily about new business opportunities involving complex, long buying cycle product or service offerings here, rather than simple transactional sales that might be concluded in a single call.
Of course BANT matters...
I have no problem with the idea that, before a complex sale can be concluded, budget, authority, need and timeline all have to exist. But sales people need to be creating BANT, not expecting BANT to be served up on a plate for them. Here’s why: by the time budget, authority, need and timeframe have been established, it’s highly likely that another vendor’s fingerprints are all over the deal.
Think back to any unanticipated RFPs you might have received over the past. How many did you win? Unless you manage to dramatically reshape the prospect’s requirements, studies suggest that if you win more than 1 in 20 of such deals you’re doing better than average. The dice are already loaded against you, and you’re just serving as “column fodder” to make up the numbers.
Your sales people need to create BANT not wait for it...
Instead of hoping that fully-qualified, BANT-ready deals can be uncovered, your sales and marketing teams need to be working together to connect with prospects that have unmet needs that they cannot afford to ignore, and for which you happen to have an economically attractive solution. Even better if your actions serve in some way to create the need, or elevate its importance.
Of the four components of BANT, it’s pretty obvious that need has to come first. It’s also clear that identifying a need is your entry point into the opportunity. But your sales people must be careful not to leap straight from an identified need to proposing their solution. They must use the freshly uncovered need to develop the other three factors, and to establish the economic case for change.
Establishing the economic case for change...
Merely identifying a need is, of course, no guarantee that the prospect will do anything about addressing it. First, they must establish an economic case for change. By helping them, you can identify the likely source of budget and authority, and determine whether a time-critical event exists - or can be created.
Start by exploring the consequences of the issue, and identifying who else is affected. Don’t stop at the first-level implications - keep probing and developing your stakeholder map until you’ve built a complete picture. Work with the prospect to flesh out the costs or lost revenues associated with the situation - the more specific the better.
If the issue is relatively new, help them fully understand the potential impact. If the issue has been obvious to them for a while, find out why they haven’t dealt with it before - and what’s changed to elevate its importance now. Ask them how the company goes about making recent similar decisions - and what distinguished the projects that were approved from those that stalled.
If your initial contact doesn’t know some of the answers - and hopefully they won’t - take advantage and secure their help to reach out through the organisation to others who are affected. Remain consultative. Keep asking questions. Refuse the temptation to propose your solution until you’ve helped them establish whether there is an economic case for change.
Back to BANT...
The process of establishing the economic case for change, assuming that one exists, enables you to use the need you have uncovered to understand and influence budget, authority and timeframe. Your pursuit of consequences will enable you to more effectively influence their requirements - and align your capabilities accordingly. And you’ll be in a much better position to determine if the opportunity is real, whether you want to pursue it, and whether you can win.
Don’t wait for another vendor to establish BANT. Don’t brief your telemarketing agency to focus primarily on discovering BANT-ready deals. Don’t let your sales people demand only BANT-qualified leads. Focus on uncovering the need, developing the requirements, and on developing the economic case for change.
You’ll find your company in the driving seat in a far higher percentage of deals - and you’ll shorten your sales cycles and increase your win rates at the same time. Oh, and you’ll be more confident about “no bidding” those unexpected RFPs you had no chance of winning anyway.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, Jul 15, 2010
It’s an old story, but one that I still hear far too often. Salespeople complaining that marketing never generates any decent leads. Marketing getting frustrated that sales never follows up on the leads they have created. And, amusing though the idea might at first appear, we can’t excuse it by claiming that “Sales is from Mars and Marketing is from Venus”.
I should probably have put the word “leads” in quote marks. It’s not unusual for part of the problem to stem from a failure to agree what a sales ready lead looks like, or to get confused between an enquiry, a lead and an opportunity, or even (bizarre as it may seem) to regard those three categories as being in some way interchangeable.
Creating a contract between sales and marketing
But the real root cause predates even the enquiry-lead-opportunity definition problem: it arises from the failure to agree and define what an “ideal prospect” looks like. Without a consensus about the characteristics of a well-qualified prospect, marketing are likely to continue investing resources targeting people who are never likely to buy - and sales will be unable to sign up to a contract with marketing that basically says “find opportunities that look like this, and we will commit to pursue them”.
What does an ideal prospect look like?
I’ve conducted a number of ideal prospect profile exercises with clients - I have come to regard them as the essential foundation for making smart sales and marketing investment decisions - and here’s what I’ve learned:
- Demographics alone aren’t enough. The classic dimensions of market segmentation - industry, geography, company size, etc., form the foundation of an ideal prospect profile, but they are by themselves insufficient
- The devil is in the detail. When you evaluate recent sales successes, you can usually uncover more subtle characteristics that have a more important predictive effect. Things like existing systems in use often have a profound impact on the chances of sales success
- Don’t ignore behavioural factors. Years ago, when I was working at HP, we uncovered something that had far greater impact than any demographic factor: companies that were highly decentralised (like HP) tended to prefer to buy from HP. Companies that were highly centralised (like IBM was at the time) strongly preferred to buy from IBM
- Look for patterns. A more recent predictive factor has emerged from my work with SaaS based offerings: for reasons that are fairly simple to understand, companies that have already signed up for one SaaS based solution are far more likely to buy additional ones. The pioneering work has already been done
A few simple recommendations...
Here’s what I’d recommend to any organisation that wants to leverage the concept of “ideal prospect profiles” to dramatically increase sales and marketing effectiveness:
- Establish ideal prospect profiles for each of your significant product or service offerings as a collaborative exercise between sales and marketing. Be sure to combine demographic, environmental and behavioural characteristics
- Make a determined effort to progressively enhance your target account prospecting database by capturing the characteristics of your “ideal prospects”. Include this learning in the information you collect in web form submissions, etc.
- Help prospects to self-qualify by explaining how your solution is particularly relevant to organisations that exhibit the characteristics of your “ideal prospect profile”. Ensure that your case studies and reference materials support this
- Encourage sales and marketing to enter into a contract based on the commonly agreed characteristics of an “ideal prospect” that ensures that if marketing uncovers a suitable candidate, sales commits to follow them up
- Implement a continuous qualification process that helps marketing and sales to judge - in an evidence based way - just how good a prospect any given enquiry, lead or opportunity is likely to be
Trust me, it will be worth the effort...
Get this right - and continue to refine it - and from all my observations, you’ll spend your marketing money far more wisely and apply your sales resources far more effectively. And both departments will enjoy working together.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, Jul 01, 2010
I’ve lost track of the number of companies who proclaim that they are embracing a “value-added” strategy in order to differentiate themselves in an increasingly commoditised market. They often see it as their best chance of breaking away from relentless pricing pressure and a highly competitive sales environment.
Many have thrown enormous sums of money at trying to move up the solution value chain without successfully changing a sales culture that is still rooted in selling simple product offerings and lacks the experience or credibility to deal with the buying processes that are associated with evaluating complex solutions.
Value-added - or cost-added?
So why do so many of these “value-added” initiatives manifestly fail to deliver the hoped for results? And why in many - maybe the majority - of cases, do the initiatives turn out to be nothing more than “cost-added” strategies that only serve to further depress the profitability of the organisation without actually moving the dial when it comes to sales win rates?
In my experience, most of these initiatives make no attempt to confirm that their various so-called “value-added” activities have any meaningful value to the prospective customer, or are likely to positively influence their behaviour. In fact, all-too-often they reflect the misapplied imagination of a product marketing manager about what matters to customers they have spent all-too-little time trying to really understand.
It's what the prospect is prepared to pay for...
I propose the following test of value added: “that which a well-qualified prospective customer proves by their behaviour they are willing to invest their time or money in, which materially advances their buying cycle, or increases the chances of them making a positive buying decision”. In other words, we shouldn’t be doing anything that a prospect isn’t prepared to pay for with their time or money.
Of course, there is a big problem implementing this thinking in an environment which is focused primarily around a vendor’s sales process. But when you turn the telescope around and look at matters from the perspective of the buying process, and what it takes to persuade your prospect’s decision making team to move forward from stage to stage, you can much more easily identify where the real value added lies … and where all the potential sources of wasted effort might sit.
Are your "value-added" efforts wasted?
Take a look at your sales and marketing actions? Can you identify where and how they add value to your prospect's decision-making process? And if not, how much more effective could your organisation be if you saved that money and effort or re-purposed it to a better cause?
Posted by Bob Apollo on Tue, Jun 15, 2010
Is your sales and marketing aligned? If not, you are running the risk of falling behind. Sometimes the signs of a lack of alignment are obvious. Marketing spends money generating leads the sales force never follow up whilst sales people "reinvent the wheel" because they don't want to use the sales tools marketing has created. The Aberdeen Group concluded that the average sales person spends 40-60 hours a month re-creating sales-ready, customer-relevant material they think marketing could and should have produced better in the first place.
It's strange to observe that these remain such common experiences when CSO Insights’ 2010 Sales Performance Optimization survey of more than 2800 sales leaders identified “achieving better sales and marketing alignment” as one of the most important revenue-driving initiatives for the year ahead.
alignment brings benefits
The Harvard Business Review has confirmed the often dramatic benefits enjoyed by well-aligned organisations - they observe that “When Sales and Marketing work well together, companies see substantial improvement in important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorter, market entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower”. Hugh Mcfarlane of Mathmarketing found much the same. He surveyed 1,400 people in 84 countries around the world, and found that well-aligned organisations grew 5.4% faster, closed 38% more proposals and lost 36% fewer customers than their inadequately-aligned rivals.
The evidence seems to be clear - when sales and marketing organisations get aligned, great things happen. So it ought to be a question of how, not if. Most of my recent work with clients has been on sales and alignment issues. I'm pleased to be able to report that we've seen some pretty dramatic benefits along the lines quoted above or better, albeit with a smaller sample size.
the foundations of effective alignment
What's the formula for success? Naturally the precise approach will vary from one company to the next, but I'm confident that there are at least 7 common factors. Sales and marketing organisations that are well-aligned:
- Have agreed "ideal prospect profiles"
- Involve sales in active market research
- Craft "messages that matter" to their prospects
- Manage an integrated revenue cycle
- Share a common language
- Establish shared metrics
- Enjoy executive commitment
download the white paper
I've encapsulated what I've learned about these factors in a new white paper, entitled "are you aligned - or falling behind?". You can download it here. It includes a 20-point questionnaire that I think you'll find illuminating. No registration is required, but I'd love to hear your comments - let me know what you think.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Wed, Jun 09, 2010
BP has been getting a great deal of adverse publicity for the recent massive leak in their Gulf of Mexico oil pipeline. It’s taken an age to address the underlying problem. The clean-up operation is clearly going to take ages and cost billions. The fortunes of the Bubba Gump shrimp company and many others like it may never recover.
Those of us who manage sales pipelines know that they rarely run freely. Many are clogged with deals that are going nowhere and which only serve to slow the progress of more promising opportunities.
But slow-moving pipelines aren’t the only problem. Sales pipelines also leak, as prospects either decide to buy something else or do nothing. Worst of all, many deals leak late in the process – towards the end of the pipeline - after huge amounts of sales effort have been applied.
My observations of high-value B2B sales suggest that clogged and leaky sales pipelines are often the norm and that much of the effort that sales teams expend on trying to move deals forward is wasted. So it’s no surprise that CSO Insight’s annual report on sales performance optimisation has recorded some of the lowest sales win rates on record.
It’s time for a massive clean-up operation – let’s just hope we can do better than BP. But what is it going to take?
Clearly define the key stages in your sales pipeline
Let’s start with the basics. Your pipeline stages must be clearly defined, consistently applied, and reflect meaningful steps in your prospect’s decision making process. The progress of each opportunity must be based on observable evidence of your prospect’s behaviour and intent, and not just on your sales activities. These are the essential foundations for any successful sales pipeline clean-up operation.
Carefully measure flow and leakage
Once you’re sure that the contents of your sales pipeline are being reported accurately, your attention should turn to measuring flow and leakage. Flow is about measuring how long it takes for successful deals to pass from one stage to the next in the pipeline, and using this as a benchmark to identify deals that have been “stuck in stage” for too long. This is important because of one simple fact: it inevitably takes you longer to lose a deal (or recognise it is lost) than it does to win.
Leakage is the other key metric. At what stage do deals fall out of the pipeline, and what is the real percentage of deals that ultimately convert to wins from each stage? I use the phrase “real percentage” deliberately. More often than not, CRM systems apply percentages to stages that have no relationship to reality, have never been reviewed or adjusted, and are precisely and dangerously wrong. It’s no wonder that average forecast accuracy rates (as measured by whether deals close as predicted) is now below 50%. If you’re still using the percentages that came out of the box with your CRM system – or if you haven’t reviewed them against reality recently, deal with it now. You can’t afford to wait.
Establish benchmarks
Once you have good underlying data and good metrics, you can establish benchmarks and start comparing the performance of your sales team members. Look at recent sales successes. Establish the cadence of their progress from stage to stage. Set deal flow benchmarks. Isolate deals that are taking longer than these winning benchmarks, and carefully re-qualify them to make sure they are real. If not, remove them from the pipeline. Review your sales strategy for deals that still seem promising but are stuck in stage. What can you do to help the prospect move forward to the next stage with you?
Look at the shape of your sales team’s pipelines. Are they qualifying out early, or losing late? Winning sales people seem to follow a consistent pattern – they take time over qualifying, qualify more deals out early in the pipeline, and successfully close the remaining opportunities faster than their also-ran peers. Conversely, average sales performers often have a habit of “losing late” – deals are either lost or qualified out late in the journey, after huge levels of effort have been wasted. You need to understand why, and take remedial action to help them embrace the winning behaviours of your top performers. But most important, if you’re going to lose, lose early!
Qualification should be a continuous process
Another common reason for opportunities getting stuck in the middle of the sales pipeline is that the prospect’s circumstances have changed. Even if the deal appeared well qualified initially, something’s happened – maybe the prospect now has other priorities – and progress has stalled.
Qualification is not and cannot be a one-time event. In fact, I recommend that at each stage in the sales pipeline that you identify and assess key qualifiers that are relevant to that stage in the buying process and which can alert you to these changing circumstances and either give you the chance to react to them or to qualify out before any further sales effort is wasted.
Avoid putting rubbish in your pipeline in the first place
My final recommendation is to avoid filling the pipeline with rubbish in the first place. Make sure that you establish “ideal prospect” profile, target your marketing towards them, and qualify inbound enquiries against them. Be careful to distinguish between interesting, important and urgent needs, and ensure that you are working on opportunities where the problem is already urgent or can be elevated to an urgent need.
Resist the temptation to add more poorly qualified prospects to the pipeline – you’ll only make matters worse, and have an even more expensive clean-up operation to perform later on. Focus on managing quality, velocity and leakage and encouraging winning behaviour, and you’ll have the foundation for a smoothly flowing sales pipeline. And by eliminating all that wasted effort, you’ll be doing your bit for the environment as well!
Posted by Bob Apollo on Mon, Jun 07, 2010
What really motivates people? Dan Pink is a contrarian thinker who always challenges me to think from a new perspective. I think that you'll really enjoy this video...
Posted by Bob Apollo on Fri, Jun 04, 2010
Jill Konrath's "SNAP Selling" identifies the "itch to pitch" as one of the most damaging habits sales people can possibly fall into - and my own observations suggest that it's one of the most common and dangerous ways of driving an otherwise promising sale off-track and into the weeds, with little hope of recovery.
The itch to pitch - otherwise known as "showing up and throwing up" or (in particularly trigger-happy cases) "premature elaboration" is an all too common condition. It can be observed whenever a sales person, upon hearing their prospect acknowledge an issue or challenge they know they can fix, can't wait to pitch in with an enthusiastic description of their company's offering or capabilities.
"As long as I'm learning, I'm listening..."
Within seconds, the previously receptive prospect has usually completely tuned out and the opportunity has been lost - potentially forever. When I talk to today's B2B buyers, one theme comes through loud and strong - they tell me that "for as long as I am learning, I am listening. But the moment I feel I'm being pitched to, I'm outta here".
Today's buyers hate being sold to. They can't stand over-enthusiastic sales people who can't wait to tell them how great their product is, or how many features it boasts, or all the acronyms that are inevitably associated with it. And they have come (with good reason) to dread the phrase "and here's another feature...".
Missing the golden moment...
Sales people who cannot resist the itch to pitch are missing a golden moment. When a prospect acknowledges an issue that you are confident you can help with, the worst possible thing you can do is to jump straight in and tell them how.
Time to explore...
Think of their acknowledgement of the issue as a golden opportunity to explore. Instead of prescribing your "solution", determine instead to learn more about their circumstances.
What first drew their attention to the problem? What are the consequences of the problem? Who else is affected? What would happen if no fix can be found? Could they live with the status quo? Have they tried to deal with it before? With what results? Why is solving it important now?
Interesting, important or urgent...
You'll learn an enormous amount by following these lines of enquiry. You may even help your prospect to think differently, and to take a fresh perspective - and earn their respect as a result. Perhaps most important, you'll be a better position to judge whether the issue they have acknowledged is interesting, important or urgent to their organisation.
Interesting needs can get you considered. Important needs can get you evaluated. But only urgent needs will get you bought. There's no point in pitching a solution to a problem that isn't regarded as urgent. But by asking these questions, you may be able to elevate an interesting or important need to an urgent one - or to identify a related need that turns out to be truly urgent. Or you may be in a position to conclude that there's no urgent need to be solved, and nothing that you can do to secure a sale.
Making it easy to buy...
When the time finally comes to present your solution, you'll be in much better shape. You'll be confident that you are addressing a real need that demands an urgent resolution. You'll have discovered who else is affected. You'll be confident in your business case. And you'll have built a rapport and a reputation with your prospect as an expert advisor, rather than a trigger-happy sales person.
When was the last time you were exposed to a sales person who can't resist the "itch to pitch"? And how did you feel about the experience? Well beware, because if you can't resist the tendency, your prospects will be feeling the same...
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, Jun 03, 2010
Jill Konrath is the acclaimed author of “Selling to Big Companies”, and an acknowledged expert on the new sales strategies that are required in the face of the dramatic changes that have taken place in B2B buying behaviour. Having enjoyed Jill’s previous work, I was looking forward to reading her latest book, “Snap Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today's Frazzled Customers”, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The acronym SNAP reminds us that our interactions with our prospects need to be Simple, iNvaluable, Aligned and Prioritised. Simple, because we have a vital role to play in helping our prospects deal with the complexities that surround any decision making process. iNvaluable, because in a world where it’s hard for prospects to differentiate vendor offerings, we need to find ways of elevating our unique value through our interaction with them. Aligned, because we need to remain focused at all times on the things that really matter to our prospects, and Prioritised, because if we’re not dealing with issues that are urgent, we’re ultimately irrelevant.
Jill skilfully explains how these four factors play out through the three key phases of our prospect’s decision making journey, which she identifies as:
- The decision to allow us access, during which we help our prospect to move from Oblivious (no interest in connecting) to Curious (agreeing to a conversation)
- The decision to initiate change, during which we help our prospect move from Complacent (will listen to ideas) to Committed (they have concluded that the status quo is unacceptable)
- The decision to select resources, during which we help our prospect move from Open (they are considering their options) to Certain (they have made their choice)
The book is packed with simple, illuminating insights into why these principles are relevant, and how they might be applied. Jill highlights the potential pitfalls that sales people can stumble into, and helps them anticipate and avoid the roadblocks that can so often derail the best-intended sales efforts.
Jill has an engaging, easy-to-read style. I found that my copy was quickly filled with scribbled notes in the margin and that before I got to the end of the book I’d already determined to put many of the ideas into practice. I’d be surprised if you didn’t find the same.
If you’re involved in complex, high-value B2B sales, and have been looking for a guide to help you navigate today’s challenging buying climate, the few hours it will take you to absorb the ideas in this book will undoubtedly represent time well spent.
You can buy the book on Amazon UK or US. Once you've read it, let me know what you think... and which ideas you plan to put into practice first.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, May 27, 2010
Regular readers will recall that I've been pleased to republish a number of guest blogs from Donal Daly of our partner the TAS Group. Here's an article that he first published a couple of months back on the Sales20Network that I am sure you'll find fascinating.
Over to you, Donal:
"There is much debate about what makes a good sales person, or indeed whether you can actually ‘make’ a good sales person. The debate of selling as a science or art continues to elicit much passionate discourse. What’s the role of sales training? Does how the sales person is compensated make a big difference? Does marketing drive sales or sales guide marketing? Why are there no (or few) professional qualifications for sales people? How come there are no standard measures? How can I get the most out of the sales team I have?
Sales fuels growth – and many reports have been commissioned on how to identify, hire, fire, coach or motivate a sales team to produce that growth. Depending on the audience, the answer to ‘What motivates a sales person?’ varies. Well, the survey results are in, and the answer is clear. But the important action for you to take right now is not to sit back and go “Hmm, that’s interesting”, but rather to think about what it means to your organization.
But first, the background …
I conducted a simple poll of the LinkedIn membership to answer a simple question:
What motivates sales people?
- Compensation or Incentives
- The thrill of the chase
- Making progress or winning
- Recognition
As I write this, there were 129 respondents, and though that is not a huge sample size, my experience with these kind of surveys would suggest that the percentages don’t change much after the first 50 or so respondents – assuming you’re targeting a fairly homogeneous group. So, I’m pretty confident that the responses here are sufficiently representative.
As you can see from the chart below, the overall results from the survey would suggest that what keeps the sales professional fired up and motivated is tangible evidence of making progress (40% of respondents). ‘Compensation or Incentives’ is strong second (at 35% of respondents) , but you will see that the gap increases when you look a little more closely.
Overall Results
Now, stop for a minute and think about how your organization provides you, or your sales team, with tangible evidence of progress. As the sales person progresses a sale, does sales management coaching measure progress against evidence of customer actions? Is it all about activity? Does the CRM system provide feedback to the user on the progress they are making – or is is just used for data entry to supply management with whatever reports they need.
When you further analyze the data, and look at if from the perspective of different job functions, you will see that from the sales professionals’ perspective, ‘Making progress or winning’ (at 67%) is the clear leader in the motivation stakes. It’s interesting to note that Consultants have it so wrong. Remember the old adage that says “Those who can, do; and those who can’t consult.” Be afraid – be very afraid.
Results by Job Function
As one of the respondents to the survey commented “So, maybe we’re not just money grabbing leaches after all.” Sales people, like everyone else, need to feel good about the job they do every day. Not every day is going to be a day where you close a deal. Sales is a profession peppered with rejection and disappointment, and it’s only those who have planned out their path to success, and have put in place a mechanism to measure progress against that plan, who can exhibit the necessary resilience to make success a pattern.
When we (The TAS Group) ask our existing customers what they like about the Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation platform, one of the most common answers we get from individual contributors and sales management alike is “We can always see when we are making headway. It’s not just like the CRM black-hole.”
One of the most interesting findings from this poll was the variances in response across age groups. Is this representative of an evolving shift in values? It is a sign of the impetuosity or impatience of youth – in this increasingly interrupt-driven environment? As you can see in the chart here, younger respondents want feedback – and they want to see progress, and they want to see it now.
Results by age categories
I found the results of this survey to be at once interesting and uplifting. For those who are open to interpreting it this way – it removes, or at least dilutes, the stereo-type of the snake-oil salesman. Sales people, like everyone else, want to feel good about themselves, every day, one small win at a time.
We shouldn’t ignore this when we think about how we manage, and might perhaps consider what one thing we can change to leverage this inherent attribute to accelerate revenue growth."
So - if you're a sales manager, how do these results relate to your experience? And if you're a sales person, do these findings reflect the way you feel? Or is something else motivating you?
One more thing: if you would like to learn more about how sales process equals sales success, you can complete a form to down load the TAS Group's recent white paper on the subject here.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Tue, May 25, 2010
Alec Baldwin’s performance as Blake in the film Glengarry Glen Ross immortalised the “Always Be Closing” attitude that for many has come to exemplify everything they hate about pushy, predatory sales people.
In any sort of complex, high-value sale, particularly one that involves multiple stakeholders, decision makers have become immune to this sort of Neanderthal behaviour. But what are we to replace the “Always Be Closing” mantra with?
Vote with your wallet, or vote with your feet...
Pushing aggressively for the close at least had one advantage: it may have caused many buyers to vow never to deal with the vendor again, but at least it forced a conclusion. In an ABC world, prospects quickly vote with their wallet, or vote with their feet.
I come across many situations where the opposite is true; sales pipelines that are clogged up with deals that are going nowhere. As my friend Donal Daly has pointed out, it takes 150% longer to lose than win. So clearly just waiting and hoping for nature to take its course isn’t a great alternative.
The discipline of winners...
From what I’ve observed, top-performing sales people rarely suffer from clogged pipelines. They have the discipline to qualify accurately, and the confidence to politely turn away from deals that are never likely to close or they have a slim-to-no chance of winning.
Contrast that with the behaviour of all too many middle-of-the-road people: they hang on to opportunities that are long past their sell-by date in the mistaken belief that abandoning them will reduce the value of their pipeline.
Of course, the opposite is true: the real-world value of their pipeline, and their chances of beating quota, is diminished rather than enhanced by holding on to these non-win deals. Better to set them aside, and go looking for better qualified opportunities.
From Always Be Closing to Always Be Qualifying...
In fact, I’m going to suggest that the new mantra ought instead to be “Always Be Qualifying”. And by that I don’t mean just the classic BANT criteria (Budget-Authority-Need-Timescale) which is hardly relevant in many opportunities where the need has to be created before it can be satisfied.
And I don’t see qualifying as a one-time act at the start of the sales process, either. My observations of top-performing sales people suggest that for them, qualifying is a continuous process rather than an event.
The art of continuous qualifying...
Let’s accept that the status quo rarely prevails. Opportunities that looked promising to start with can fade away. Leads that seemed poorly qualified can be nurtured into winning deals. But at the end of the day, I’ll suggest that you need to keep on top of two things above all: will they buy, and can you win?
Will they buy is all about whether the problem they are facing is so painful that they have to act. You need to be continuously qualifying for the economic impact, who else might be affected, and what the consequences of inaction might be. If the problem turns out to be merely irritating, can it be elevated to important? And is resolving the problem still a top priority - or has it been overtaken by events? What would it take them to move forward to the next stage? And what might hold them back?
Whether you can win is about whether they trust you, more than any other option (including “do nothing”), to deliver them the results they need. Have you got the support of the people who matter when it comes to making the decision? How can you elevate your value, and mitigate any risk? And are you sure that you know what sets you apart – and why it matters to your prospect?
Coffee is for qualifiers...
According to Alec Baldwin, “coffee is for closers”. But I’d be happy to buy a coffee (or send a Starbucks gift card) for anyone who contributes to this thread with their ideas about great qualifiers.