For those of you who do not subscribe to it, here is our March Newsletter - focusing on the challenge of "no decision"...
For many sales
organisations, faced with risk-averse prospects and lengthy and convoluted
decision making processes, their toughest competitor has become "no
decision".
We are dedicating this newsletter to exploring this issue and its
consequences - and to sharing what we've learned from best-in-class
sales organisations who have managed to master the challenge.
Competing against "no decision"
Being offered a compelling ROI is not enough to propel today's prospects to
buy. Many of them prefer to preserve an uncomfortable status quo
rather than take the risk of making a bad purchase.
Faced with this inertia, vendors need to focus all their energies on
engaging with prospects with urgent problems that they cannot afford not to
deal with, and for whom the vendor has a compelling solution.
Getting considered by more of the
right sort of prospects
Solving the problem starts at the top of the sales funnel. Now, more
than ever, sales organisations need to focus on quality, not
quantity. You cannot afford the distraction of wasting valuable sales
resources on deals which have little or no chance of closing.
We've seen that vendors who practice prospect profiling, implement opportunity scoring, carefully
align the prospects most pressing issues with their key capabilities using value mapping - and qualify bad
deals out early - enjoy far better opportunity-to-sale conversion rates
than their volume-focused peers.
Of course, getting considered is just the first step in the process.
Driving the sales team to "sell harder" will, in most
circumstances, simply result in the middle of the pipeline getting clogged
up with deals that are going nowhere - and a growing level of prospect
irritation.
The final hurdle - but the one so many deals now get stuck
at. As we've already observed, having a strong ROI is no longer enough. If
they are to achieve closure, sales people need to have elevated the consequences of inaction to a
level where the vendor is seen as the least-risk of all available options -
including "do nothing".
We know all of this probably seems like simple common sense. But how
completely is your organisation putting these principles into
practice? We can help you find out.
Until the end of March, we're offering a free sales process healthcheck. It
will cost you nothing other than a little of your time, and there is no
need to either accept the findings or use our services. What have you
got to loose?
Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales Professionals, a regular contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and Top Sales World Magazine, and the driving force behind Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the leading proponents of outcome-centric selling. Following a successful corporate career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and market leaders, Bob now works as a strategic advisor, mentor, trainer and coach to ambitious B2B sales organisations - teaching them how to differentiate themselves through their provably superior approach to achieving their customer's desired outcomes.
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