Front End Selling

I met with a senior Project Manager from a European engineering firm. She saw my sales model and said, “I only have experience with the presentations and post-sale activities, the right side of your Sales Model.” She is managing large projects, and comes aboard after they have been won.

Now she doesn’t have enough work and is coming to grips with the source of her problem.

The right side of the model is creating interest. That usually includes making the prospect knowledgeable about their options, the benefits of your approach, and making them familiar with cost. Controlling the customer’s concept gives you the best chance of successful completion.

The left side is defining the sale and post sale activities. Superficial observers see the revenue coming from these later stages, but without sufficient initiation, there is nothing to shape, manage, and bill.

There is also an inevitability to the back end of the sale, where if you don’t screw it up, you will probably complete the work. After all, the customer has already put their reputation on the line, choosing you.

In federal sales, I see an imbalance, most of the effort coming after a customer has identified what they want to buy. Then everybody is fighting to bid it.

That means someone else has already created the idea of the project, and how it should be done, and the followers are left with trying to create value by dropping price, or winning with a solution the customer doesn’t know they want.

My biggest and most profitable jobs have occurred after I had seeded the initial concept, and created a loyal customer following before the world knew what we were doing.

How much of the total sales work and how much of the value would you say comes from the front end of the Sales Model?

How many of your team understand that and can make a contribution?

Defining Sales Prospecting

Let’s try a mind experiment.

In the last three weeks I have been asked about sales prospecting several times. Must be spring.

My definition is that sales prospecting is a technique to spend two to five minutes to discover if someone would like to buy your offering.

Do it wrong and of course they will say, “Go away, boy, you bother me.” So to be valuable, this is a behavior that gets more wins than losses. I have been doing it for years and generally get somewhere north of 75% satisfaction.

We’ve already done that in our Five Step Prospecting Script, available elsewhere, but let me take a minute to describe what successful sales prospecting accomplishes, instead of how to do it, in the hope that we will learn a new way from our readers in the comments to this post.

1. Most important, we want the other person to really focus on whether they want to purchase what we are offering.

2. So before that, we want them to know what we are offering. Figure on a minute or less to have them understand enough to form a desire to acquire.

3. We also want to create an internal condition (theirs, not ours) to take action as quickly as possible.

4. Finally, we want to reward ourselves by satisfying ourselves the other person is buying everything they can.

All of this in five minutes or less, and the people you are playing with have to be having a good time, so in a group situation, others will play.

What are your ideas for how I can accomplish this? Please comment.

Thank you,

The New Prospecting

I was introducing myself to a local CEO when she said, “Oh, I know you, Dick. I read your blog posts. I’m a lurker.”

The World Changed Right Then!

First, she knows what I am writing about. Second, even if she doesn’t blog (yet) she knows the blogger term “lurker,” a person who reads but doesn’t comment.

We had a fabulous meeting.

What does this have to do with prospecting?

Theo was giving a talk about prospecting to a financial salesforce. He asked what I was thinking. So I started putting this together. His talk came and went, and we decided this wasn’t what his audience wanted to hear.

The textbook definition of prospecting is to assemble a list of prospects.

Well, that Nigerian Prince conclusively proved you can contact almost everyone by email. But he didn’t make many sales, and sure didn’t create happy relationships.

It’s not classic prospecting, but what is required today is making people predisposed to buy your offering. That takes communication.

One way is blogging. Another channel is events.

I use events three ways. I remember being introduced in a new territory and one of the top customers was remembering the long time gone local users group.

“I’d like to help you with that.”
“Well, you can’t come, it’s for customers only.”
“Fair enough. How about I drop off your projectors, handouts, and breakfast and then leave?”
“What about lunch?”
“I’ll get that too.”
“Well then, you might as well come to the meeting.”

That user group was very good to me.

I take a leadership role (usually starting in Membership) so I get to know everyone, AND they get to know me. Second, I’ve been called “A “Loud and Frequent Speaker.” Some wag wrote that and was surprised I won’t let it go.

A third use is getting my customers to speak. I’ve noticed I do better when my customer tells the story.

All of these are “pull” prospecting activities rather than interrupting people you don’t know when they are doing something else.

What's your most successful prospecting technique?

Defining Sales Activity - What Salesmen Do

There are five areas that sales professionals need to be able to use successfully. This is based on what we see the very best salespeople doing, from organization to organization.

This does not include prospecting, which is covered here.

There are three arenas where you will work with people who are not committed to buy from you. They are:

Face-to-Face - How can you meet someone and have them want to buy your offering? You know people need this skill when they start complaining about a lack of Qualified Leads. One time I flew from Washington, DC to Chicago sitting next to a nun, who had never used a computer. By the end of the flight, she thanked me for talking with her and was going to get some COBOL at her first opportunity. She said COBOL had become a priority for her.

Phone/Web - With voice mail, the telephone has become asynchronous. You can have a constructive conversation and complete a task without ever being on the line with the other person. That means good phone calls are designed for completion through voicemail.

Events - When people get together, the two most valuable positions are leading the meeting or being in the audience. The best make the most of either opportunity.

There are also two excellent opportunities when someone wants to buy.

The first is the classic "presentation" request. Three things should happen.

You need to present your offer,
Develop a solution, and
Negotiate an agreement.

Whether that takes one meeting or twenty (and it can!) has a lot to do with how organized both sides are. Here is how you can organize your side.

Your final opportunity is after the sale. This opportunity is often missed because of time constraints or lack of confidence in the offering. There are four good things that happen after the sale:

Realize (Get it installed),
Reload (As long as we are putting one here, can we put one there?)
Refer (If you've ever seen a hapless salesman seeking referrals, THIS IS THE TIME!)
Recommend (What? You would rather make cold calls?)

How close is this model to what you are doing?