The next thing I like to do is get things in the proper order. Your customer’s idea of a selection process tends to favor their purposes, and in many ways their purpose is ‘de-selection.’ In most cases, the products or services you sell are much like those your competitors sell. Sure there are some technical or functional differences, but your customer probably couldn’t tell the difference. And as long as either one will do the job, they probably don’t even care.
By requesting things like demonstrations, references, and proposals, your customer hopes to be able to narrow the field of competitors through a process of elimination. But if it costs us thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours to participate, we might want to negotiate reordering things a little, and maybe even requesting some additional information up front.
I have learned, the hard way, that some customers simply buy wrong. They want you to lead with ‘B’ (your solution) and they will tell you whether or not they think it is the right one to take them to ‘C’ (their desired destination). In some cases they won’t even tell you what that ‘C’ is. I hesitate to be brash, but these kinds of deals are not worth participating in. This would be just as silly as calling up a car dealership and saying, ‘I am in the market for a new car. So, I am asking the top five dealerships in town to drive whichever car they think is right for me over to my house. Then I’ll decide which one I like best.’ You have the right, as a business professional, to insist on certain conditions before you invest thousands of dollars trying to sell something.
Here are some suggestions about how you can sell your ideas of reordering things to better suit your purposes.
1. Insist on Meeting Up Front with All of the People You Will Be Presenting To
I have encountered buying committees or gatekeepers who would not allow any access to those who would make the final decisions. They think they’re being smart, but they could not be more mistaken. If you and I can’t get an understanding of what those decision makers perceive as point ‘C,’ and the value they hope to derive when they get there, our chances of hitting the target are just about as good as shooting up in the air and hoping that a duck is flying over.
By meeting with the executives up front, you will have a much better idea of what to look and listen for during your needs analysis, opportunity assessment, or discovery process. Then, you will be able to tie your functional capabilities to the goals and objectives that they told you were important, and connect the dots between what they want to do and what you can do to help.
Every big sale is just a series of little sales, and if we can’t make the sale of why we should meet the people who understand ‘C,’ so that we too can understand it, then what chance do we have of making the larger sale? If our customer wants us to present to a group of executives, I care- fully sell them on why I need to meet each person they expect to have in that meeting individually before the presentation, and preferably very early on in the process. Keep in mind that if they are extremely resistant to our request to meet with executives, it might mean that the project is part of a bottom-up initiative, and executive management may not know a thing about it. We will talk about this further in Elevating the Buying Process.
2. Push the Product Demonstration Toward the End
Many customers will want to ’see your product’ as soon as they possibly can. Sometimes it’s because they are trying to bolster a grassroots campaign and they think ’seeing’ the product will help to garner support for the initiative. Other times they simply want to see which one ‘looks’ the best.
If your product offering is visually and aesthetically superior to your competitor’s product, you might be able to get away with showing it early, but as a general rule, ’seeing’ the product is part of the deselection process. Especially in the software business, which is where I spent most of my selling career, showing the product almost always results in a number of objections about things ‘they don’t like.’ Here are some classic examples:
- ‘This isn’t the way our current system does it.’
- ‘We don’t look at shipments by warehouse; we look at them by customer.’
- ‘We would need to customize the interface to display other data that this doesn’t show.’
- ‘This data pertains to flavored juices. We don’t sell flavored juices, we sell fashion apparel. I assume your system is incapable of handling apparel data, right?’
The interesting thing about software is that it can be made to do or show almost anything the customer wants it to. But the chances of it looking exactly the way they want it to look in an up-front demo- before we do any needs analysis or discovery-are nil. Take it from a guy who has made this mistake too many times. Learn how to sell them on the idea of doing a more customized demonstration later on in the process. If they get a ‘bad taste’ up front, you will be pushed to the back of the line of potential vendors, you won’t be given the same access to people or information you otherwise would, and you may never be able to recover.
There are some cases where a customized product demonstration, or what some vendors would call a proof-of-concept, can be quite an expensive undertaking. I have often insisted on presenting the findings of a needs analysis along with a detailed value proposition, which includes product pricing, before doing a custom product demo. My rationale is, ‘If you agree with our findings, and you feel the value proposition justifies the estimated investment, then we will move forward with the demo to ‘prove out’ the solution we propose. Does that seem fair to you?’ We certainly don’t want to invest all the time and money to develop a prototype or proof-of-concept only to hear them say later, ‘That’s just way out of our price range.’
3. Only Use References as the Last Step Before Commitment
It’s really easy for your customer to say, ‘Give us a few references.’ It doesn’t cost them anything. It’s a great way to get us off balance and to start jumping through their hoops. We can’t allow that kind of precedent to be set. For many years I have maintained this policy:
‘If you want to talk to one of my existing clients, that’s no problem. But I cannot ask my customer to take their time to speak with you, or host a visit, unless it is the last hurdle we need to get over before you are ready to move forward. I have a lot of happy customers, and you can talk to any of them you want. But I don’t have so many that I can afford to exercise them for a ‘maybe.’ If you decide to do business with us, I will treat you with the same respect. I would not waste your time to provide a reference for a prospect unless they were in a position to finalize their decision as a result. Does that seem fair to you?’
I’ve never had a customer who took issue with that. In most cases they simply want to know if you actually do have happy customers. To provide this ‘warm fuzzy,’ you might want to produce a partial list of existing clients that you can share, or several written customer testimonials in either a case study or a letter format.
I often ask my best reference clients if I can conduct a short inter- view in which I will ask them a few key questions, then write a letter ‘to me’ on their behalf, and e-mail it to them for approval. If they approve of the letter, they can print it on their letterhead, sign it, and mail it back to me. I always keep color copies of a dozen or more of these testimonial letters ready to go and often include them in information packs to new prospects.
Some companies organize scheduled conference calls, or even scheduled site visits, with key reference clients that their sales reps and their invited prospects can participate in. But here is a very important point to remember . . .
There are a finite number of things that your prospect thinks they want from you in the Selection and Buying Process. Now, you and I might know that they actually need our guidance and advice, our domain expertise, and the like. But sometimes they think that all they want are specifications, functionality, price, availability, and references. If we give them everything they want too early, they might not see a reason to meet with us again. We need to try to leverage these things they want, to get some of the things we want such as access to executives, other decision makers or influencers, Finance, Legal, and so on.
4. Never Present a Written Proposal Without a Verbal Agreement First
One of the most uncomfortable situations in selling is submitting a final proposal and waiting for them to ‘get back to you.’ The days or weeks that elapse seem like years and are a leading source of gray hair and ulcers among sales professionals. To reduce the anxiety, and to make sure your proposal hits the bull’s-eye, insist on reviewing the proposal verbally before you submit it in writing. This allows you to gauge their reaction, handle any concerns or objections they may have, or clear up any ambiguities that might exist.
There are situations where a client will demand that a written proposal be submitted before any response is provided. But here again, if they won’t even talk to us, what makes us think they are going to turn around and buy from us? If your customer won’t sit down with you to go over everything to make sure it’s right before you type it up, take that as a sign that you are not positioned to win. That’s why we need to sell them on the idea right up front. Tell them, ‘This is how we do our proposals. We meet with you to review the proposal, work out any kinks, come to an agreement, and then we go back and type it up. Does that seem fair to you?’
For years I have insisted on this as a rule of thumb: I will not type up anything that hasn’t been verbally agreed to first. If you aren’t in a position to be that bold, at least catch the spirit of the suggestion and work in that direction. What I’ve found is . . .
Submitting written letters, plans, or proposals that have not been verbally agreed to first can destroy your momentum in a sale, and can even damage a relationship if your customer doesn’t understand or agree with what they read.
Take the time to review things verbally before you put them in writing. That way, when you do submit the written version, you don’t have to sit around wondering what they thought about it. It’s worth the trouble, and you’ll find yourself having to write a lot less when you’ve already explained things in person or on the phone. What you write will simply be a confirmation of what you’ve already mutually agreed to.
5. Add in Any Major Steps or Events That Seem to Be Missing
There are certain steps that you know are critical in a successful sales campaign. You will have other chances in the future to suggest additional steps along the way, but if you see a big one that is missing, it’s best to bring it up and get it on the table early on.
A couple of examples might be meeting with Finance to talk about options for financing, or meeting with Legal to review standard contract language and at least start the dialogue around specific terms and conditions that you know might be contentious.
Heeding these guidelines and others that you know to be true about how customers buy in your market, you can present these steps once again slightly rearranged. Now the process looks more like this:
- Meet with key executives to understand desired results
- Needs analysis and opportunity assessment
- Meet with Finance to discuss financing options
- Present findings and value proposition to executive management
- Meet with Legal to iron out contract issues
- Verbally review proposal
- Product demonstration/proof-of-concept
- Submit final proposal
- Reference site visit
- Finalize agreement
Ideally, we would like to get verbal buy-in on this ‘rough draft’ of the things we will do together moving forward. The plan is obviously not complete yet, but it’s important that we have some degree of shared understanding and shared expectations to make sure that we are both on the same page. Then we can go back to the office and take this plan to the next level.