The troubles always crept up after the final meetings were held and somehow each deal went into a rotting period wherein nothing really came out of any followup call or mail or fax etc.
We were successful in convincing them on the solution and all the hard work that went behind getting them to understand the value of our solution was well accepted by each client-rep at the meeting. Everyone agreed that the proposed 360D approach on digital marketing suggested by us and the kind of inputs given by us were amazing.
As a part of new age consultative sales, we were successful in getting the facts and obvious benefits of associating with us, etc RIGHT and therefore it was difficult at first go to understand what caused such delays.
After some recent reading of articles related to sales, I have come to infer that what we missed in the whole picture was actually the center piece of the puzzle - that we didn't establish the fact of the degree of RISK involved in maintaining their current status-quo of not solving their problems TODAY. What's the risk of maintaining status-quo? What's the risk in terms of brand, revenues, future revenue losses, results, growth etc? Why should they be convinced that they need to do something and do it now? Why should they then look at solving that issue from the best solution-provider? What's the cost that they are then ready to pay?
I don't think I need a sales team that sells according to the whims and fancies of clients or customers. That's because if it will be always according to the timeline and needs of the customer, why should I have a field-sales team for B2B? I can suffice by hiring an inbound-sales team that will act more like a call center.
Without crossing this first level of prospecting objective - "to ensure they understand the cost and the risk of maintaining status-quo", I am sure my solution level selling will hit the bottlenecks that it is hitting right now. Given the profile of clients that are stalling such deals (bordering the limits of laziness in innovating and implementing new systems) such an added level of getting them to agree that they need to act and act fast to win the losing battle needs to be done by each sales rep.
One of the toughest questions to answer for any sales rep is - "What happened to this deal that you said will finalize in the next few days?? Its been more than a week now?"
For practitioners of consultative sales and mostly in B2B sales, one usually focuses more in getting the right kind of process flow, meeting the right people, convincing every person in the decision tree that the solution is the best, and then propose the best possible program for the client, following-through the commitments and creating an excellent premise for customer delight all the way. But as it is proving out to be, these are not completing the entire picture for a sales rep. They now need to also ensure that they get the client to agree that the organization needs to act and come out of status quo.
Is it a sales problem? I don't think so. Because if its attacked via sales, the problem and then the latter part of the solution selling will blow the sales cycle out of proportion. I will want to give the power of marketing to the sale rep and let the person design the marketing program effectively to specifically address this very problem.
Amongst the markets that are being targeted( and of that you speak of) the constant search amidst meetings with multiple names is always for that elusive client or two, who atleast has an inkling of where he wants his institute to be in a couple of years from now. Once all the efforts - of prospecting, marketing,first round meetings etc - go into discovering that one /two names and convert them into deals, it shall open the floodgates for the herd in that local market to start considering adopting changes.
ReplyDeleteIt might not be really practical to try to influence everybody one-on-one and we need to use the "influence" card rather smartly. What do you think?
Not Growing now is equal to started planing to die now itself.
ReplyDeleteAccording to what I understand and have experienced, its always better to know who are the strategic-leads (as a part of the client team) in the deal and then meet them separately as well as collectively to talk about the risk of status-quo and then the solution that they need to buy.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is to follow the 2step process so that at a later date we don't have rotting-periods of unresponsive clients who are not converting your deals.
There are definitely extra rounds of caution to ensure that you dont pitch too high or low than the budget or perception or buying behavior/pattern, and also taking care of their internal motivation and power equation.
The influence card is not a strategy - it is rather something that's an integral part of your sales process, after the marketing process ends. I am sure that by the end of the marketing process, someone will automatically become the deal-pusher in the client team, but along with his efforts you are to ensure that meeting every stakeholder is done and you have followed the 2-step process to get the best deal asap.