You have been working on this multi-million deal for months.
You’ve met a lot of people, gathered tons of information, got a good
understanding of what your customer really needs and you have even a pretty good
sense of where your competition stand… you feel great, a little euphoric… and
you have pushed this opportunity at the top of your forecast. You already
imagine your-self coming back home with the largest-winning-smile-ever and you
have started thinking about what you could buy with the five figure commission
check you’re going to make. Man, you love your life!
The decision should be made this week. You’re thrilled. You call your buddy, a guy you’ve build a great relationship with, but that left a bitter taste in your mouth. He is cold, short in his answer… And he tells you they have a board meeting where the deal is going to be presented, discussed and actually decided. You suddenly feel frozen by panic. Wow, you had no idea it would go so high. And you don’t have a clue who those board members are. Within a few minutes, you have definitely lost control, and fallen down to square one. Everything is now just a question of luck…
This is very close to a true story. I was delivering a sales training in Sweden, Strategic Selling. I was 31 and one of the attendee was a senior sales guy who has been working on a huge deal for more than one year. He was quite arrogant and clearly thought he had nothing to learn anymore, and certainly not from me... Applying the model to real sale situations during the last day of the training, he suddenly realized that such a large deal had very little chance to be decided at the level of the people he was dealing with. He went from overconfident to scare to death in minutes. He has forgotten one important thing, to build a map and to look at it to know where he was and where to go to win.
What are maps for? Their objective is to simplify the territory and give you a simple representation of the reality that you can easily apprehend. This is exactly what you need when you are worried about a deal… or when you are too much euphoric, losing touch with reality. The best map I know to manage a complex opportunity with a long sales cycle is the model offered by Strategic Selling from Miller Heiman, precisely the one I was teaching in Sweden.
Strategic Selling methodology gives you a map to assess your situation within an account for a given opportunity. From there, you can really and comprehensively understand your strengths and weaknesses and make the best decision as to what the nest right move is. No more luck, but a systematic, repeatable and extremely effective way to maximize your chance to win.
To give you a little taste of how it works, here is a quick list of the main concepts in 10 points.
1- List all the Players who are or could be involved in the deal, internal players as well as external ones such as consultants.
2- The next step is to find out what the Role of each one is. They are only four possible roles:
a. Economic Buying Influence is the one making the final decision, the one who signs the check and can veto the decision recommended by the team.
b. User Buying Influence is going to use or supervise the use of your product/service. His/her performance is going to be directly impacted by it.
c. Technical Buying Influence is screening the specifications either technical or legal. He can say “No” but cannot say “Yes”.
d. Coach is somebody who is going to guide you on this sale for whatever reason. Coach doesn’t exist per se; you have to develop somebody in a coach.
3- Then you have to know what their individual Modes are, meaning how they see the sales situation and what their perception of the reality is. This is the one that matter, not yours.
a. Growth. They perceive that the results needed are higher than the current reality. They want more, more quality, or more quantity…The positive gap to be filled makes the probability of a sale high.
b. Trouble. They perceive that the current reality is lower than what should be. They want to come back to normal, with a sense of urgency. The probability of a sale is high too.
c. Even Keel. People perceive here that the reality matches the result needed. Chance of a sale is low. The only way is to change their perception and show future threat they have to address. That will take time.
d. Overconfident. People who consider they have never had it so good. Their perception of the reality is above the results needed, so they won’t do anything to rock the boat. Chance of a sale is null.
4- The next two things you have to qualify are what each person Win-Result is. Win is personal; Result is corporate.
a. Win is how a person win on a personal level. This is often intangible, non measurable nor quantifiable such as “remaining in a power position” or “gaining recognition” or “having more free time with his family”…
b. Result is related to your product/service and its impact on the customer’s business. As opposed to the win, it is tangible, measurable and quantifiable.
5- Finally you have to find out how each player Rate your solution and its ability to fulfill his/her Win-Result on a scale from -5 to +5, from strong antagonist to enthusiastic advocate.
6- Now you have a pretty good map in hands. You know who the players are, their roles, their perception of reality, what they want to accomplish business wise and how they could personally win, and finally how they rate your solution. Challenge each information to make sure you have the best of your knowledge captured.
7- This is a lot of information to uncover. Everything you don’t know for sure because you have not been told directly by the individual answering your questions or by somebody else in the organization such as one of your coaches is a Red Flag. People not met are red flag. Guessing is not an option. A red flag is good because it makes clear you don’t know yet something you should know.
8- You can now list your strengths such as a coach who would be in a growth mode, be the economic buying influence and love your solution. This is the best situation you can get ever!
9- You can also list your weaknesses, as not having a coach or having two users with unknown win but rating your solution -3.
10- Finally you can step back, look at the map, and decide what the best next move is. The best actions are defined as the ones that leverage strengths while reducing or eliminating at least one weakness. For example organizing a meeting with your coach-user to uncover the win and rating of the economic buying influence that you have not met yet is a great one. Meeting him alone would be less of a good move.
This approach is extremely powerful and when mastered, become a second nature. You have a map for action and you know what to do next to increase your understanding of the sale situation, and maximize your chance to win. You rely now on an objective analysis and no more on luck.
Additionally when shared across an entire sales team, from sales to pre-sales to management, it is a powerful tool that gives the opportunity to describe precisely a sales situation in a few minutes. Everybody is on the same page, use the same definition and that facilitates collaboration and team work to make the deal happen. You can find a Blue Sheet Form here.
Which tools have you used to over achieve? Share your best practices here to give us a chance to improve our game with new weapons.
