That was a good meeting - I think I'll do it again

Well finally the snow has gone, and meetings are starting again. This means we are once again joining in regular reviews of meetings as our clients look to build their pipelines as the UK comes out of recession. As a result of this we had an experience that caused us to discuss our favourite subject of "planning your activities" as opposed to starting to discuss how you can take new offers to market.

The year ends in March, how are we going to hit target?
We have been working with an organisation whose financial year ends in March, so all the focus is on how can we close off deals. You would think this was a pretty straight forward activity:

• qualify the prospects who are able to makes a decision before the end of March (assuming you know their buying process and key decision making criteria)
• validate that your solution is a "good fit"
• ensure the key DM criteria and your solution match as closely as possible so that a decision is made in your favour
• check your solution beats the competition and work with your sponsor to win the business

So you would expect the sales team to have used the snow outbreak to re-qualify their pipeline and then start to have focussed meetings to win business. It would appear that for some sales teams this is not an effective exercise as it could ruin a "strong pipeline". Let me give you an example:

One salesman has just come back from a meeting, which he told us was "very good". We asked the obvious questions

• Can we win the business before March?
• What do we have to do to win the business?
• What is the next step?

The response we got was, "They are very interested in our approach, especially if we could include some of the new features we have promised in version 8 (due in June 2010). I told them that these features give us a clear competitive edge and they agreed with me. I have promised them a demo of the new features (using our beta tool) and we are looking to arrange a meeting in February. I hope that when we next meet we will be able to finalise the proposal, which I am confident we will win"

That was a good meeting, wasn't it?

I think we have a case of "Don't ruin the fun of the discussion by asking for the business". The salesman involved comes from a technical background and their comfort zone is in designing potential solutions. They enjoy the intellectual challenge of the discussion, but struggle with the close. In many cases they think that their customer will think less of them if they ask for the order!

So what did we do?

1. We did not pick on this one sales person! We asked the whole sales team to give us an update on every opportunity in the pipeline, specifically ranking them by
1. Target close date
2. Value
3. When the next meeting is
4. Objective of meeting and how this will help us close the business
2. We then carried out a one-to-one on each sales rep's top 3 opportunities and we specifically looked at
1. Did they know the decision making process and did this match their target close date?
2. Could we bring the close date forward?
3. Are they meeting the contact soon enough and have they agreed a clear objective for the meeting and the desired next steps?
3. We re-cut the pipeline (in terms of the final quarter) and identified where there are gaps and then revisited the process for any deals that are likely to close next year to see if we could bring any of them forward.

How did this help our troubled salesman?

We asked the salesman to visualise one of his colleagues who in the words of the salesman, "has no shame he will make any offer to win the business". We collectively worked out a strategy to allow the customer to place an order this month by:

• Identifying the key features they need us to deliver, and when they need them by
• Agreeing a delivery schedule that would allow them to buy now, and receive "credits" if we fail to deliver the features to the agreed timetable.
• Gaining commitment for a 24 month deal (not the 12 months that the salesman was originally offering)
• Ensuring there was no price discount but rather a win/win price!

The salesman has had his meeting and positioned the offer, and the client is working through the paperwork as we speak!

So what can we all learn from this?

There are 2 key lessons here:

1. Not all sales people think their job is asking for the order - with the focus on "solution selling" and the desire for our people to be able to build a solution, we have recruited a number of people who see themselves as "solution architects" and not sales people. As Managers we have to spot them and ensure that they are focussed on closing business.
2. Have a plan and implement it - Don't expect your sales people to have a plan, check they have a plan and check they follow it.

What can you expect from this Blog over the coming year?

It is our aim to continue to provide pragmatic and practical advice and solutions to the issues facing sales teams. We will always ensure that whatever we say you can use with your teams confident in the knowledge that we have already used the solutions in real life. We will continue to provide free tools and if you want access to more tools then you can always visit our website www.sales-accredit.com.

We need your input

We base all of our examples on the issues we are identifying in our clients, but we would like you to help us. Send us the issues you are facing and we will endeavour to address them in our future blogs.

And Finally

In the last blog of 2009 we discussed the personal business plan. We now have a worked examples, so if anyone would like a copy please drop me a line mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com

This week we are working with a key client on a reason to call campaign in support of some new products, I will share with you the lessons learnt on this project on next week's blog.