The fact is getting project approval has slowed sales down

I was on an early morning con-call this morning with a professional sales person based in Australia. He recently secured a significant deal (more than $10 million). I asked him what he was doing to face the slowdown. His reply:

“Now is a good time to knock on doors, it is important to stay focused and to stay positive about the impact your solutions can deliver. Eighteen months ago, I wasn’t too worried about looking for budget in the early part of a sales cycle. Now I am qualifying very hard a lot earlier on, we are asking questions like

• What will the board view be on a project like this?
• Where will the budget come from for this project?
• What types of cost benefit analysis will we need to work on together?
• We are being frank but at the same time respectful, its is important not to come across as being pushy.

Our sales team are drawing out the cost benefit and project justification a lot earlier in the sales cycle as part of qualification. We are working with the clients to build this so we don’t waste our time or theirs. Qualification and activity levels are the only game in town if you are going to reach your numbers”.

I hope this insight from the field is useful.

John O’ Gorman – sales coaching, sales effectiveness, sales management

Who is needed on your selling team? – 8 key roles

We all know that buying teams are getting larger and decision making is more complex. But what about your selling team? What type of sales team is needed to close a €500,000 plus deal?

I was chatting with two successfull entrepreneurs yesterday about selling complex solutions into major organisations and we began to talk about the type of sales team needed to close big ticket deals. Based on our collective experience of over 50 years in business we identified a number of key roles critical to moving opportunities from leads to meetings to sales cycles to orders.

1. A sales person – who adopts an expert selling approach – a listener

2. A pre-sales support person who knows the domain

3. A product/market expert who can talk knowledgeably about the industry

4. A Product director – the person who own the technology vision and road map, the guy who protects the IP and core

5.  A Senior developer who can be paired off with senior developers from the client/buying team

6. An account manager who can be introduced towards the end of the sales cycle – a person who has delivered similar projects, a person who has faced project delivery channels previously

7. A implementation/customer services director who owns the process for delivery, customer service and steering group reviews

8. The MD & maybe even chairman – as part of reference checking, building confidence and validation

Sales as we know it has changed forever, gone are the days that 2 people can sell high value deals without help from domain experts, technology experts and delivery experts. This fact has implications for the sales and relationship competencies across your organisation.The organisations who are closing business are holding workshops and team meetings with their key staff to remind them of their responsibility for sales. Worth a thought.

John O’ Gorman – Sales activtiy and sales success, accelerating sales growth

Sales People that sell

It struck me following two conversations yesterday with a sales manager and a highly experienced and successful CEO that there are a number of key characteristics to those people who will continue to sell successfully and those who will continue to struggle. These are three I noted from my conversations. There are many more but I would be here all day if I tried to list them all.

1. Sales is a tough profession, sales people who recognise this and take the good with the bad are the ones that do the business. Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Seperate Peace puts it well – The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as a blessing or a curse”. The sales people who succeed may not know it but they are following Don Juan’s philiosphy.

2. Sales people who are at the top of their field are the ones who are always looking to learn, they read, attend sales conferences and are hard on themselves after sales calls.  Some food for thought:

• what was the last sales book you read
• when did you last attend a sales training course
• when did you last ask for frank feedback after a sales call
• have you ever asked a customer/prospective cleint for feedback after a sales meeting?

Sales people who read and are looking to develop their sales management skills will sell more.

3.  Maybe old school given the new web 2.0 generation that is emerging but you know what when you are selling complex products you will need to be willing to build a relationship with the customer. As Brian Tracy (www.briantracy.com) says the customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Its worth buying one or two of Brians’ books.

All the best

John – www.acceleratesalesgrowth.com