I was gambling in Havana I took a little risk Send lawyers, guns and money Dad, get me out of this

- from “Lawyers, Guns and Money” by Warren Zevon

When is it time for the heavy artillery in the sales process? When do you bring in the CXOs and how do you use them?

I have found that companies typically use CXOs too infrequently in the sales process, not too frequently (or not frequently enough). Regardless of frequency, though, there should be some guidelines as to how to best use your CXOs in the sales process. Let’s focus specifically on the CEO and the CFO positions for the sake of this post. Using their clout correctly can improve your sales processes and your yield on big deals.

USING CEOs

The Do List

A CEO’s greatest power in the sales pitch is in conveying the following:

• Cultural alignment. The CEO’s role in the conversation is to communicate that our organization and their organization have similar vision, mission and values. That our people and their people can work together well and that we can smooth out any of the natural bumps in a relationship. This communication occurs between your CEO and their highest level people in the sales process.
• Financial and organizational commitment. The CEO has to be the one who communicates the company’s financial position. Where it stands, its history and what the financial future of the company looks like. This is not so much of a discussion of the balance sheet as it is a discussion of the underpinnings of the business and its plan for the future. Tucked inside of this is the CEO’s communication of commitment; “We are signing up to be your partner Mr. Customer and we are sincere in our commitment to you and to this work we will do together.”
• Creativity and flexibility. Big deals are often unique in their structure and need support. This requires the creativity and flexibility of the senior-most person in your company. When the CEO is not in the room for these conversations, the discussions devolve into “if-then” and “what if?” scenarios that may be creative, but end with a statement of “I’ll have to go and discuss this.” That sucks all of the oxygen and speed out of getting a deal done.

You want to make certain that you use your CEO on the bigger deals and in the right way. Careful use of the positional power and resource will help you to close more big deals.
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In the military academies, seniors preparing for their oral exams use two key processes for preparation and improvement called Murder Board and Hot Washes. These processes will increase your sales effectiveness by huge multiples if you include them in your sales process.

Murder Board. The Murder Board is a committee of selected peers and teachers who prepare a student for oral exams by posing anticipated questions to the student and then provide critique of the answers. This same process is now used by politicians who are preparing for debates and I hope you will use it for preparing for key presentations.

To get the full value of this process, you need a few things:

• Really smart people. This means that you are going to use people who are knowledgeable about your own business, your industry, your competitors and the prospect.
• Enough time. The Murder Board process will take twice as long as the presentation itself, and then some. To be successful, you will need to go through the presentation from start to finish without sidebar interruptions. Then there is the aggressive Q & A from your Murder Board that is designed to challenge you and help you shape your presentation as well as your answers.
• Your full pitch team. You need to have the people who are going to be doing the pitch, all of them. I have seen the absence of just one person during the Murder Board then create a dynamic in the presentation that was damaging.

You are doing this process with the intention to sharpen yourself and your team up to your razor level to deliver a fantastic presentation. To get the most out of your Murder Board, follow this framework:
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Chasing….I hate chasing. Wouldn’t you rather have a fast “no” than an excruciatingly slow “maybe?”

Do you know what the difference is between begging and professional follow-up?

Three unreturned contacts to your buyer.

After three, you have to be honest with yourself—she’s just not that into you.

I call this endless follow up process the “Maybe Whirlpool.”

You know that you are in the “maybe whirlpool” when one or more of the following conditions happen:

• Slow response cycles. Any response cycle outside of 48 hours from your point of contact. When these are repeated with your key buyer or contact, then you either have a very weak contact, or you are very low on the list of issues they are solving.
• Long consideration windows, like when you receive a message that says that they will be considering their options over a period greater than 3 weeks. You may need to modify the period if there are engineering requirements, IT configuration issues or other technical compliance issues. However, there is a cycle that you need to define and then honor if you are going to stay out of the whirlpool.
• Vague political maneuvering comments. “There are a few things going on here that I can’t discuss. I need to line some things up and then I will get back to you.” Again, you have a weak contact who will not be making a decision in the near future.
• Two delays. When a fixed decision date has been moved twice.

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Referrals, references, connections, networking, social media: they’re all about access and leverage. You get access to the people who make things happen and are able to leverage these relationships.

I want to focus on the second part: Leverage. How do you get the most leverage during the sales process from your past successful client relationships? If you have read my materials, you know that your prospects have to overcome their fears and concerns in buying from a small company before they buy from you and not from a better-known, bigger company. References can be a tremendous asset in getting a buyer to overcome that fear, or they can be perceived as worthless commentary delivered by your buddies. So, how do you get the most out of your best client relationships?

A couple of techniques for high-impact leveraging of your references: Read the rest of this entry →

Recently I was interviewed by Paul Diamond from the Vistage organization. We discussed the vast array of social media sites for salespeople and the fact that there are a lot of these sites out there, but not all of them are good. I think that Paul’s take on the topic and what he uncovered in his research is helpful. Check out his blog post on the topic on Bizmore.com.

Recently a client decided to say ‘no’ to an RFP opportunity. It was tough. It was a big company, a huge opportunity and a great chance to get a foot in the door. They said no because of their Red Flag Dozen (see RFPs Suck!). The Red Flag Dozen is a list of the must-haves in order for the company to invest in responding to the RFP. One of the red flags in this situation was that my client had to have an executive sponsor before they could answer an RFP. Another red flag was that my client would have needed to have done business with the company before. Finally, my client needed access to information during the RFP process, access that the company would not grant. Three strikes: no sponsor, no past history and no access.

Here is the letter that they sent to say no. I have made the letter more generic than what was sent, but this will give you a good template to follow.

“Dear Mr./Ms. RFP Sender,

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to your Request for Proposal for the XYZ project. That said, I would like to inform you of our intent to not participate in this process. This decision is not based on your process, which is fair and balanced, but rather on our own internal opportunity review process.

Specifically, we require client executive sponsorship and a thorough understanding of the guiding business initiative. This requirement is based on exhaustive experience that indicates that the success of complex projects hinges on executive sponsorship, relentless focus on the underlying business value and trusted partnership between the business and the solution provider. While I’m certain that you fully understand this reality and would never proceed on an important project without such assurances, I am not confident that we currently enjoy this level relationship with you.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to submit. Please direct questions or comments to my attention.

Executive in Charge Non-Responding Company”

This response stands on its own. It is not a move.

That said, the letter does create the opportunity for the RFP company to come back and make a strong request for your to participate. What should you do?

1. Make a simple request. “Who will be my executive sponsor?” (see “Executive Sponsorship Agreement” blog) 2. Make a second simple request. “I would like a phone call review of the RFP document for the sake of more complete context on some of the items.” 3. Do one more thing. Go back through your Target Filter and your Red Flag Dozen before you decide to respond.

One of the keys to winning in the RFP game is to say “no” early and often. Establish your best practices and stick to them.

I have been living in the world of sales training, writing, hiring and strategy for quite some time now. I have had a chance to look behind the curtain to see what is back there. Here’s what I have found: a lot of misspent money.

The consultants and trainers working in the field are well intentioned, and many are very talented and effective. There is among all of us, however, a myopic view of solutions and consulting. For example, if I sell selection testing, then I see testing as the solution to everything. If I am a trainer, guess what, training is the answer. Process guys love process, of course the CRM people believe activity tracking is the panacea and so on. The fact is that there is not a universal solution to a multi-faceted problem and as a result, your risk in buying into one solution to solve your problems is that you are bound to overspend on one part and get poor results on another.

The Big Picture

Companies hire my company when they are ready to double the speed with which they are going to double their company. We help them develop the strategy, process and techniques for big sales. But such exponential growth is not everyone’s goal. Some companies just want to grow at a more manageable rate. This means that some times—actually a lot of times—I’m the wrong consultant for the job.

Look at it this way:

• If you want to grow 5-10% per year, then skills training with your current sales staff can help you make that improvement. It is a smaller investment and requires the least amount of organizational change to accomplish it.
• If you want to grow 10-20% per year, then you will need to change personnel and the way that you attract and select them. It is a bigger investment in dollars and culture change. If you want to get bigger in this range, you have to bite the bullet and make the choice.
• If you want to grow 20%+ per year, then you can’t just use the same people with some better techniques to get there. You can’t just use new people to sell into your current market. You are going to need a few new players and a much better market/message/sales process strategy to land your transformational accounts.

In the ideal world, you do all three because no single approach will give you the sustainable growth and solid sales organization necessary. But because most organizations have a finite amount of resources, sales consultants wind up selling you their solutions as the complete answer. It’s not accurate and that is where consultants get a bad name.

The Quartiles

If no one solution is the best for everything, then how do you figure out what is best for you? I believe you should use the Quartiles method- Break down your sales staff in blocks of 25% performers, based upon raw gross sales. Be careful, you can over analyze this. Just force-rank them by sales and you can evaluate for exceptions later.

When you break down that group, the general guidelines look like this:

What you apply universally will kill the productivity of half of your team. Let me say it again. Whatever you apply to everyone reduces productivity in half of your sales staff. You are going to need to apply a blended approach if you want to dramatically change your sales results as it relates to your team.

EXAMPLES

• CRM. If you start using CRM as an activity measurement tool, then your top 2 quartiles are over-managed and annoyed. You are wasting their time by managing them like your lower 50%. The unintended outcome is that the best performers get marginalized
• Selection Testing. You are not going to hire your next rockstar through testing alone. Testing is great for identifying potential. It keeps you away from hiring those who do not fit the job and dramatically increases the possibility of high potential candidates who will develop into top quartile producers. This process doesn’t guarantee all top quartile hires, but it does avoid almost all bottom quartile performers.
• Strategy. Half of your team is not prepared to learn the strategic and nuanced call-coaching information that you are providing. They will take misunderstood ideas to their customers and confuse them. Strategy is lost on people who need tactics and those people who want strategy are bored by tactical training that they learned a long time ago.

THE TRUMPS

Here is my rule of thumb if you have to make tradeoff choices rather than implementing all of these investments at once:

• Strategy trumps talent
• Talent trumps skills
• Skills trump activity
• Activity trumps inactivity

In best-in-class companies, there is an attention and investment in all four. Picking consultants has to be an outcomes first consideration. Decide what you want, then look at the changes in which to invest. As always, buyer beware. If anyone promises a fast and effective answer, it is probably neither. And if anyone promises a universal answer, they probably don’t understand the problem in the first place.

I recently sent this email to the head of sales for a company with whom we did our Accelerator 1.0 program. He is a new “Shaman,” (a little whale hunting speak from my book “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company” with Barbara Weaver Smith), and he has decided to change the roles of one of his people to that of a “scout.” A scout gathers information and is the first contact lead qualification and interest generation.

Here’s what I sent:

“As you get started in your first Shaman role over your scout, consider the following:

1. Keep him on a short leash. He needs you to set daily goals on information (dossiers), and eventually people and calls. This isn’t over-management, it is just holding onto the bike while the kid gets used to riding without training wheels. 2. Feed him. You need to be in the media information flow around your key markets. Do a quick Google search every day, and send him an article or a new key word to add. Do something that keeps you connected to leading him in the work he is doing in the market. 3. Take the first hits. If he is going to make his first calls to prospects, make them with him on a conference call. Let him listen to you. He needs to get confidence in this new space. 4. Keep your foot on the gas. At this point, you need to change planning into action, so keep the intensity up of your expectations. 5. Read and react, Manning style. Look at the information you are getting from the process and make the recalibrations to what the market is telling you. Reset the dossier, the script, the benefit language and so on, but wait until after the first quarter to do it. You can’t run one series of plays and think you have it all figured out and blow up the gameplan. Get the data, then recalibrate.

Finally, I’m on your team. All of this is new or newer. Let’s stay connected, especially on the ‘what ifs?’ that invariably come up when implementing new approaches.”

I often see the sales process get stalled out in the scouting process. We build a fantastic sales process, great market message and approach but then no one makes contacts into the market. It’s like leaving a Ferrari in the garage and wondering why you are not enjoying it. (I have a couple of clients who are probably reading this right now and cringing. And yes, I am talking to you. Out of consideration, I won’t name names, but the states are Ohio, DC and California). The easy fall-guy for this situation is the sales person, but the real accountability goes back to leadership and management one-layer up. It is our responsibility to drive the planning into action.

“We’re getting commitments, but we’re not getting orders…”

“Some of the biggest companies out there are our customers, we just aren’t getting the volume…”

“The decision-maker is saying we’re going to get the business, but then her people order from their old suppliers…”

One of the most common problems I hear from clients is the problem of traction. They can get into the big companies, but they can’t get that “yes” to turn into dollars. I have touched upon this in the past in “Unsticking Stuck Deals (parts one & two) and “The Executive Sponsorship Agreement.”

I believe that sales people are pathologically optimistic, and it’s a good thing that they are. If they weren’t, how could they get out and face the rejection and frustration that accompanies the sales process? But that optimism carries with it some inherent dangers for their companies.

False positives, missed signals and ‘hope’ acting like ‘commitment’

Sales people are given a variety of “yes” answers over the course of a sales process that create the sense that a deal has occurred. In reality, though, there is at least one unseen step in the decision spectrum where the ‘maybe’ masquerades as ‘yes.’ You can probably spot it.
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“If we get Microsoft, (replace Microsoft with your favorite iconic brand name), then it is going to be a lot easier to get other big guys. So what if you take a little bit of a haircut on that deal? It’s what we are going to have to do to get our name out there.”

When I work with small and mid-size companies, I often hear the siren song of the logo deal.

This is not a discussion I hear on occasion. In one flavor or another I hear this conversation in almost every company I meet. The promise of affiliated greatness for your brand because of someone else’s strong brand is very hard to pass-up, I know.

I’ve written and spoken against this practice at length. For the sake of context, I’ll just give a quick summary of why this is a dangerous temptation. Then I will outline the Trigger-Map Strategy we teach for companies that want to boost their brand through key brand affiliation.
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