“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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Yes, it’s January, but the PowerPoints I’ve been going through in the last eight weeks have me flashing back to the Christmas letters I was reading just a few weeks ago. You know the ones. Each letter is filled with an update from the family that sent it. The letters typically fall into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s take a look:

• The Good. Lots of photos, little text, only high points. Leave you feeling like you miss the people and you want to re-connect. The feeling reminds you why you like them.
• The Bad. One photo. No text. Standard “Happy Holidays” with ink-jetted signature. Gives you the feeling of a bad stand-up brochure for plumbing or painting services.
• The Ugly. Two pages of 6 pt font text, outlining every event of the year including the dog’s de-worming. Possibly a photo thrown in for good measure, but it is posed in front of the obligatory fireplace with the Mr. Potatohead smiles in place.

The parallel to PowerPoint presentations is hard to miss. The best ones have the following characteristics:

• Short and sweet. I mean less than 15 slides total. Trust your audience and trust your presenter. Your audience will fill in with questions and its own understanding some of the gaps. Your presenter is there to tell a story that brings your slides to life.
• Low text. Why did you send a presenter if people are supposed to read the text? If you don’t trust your presenter to get it right, I suggest you train him or her better or send in a different presenter. A dense and long presentation will not make up for a bad presenter.
• Focus on the audience. When you read the Christmas letters, what is interesting to you? The key events, the photos that show those events, possibly an insider comment that connects us with those events. That’s it.

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Hi All,

Just a quick housekeeping item for you: I’ve introduced the “My Best Blogs” archive. Reason being, I constantly find myself having to dig for oldies-but-goodies that I think would be great for driving home various point to sales teams. But digging these things out all the time is a waste of time, so I’ve decided to get organized. My Best Blogs contains an easy-to-navigate list of some of my favorite and most frequently-requested blog posts and guest posts, organized loosely by topic category.

If you notice any glaring ommissions, please let me know. Otherwise, enjoy!

- Tom

By now you may or may not have purchased my new book, RFPs Suck! If you haven’t, you can purchase it here. It’s now in paperback. Call me biased, but I highly recommend it.

The latest stop on my book tour/media blitz was with Ian Brodie, one of the best sales consultants across the pond. Ian works with professional service firms–consultants, lawyers, accountants, surveyors, architects and coaches–to help them attract more clients and win more new business. You can check out the interview on his site, IanBrodie.com.

Thanks, Ian!

I posted this blog some time ago, but in the past several weeks I have directed so many people to it that I thought it would be good to bring it back for a re-post. Enjoy!

I’ve been on the road the last two weeks with a number of clients and I have to tell you that the swagger factor in the marketplace is low. That’s right: SWAGGER. That quality of confidence that provides patience in the face of stupidity, no-blink nerve when looking into the eyes of challenge and the slight strut of knowing you’re the best.  In talking to best-in-class sales leaders in a variety of industries who work with top-shelf branded clients, I discovered that they are still committing the following party fouls when approaching new prospects:

• Running test-proof cycles for the most basic products and services;
• Waiving engineering, design, drawing, setup and installation fees for first-time buyers on small orders;
• Fulfilling tiny initial orders so that “you can prove yourself”;
• Agreeing to long “try, wait and see” cycles.

Brando Don’t Audition. At some point in your company’s history of performance, serving demanding clients and developing your reputation, your company became good enough to answer this question from a prospect: Are you qualified to do business with me?

“Qualified” means competent and market competitive—in pricing, features and benefits—which further means that you should have the right to move past the first round (walking in the door).  Prospects ask for samples, references, test-runs and little orders as a credentializing step in the process of doing business with you. After you have credentialized yourself, THEN you get to the real issues of a potential business relationship, which means relevance and value at a scale past credentialization. That’s why I say, “Brando Don’t Audition.”

Marlon Brando’s has a level of expertise and notoriety that makes it ridiculous and insulting to ask him to audition.  His body of work of work speaks for itself.  Your company’s body of work should do the same.

When prospects ask you to credentialize yourself, you have to get them to see you as competent and competitive straight away so that you can get down to the nitty-gritty: the value and relevance of using your firm. One of the best ways to do this is to take the prospect back to your company’s body of work.

You say:

“Look, we work with X, Y and Z companies, solving problems like P, D and Q and with the scale of A, B and C. This tells you that we are capable of doing this type of work, consistently and at a market competitive rate. Otherwise these companies, with their rigorous qualification process and purchasing approach would never have hired us. If you agree that we can probably handle your work, let’s spend our time focusing on the specifics of this relationship so that I know whether or not we can be relevant and valuable on this particular program.”

People put you through the hoops of auditioning because:

• They feel they have to. Some part of their process requires it.
• They want to put you in your place. Like keeping you in the lobby 15 minutes extra before meeting you.  It’s a power play.
• They don’t know you’re Brando. This is the place you have the greatest amount of control. Through your initial conversation and presentation, the prospect needs to understand that putting you through the hoops is a waste of their time and yours. You are the Marlon Brando of your industry!

The competitive market place has caused companies to stop swaggering. You have to get the swagger back or you’ll risk grinding out your confidence by going through the audition door.  And really, you should be going through the finalist door at the first knock.

Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing had a look at RFPs Suck! and decided the topic was worth an interview on his site.  Call me biased, but I have to agree.  He asked some great and important questions on RFPs and I’d like to share the answers with you here.

Below is an excerpt from the article.  Read the whole thing here.

RFPs Suck-Don’t take my word for it…

RFPs are like a colonoscopy: Someone you don’t even know gets to inspect you from the inside out.

Sorry, I prefer to have dinner first.

Thankfully, I’m no longer raving alone. Tom Searcy has written an excellent book titled, guess what, RFPs Suck! How to Master the RFP System Once and for All to Win Big Business.

Unlike me, he provides excellent help to navigate the RFP process. In fact, I used some of his advice in an RFP, and are now in the running for the contract. So his stuff works.

Tom was kind enough to do an interview with me about the book and RFPs in general. Here it is:

1. What inspired you to write the book? I know why I’d write it – because RFPs really do suck. But clearly you’ve seen great success responding to RFP’s.

Over the past five years, governance requirements, aggressive cost-cutting measures and more powerful purchasing departments have been driving deals into the RFP process–even the smaller deals that may not have required one before. As such, the number of deals that require an RFP process has increased exponentially.

Read on…

I liked your “Sales Challenge” answers so much that I am going to make “Sales Challenge” a regular part of this blog in the future. Great ideas from everyone!

Here’s the rest of the story…

The team improvised. The second-in-command eel exhibited classic “I don’t want to be here” body-language: he was slouching, his arms were crossed. He didn’t even bother to cinch up his tie when he came to the meeting. He could not have tried harder to project the “I’m here because I have to be, not because I want to be. Make it fast” attitude.

The first thing the sales team tried to do was break the ice and ask some questions about what the eel wanted. Nothing doing. He simply said, “Just make the presentation like you would if John Doe was here.”

Without much to go on, the team tried to change the expectations. Team: “John Doe’s not here, so the objective of the meeting is different. In fact, it’s wide open now and the presentation may not even be valuable. Let’s talk for a moment about the area we are looking at, what goals you have in that area and what you consider to be some of the pain points.” They got a little bit more out of him here, but not much. The eel was still closed off and defensive.

Third, the team tried to befriend the eel. Team: “Considering the time the team has been in place and what your group is trying to accomplish, our analysis is favorable. Some of these results are probably in line with things you are already addressing.” Even as the team presented high-level results, we’re got nowhere. The problem was that we were now all-in. We opened up the dialogue about the presentation, so we had to make the presentation. Calculated risk. I would like to say it paid off, but it didn’t.

We pitched the presentation, left copies of it and promised to follow-up. The team’s email to the eel’s boss (our AWOL first-in-command) to set up a conference call to review the results was brushed aside with a perfunctory email response: “Thanks so much for the report. It is very thorough. I don’t think a call is necessary at this time. I’ll review your recommendations and get back to you.” Dead stuck.

Mistakes in our approach? A bunch. I’ll give the short-list:

1. We didn’t make a same-day appointment confirmation call with the most important person in the pitch to make certain he would be there. 2. We didn’t call the meeting off when we found out that the sponsoring executive was not going to be there. 3. We pitched the one guy who had the most to lose and then let him pitch the one person who had the most to gain without us. 4. We had not involved the eel early enough in the sales process to have gotten some level of buy-in or fear-reduction before we started the entire sales process that culminated in this presentation of results and opportunity to propose our solution.

There are more, but I think these are at the top of the list.

You have all been very helpful with what should have been done differently.

I now have a different challenge for you. What should the hunt team do next?

I recently went on a pitch with a client’s hunt team. We were supposed to be pitching to the first in command, but he was pulled away to a funeral at the last minute. He left a message for us while we were on the plane, so we didn’t listen to it until much too late.

We arrived at the prospect’s offices to present the results of a preliminary analysis of their operations and to detail my client’s company plan to help them. We were told that since the first in command was out, we would be meeting with the second in command.

Sales Challenge: The second in command is the eel in the deal.

We sat down in the board room and prepped for the meeting. What would you do?

Some options:

• Pitch
• Leave
• Improvise
• Other

What would you do in this situation? I want to hear your thoughts because I think that this type of scenario happens more often than we would like. Let me know what you think!

I spoke to Newpreneurs™ at Inc. Magazine/Alibaba.com conferences in New York and Chicago this week about the 5 key things it takes to be successful in growing their businesses explosively through large account selling.

Here’s what I told them:

• Focus. Pick your 4% marketplace to attack and weed out “toxic clients and black hole prospects” as quickly as possible
• Solve your prospect’s real issue. Companies are not focusing on pain, features or benefits. They are buying on time, money and risk.
• Get a bigger buyer’s table. The people who will kill your deal are often times not in the room. Invite your detractors into the process. They will work against you anyway so you might as well face them head-on and work through their issues with them.
• Think like a big prospect. Interest is generated by your compelling advantage, but the decision to buy from you comes from how much fear your big prospect has of your ability to deliver.
• Hunt heavy. Take a big team and all of the resources. If you have to err on how many resources to expend, err on the heavy side.

Here’s what I didn’t tell them:

• It’s not about the product. Many of the contestants in this national Newpreneur™ of the Year contest sponsored by Alibaba.com are product companies. As I listen and judge their presentations, the recurring theme of their 90-second elevator pitch is “my product is best.” Their distribution channels are not necessarily looking for the “best” product. Whether they will take their products to market through dealers, distributors or retailers, these Newpreneurs have challenges that have nothing to do with the quality of the product. Quality and value of product to the end buyer is an issue of returns.
• Distribution channels want to know about:
  • Velocity. How quickly will the product move in and out of my DC?
  • Margin. How much will be made per unit and palette in total dollars and in percentages in comparison to same or similar product in the warehouse?
  • Risk. How long will it take for the sales to be the same or better than whatever it was    that filled that space in the DC and on the end sale point shelf?

  When they focus on the quality of the product, companies are focusing on one-off sales, not on the big deals that go through 2-step distribution.

• It’s about the supply chain. As my brother Tim likes to say, “In this marketplace, companies don’t buy from other companies, they buy from supply chains. You are not just you any more, you are you plus all the partners you bring with you including your bank, your landlord, your business partners, and everything that makes up the composite picture which is what you offer.” To be successful in going to market, companies have to bring the full solution and the complete team to the table to land their biggest deals.
• Passion will only get you so far. Every contestant has a dream. Their passion inspires to the point of making you want to weep. I’m serious. It is energizing just to be in their presence and if you can get to one of these events coming up, you should. You will leave fired up and confident in the future of our economy. That having been said, very few of the contestants would have survived the TV show “Shark Tank.” Push in on their business plans, poke at their go-to-market-strategies and everything is a little squishier than you would like to see. A couple of glaring gaps:
  • Money? For the most part, these new business people are looking at their businesses in a hand-to-mouth fashion. A big order, an investor, even an inheritance would probably not be used well based upon the answers to the questions we heard. There has to be a plan for what the next level of money would do for the business.
  • Team? You can’t do it alone. Each of these businesses needed a MasterMind group of advisers to guide them.
  • Scalability? One of the first things a big company is going to ask a product company is “Can you keep up with demand?” This is a question that was not well answered by most of the contestants. A strategy that says “We’ll figure that out when we get there” will run out of runway the moment the business is “there.”

The Newpreneuer™ series of events has been great and I am looking forward to the remainder of the tour. Even with these small critiques, I understand why almost two-thirds of Americans surveyed believe that the economic turnaround will be fueled by new entrepreneurs, not the large, old-line companies of the past.

Hi All,

Just a quick note to let you know that my new book RFPs Suck! How to Master the RFP System Once and For All to Win Big Business is now available on Kindle. If Kindle is your format of choice, well then, please go forth and order!

The Kindle edition is available HERE.

Thanks and enjoy! Tom