Strategy is often directly influenced by whom the enemy is.

Pricing is influenced, of course. Also, your approach to the deal is impacted, as well as whether you even continue the pursuit.

However, because of governance rules, procurement guidelines and the jerk-nature of some smug buyers it is getting harder and harder to know who your competitors are.

I was recently sent an email on this very topic just last week, and here is what I told him:

Thanks for your email- It’s really hard to get a list of competitors from prospects – often times because of governance requirements in their process. However, you can triangulate sometimes using these questions (that your prospects may still not answer, but you have a better shot with these than without them):

* How did you generate the list of candidates for this project/contract?

* What were the top 3-5 characteristics that you used to qualify the list?

* Have you worked in the past with any of the companies you are considering? Are you working with any of them now?

These questions, if answered, give you a lot of insight, not just into the competitors, but to the buyers as well.

Let me know your best ideas by posting up here so everyone can share the best practices.

Why is it that the least important person in a presentation can hijack the entire meeting? You have been in these sessions when you are in full presentation and a person in the meeting starts the “challenging question” interrogation. It can sound like this-

• “Don’t you think that your approach costs too much for a company our size?”
• “How do you expect to integrate with our proprietary system if you have never worked with it before?”
• “What real and direct background do you have working in our industry?”

You’ve heard your own examples, I’m sure.  Regardless of the challenge, it often comes in the form of a challenging question, it happens before you have had a chance to complete your presentation and it could de-rail the entire conversation. These are pivotal points and if you handle them the wrong way you can burn through precious minutes in your allotted time, look defensive and weakened in the presentation or get trapped into elevating a trivial point into a major issue.

Here are a few strategies to deal with this:

1. Defer – The easiest one is to defer answering the challenge until the end of the presentation by saying, “That’s a good question, I believe we address some of what you are asking in the balance of this presentation. I’ll make certain to circle back with you at the end of the presentation to make certain we address anything left unanswered.”
2. Isolate – If you have a persistent provocateur, I encourage a different approach. Isolate this person and this issue by saying, “This seems like this issue is big enough for its own conversation. I want to honor your concerns and provide a more detailed answer than our time allows today. Let’s agree to set a meeting for you and any one else who is interested from this group and I’ll make certain we have a thorough discussion of that point.”
3. Recruit – Look to your executive sponsor for the meeting and say out loud, “This seems like an issue that needs addressing but is outside of the scope of this meeting’s purpose, if it is alright, I would like to table this issue for this meeting and return to it another time.” You are looking to your sponsor to confirm a shared understanding of the meeting’s purpose and support in closing this direction of discussion down for the time being.

Most of the time, these approaches will be enough to close out the issue for the time being. Often times, that same person will be unwilling to then meet afterwards. That’s Ok. Send out an email to the group who was in the meeting that says, “Please find attached an answer to John’s question from our meeting. We are working to schedule a follow-up meeting if necessary and will circulate notes from that meeting if appropriate.”

Often times the behavior of someone like the monopolizer is not unique to your meeting. He or she acts like this during internal meetings as well. You can tell because as they interrupt your presentation you can see the eye-rolls, setting down of the pencils or the focused doodling of the people in the room.

By managing that person, you not only keep the meeting on track, you sometimes win some new supporters and friends in the meeting.

*****

There’s still time to register for the Chicago kickoff of “Big Sale Factory: Level One Training” on May 24 & 25. It’s the start of a nine-week program designed to turn your company into an organization that regularly lands sales ten to twenty times your average. During the course of the program, you’ll develop:

• A business acceptance process that eliminates wasted efforts.
• A compelling corporate message designed to secure executive sponsorship.
• Insight on reading the minds of large account decision makers and how to make that work for you.
• A dashboard and management tools for directing and controlling every aspect of the sale.
• Techniques for creating the best possible team for each sales opportunity.
• Management plans for removing inefficiencies and accelerating performances.

For more information or to register for any of the upcoming dates, visit www.huntbigsales.com/workshops.php.

“What happens if you do not deliver as promised? Has that happened to you? If so, how did you deal with that situation?”

This happens to all of us. Every company falls short of its promise at some point.

As to my current business, we have fallen short a few times. In one occasion, I met with the president of the company we were working with. Honestly, his organization had a share in the failure of the program, but that was not important.

Together, we were not being successful.

At the beginning of the meeting I handed him a check for all of the fees that he had paid so far. I said, “Let’s start on even ground, here’s your money back. This doesn’t cover your investment of time and effort, but it does return your fees. Now, let’s figure out if there is a way for us to go forward or not, but I don’t want the money to be the question, it’s yours back if you decide you don’t want to go forward after we have spoken. If this is all you wanted from our meeting, then it is yours with my gratitude for giving us the chance to work with you and for what my company has learned through this.”

Taking the money out of the equation changed the conversation entirely. We worked through the issues, re-set mutual expectations and decided to keep working together. He gave me the check back. He didn’t have to, and I wasn’t expecting it. However, if he had to fight me for the money, we would not have worked through issues and re-engaged, let alone giving me the money back.

My baseline answer to approaching a situation when your company is falling short is:

1) If it’s a small problem, fix it and don’t make your problem your client’s problem by including them in the discussion. This only works if the problem is small.

2) If it is a big problem, then you have to tell them. Tell them quickly, tell them with a plan as to how you are going to make it right and give them a schedule of updates so that they can be kept in the loop at each step of resolution.

3) You have to be AGGRESSIVE in your overcommunicating during the period of resolution. Call every hour if necessary to tell them every incremental improvement that is occurring and each additional effort your company is taking to fix things.

4) Immediately schedule a “process review” session internally to improve how you do things so that you can get better.

5) Schedule a “process review” session with your client to improve how you work together and also to discuss what steps you have taken in your internal process review.

You don’t always have to act as dramatically as I did when I passed that check across the table. However, you always have to act. Failing to deliver in the way you promised is always a problem, but failing to do anything about that failure is always a disaster.

What’s it like to be someone’s “11th Biggest Customer”?

In the constant sales competition with bigger companies for bigger deals, at some point, if you are smaller, your size is going to become an issue. This can be in an obvious way or in a subtle way- even unstated. However, if you are competing with a company who is much bigger than you are, often that competitor looks like a safer bet than you. You have to turn their size against them- and that’s not easy, it takes a little magic.

Here is the magic trick -

Ask your prospect, “Who is your 11th biggest customer for your company?” As they fumble through the list in their mind, drop in this second question, “What’s it like to be somebody’s 11th biggest customer?”

You’ve set up the conversation about size, trust and promises. Be careful, it would be easy to swing on the point with an eight-pound sledgehammer when just a finishing hammer is necessary. Here’s how the rest of the conversation should go -

You: “Being out of the top 10 shows up in a lot of ways in a business relationship- not always up front, but over time, the bigger clients always get the first attention in any of our businesses. I would encourage you to ask anyone you are considering for this project/program/purchase/partnership where you will fall in the order of size of their clients. Just for reference, you will be my 3rd biggest customer, (fill in the blank with the correct number in the top 10 for your company or your personal book of business).”

It’s simple – we all know that being 11th sucks. Sometimes a prospect needs to be reminded of this fact. Then the prospect needs to be asked to make this reference real to his or her own business. In our own hearts, all of us, prospects included, know that we don’t treat all customers equally. They enjoy that leverage when they have it and resent it when they don’t. This is our chance to drive that point home. Works like magic.

One of the things he taught me was that success in sales is 90% process and 10% magic. “If you work your process, you earn the right to do your magic.” I heard that a thousand times. Nutty thing to say then, now I understand he was brilliant. The point is even more valid when it comes to sales management. Sales management is about process. Process, when done correctly, is boring. The 90% of the time that a sales manager spends on process creates the opportunity for him or her to be magical the 10% when sales leadership is necessary. This week I want to talk about the 90% process, next week I’ll talk about the 10% magic.

How to Manage Sales People
The first thing I want to say is that management and leadership in the role of sales are not the same thing. Different goals, different skills and different muscles.  For sales management, I believe you are working on the execution of a process. Think of it like manufacturing. There is a design and engineering phase and then there is a production phase. The production phase is about efficiency and quality control. Sales management is what happens in the production phase of sales. To successfully manage sales people during this production phase I recommend the following:

1. Drive to a Step Process - Just like manufacturing, when you go to production, you set up a series of linked processes. In each process there are requirements to be completed in one step before you can go to the next step. Sales management’s role is to ensure that we are following the process and that this execution is efficient and meets quality standards.
2. Only Focus on the Gaps - It is tempting to try to armchair quarterback every deal in a weekly meeting with sales people. Don’t. The sales management process should be pointing out gaps in either the information that is supposed to be gathered in a particular step of the sales process, the people who are engaged or how long that step is taking in comparison to your expectations. Focus on just those gaps. If there are no gaps, then the process is working. Focus on only those accounts with gaps.
3. Compliance and Coaching Are Different - Coaching to solve gaps is a different exercise than ensuring that the machine is working. If you are brainstorming a solution for handling a thorny prospect or a stuck deal, set a separate meeting time. Production discussions are about running the machine, period.
4. Own the Time - Have your sales people bring their calendar with them. Their calendar is not their own, it is yours. Working through the next week or month’s schedule is a part of the meeting. Where will they be next period, are they going the right places with your right expectations, are they visiting to visit or are they advancing the sales process along the steps? These are the questions that sales management must ask as a part of the regular meetings.

Running the Sales Management Machine

1. Meet with sales reps 1:1 - As a sales manager, you have to drive sales process compliance and efficiency rep by rep and account by account. I advocate a 30 minute meeting every week with each rep for whom you are responsible. Set it for the same time every week and run it the same way. I know, it’s not sexy, but it is enormously effective.
2. No group meetings for sales people - There is a self-delusion that sale managers have. This delusion is the belief that sales reps learn from each other as we go through a sales meeting and discuss accounts. The only person learning in a session like that is the one sales person who owns the account. In addition, he or she is usually evasive or defensive when put on the grill in front of his or her counterparts. Group meetings are for product and process education, recognition and market planning.
3. Thirty minute rule - All sales reps have ADHD, (unless they are the one talking), so don’t have long meetings. A simple rule is 30 minutes of prep for you per rep meeting and 30 minutes of meeting with each of them, done every week. If you have 5 reps, that’s 5 hours per week to run the machine. If you run the machine, the machine will run and get better, but it is boring. That’s OK. Run the machine the right way and you get to make more magic, which I’ll talk about next week.
4. Be consistent - If you want to train someone to think like you, ask them the same questions every time and they will soon anticipate your questions. This means that they will prepare to answer your questions and begin to ask those questions of themselves every time. Soon you will have people who think like you. If you play “gotcha” by asking all sorts of different questions, they will give up because they can’t get it right. By working to a process, you can develop your series of management questions. By asking those consistently, you will soon get a group of sales people who are following a consistent process. That’s an efficient machine.
5. Get commitments, take notes - By running this meeting every week, you should be able to implement rigor and impeccable follow-up, which is what is necessary for a good sales process. Take the notes of what is to be done each week by each person and start off the following week with where the person is on their commitments from the prior week. Sounds simple, right? This is one of the biggest mistakes we see- a lack of consistent rigor around commitments.

We have seen as much as a 40% lift in productivity of sales people over a less than 90 day window in the companies who have implemented just this set of practices.

It’s boring, isn’t it? That’s why so few sales managers do it- they want to do the magic and they forget the need for the rigor. You get to do your magic because you earned that right by following your process.

My answer is easy when price is the only issue. Present the buyer with the lowest price option and win the deal.

A lot of the time, however, price is not the only issue and it’s merely being used as a smoke screen. You are getting price pressure for a lot of the usual suspects that you already know—the buyer believes that they should push for lower price, uncreative people want more for less and so on.

I want to challenge you to think of price in a different way. If you are not offering a commodity, price is a byproduct of other issues. You must be clear on these issues with the prospect or client so you can get control of the price discussion.

• Price is relative to business problems. If you are selling in the iron-triangle of Service, Quality and Price, then you are not selling value that solves business problems. You are selling into a comparative matrix that boxes you into a same:same measurement with our competitors. When you solve business problems – Time, Money and Risk—then you are in a very different dialogue. An example of this comes from one of my clients. They sell programming services on a particular operating system. This typically means that they are being compared on a bid with other vendors by how many hours it takes to complete the job and what the hourly rate is. In other words, they are a commodity in that market.

  However, they changed the conversation by saying the following:

  “If you need this project completed in a year, anyone in our industry can do the work. If you need this completed in 6 months, we can give you a list of 5 firms that can do this work. If you need this completed in less than three months…we’re it.”

  By defining the business problem as a time problem, price became a smaller part of the discussion. The interesting thing is that for those companies for which time was not the major driver, my client was still able to win business at their price because an important value of time and ability to finish the project with confidence was elevated in the conversation. The issue for all of us is how we frame the business problem apart from price.

• Price is a reflection of confidence in outcome. If there were a 100% guarantee that there would be a resolution to a buyer’s business issue, then his or her willingness to pay that price could go up. When I get price resistance on my proposals, I ask this question, “If we could get you a $20 million increase in sales in one year, would it be worth a million dollar investment?” Their answer is almost always yes. Then I say, “Well, this discussion is not about price then. It is really about your confidence in the outcome of this proposal. So, let’s talk about what would give you greater confidence in this proposal and also let’s make certain that all of your concerns are on the table.” In responding to price resistance on large account sales, focus on the issues of confidence before you discuss price or terms.
• Price is a reflection of measurement context. In the world of business solutions, there is no such thing as a true “apples to apples” comparison. Complex solutions are almost never exactly the same in the solution architecture between two competing companies. That means that there is no valid comparison between you and your competitor in the area of price. I recently used the example that you would not ask a nurse to remove a tumor, or a neurosurgeon to cure a cold. On the spectrum of care, these represent the same industry, but different problems and different solutions. This happens to you as well. A lower quality provider in your market is held up as “just as good as your solution” by your prospect, so therefore the only point of comparison must be price, right? Only if you allow it to be.
• Never Haggle. The difference between negotiating and haggling is simple. Negotiating is when you are making adjustments in terms, conditions and scope of work between two parties. Haggling is when you are asked to do the same work as you have proposed, but for less money, period. I don’t believe in haggling. If your work is priced correctly, then any adjustment in price will require an appropriate adjustment in scope, terms or conditions.

In my experience, the price resistance comes when no better context has been established for the discussion. Establishing the right context for the evaluation of your proposal is 100% our responsibility. If you are getting price resistance and your offering is not a commodity, then the context needs to be adjusted.

• Make it important to them. Big P.C. comes from doing something important. You have to connect to their biggest business problems and demonstrate how your relationship aligns to those, or you will not get any real P.C. spend—you’ll just get lip service. The results have to be measureable and they have to happen quickly.
• Big ROI. This is key. You have to show a very big ROI in one of two ways: either a huge multiple on a big investment or a huge multiple on a small one. Executive Sponsors must perceive a relatively small expenditure of P.C. to get a big win. To do this, you are going to be very specific in your requests. a. “I need for you to make this introduction on my behalf.” b. “I’ll need your direct support in getting that information from that department.” c. “I’m concerned that the person we need for this effort does not feel the sense of urgency that we do. Will you assist me in moving this up her priority list?” These things are all small P.C. expenditures for the Executive Sponsor, but are big in terms of value to us (the little guy). By being tactical and specific in your requests, you have helped them to calculate what the potential P.C. expenditure. The request is contained and manageable, so you have a higher likelihood of getting that sponsorship.
• Make them important in the process. Vagueness serves no one in Executive Sponsor work. Often times I explain to my sponsor up front: “Here’s our experience, if you don’t provide some sponsorship in these stages of the process of our companies considering working together, the inertia of doing things the same way will keep people from making necessary change. That’s why it is so important that if you are really interested in seeing what this process might produce, that we have your early support to at least have the necessary meetings and get the information to see what is possible.” I have found that this very direct explanation gets a Sponsor’s head nodding. They begin to understand why they’re needed in the process and just how crucial their role is.
• Make the right ask. Start with incremental requests early in the process. You want them to get comfortable with you by making small spends of P.C. before you make the big ask. This may mean getting a person to a meeting or making a request for a report or other piece of information. Don’t ask them to sell for you; they won’t be any good at it. Don’t ask them to guarantee you will get the deal; they can’t and will feel you have overstepped. Even in the “big ask,” the Executive Sponsorship Agreement, you are only asking for assistance that is appropriate, (See my blog “Executive Sponsorship Agreement”).
• Talk them up. Wherever you are in the process, you should speak highly of your sponsor. This gives your sponsor a modicum of P.C. in his or her organization.

How to put this to work:

Set Expectations Early. Just like the example above and the document from “Executive Sponsorship Agreement,” you want to be direct as to what you are asking for and why you need to have it. The key things that you need from an Executive Sponsor are:

• Access. His/her assistance on connecting to the right people is very important.
• Priority. We need to figure out the appropriate level of attention for your organization so that the process is supported.
• Interest. Communicate with him/her throughout the process and let him/her know what’s happening. Stay connected with updates on the progress.
• Logjams. If the process bogs down, you must be able to approach the Executive Sponsor and be able to count on his/her assistance.
• Clarity. There are times when you will need to better understand your Executive Sponsor’s company and its unique culture. If you are confused, you must be able to ask for clarity from the Executive Sponsor.

I have included an example in my earlier Executive Sponsorship post.

Negotiate half-steps when you can’t get full steps. If you can’t get someone to give you the Executive Sponsorship that you request at any step in the process, then you have to get your half-a-loaf. The request sounds like this, “Can you at least do this much for me?” and then make your request. If you are not getting this much commitment, then you are not necessarily lost, but you are losing fast.

Don’t proceed without commitment. At every step in the sales process, even the first one, you have to have an Executive Sponsor. Unless your business works on the basis of blind RFP awards, (which if it does, why are you reading about selling? That’s not selling, it’s bidding and hoping), then you cannot win at any step unless you have sponsorship.

Don’t single thread. You need executive sponsorship from everyone who will give it to you. That means that every meeting requires an ask of some fashion for one of the five things stated above. You need them to be able to win, and since we are playing to win, not playing to play, there is no sense in going forward without that sponsorship. By having multiple executive sponsors, you are increasing the potential of success from all of the players and more P.C. is being spent on your behalf.

The best people at securing Executive Sponsorship are the most fearless. They are direct, they are unapologetic in asking for what they need in the sales process and they are quick to explain why not getting what they need is bad for the prospect. Ask early, ask often and ask specifically.

The last time I wrote about Executive Sponsorship, people loved it but wanted more. How to get more sponsorship, earlier sponsorship and greater commitment.

Let’s start with the idea of Political Capital

In a big company, there is an unaccounted for currency called Political Capital. That term stands for the sum of the positional authority, favors, charisma, recognized successes, perceived favoritism from higher-ups and “fair-haired” status that a person has in a company. Now, this is real “coin of the realm” stuff and it is exchanged in a very subtle way for all sorts of purposes, including:

• Moving priorities around. Say, getting your IT project done before someone else gets theirs done.
• Quashing prying eyes. For example, your people screwed up a quarterly report and you want it re-run on the down low rather than having someone making the mistake a big deal.
• Getting promotions. These can be for that person, for a subordinate, a peer or a friend.
• Getting preferential treatment. Travel vouchers, seating at the company banquet, office supplies and so on.
• Making things happen. Little or big, when an executive wants to make things happen, he or she is using political capital to do it. The less organizational chart influence they have, like telling a direct subordinate what to do, the more political capital it takes to get things done. Don’t be confused though. Even getting a direct subordinate to do something takes political capital.

In the end, it’s for influencing people in an organization in order to give/get a person his or her way. This works even if a person does not seem to have much power on the organizational chart.

If someone is your Executive Sponsor, he or she will have to spend their Political Capital on you. Your Executive Sponsor is going to spend Political Capital to:

• Get people to meet with you;
• Get the information that you need;
• Move a competitor of yours out of the way and
• Swing the deal your way.

Remember, your Executive Sponsor is only spending his or her Political Capital for one reason:

To Get More Political Capital!

How do Executive Sponsors get more Political Capital by helping you?

• With success. Part of the way to get Political Capital is to win. If you are successful in the deal or interaction that your sponsor set up, he or she will also be seen as successful. Success always increases Political Capital.
• By defeating their own competitors. Everyone is watching. When one “player” in the company sways decisions his or her way, everyone knows that Political Capital is at play.
• By making change that works. “Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.” When someone implements a successful change in a big company, people notice and quickly “get on board” with that person’s ideas.
• By getting other people what they want. Part of this game is trading. By doing favors, that person gets favors. Players look for low-risk ways to give people what they want so as to trade on that favor later.
• By doing things in an honorable way. Everyone is watching the way in which and Executive Sponsor handles him or herself. If he or she handles him or herself in an honorable way, he or she will gain the trust of others in the organization and in the industry. Trust is a cornerstone in the game of Political Capital.

How can you get someone to spend their Political Capital for your purposes? By showing the Executive Sponsor why investing in your purpose is important to them. How?

I will address this in next week’s post!

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.

The Don’t List

Do not use a CEO to:

• Negotiate price. I have a simple rule: CEOs do not talk price with clients. Ever. This cheapens the CEO’s position as well as eliminating a fall back position for you in the sales process. This does not mean that the CEO doesn’t direct the pricing strategy. That is absolutely the case, especially on the big deals. However, when it is time to discuss price, the discussion should be handled by other members of the team, leaving the CEO in a better position to consider options and direct the negotiation.
• Set project scope and particulars. The day-to-day particulars of the project should not be defined by the CEO. Not only will he or she not be the one doing it, but by having him or her discuss project details you have effectively put the CEO in the position of Account Manager for the account. These discussions need to be handled by either the COO or the person most directly involved with the account.
• Manage non-Executive communication. I had a CEO client who was a control-freak. That is not unusual or necessarily a bad thing. In this case, however, he wanted to be on the line during all conversations with the peer-to-peers between his company and the prospect company. This is a terrible strategy and it makes the company look small. Not only that, but it kills all relationship building between the peers and guarantees that all trouble-shooting on the account will be elevated to him more quickly. Peer-to-peer communication starts in the sales process and the CEO must respect that.

USING CFOS

One of the most under-utilized positions in the sales process is that of the CFO, even though organizations that regularly use their CFOs in the sales process see huge benefits and gains.

To say that having your CFO talking to your prospect’s financial people is a little obvious. The question is when? Here are some of our pointers:

1) Get your CFO involved in the conversations at the initial point of engagement with any personnel from your prospect involved with finance. Procurement, Purchasing, Compliance, RFP process management and so on.

2) Never talk to these personnel without your CFO. There is a lexicon that the financial personnel use that has nuances and meaning that is important to get right on the first try. If you don’t use your CFO you risk losing lots of time in the discussion trying to get your prospect’s requests met correctly. You also save yourself some of the frustration of being a carrier pigeon moving questions and responses back and forth between the two financial departments.

3) CFOs talk terms, not price. Pricing is an issue for the CEO to set strategy on and the sales team to communicate. The CFO is a part of that discussion and provides a great deal of insight to the conversation, but is not a part of the actual price discussion. Like the CEO, his power is best used behind the scenes. Once price has been established, then the conversation is about terms. Most sophisticated people recognize that terms are more important than price in the negotiation anyway.

There’s an old story about an emperor who sentenced a man to death, but allowed the man to choose his form of execution. The man responded to the emperor, “I choose death by old age.” Death was the price, old age was the term.

All of your CXOs bring a weight to the conversation that is valuable in the sales process. It is through careful use that you get the greatest amount of yield out of each of the positions.

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:

• Assign the voices. You probably know the people to whom you will be pitching. For this reason, assign those people’s perspective and personas to members of your Murder Board. This can be funny, but that’s not the point. The real issue is that you want finance questions from the finance guy, technical questions from the tech person, and so on. This also allows your Murder Board participants to be more focused in their listening and challenges.
• Bucket the questions. You need to get the questions into context. It is not helpful to your cause if there are just random questions. Although that may be representative of the anticipated meeting, in rehearsal it is more helpful in developing a consistent and coherent answer if you have grouped the questions. I recommend the inclusion of these categories of questions, but you should feel free to add and edit your categories:

• Compare and Contrast. Questions asked for you to speak about your company in relationship to the other competitors.
• Why? Examples include: “Why should we hire your company?” and “Why did you choose to use that technology?” These are intentionally challenging because the implication is that another option is better or one that the prospect prefers. That may not be the case, but the question does challenge your approach.
• Implementation. These are nuts and bolts questions around working together. Who?, How?, When? and Using what process? Are all examples of the structure of these types of questions.
• Blind spots. A good Murder Board member will be looking for those areas that are under represented or missing in your proposal or presentation. These need to be declared in the preparation so that special attention can be paid to them.
• Your known vulnerabilities. When you have done a few presentations, you will become very familiar with the areas in your business that are weak. It may be your size, your technology, your financial strength or other concerns. These are your weak spots. Your strategy is to craft airtight answers in these areas and rehearse them. This is a particularly great use of your Murder Board in the preparation process.

• Shoot for three. On the key areas, Murder Board members need to push 3 questions deep on that area. The follow up questions are more important than the initial questions. Your prospect will dig, so your Murder Board needs to dig.
• Record the session. Don’t trust your notes or your memory. Great things come out of these sessions and you want to make certain to get it all. An audio recording is fine – the equipment is cheap. Better yet is a video recording if you can make one. The technology is not as important as the ability to review the answers, capturing the best ones and improving the weak ones.

I recommend that you do the Murder Board exercise within 48-72 hours of your presentation. This gives enough time to practice and revise without so much time that you second-guess and forget.

Hot Washes. After the exams, students either reconvene their Murder Boards or use other advisers and mentors to do a thorough review of the exam. This is to make certain that the lessons are learned. Again, this approach is now used for politicians so that they can improve from one debate or presentation to the next.

This process is a review seeking to identify 2-5 key lessons for the future. In doing a hot wash, the process should be relatively quick and surgical in its approach. Here is the way that conversation should be structured:

• What parts of the process worked. A presentation starts at the lobby and ends when you get in the car after it is over. There is a process in the middle- from how we enter the room, where we sit, how we present, who presents in what order, how we handle questions and answers and so on. Without focusing on the content, as the questions about the process and score each of the steps as to its successfulness.
• What content worked. You need to capture the language, the content and the tools used that the presenting team or person felt worked. Focus on this question in the dialogue, “What behavior did you see from the prospect that made you feel it worked?”
• Which relationships worked. Often times there is a connection made between people in the session. Possibly it is because of a shared background in education or where we grew up. It could be because of well-received answer to a question. Whatever the cause, relationships are forming and possibly improving in the presentation. Name them.
• Reverse field. Now cover the three areas above in reverse- what didn’t work. Be honest and get it out on the table.
• What will we change. Focus on the 2-3 important things that you will structurally change in your approach. You may decide that a particular picture is too dark for the PowerPoint- but that’s no we are really talking about here. You are looking for the more important things that will make a difference in all of your presentations going forward.
• What will we do exactly the same. No easy ones and no more than 2-3 ideas. We are looking for the high-leverage things that we did in this presentation that we want to make a part of our permanent arsenal.

I use Murder Boards and Hot Washes to this day with sales teams I am coaching on their biggest deals. They increase confidence and force learning for real improvement.