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.

By Tim Searcy

I have referenced before that the CIO for Nortel made a keen observation that “companies no longer buy from companies, they buy from supply chains.”  Supply chain management is a buzz word concept that has actually had some staying power.  More of our clients are finding themselves in presentations in which they have brought in “partners” to assist in selling to a whale. Multiple- team selling can be a way in which your company can combat the “whale’s” natural fear that your organization is too small.  As in all things, the devil is in the details.

There are some good reasons to sell with partners.  There may be a set of capabilities that required by the buyer that you are not able to deliver.  Additionally, sometimes a key relationship may exist between a potential partner of yours and the polar bear (economic buyer) inside the whale.  It could be that the partner you are working with brings the necessary local office and physical proximity that the whale demands.  Finally, whales will occasionally tell you that a specific partner would make your offering more appealing to the firm.  Regardless of the reason, if you have decided that you will take on partners to sell the whale-sized deal, you need to keep some things in mind:

1. Who owns the chain? A supply chain or a multiple partner solutions needs to have someone in charge.  If it is you, the strength of the chain link and your ability to manage the chain are paramount.  You do not want to be in a position that a partner can somehow go around the relationship that you have and secure the business without you.  Contracts must be in place to clearly specify that for this particular pitch, your partners cannot compete separately or with a competitive solution.  If you are the subordinate in the relationship, it is important that you only select the very best partner to hunt with.

2.    How do we control the pitch? Often times, powerful salespeople or forceful personalities can take over the strategy and pitch approach of a supply chain seeking big business.  If you are in the lead, control needs to be set for items like venue, agenda, speaking times, message that will be conveyed and stories that will be told.  You will also want twice the number of rehearsals that you would normally use because the players have not worked together, and a seamless presentation will be a key way to alleviate the whale’s fears.

3.    What is the brand we are pitching? When you are selling as a supply chain, figuring out your brand can be complicated.  Will the lead firm own the contract?  Who will handle collections?  For the prospect, the question becomes “who are all of you people anyway?”  For the very biggest deals, I recommend having business cards printed that have the prospect’s logo on the card along with the lead firm and a clear title for everyone as the client’s team member.   Remove the confusion about who you are collectively by focusing on the prospect as the point of connection.

If we have concerns about trying to sell into a whale as a team of teams, imagine how the prospect feels.  One of the important points we make at HBS is to never scare the whale.  When you come at the whale with multiple players representing multiple firms, you could easily scare the whale.  Here are the come things that may be on the whale’s mind that you need to address:

• “Why is there a chain to begin with?” It is very likely that the whale starts with a one stop shopping approach to establishing a new business relationship.  The natural bias may start with opposition to a collective of providers.  Reasons that may offset that concerns include that you have selected the best of breed in individual component provision, or that single sourcing does not make sense in this particular case or that specialty requirements that move the work from the mainstream demand a unique solution.
• “Am I paying for redundant overhead?” It will be no surprise that multiple firms implies multiple hand offs and higher costs.  It will be your responsibility to clearly lay out the economics of the multiple team approach and explain the financial advantage.
• “What if this all goes bad, but I like some of the links?” Although prospects don’t always communicate their interest in some of the individual partners, it happens frequently.  In very clear terms, you need to let the prospect know that you have come together as a team and will stay together as a team because that is what is in the client’s best interest.
• “Do these people know how to work together?” Or “Am I going to be first?” Few things scare whales more than transition costs related to communication or ignorance of the new provider of business practices, business needs, market conditions etc.  We scare whales when we give the impression that the necessary training to get up to speed will have to cross multiple companies and multiple cultures.  It is important to emphasize any historical pairings that have been successful with the teams you choose.  If this is not possible, the process of making the delivery painless to the customer and with single contact point account management should be used to convey simplicity and service delivery.

Supply chains are an effective way to deliver service.  Whales can appreciate the value of multiple smaller firms positioning themselves as a superior combined solution.  The key is to make the actual work look like one firm is performing it instead of a jigsaw puzzle of individual pieces.

By Tim Searcy

Nothing beats the real world for reminders about sales process challenges. During a recent seminar when I asked people to name members of the Buyer’s Table, a participant chimed in with, “The idiot who thinks he knows everything and for some reason, everyone in the client company listens to him.” Of course, when we push down on this type of person just a little bit, we realize that they are the smartest kid in the remedial class. The rest of the firm turns to the only light of information they have and trust . . . one of their own. As the smartest person the client knows on the topic in question, they are trusted implicitly and completely. For this reason, the one-eyed man in the land of the blind really is king, and we better know what to do about him. We can:

1. Eliminate the expert from consideration. This almost never works unless your champion has always suspected that the expert was not that knowledgeable. Be very careful. An expert enjoys protected class status, and the attempt to eliminate them by showing them up can have consequences. The expert is on site or in the firm, and has relationships both professional and personal. The “nobody picks on my sister but me” mentality can take over and you will be shut out.

2. Ignore the expert. Sometimes this is wisest. Until you know the lay of the land, simply treat the expert as another member of the buyer’s table. Their questions and comment have equal merit and weight as everyone else, BUT NO MORE than anyone else. This play works well if you can keep the expert looking informed but not smart. It is advantageous to agree that the expert from their team in knowledgeable, but that the expertise exists in your team.

3. You can marginalize the expert. This involves creating clear boundaries for where the expert’s knowledge ends. In this way, the individual can feel validated about their knowledge and can even receive compliments from you while at the same time, their potential impact on the overall process can be minimize.

4. Engage the expert. This solution is fraught with peril. To engage the expert is to let their opinion dominate the dialog. Unless the expert is your firm advocate AND clearly has the ear of the polar bear, this individual can become dictatorial from your endorsement of their knowledge. If you choose to engage the expert, you must educate them from their current point of information until they actually do achieve expert status. In this way, you solidify their power base and at the same time make yourself indispensable to their future role.

5. Convert the expert. This strategy is for the expert that has clearly chosen a different solution or has “seen it all”, and just knows that your solution is not going to be effective. Instead of coercion or conversion, it is best to attempt collaboration. In this scenario, bring the expert closer, and ask lots of questions. Provide no statements or rebuttals until all of the thoughts are out on the table. Use questions to encourage the expert to move to your way of thinking.

The experts often rely on their role as expert. They are not easily replaced or eliminated, and although their true knowledge of the subject matter may be limited, their knowledge of the organization is greater than yours. Craft a strategy that puts the expert inside your circle managing the decision making process with you instead of outside your circle directing the process towards you.

I’m working with a team of sales people right now—good sales people—who have one teensy-weensy problem: follow up.

The sales process for all of us includes a large number of transactional communications. They may include coordinating a meeting, securing a key piece of information, getting approval from Procurement or Purchasing, sign-off from a superior, the review of the proposal, signing the contract and so on. Every one of these communications must be completed in order to land the deal. If you participate in the sales process, you understand that rarely have you suffered more indignity or unprofessionalism than in this cycle of unanswered, unreturned or ignored emails, voicemail messages and sent and unsigned documents.  And it’s done WILLINGLY.

I’ve watched frothy-mouthed-screaming-at-officials-soccer-moms, who when faced with following up with a prospect who agreed to an action and hasn’t done it, say “Well, I’ll just give it another week.  I don’t want to be too pushy.”

I’ve seen bar-pounding-get-me-my-beer-now-guys wait for weeks for a response on a proposal. Weeks!

What is the right amount of time to wait before following up with a prospect? Not just any prospect, but a big prospect.  I know that you don’t want to be pushy or desperate.  I get that.  But you also need to keep moving the process along. We are looking for the Goldilocks “just right” level. Here are some pointers before I give you the timing guidelines:

• Ask. My favorite approach came from a guy in Ireland pitching me some commercial real-estate. He said, “Thomas, the line between persistence and annoyance is a fine one, and I wouldn’t want to be crossing it. When should I be getting back to you so I’ll know you’ll be picking up the phone.” In every direct communication, ask when they want to have you get back to them and be specific. “Early next week” is not specific. “Tuesday at 10am” is specific.
• Set expectations. It starts with setting expectations. In voicemails, emails, face to face or by phone, never end the conversation without setting the next time. Tell them when you will be calling or sending an email, specifically.
• Be impeccable. Never miss a time or date. Not by a minute. If you are going to set the time for follow up with precision in your email or voicemail, then you have to hit it. You are creating a perception of attention detail and reliability. Just because they are not impeccable does not give you a pass not to be.
• Allow some leeway. Sometimes, my calls for appointments and follow ups are missed by the person whom I am calling. I leave this message, “I have us scheduled for a meeting today at 9am. I probably just missed you or one of your other meetings is running over. I will call back in 15 minutes to connect. I look forward to our conversation. Thanks.” Then I call back. If I don’t reach the person, my message sounds like this, “I’m sorry we didn’t get connected today, I was looking forward to our conversation. Your day may have just gotten away from you, I know that happens to me sometimes. I’ll call you back at end of day today, say 5:00pm, to reschedule this call. Thanks.”  Don’t wait for a call back or an email.  Keep pressing forward.
• Drive, don’t ride. I don’t expect that people will be calling me back. I’m driving the process, so it’s my job to drive the communication. I am always willing to be surprised in a good way with a responsive person, but my control needs dictate that I can’t be waiting.  I have to drive. How about you?
• Walk away. Like the movie title says, maybe “He’s Just Not That Into You.” At some point, continued follow up is groveling. Don’t grovel. (see Brando Don’t Audition)

If they are not responding, it means that they have moved on. I send an email or leave a voice message that sounds like this:  “I’ve been in this business a long time, and when I stop being able to connect with someone it usually means that the timing for us to work together is not good. This is my last call to you for 6 months. I’ll circle back around then to see if timing is better for us to work together. If something changes for you between now and then, please feel free to call me. “

Having said all of this, here are some guidelines for proper Hunt Big Sales Prospect Follow Up Etiquette:

Prospecting Calls

• 1st Prospecting Call- You can call or email an unresponsive person within 48 hours.
• 2nd Prospecting Call– Within 48 hours of last call
• 3rd Prospecting Call– Within 48 hours of last call
• 4th Prospecting Call– Within 72 hours of last call
• Final Prospecting Call– Within 72 hours of last call

Trade Show Follow-Up – This gets trickier depending upon the volume of contacts.

• Pre-Set Personal meeting – Within 48 hours of trade show closing.
• Good conversation on floor – Within 48 hours of trade show closing
• Passing conversation on floor – Within 72 hours of trade show closing
• Fish bowl business card – Within 7 calendar days of trade show closing
• Prospect listed in program – Do you really have time to chase someone who you never met at the show? Don’t be a psycho stalker. Let it go.

Proposals. Assuming that you are sending a requested proposal, rather than an unsolicited one, your follow-up cycle should be declared in the cover letter. It should be within 24 hours to confirm receipt and distribution if appropriate. The time should be set at that time for a full review of the proposal within 72 hours. The house goes on fire outside of 8 calendar days—you must get connection and confirmation of interest and progress within 8 calendar days or you are dead.

Contracts. Who is driving? You are. Contract cycles within clients are a misty and dark area of the sales process. Lawyers think of themselves in this process as the stewards of their company’s risk, which they probably are. Because of this, they are slow, methodical and indifferent to you. First, get an understanding from your champion how long the cycle usually takes. Cut this time by two-thirds and follow up at the one-third mark in the cycle. Work both the attorney and the champion. Your approach should always be helpful: “What areas are of the most concern in the agreement? Which parts of the agreement are we going to be able to leave the same? How can we help to work through this agreement?”

Getting the prospect’s team to move. Stuck. I hate being stuck. Usually it’s IT, but not always. The process gets tends to get bogged down while your champion of your new client is waiting for someone in his or her organization to do something. Now everybody is waiting. Your follow up here has to be vigorous and consistent but friendly. You are working within 4 hour cycles of commitments. Any time that a time or date has been missed on a commitment, you follow up within 4 hours. If they are not missing commitments, then your follow up is within 1 hour of commitment completion to thank them for completing the commitment. 20 commitments? 20 thank you’s.

Information requests. Use the same guidelines as “Getting the prospect’s team to move.”

Guidelines are not laws.  When in doubt, use your own judgment. Always remember though, YOU ARE DRIVING.

By Tim Searcy

Ahh meetings—those wonderful illusions of productivity, collaboration and focus.  Meetings are the standard reaction to sales management crisis just as running an IV is the standard answer in an emergency room.

OK, you are going to have a meeting because you are in a crisis. What are you going to meet about?

Enthusiastic yelling, leading and hours of meetings will only create the illusion of problem solving.  Instead, you need information.  There are three types of information you have to get a stranglehold on right away in a sales crisis: pipeline, prospects and potential.

1. Pipeline. The pipeline is defined as the list of real opportunities for which you have credible, verifiable information including all of the following:

• Dollars. How big is this, how soon can we see it, and how long will the opportunity continue to pay us and is there a bigger payout later?  But even more important than that is the rock solid assurance that a trigger event has occurred that will make certain this deal happens, and an unshakeable knowledge that a budget of sufficient size has been allocated to do the work. Without these, the dollars are dreams, not dollars.
• Dates. When the deal is going to close is less relevant than when it will bill.  More importantly, what control do we have on moving the dates forward versus waiting for things to happen?  Sometimes a prospect will make accommodation or we can directly impact how quickly actions can take place by what we do.
• Decision Making. You have to know the criteria upon which the awarding of the work will pivot.  If we don’t know how the fears that the deal will alleviate in the client’s mind, we don’t know enough to win.
• Decision Makers. Is the economic buyer involved and have we personally engaged with them yet?   What do we know about these people as individuals, and what research do we have on them and their history in decision making?  Again, do we know what has triggered the choice to change providers or move outside?

The goal of the pipeline information analysis is to trim down the pipeline to a 30-60 day action cycle. Clean out everything that does not provide the information you need, set it aside for reconnaissance work and now focus on the remaining pipeline over which planning and energy can have impact.

2. Prospects. What if your remaining pipeline is ‘thin’? The crisis may not be able to be addressed with the opportunities in the pipeline even if we close at a slightly higher rate than we have in the past.  We have to look above the pipeline to find out where we can hope to see more opportunities.

• Source. Often a crisis is at least in part about our own expenses. As a sales leader, you will be asked to address things like trade shows, advertising, sponsorships, client gifts and T &E.  You need to have a great sense of where your best leads are coming from.  In a crisis, there is nothing you have to do.
• Rate of flow. What is the pace of demand generation and does it have seasonality?  Trade show season is often touted as the best time to get new leads.  However, every marketing activity has a lifecycle, and someone needs to work through a calendar to give you an expected number of leads for each cycle.  Then you need to determine if the lead flow will be sufficient, and if not, what expense trade offs are you willing to make to gain a greater or different yield of leads.
• Distribution. This is no time to play fair.  If you have been using a standard distribution of leads to sales people, you need to rethink this.  In a time of crisis, you need your best people chasing the best opportunities.  Crisis by its nature means you will have to sacrifice something, and unfortunately the feelings of your less productive salespeople may need to be ignored.

These steps are all valid if the pipeline is too small to overcome the gap that is creating the crisis. If you have a big enough pipeline, however, WORK THE PIPELINE and leave the fresh prospecting efforts until you have exhausted the pipeline.

3.    Potential from current clients. Often the place we go first is our current clients.  We know them, and they know us, and it is likely that we are not getting all the business from them that we should.

• Current status. With which clients are we currently in good standing?  This is not the time to chase someone who is angry at us to ask for more business.  As a sales leader, it will require nerves of steel to face down an owner or boss and say “No, it is not time to ask for more business from this client, because they are already on the edge of firing us.”  I have seen many organizations in which the CEO is completely unaware of the current relationship challenges and the severity of those challenges.
• State of Triggers. It is very difficult to pull a trigger that is not there.  We have to assess whether we have a good story other than our need for why we should be getting more business from a current client.  If the client does not have their own rationale for giving you more, you will need to take one with you.  Ask yourself, “What problem do I solve for my client or fear do I alleviate for them when they give me more business?”  Conversely, you need to assess what problems or fears you create when they give you more business.

With this information, you can begin to make the most important decision any leader can make: what not to focus on.  That’s right, this is a reductive process.  Get rid of the lower impact items and drive the things you can manage like a ten penny nail (That means really, really hard!)  Many times, the answers you get from your investigation will drop that pit in your stomach to depths you had not realized existed.  However, from real truth comes real change.  You need to design a plan that takes into account Pareto’s law, and focus on the 20% that can give you the 80% you have to have to get out of the crisis.

Old men aren’t the first to die in shipwrecks.

You would think they would be since they do not have the strength or endurance of young men, but in maritime records, young men die first. Why?  Because they flail about and waste precious energy while old men grab onto drifting debris, conserve their energy and wait for daylight to determine what to do.

Right now, one of my client’s business unit leaders is acting just like a young sailor during his first shipwreck.  His biggest deals are finishing up with little backlog to absorb the headcount and he’s flailing, yelling into the darkness and panicking.  He’s frightened and he has the right to be.

So what can he do?

1)    Shut up. Quit talking to everyone about how frightened you are, how quickly the sky is falling and how new and different strategies need to be implemented.  For the most part, this is not new news and does not serve a proactive purpose. Start talking when you have a consistent strategy and when you can articulate it clearly, often and with conviction.

2)    Grab onto some driftwood. Just because you are frightened, it doesn’t mean that everything is not working. You have to define the core pieces that are working and start building a boat (your strategy) based on them.  At the very least, you need to cling to what is working until daylight comes.

3)    Quit kicking until you spot land. There are no silver bullet solutions. Changing the offering to the market on a 72-hour cycle confuses your people and your prospects. Follow a strategy with 10 prospects and determine the outcomes.  Don’t just take a sample size of one conversation with one prospect and decide that you “have the answer.”  Calm down. Follow the plan through 10 conversations with 10 prospects and then decide if a complete change in strategy is necessary.

4)    Conserve energy. Make choices. More of more is not necessarily going to yield more.  Focus on the opportunities that you are hunting one at a time and with rigor.  It is the opposite of the shotgun approach—a flurry of activity in many directions—but it is more effective in the long run.  It’s better to pick out strategic targets and drive hard at those opportunities.
5)    Give encouragement. Chances are that other people on the team are frightened.  Use your experience and judgment to show them that your team will get through this tough time.

As in life, the people who need the most help are usually the least likely to take it.  If you are the drowning man, follow this list. If you know a drowning man, give him this list. If you are doing just fine, keep this list.  You may need it the next time there is a sales shipwreck.

I just finished Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, an oldie but a goodie. It tells the story of the Oakland A’s and their manager Billy Beane’s fight against the Conventional Wisdom of professional baseball. Beane guided his team in a battle against the “system”—the well established conventions of what it takes to make a great baseball team (or a baseball team great)—and won. Beane understood that his team was not just a group of players, but a group of people whose individual skills are needed to orchestrate a win. The same can be said for your sales team. The sales person, sales manager, designers, engineers, operations and client services personnel all have a hand in hunting a big sale. It’s the combination of skills they bring to the table that will help accomplish the goal.

What can hunters learn from Beane and his team?

Go Against Conventional Wisdom (CW)
Let’s start with some of the “Conventional Wisdom” that organizations use when fielding their sales teams. Remember, these are the things you’ll be working against when putting together your team.

• “Our team must come from our industry.” I hear this statement 90+% of the time. This is true for some positions, but as I will discuss later, not all. This CW is limiting and can be expensive.
• “Have a set of deep contacts in the prospect base.” People like the idea of having access to large accounts via previous contacts, but with all the turnover and reorganization in the marketplace, this is not as valuable or as relevant as it once was.
• “Sales people are the most important part of the sale.” I have railed against the “rockstar” idea before. In the complex sale, one person may be the most important part of a single step, but is still, in the end, just one part of the overall team.
• Rockstar pedigree. You may be looking for players with the “big company” background, but in what way is experience from a behemoth, matrixed, highly-resourced and deeply branded company going to benefit a company like yours? In other words, how will those players’ backgrounds serve you?
• Look the part. There is a widely-held belief as to what a sales person looks, talks and “feels” like. In reality, there’s no real “look” to a great sales person. It’s his or her skill that will make the sale.

Team Building on Your Payroll (or lack thereof)
Like Beane, small and mid-size companies don’t always have big league budgets to hire the “rockstars” to play for their teams. But since we play in the big leagues, we need to figure out a strategy to win…
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What is a sales team’s likely response when their buyer involves a bunch of people in a sale who don’t know much about what they’re buying?

“These people are IDIOTS!”
[Paraphrased from frustrated sales people the world over, dealing with “new” buyers at their big targets…]

When big companies lay people off, the functions of those people get stacked on top of the already-full desks of other people. These new responsibilities most often don’t come with training, a manual, or any relevant experience on the part of the recipient. And these new job requirements just show up. Often times, one of these responsibilities is to be the buyer of products and services with which the “new” buyer is very unfamiliar.

So, what do these people do with their new responsibility? Most of the time they choose one of the following:

1. Do nothing. They don’t buy anything- they just put it off
2. Stick with the incumbent.
3. Buy from the lowest-priced vendor.

In the rapidly-shifting organizational charts of companies dealing with downsizing, ignorant buyers can be dangerous to your sales process for new accounts. Face it—there are a lot of options that are easier and safer than going with a new provider like you.

Getting these new buyers to sway away from the three easy options listed above will require you to adjust your approach. Here are some recommendations…

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We believe it’s important to keep score…

Because our business revenue cycles run in four-month increments, we count on the trimester and we just finished our counting.

Using the HBS system, strategies and techniques for large account selling, our clients and friends have closed $171,000,000 in new business in the first four months of the year! That is fantastic and we want to say CONGRATULATIONS to everyone who landed big new deals in this first trimester! There were new sales from $100,000 in the list all the way to just over $100,000,000, a very broad range indeed. This new addition brings the system’s total to over $2.6 Billion in new sales!

We want to get better at keeping score, so we are reaching out to the readers of this blog, the website, Twitter and my newsletter to let us know when you land a deal and feel that in any way our system, thoughts and approaches have aided in winning that new sale. Send me an email letting me know what you landed and how big it is to your company. We will then add you to the score.

Again, congratulations to the big hunters in this first trimester! Listen to the podcasts in the upcoming months because some of the people who have landed the big deals, including the $100M+ deal, will be featured.

I’m working on some big sales right now with my clients. I act as either a member of their team or as a key advisor. We’re aiming at accounts ranging from $500,000 to $100,000,000. This is a great part of my professional life. People hire me typically for one or more of three reasons:

1. They’re looking to “double their double.” They want to double the speed with which they can double the size of their company and they believe that landing large accounts is the way to do it.
2. They want a manageable and scalable approach to running their sales process, measuring it and improving their success rates.
3. They have a mega-sale that they want to land and they want me to be their adviser and coach. I play the role of “deal-doctor” for lack of a better description.

I’m doing all of this work right now for a variety of clients, but it just so happens that in the area of mega-hunts, we’re in a very busy hunting season.

Every one of these deals is different – different size, industry, competitive landscape, personality mix… You get the idea.

But there are a few things that each of these mega-hunts has in common…

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