Many prospects are suspicious of their potential providers. They feel like someone is always playing fast and loose with the truth. The technique I am writing about today arms your prospect with the right information and questions to give them the edge in the buying process. The trick is that this approach squarely puts your company in the strongest position. This magic trick frames the untruths and partial truths of your competitors.

The 7 Deadly Sins

For us, the 7 Deadly Sins represent the “You Must Not Do’s” of your client making a buying decision in your market space. By establishing what they are, how big a mistake they create and the questions that a prospect should ask when meeting with potential vendors, you have created trust with your prospect as well as educated them on how to avoid really big mistakes.

The following illustration is just an example. I recommend that you develop your own “7 Deadly Sins of Selecting a ______________ Partner” that is relevant to your market and industry. You will be giving the prospect these 7 Deadly Sins, written from their perspective, for them to have and use as they interview other possible competitors to you. Again, this is only an example.

7 Deadly Sins

• Certification – Ask every potential partner if they have the XYZ certification for all of their staff and locations. Many players in our market may have one or two individuals certified, but they do not have their entire staff certified, or their entire facility certified.  If they do not, that is a risk because _____________.
• Diversification – Ask what the experience in your particular industry has been of the frontline people who will be doing the work and ask for background profiles for the management. Often times in the market, there is very little breadth of experience in the teams who come to do the work and all of the experience is in one or two people.
• Specification – What are the three biggest things, specifically and measurably, that you are going to get from working with a new provider? Too many claims are general and soft-cost oriented. A credible provider should be able to quantify the benefits.
• Dedication – Who is the dedicated team that will be doing the work for you? Too often, an executive team does the selling, but a less experienced team does the work. You want to know who is your team.
• Prioritization – What size is this project in the scheme of things? Are you a Top 10 account, or will you be suffering from the 11th+ position problem of priority with your possible provider.
• Concentration – What portion of the business that your potential partner does is in your industry and market? If it is less than X%, then the relevance to your business issues and forward thinking necessary for good partnership just isn’t there.
• Integration – How will the company manage knowledge transfer and cultural match ups? Your business will require integration between people from your company and any partner, do they have a plan that is clear for how that will happen to get the maximum value out of this new relationship, or is it just a punch list and an onboarding schedule?

In building your own list, you are considering all of the untruths and partial truths of your industry. Similar to the 5 Myths, this is designed to give the ‘real story’ to your prospects to make them better buyers. By doing that, you are giving yourself the opportunity to show your real value in a tight and often commoditized marketplace.

“Congratulations, You’re My 11th Biggest Customer”

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.

I was flying with a senior engineer from one of the top 5 aerospace companies in the world this week as he was on a trip to meet with a number of his suppliers around the country. He’s been an engineer on the supply chain management side for years in several different very large companies. I asked him his thoughts on smaller suppliers- how can they get into a big company, how can they grow their business and what are some of the common mistakes. A couple things I got from our conversation include:

Getting In The traditional answers came up, but some nuggets came out. Industry networking – figure out a way to connect to the senior people at trade shows. Read the papers and articles in the industry and contact those authors who are active engineers in the companies with whom you would like to do business. LinkedIn is an emerging way to reach out to senior people and he is seeing more social media connection going on, especially in the specialty groups that are formed inside of LinkedIn and other SM platforms.

Procurement He saw my eyes roll and he laughed, but he tried to reassure me that this is still a good way to get in. His point was that starting at the top and working on getting an executive sponsor in Procurement/Purchasing/SCM is still the right move. Most small companies look at these areas as processes to follow or areas to avoid. However, his point is that the executives in these areas get big points for bringing in good suppliers who solve problems. If there is a mix of smaller suppliers who make the grade, they get every bit as much credit as working with a big supplier. In addition, smaller suppliers are easier to move into the “Top Supplier of the Year” winner’s circle at the end of the year because they are easier to develop, which is another way those executives keep score. His point was that the executives in this area of the business are getting their heat from the company for failing suppliers of any size. If they can get a quick resolution to a real problem by bringing in a smaller but successful supplier, it is a big win.

Main Suppliers Being a second to a prime supplier is a successful route and often leads to the second becoming a prime over time. His emphasis was the “over time.” The route is second, co-developed parts, prime, and this cycle moves slowly.

Here’s what he said about growing your business: Small companies are often looking for the fast win and fast growth, so they push too early. By being painstakingly perfect on initial orders, the follow-on orders and projects will come more quickly. Go slow to move fast.

Also, he said that smaller companies who ask for help, collaborate and are transparent rocket to the top of the list. The ones who hide their issues, close down or try to solve everything themselves do not look like good partners- they look suspicious.

Visibility Is Big Bring more people to the meetings when the big company comes to your site. Use the visits not only as quality control and education sessions but do in-services, brainstorming, and problem-solving sessions. When you visit the big company, take more people. Take senior people, take the president, when the big company is in the offices regardless of the level of person who comes, the executives of the smaller company need to show up and spend time.

Also, who is directly working the account is a HUGE issue. Don’t use younger, inexperienced people in any way on the account. Senior people need to handle the account management, the regular touch point work, any engineering, production or logistics areas.  If the bigger company makes a comment about a person they like or dislike, take it very seriously. Those relationships are very impacting to the overall companies’ relationships in many ways behind the scenes.

I think for many of us who work in the small business to big business arena, these thoughts echo our own impressions and experience of how this works: a good reminder and all of that.

However, I found the conversation interesting because of some general tones that were worth noting:

1. Smaller is better: The general sense was that his experience was that he preferred smaller vendors because of responsiveness, leverage and quality. His big issues were resources and that he felt that as those companies grew they sometimes “forgot who brought them to the dance.”
2. Playing favorites: Once a smaller company became a “go to guy for me,” he would maneuver the system to favor that company very aggressively. However, that company had to be able to respond with the same energy, quality and success on the next project or they became pigeonholed and would not get many new opportunities.
3. Whining v. collaborating: His point was that he and his people would work tirelessly with a company that they liked, who demonstrated that they were working just as hard and who collaborated. They cut off the whiners – those companies who had no ideas, who waited for his group to make all of the revisions and who seemed to sit on the other end of the rope waiting to be pulled up instead of at least grabbing onto the rope and to start climbing.

For most everyone reading this I think you will feel as I did about this conversation, invigorated. It clarifies from behind the curtain what the market thinks about your efforts and how it will respond to your approach.

It probably seems a little confrontational when I ask a prospect the simple question of “Why are you doing this?”, but really it’s just a more direct variation on a theme.

The other, less direct versions of this question are questions like:

• Why is this the right time for you to consider changing vendors?
• What performance threshold are you hoping to achieve by changing your provider right now?
• How have things changed so much in the last 6 months that you are now considering changing your provider?
• What will working with a new vendor give you that you are not getting from your current vendor?

In the end, though, it all boils down to wanting to know why.

I am working with two clients who have put this question into the early parts of their sales process and the answers they received are astonishing in their frankness.  I assure you that all of these examples are real.  I find some of them rather disturbing.

• “I have to look at other vendors every so often to keep procurement happy.”
• “The company we are working with says they can’t make any money because raw material costs are higher than what we pay in total price, so I’m looking to find someone who is cheaper.” (All providers in the industry buy their raw materials from the same source.)
• “We’re always looking to see what’s out there.” (The next question: “When was the last time you changed vendors?” Answer: “We’ve worked with the same company for 11 years.”)

These same clients would visit any company that would give them the time before even reaching the “Why are you doing this?” point.   Their reasoning, and I hear this a lot, was, “Hey, you never know.”

True, but only if you don’t ask. If you ask, you will probably get a good idea of whether or not the prospect is interested in making a change (and whether it is worth your time to move forward in the process).  The good (for you) answers from prospects to the “why” question include:

• Current vendor is failing to perform
• Specific improvement targets for changing
• Clear need for new technology, system, process or materials
• Company initiative to change approaches and therefore vendors

It’s never too late or too early to ask the “why” question, and you really can’t ask this question often enough.  By finding out the prospects’ motivation you can find out the reality of whether or not they actually plan to change. After all, change is where the money can be found.

I once worked in telesales where the psychology of the “one-call close” is that you never say “No.” I worked hard on every call to get the customer into a series of “Yes” statements so that the natural final answer to the closing question was “Yes.” Guess what? It works for transactional sales…kinda. But it doesn’t work for large account selling.

The top sales people are not afraid of saying “no” to requests and challenges from prospects and clients. But the best sales people go further. They don’t allow a client’s requests to set the pace of the deal, for doing so may limit the sales person’s power in the deal. If the client is setting the pace, the sales person is not in the best position to tell a client what he or she can’t do, won’t do or what is not in the client’s best interest to do.

Now, just to be clear, I am not talking about combative selling or a “Dr. No” approach that I have sometimes seen. I am talking about the need to frame a value proposition clearly and with contrast so that it highlights what you bring to the table and what you do not.

There are lots of flavors of “no.” I would like to hear some of yours.

Blog readers and enthusiasts,

I am going to give a Kindle 2.0 to the winner of the following contest:

I’m publishing three books (three!) between now and the end of summer. One of these books is on how to be more effective using all of the tools out there for prospecting large accounts. It is the much-expanded version of my most recent e-book, How to Get Into Bigger Companies for Bigger Sales.

My publisher and I agree that this particular title stinks. Not only is it tepid, but if you’ve read the e-book, you know that there’s a lot more to it, including an entire how-to on using specific social media platforms for prospecting and “listening.” That said, I’m looking for a more provocative and accurate title that elicits the reaction: “I want to buy this book for every single person in my company!”

So, you have one week. If your suggested title is the one I choose for the book, you win the Kindle 2.0. I have one, and it is flippin’ phenomenal.

Post your entries as comments to this post and, who knows, a week from now I might have a new title and you might have a new Kindle 2.0!

All the best, Tom