At what point do you just give up?
Hope is never a strategy but when is it okay to just pick up your marbles and go home?
Hope is always part of the equation. When that is the last thing you have, how long do you hold on?
At the time I am writing this, Russia still hasn’t succeeded in overtaking Kyiv. We know that both sides of this conflict are hoping. In fact, they are both hoping for the same thing - for the other side to stop. They want the other side to give up. Either give up their freedom or give up the aggression. The difference in the end will be is who gets to stay after the bullets stop flying.
I am not trying to compare bullets flying with a business negotiation. But success can be calculated well in advance. What do we know, what don’t we know? Making mistakes along the one is one thing, but not getting all the information up front has extraordinary costs. That’s the purpose of this blog.
It is fair to say though that stalemates happen in business more often than not. There are no peace treaties or a cease fires. We either keep pushing and calling ourselves persistent. Or we walk away and accept our losses. There is no one cheering or jeering from the sidelines. What happens throughout these processes is between, what you hope, two professional companies. It will either work or it will not.
As professional sales people, our closing averages are not 100% … and depending on your industry, it could be as low as 10% and you could still be considered elite. That means that 90% of your so-called prospects either walked away from you, or the other way around during the sales cycle. But walking away is so tough - here’s how to soften the blow.
The Courting Process
Last week we wrote about negotiations and win:win … That can only happen near the end of the courting process. How did you get to this point? What have you found out in your courting of your customer? We are at the point of defining the win:win because we have successfully made it through the various steps of the sale. Each step has provided us more information, and all of that information was acceptable and proved that this was still a viable prospect. That’s how it works in a perfect world.
What do we mean by courting? The prospecting, the discovery process, the relationship building, and the qualification process. Some have written about the 7 steps to a sale, others write there are only 3 or 4. In our case, regardless of what you sell, let’s look at these 4:
Prospecting / Marketing / Demand Creation
Discovery & Qualification Process
Relationship building
Close
Each of these broad categories is a gate. It gives you the opportunity to stop the process, review what you have learned, and move on to something more productive and profitable if they don’t meet your criteria.
For years I worked in sales relating to engineered components. The principal pointed every year to a certain very large Tier 1 Automotive Systems ‘prospect’. “They are our perfect target”
Every year this target would be brought up, and time was invested in re-discovering what most of the team already knew. Their terms and conditions to work with them were so cost prohibitive, that it was not only low-margin but high-risk business. Yet, year after year the team was tasked to go into step 3 and engage. Develop those relationships, and maybe - just maybe - we could get through the legal issues.
Over the decades a lot of relationships were built, but the t’s and c’s never changed. A lot of lunches and dinners were paid for, and not one purchase order received. Flights were booked, time was invested, costs were made, and more importantly that time was not invested in things with higher chances to succeed.
The problem: Senior management refused to accept not having this prospect as a customer. Investing meeting after meeting only to get to the same spot every year. Ego and hope were the two remaining strategies - and in the vast majority of cases - if these are your last two cards in your hand, you will lose.
Set up your process for gate reviews
We recommend that you thoroughly define your entire marketing and sales process. Whether its a 3 step sale or 13, define specifically what you want to find out in each of those steps. There should be a clear Yes / No response when you get the information. Do you continue? yes or no.
One of your qualifiers could be annual sales or quantities of a product. If over this number, then continue, if under than stop. Yes, we know that sometimes there are hidden gems out there, but finding that nugget of gold might have you spending enormous times sifting thru thousands of yards of dirt.
Of course one assumes you know what your target customer looks like. You have identified the objective criteria in order to create this process. Feelings about a customer do not matter, these decisions need to be made objectively. The case needs to be extremely compelling for subjective information to change your minds - for example - the CEO is also my father-in-law, and they want to do more business with me so his daughter is better taken care of …
If you have refined your process, are you and the team walking away when the decision tree tells you to? Or are you hoping that this one time, just this once, the client will change? Remember, the selling process can be as long as 700-days, but Day 1 could be the time to walk away - or even on day 689. You have this clear criteria set up for a reason - use it.
It’s like going out to dinner. Before you walk into the restaurant, you and your spouse agree that waiting for a table is okay, but no longer than 30-minutes. The decision is made, even though the smell of the kitchen is pushing you to change your mind when the maitre d tells you it will be 45 minutes to an hour.
With fewer and fewer resources in our organizations, we need to be efficient in these processes. We need to save time where we can. This will lead to more new business, not ‘lost’ business opportunities. It is hard work, but it will pay off - at the Kole Performance Group, we can help you today for that better tomorrow.