Next Level Selling

by Tom Fedro

  We tested, tested, tested, and tested some more — and when we found an issue, we eliminated it immediately, showing the printer team that we were an extension of their development group with the instantaneous response that entailed. When you ship millions of units, there can’t be issues in the field. Our quality offering and responsiveness were critical for the company. We were able to convince the product team that our offering was the solution, and we put together a deal that worked for the procurement team’s budget and made it happen.

  Lessons learned

  Finding PAM in the halls of this mammoth prospect led to another seven-figure deal for our company. We made sure we had the right people in front of their people from an engineering standpoint, and built relationships at the senior levels that allowed us to close business in a very complex environment with multiple business units and decision makers — a great deal for them and us.

  Timing as an obstacle

  Timing can be a significant obstacle, tripping you up by a change in your prospect’s environment. Perhaps you’re in the sales process, and PAM’s sitting at the table, and things are looking good. Suddenly, though, a management change rearranges the priorities of the people in the deal process — the deal can freeze due to this timing issue. You could be ready to rock when it’s suddenly announced that the incumbent’s contract has another year or more on it before they’re going to make any changes.

  Alternatively, the company is bought when you’re in the middle of your PAM sales process, and all deals are terminated — another timing issue. Perhaps the prospect takes a financial hit that quarter or their budgets are constrained unexpectedly. Sometimes internal politics can blow your deal out till next year when a competing project wins in the boardroom fight for priority. These are all timing issues that the sales rep may not be able to do much about, and any of these events can signal that it’s time to fall back and regroup.

  Sometimes, however, that timing obstacle may be just a smokescreen, and sales reps must be ready to ask tough questions to see if they can get the deal back on track. Getting to the real crux of the matter could be as easy as asking what else beyond the timing issue is putting the process on hold. Maybe the prospect doesn’t like confrontation, and instead of saying the project lost in the boardroom, they ask for more time to evaluate, leaving the salesperson in the dark.

  Depending on how strong your relationship is with your prospect, you have to push hard and ask more in-depth questions to learn what’s happening. Your job is to get to the truth, and gather the relevant information necessary for moving beyond what may be a smokescreen. If you confirm that the timing issue cannot be overcome, that’s your cue to excuse yourself, and come back later when the time is right.

  Disaster as an obstacle

  You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. – Wayne Gretzky

  A disaster is an event or fact that has unfortunate consequences, and a sales disaster comes in many forms.

  Here are some examples.

  Your product blows up during testing.

  The reference you’re counting on says the wrong thing that impacts the overall impression of the offering in a negative way.

  The salesperson doesn’t research or build a solid understanding of a prospect before the initial interaction, and gets it all wrong when they’re sitting in front of the customer.

  Your internal champion gets fired, leaving you high and dry when it comes to navigating the prospect’s internal political landscape.

  The company is sold, and your PAM sales process is shut down.

  Each disaster has a unique profile that must be addressed by the salesperson in real time. You’ll have to make decisions, discover information on the fly, and change course to make the best of the particular disaster you’re facing. Disasters are what keep selling at this level exciting and fun. They demand creativity and innovation. These attributes are what keep high-end salespeople compensated at a rate of which most people can only dream.

  A disaster generally means that you’re dead in the water, and the potential of closing the deal according to your original plan has sunk without a trace. You’re going to have to back away, and let the situation clear, then see what pieces of the puzzle remain and who is left standing to help you get the deal back on track.

  Case study: online backup

  Tough Beta

  This customer is an online backup service provider and one of the most well-recognized brands in the United States. They back up servers and workstations to the cloud. For both Windows and Mac users, documents, emails, music and photos can all be stored in the cloud. This customer has become hugely successful in the business community by backing up entire infrastructures for mid-sized businesses up to large enterprises. They are continuing to grow rapidly, and are now valued at more than a billion dollars as of this printing.

  The pain this customer needed to eliminate was a gap in their product line that needed to be filled with some world-class software. They needed a bare-metal recovery (BMR). If you lose your computer — perhaps it’s destroyed or stolen — and you have to buy a new one, this customer wanted to empower their users to recover not only files but the operating system, applications and device drivers in a simple way. These are all the little things that can be a pain to fix when you get a new computer and want your old data and environment placed on top of the new system so you can keep chugging along. When you solve that pain, that’s BMR!

  The authority was the CEO and the CFO who would be the signatory, and they would be helped to a decision by a cadre of technical evaluators. When you’ve got a technical product that’s going to be in hundreds of thousands (and in many cases, millions) of end users’ hands; you’re going to face evaluators who are going to test your product rigorously to make sure that it works in every conceivable environment and configuration. These evaluators can’t say yes, but they can certainly say no, so you have to take good care of them.

  Of course, the procurement people are involved as well, but due to the importance and expense involved in this transaction, it was the CEO who had the authority and direct involvement in making this decision. The money was confirmed as this was an essential feature of their new product line to give it strong differentiation in a very competitive space. PAM was in the building!

  We developed key relationships with their engineers and showed them exactly how the product was going to work within their environment and how easy it was going to be to integrate. Then they hired a new CEO, and he killed our deal by putting it on the back burner. Disaster strikes! We were well on our way to a significant win, then everything ground to a halt while the new team came in and got its feet on the ground.

  At first, when the new CEO came in, our internal contacts naturally became a bit about wary about engaging with us until they knew whether they were going to stay the course on our deal. That’s when we had to take it up a notch and get the new CEO to see that we were the right people to be working with them on this significant project. Initially he was not very receptive; however, we were allowed to continue working with their engineering team to show them that our approach and what we had done up to that point was of high value.

  I spoke with the new CEO and convinced him of our promise and partnership. I assured him that we could do exactly what they needed and asked him to allow us to continue. We proved to him that we were going to be a good partner for the long term and to stay with us. It was a critical conversation. We didn’t want him to bring in somebody that he might have worked with before, or be convinced that one of the other vendors in the evaluation along with us might be preferable.

  At this point, the relationships we developed with their senior team on the engineering side, along with our superior technology, positively influenced the new CEO and his team. Ultimately, it was the technology we delivered and our access to the senior-level executives in the new regime that won the business for us.

  Lessons learned

  Even when you face a potential
disaster, if you are genuinely convinced of your value, you have to stay the course and do what it takes to win the business. This billion dollar company is now thriving, and we’re right there with them, enjoying the ride and growing along with their customer base. It was crucial to have many advocates within the company who could champion our case to the new team. They knew our capabilities and our expertise and how nicely it mapped to their requirements gave us the edge we needed to keep the deal alive in the midst of what could have been an unmitigated disaster. Due to our perseverance and foresight, we have a multimillion-dollar deal and extensive and deep relationships from the CEO to finance and the engineering team.

  PAM’s not in the building.

  If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all?

  – Joe Namath

  As discussed, PAM is the process to make sure that you’re spending your time in the right spot, and you’ve got a prospect who’s ready to write a check for your solution. If you can’t identify the pain, authority and money, this is an obstacle that you’re not going to be able to overcome — there won’t be a deal.

  If you can’t qualify those three aspects and make sure there’s an urgency to get the deal done, it’s time to move on. The sooner you can do that, the better and more successful you’re going to be over the long term. There is no time to waste. You must have PAM in the building or you’re out.

  Case study: major mobile phone manufacturer

  No PAM = no deal. Unfortunately, we’ve had a few times when we were unable to find PAM. One case includes a fast-growing mobile handset manufacturer out of Florida. They have some great products that they sell on Amazon and enjoy a massive following in Latin America. They have, however, an issue with the amount of storage they can put into these devices because of their architecture’s software limitations. We offer a solution that they could integrate into the phones that would allow almost unlimited storage for their devices; a fantastic addition of value they could provide to their customers almost immediately

  It’s a great use case and an opportunity for a consumer once they have that phone to buy as much storage as they want. PAM isn’t, however, in the building. At this point, the company does not perceive the lack of storage as a real pain that they need to address with their prospect base. They haven’t moved forward.

  Lessons learned

  Our challenge is to continue to track PAM with a minimal amount of resources and time involved via reference accounts, industry insights, competitive threat analysis and other relevant tactics that will help this prospect see the value in our technology for their customers. Eventually, they’re going to need a solution like ours, so it’s a matter of standing in front of them, proving that the pain is real, and driving the urgency. Right now, without PAM in the building, we don’t have a deal.

  No-decisionitis as an obstacle

  Your job as a sales resource is to find and qualify PAM before attempting a close. It’s imperative that you know PAM is in the building and when it’s likely that a decision is going to be made. You want to reach the point where you create a verbal contract with the prospect that if you can show them the return on investment, they will agree to move forward. You have to know that your prospect is willing to do the deal with you.

  Throughout the sales process, you have to know that you have an opportunity to close the deal. It would help if you felt confident that your prospect is going to get significantly more value than the cash they’re laying out, and you’re going to get a nice payday and a great new reference. If you’re walking the path hand-in-hand, no-decision is not an option unless you’ve left some rock unturned which should be discovered very early in the process. If you have all the attributes of PAM but a decision is not forthcoming, you have encountered no-decisionitis.

  Case study: major cable modem manufacturer

  In one case, we had a large manufacturer and service provider that delivers cable services and hardware for homes such as cable boxes and modems. We showed significant value in the performance of their cable modem and routers by eliminating a substantial pain for their customer and their senior team. Authority confirmed they had the money to do a deal; however, they didn’t move forward.

  This manufacturer had been evaluating our solutions for months with the promise to invest in our proposal based on successful evaluations. We’d tested it in multiple products of theirs and successfully demonstrated how they worked to various business units to no avail. They couldn’t decide to move forward and offer the opportunity to their customers — who would enjoy much more capabilities as a result of our solution.

  Our job was to track down why they couldn’t make a decision and determine who was ultimately going to be the champion to take the deal internally to the next level. The messaging we received was “We’re still looking. We’re still evaluating. We’re not sure what we’re going to do.”

  These are rampant no-decisionitis symptoms, so it was up to us to keep the heat on and figure out who had the most to gain from a more comprehensive solution. We had to determine how long to persist in that scenario, as it was a judgment call that we had to make every quarter.

  We wanted to ensure that we were not wasting anyone’s time, so it was an ongoing decision-making process. In cases such as with this prospect, there are no set rules because these are big companies and therefore significant opportunities for us.

  Lessons learned

  While we didn’t want to waste time, we’ve been through the gamut enough times to know that in some cases, all you can do is wait it out. We continue to show our value to varying combinations of people to make this deal happen. No-decisionitis is a terrible disease that doesn’t have a clear remedy. Each case is unique. This one is no different, stay tuned!

  Lack of urgency as an obstacle

  Well done is better than well said. – Benjamin Franklin

  In some cases, you can identify where a prospect is losing money by not having your product, and their pain is proven. You can be speaking with the person in authority to make the purchasing decision. You can verify that their finance team has the money. You’ve covered your bases in finding PAM, but when you realize the prospect still isn’t feeling the urgency to act, you’ve met the lack of urgency obstacle.

  It’s a mystery why some prospects just don’t feeling the urge to move forward. Forensic investigation can include questions around trying to understand why they wouldn’t want to save money in the second quarter as opposed to the fourth.

  You can ask prospects why they won’t move from first base and hope for an honest answer. They may say they have too many other projects going on at the time, which is usually a smokescreen alerting you to the fact that the urgency isn’t there. As the salesperson, your task is to do everything you can to create that urgency for the prospect. If you sense that it’s not going to happen, move on to greener pastures, and stay in touch until that urgency is there to close the deal.

  You can foster urgency in various ways. For example, if you discover that your prospect is losing money, yet they’re not ready to pull the trigger, ask to move toward with their finance team or CFO. You may find a more willing audience when you clearly explain your value proposition to them and how they can save money with your product and solution. Hopefully, you have a champion in that meeting who can say, “We’ve tested it. It works. We’re ready to go!” Get the finance team across the line to move your project up on the priority list.

  Another option is to hit other senior executives with your case studies, case histories or white papers that show them that their competition has implemented your solution. Illustrate how their competition is already enjoying the benefits of your product now — as opposed to waiting.

  Target whoever could be affected by your offer. The financial officer will want to save the company money. The end users want a product that makes their lives easier. Ferret out these various buyer personas, and approach them using the language they understand and illustrations they need to see in order
to respond.

  Naturally, there can be internal politics (of which you are unaware) that affect your contact’s ability to move within their organization. As you progress into the trusted advisor role with your connection, you can potentially help them get what they need. Offer to make the right calls, and bring in the right people from your company for multilevel selling.

  Case study: major software vendor and one of the most valuable companies in the world

  We have our own stuff… not.

  This company makes operating systems and provides software offerings that are used by just about every other company on the planet in some shape or form. Over the past decade, they’ve expanded their reach in all different directions with their operating systems continuing to dominate worldwide. They’ve now grown to become one of the largest cloud providers, and a leading manufacturer of browser agents, and they offer the de facto office suite software product, as well as a whole cornucopia of other software SKUs for offices of every size.

  How did a small company like us win a major, high-value software deal from such a large company with a vast footprint of products, and how did we win over their own solutions?

  We started our process by looking for and confirming that PAM was in the building. We found they had some measurable pain in their retail stores across the country. If your laptop or your desktop PC has a problem and you take it to one of these stores, you’ll find their group of skilled engineers is ready and able to help you fix those problems.