Brian: I would definitely go ahead with any water heater that could meet those requirements. (He confirms the requirements of his conditional commitment.)
MPC 2: Potential Confirmed
John: Brian, I would like to suggest that I survey your existing water heater to determine its size, efficiency, and perform the savings analysis. I’ll then pursue some possible solutions with my engineering and applications group. This will help me determine what product will work best in your situation. We can then plan to meet next week to review our findings. How does that sound? Is Thursday at the same time good for you? (John verifies the call for action [survey] to work up a yet-to-be-determined product. John does not want to start mentioning products yet. He needs to review all his data with his sales and engineering groups before he commits to a particular product. Furthermore, it sets the purpose for the next meeting—to review his findings. John would also give Brian the opportunity to add, subtract, or modify any goals, filters, systems of evaluations, or measurable benefits.)
Brian: Let’s look at my water heater, and then I’ll see you next Thursday.
John: Thanks for all your time. I look forward to our meeting. (John got his information; now it’s time to go. Anything else said would detract from his efforts. Keep in mind that selling is the ability to gather customer information beneficial to you at a greater rate than you give out product information detrimental to you.)
John Peters has the ability to evaluate his progress by the use of the following modified Q sheet. He generated the appropriate MP 1: Spark Interest before he made his MP 2: Measure Potential in-person sales call to Brian—not afterward. John completes the blank sections in his Q sheet as soon as his in-person sales call ends to evaluate the details he gathered.
You also could use these sheets to measure, manage, and maximize your selling efforts. This recording of essential information takes into account another adage: Sales geniuses know in detail why they are successful so they can repeat their triumphs and avoid failures. (See Exhibits 6-10 and 6-11.)
Exhibit 6-10: Front page of Q sheet.
Exhibit 6-11: Back page of Q sheet.
Summary
MeasureMax has four Measurable Phases (MPs) that break sales opportunities into four minisales. A kind of purchase order ends each phase.
Measurable Phase Changes (MPCs) are the four so-called purchase orders.
The sequence in which you conduct the MPs affects your ability to build value. Moving out of sequence diminishes value.
The first two MPs are MP 1: Spark Interest and MP 2: Measure Potential.
You do not mention specific products during the first two phases.
You plug information from your Product Profile sheets and Market Profile sheets into the MP 1: Spark Interest steps.
MP 1: Spark Interest consists of the following three steps:
Research and Membership. Confirm organizational characteristics and position.
Take Your Pick. Customers choose goals.
Track Record. Provide references from market segment.
These first two steps form your Spark Interest Statement, which you use for specific market segments.
MP 1: Spark Interest ends with MPC 1: Interest Confirmed.
MP 2: Measure Potential consists of the following four steps:
Market Focus. Display expertise in customers’ market segment.
Purpose and Goals. Confirm purpose of meeting to understand requirements of goals.
Eliminate Unknowns. Make goals, filters, and conditional commitments measurable.
Yellow Light. Customers make conditional commitments.
This second phase ends with MPC 2: Potential Confirmed. Customers confirm they want to achieve their goals.
In sales with various decision makers, conduct MP 2: Measure Potential with the lowest-level decision maker before conducting it with the next highest-level decision maker. You always begin the next sales call with a different advocate or the FDM by verifying the conditional commitments from the previous contact. Make sure you have valid and accurate information.
Customers make conditional commitments to themselves. They commit to achieve their goals. A huge if exists—If they can achieve their goals within the constraints of their attainment measurements. Conditional commitments are not trial closes. They are not committing to a specific product, but rather attaining a specific goal.
After MP 2: Measure Potential, any time you contact customers to gather missed information, provide them with new and relevant information first.
Ask customers with multiple goals to rank them, and use their top one to flush out their filters.
If you plan on writing down specifics of customers’ goals and filters, you should take notes.
Use Quick-Entry Sales Management (Q) sheets to measure and manage your selling efforts objectively against the same bench-marks.
Chapter 7: Every Reason to Say Yes
Overview
It will feel a little backward, but powerful. Thinking like a customer, not a salesperson, to present your products will feel awkward the first few times. When you begin presentations with the goals and measurable benefits of the conditional commitments, and not features and benefits, it runs contrary to your training and selling habits. When it becomes apparent that old habits get in the way of selling value, you will find it easy to get rid of them.
This chapter provides customers with every reason to say yes to your product selections by explaining:
How you turn products into solutions that achieve customers’ goals
How to conduct MP 3: Cement Solution and MP 4: Implement Agreement so purchase orders become foregone conclusions
How to make powerful technical presentations to nontechnical buyers
How to make sure your proposals (formal offers to customers) are pulled through by customers and not pushed through by you
MP 3: Cement Solution
The third Measurable Phase (MP) consists of six steps. The first three occur before you meet with customers; the next three take place during your meetings with them. Again, memorizing the steps is not important. Just remember what you are trying to accomplish. When you present products that meet their conditional commitments, you value-earn purchase orders and long-term customers. (See Exhibit 7-1.)
Exhibit 7-1: MP 3— Cement Solution (before presentation).
Note You will continue to follow the two case studies from the previous chapter for these last two Measurable Phases. Steven Smartsell and Olivia Ontime highlight the business-to-business concepts while John Peters and Brian Walters focus on the business-to-consumer ones.
Before Meeting with Customer MP 3 Steps
Preparation is a key to success. The following three steps ensure that you highlight how you built the selected solutions from the customer’s goals down, not your product’s features up.
Step One: No Blanks
Review your Quick-Entry Sales Management (Q) sheet to determine what else you need to find out. Its format makes it easy to see what measurable details you know or do not know. Your knowledge of sales opportunities will be apparent. If you use loose-leaf notes (and can find all of them), how you piece your information together will probably differ for every sale. Yet, sales success comes from consistently repeating the same steps that achieve the same outcomes. Loose-leaf notes make that a difficult task. Q sheets do not.
Either way, be on the lookout for either sketchy (that is, immeasurable) or missing information. An unknown or vague goal, filter, or conditional commitment can doom a sale to failure. With unknowns, you gamble that any filter or goal you do not know will not affect the outcome of the sale. Again, you can call customers to get missing details. Be sure to provide them with new, relevant information when you do.
Step Two: Benchmarks
With your product selections, you seek to accomplish two objectives. First, you connect the features of your products that produce the measurable benefits of customers’ goals. While you should strive to achieve all their goals, achieving the top-ranked one included in the conditional commitment is mandatory. Include as many unique strengths as you can. Do not forget how packaging or corporate-level features help you in this endeavor. Avoid any diluting features that do not connect to a measurable benefit.
Second, if you are not the existing supplier, make sure the measurable benefits in Column 2 can offset the assigned dollar value of price, delivery, supplier relationship, and cost of changing suppliers or products in Column 1. If you are the existing supplier, make sure Column 2 value can overcome the costs of doing nothing.
Note If your product selection contains no unique strengths, question the validity of your Market Profile sheet. Without any unique strengths, you often end up doing battle with me-too competitors that offer low prices. However, you can still earn sales even without any unique strengths. Just show how the features of your products produce more measurable benefits than those of competitors.
Steven Smartsell starts with Olivia’s only stated goal of reducing downtime. He fills in the details from the MP 2: Measure Potential section of his Q sheet (another strong argument for taking notes) into his Connecting Value sheet. He matches only the appropriate product features to her goals, measurable benefits, and conditional commitment. For illustrative purposes, Olivia has only one goal while your customers might have two or three goals (as in the water heater case study). A Connecting Value sheet becomes invaluable in matching features when you have more than one product that can achieve customers’ goals. (See Exhibit 7-2.)