Category of Hinge: Leveraged
Surfaces: MP 4: Implement Agreement
Reenter Sale at: MP 3: Cement Solution or MP 4: Implement Agreement
Result: Salesperson cannot obtain MPC 4: Agreement Confirmed
Causes:
Remedies:
The price of the proposed solution seems excessive compared with their guesstimates of costs.
Be ready to explain costs customers do not associate with the products. These are items such as special manufacturing processes, extensive testing procedures, strict tolerances, expensive materials, included warranties, and the likes.
The price of the products seems excessive compared to fair market value.
Be ready to explain significant quality differences between your products and other “similar, but definitely not the same” competitors’ products. Acknowledge that your unique strengths do add costs to your products in order to achieve the customer’s measurable goals and benefits.
The price of the proposed products is marked up beyond a reasonable expectation even when accounting for all your investments.
Best of luck, our sincerest wishes, and let us know how it worked out for you.
Exhibit 8-13: Type IV— Rip-off.
Exhibit 8-14: How to handle the rip-off hinge.
Summary
Hinges prevent you from conducting the Measurable Phases in their proper order or create an inability to obtain a Measurable Phase Change and its respective calls for action.
Hinges fall into the categories of natural, leveraged, or hidden.
Natural hinges occur during MP 2: Measure Potential. Customers do not view them as negatives because they are a response to your questions, not your actions or comments. They occur before you mention specific products.
Leveraged hinges are adverse reactions from customers to your comments or calls for action. Customers leverage them against specific products.
Hidden hinges are concerns customers are reluctant to disclose; they might have negative implications for the customer or for your company because:
The contact cannot make or is not involved with the decision.
The contact cannot obtain the funding for the project.
The contact committed to a solution from another company.
The contact does not feel your product selections are justifiable or beneficial.
Customers use smokescreens to protect hidden hinges from disclosure.
You encourage customers to disclose information, regardless of its impact on your business potential, by referencing your questions to their goals. There are four types of hinges:
Type I: Pulse check (Natural—MP 1: Spark Interest)
Type II: Iceberg Ahead (Leveraged or Natural—MP 2: Measure Potential or MP 3: Cement Solution)
Type III: Gutter Ball (Leveraged—MP 3: Cement Solution)
Type IV: Rip-off (Leveraged—MP 4: Implement Agreement)
Use the How’s Zat? to make measurable the effects of hinges. Start your initial responses to every hinge with some version of How’s Zat?
How’s Zat? tactics are:
Silence Is Golden. Gives you time to collect your thoughts.
Pat from SNL. Are they hinges or requests for more information?
Lose the Battle, Win the War. Acknowledge legitimacy and outweigh.
You Can’t Do Both. Customers choose between filters or goals.
The four basic steps in handling hinges:
Damage report
How’s Zat?
Target confirmed
Downplay
Strategies for removing hinges:
Explaining. Provide additional information or clarification to “explain away” customers’ misconceptions.
Outweighing. Show how the overall benefits of achieving their goals still more than offsets existing liabilities they mentioned.
Revising. Means of last resort; change your product selections.
Chapter 9: Using MeasureMax Your Way
Overview
It is time to make your investment in MeasureMax pay off. It is time to benefit from building a sales foundation where you make sales successes direct results of your planning. In this chapter, you unleash the power of measurability to your products, customers, and sales opportunities on an everyday basis by understanding:
How to get out of the numbers game
How to use the five steps to set MeasureMax in motion
How to set measurable sales goals to gauge your potential and progress
How to use personal benchmarks to enhance performance—not judge it
How to make your output from using sales tools greater than your input
Get Out of the Numbers Game
Traditional selling methods teach you that sales is a numbers game. Take its 80/20 rule that proclaims 80 percent of your sales come from just 20 percent of your customers. In other words, 80 percent of your customers give you only 20 percent of your business. Figuring out which customers fall into the 20 percent category can waste a lot of time.
Customers have their 80/20 rule, too. Only one out of every five salespeople who contact them has something of interest. Now you know why when you call they might seem skeptical or reluctant to meet. The numbers are against you. Therefore, you overcompensate by making more sales calls.
Yet, when you increase the quantity of your sales calls, often the quality suffers. You become less choosy about whom you contact. You figure that with enough sales calls, you are bound to stumble upon opportunities. It becomes easy to take paths of least resistance and pursue sales opportunities that show minimal interest.
Granted, even with 80 percent of customers being nonproductive, more sales calls mean more orders. “Make more sales calls” becomes your (or your sales manager’s) battle cry. Let the call reports fly. A sales manager once captured the essence of this sales strategy when he said, “Even a blind squirrel gathers some nuts.” Twenty years later, no one is sure if he was commending tenacity, criticizing inefficiency, or just making an astute observation.
Although 80/20 makes sense from a volume standpoint, it does not from a productivity standpoint. Making hit-or-miss sales calls does not place a premium on efficiency. You want to lower the number of sales calls it takes to get an order, not raise it. Therefore, the key is to increase the quality of your sales calls, as well as the quantity.
However, two fundamental questions loom:
How do you apply MeasureMax to positive customers who are comfortable with your existing sales approach?
How do you apply MeasureMax to neutral or negative prospects who are accustomed to product pitches on the first sales call? The answers lie in how much selling effort you invest in account management and market development.
Account Management
In account management, you protect and grow your base of positive customers (see Chapter 4). You count on their untapped opportunities to grow your sales production at a faster rate than their market segments (or, at least, your sales quotas) grow. You concentrate on ensuring that their goals, filters, and systems of evaluations still favor your company.
You want to be at the joint planning level (where you progress from vendor to supplier to partner) and help customers set and achieve their long-term goals. Your sphere of influence should be at the C and D levels. Jim Bujold, of Johnson Controls, succinctly described account management as helping customers forget how to achieve their goals without you.
Positive customers become comfortable doing business with you a certain way. A way that might not have anything to do with making goals, benefits, filters, and systems of evaluation measurable. For example, a customer is accustomed to your responding to their requests for making product presentations or proposals. The customer might find it unusual that after all these years you now seek to find out their goals. Yet, the pitfalls of not making your professional bonds with organizations as strong as your personal bonds with contacts are well documented. So, how do you change established precedents for conducting business to benefit both you and your customers?
First, ensure that you honor the most important rule of customer etiquette: Fulfill customers’ expectations of the purpose of the sales call before trying to fulfill yours. If customers expect to discuss specific products and prices, etiquette requires you to comply. Unfortunately, this compliance might diminish your ability to sell value. Therefore, change their expectations. Make the purpose of the meeting relate to the Measurable Phases (MPs). For instance, before you start MP 2: Measure Potential, customers should agree the purpose of a meeting is to gather specifics of their goals and filters.
Introduce positive customers to MeasureMax concepts by encouraging them to think about their goals chronologically. This thought process is a natural and comfortable way for customers to discuss their goals, the first step in MP 1: Spark Interest. Your questions take them from their past goals to current ones to future ones. In other words, you begin with the known goals of yesterday and today, and then work your way to their speculative goals of tomorrow. Let their thought process evolve logically. Build on their and your accomplishments. Ask them how you can continue to help them in their endeavors as you uncover the specifics of their goals or the filters affecting them during MP 2: Measure Potential.
Example
Steven: Olivia, how do you feel your goals changed from a year ago to now?
Olivia: Steven, reliability was our major concern, but now it is to reduce operating costs.
Steven: Why is that?
Olivia: A corporate edict states that we have to cut expenses by 8 percent.
Steven continues by focusing on how Olivia thinks his company can help her cut operating costs by 8 percent. In addition, he seeks answers to making her goals measurable. (What do operating costs entail? How much does 8 percent equal?) He gathers specifics by referencing the filters to her goals. Her answers determine his next questions per Chapter 5 strategies and tactics.