Eileen sends out numerous buying signals. Their discussions focus on the different product costs and projected benefits. Bob also confirms that Eileen is the decision maker, has a $150,000 budget, and wants a solution in place within three months. Eileen requests that Bob work up three different combinations of products and services for her to review. Bob goes for the trial close. He asks Eileen if his products solve her outages and hacking problems, while also satisfying her budget and completion date, would she buy them? She says yes. Bob immediately agrees to present three proposals later in the week. Why not? Bob knows he has an interested and qualified customer (expressed need, available funding, set deadlines, and affirmed trial close), right?
Maybe not. Bob did a good job qualifying whether Eileen has the ability to buy his products. However, key metrics and details are still missing about whether Eileen can achieve her goals—and whether Bob can help in her endeavors. These measurable details could delay or lose the sale. In addition, the missing metrics and details would eliminate the need for Bob to present three different proposals that include details such as:
What does “increasing data protection” really mean in dollar terms?
What does it cost Eileen’s company per hour or minute of downtime?
What is the company currently doing to address these situations?
Are there any other competitors or alternatives involved?
How many incidents of hacking has the company had, and what was the cost?
How will Eileen justify the expense of any new software?
Which is more important: illegal access or outages, and why?
What are the reasons the company proceeded with or abandoned this type of project in the past?
Why is the company pursuing these issues now?
Most important, what measurable benchmarks will Eileen and Bob use to determine if she achieves her goals of data protection? After all, Bob wants to turn Eileen into a long-term customer by fulfilling her measurable expectations—a hit-or-miss proposition if he does not know the answer to this question. Bob might even find out that he cannot help Eileen to achieve her measurable benefits. If so, he would explain why he cannot help her at this time—and pass on this opportunity. If you get the sale but disappoint the customer with unfulfilled results, you will lose the opportunity to develop a repeat, long-term customer. A lost sale always beats a lost customer.
In The Science of Sales Success, you learn how to motivate customers to answer all these questions with specific and measurable details.
In tactics-driven selling, once salespeople throw out enough features and benefits to hit customers’ hot buttons or “pain,” they tend to end sales calls. When success seems likely, it is tempting to avoid finding out additional information that might jeopardize sales opportunities. “If I do not bring up something negative, hopefully customers will not either,” they think. This approach often results in time wasted on unqualified opportunities for everyone.
Tactics Result in Unequal Motivation
Relying mainly on tactics, you become more motivated than your customers are. Nothing productive happens when you want to accomplish something for customers more than they want to achieve it for themselves. Do not fall into the trap of focusing on why you would buy your products, believing customers share the same sentiments. While it is important how much you think your products or services can help someone, it’s more important how much customers think your products or services can help them.
Common symptoms of this more-motivated-than-the-customer situation are numerous. Customers may conceal information, avoid your calls, and give you an eventual, but long-drawn-out no. Customers, sales managers, and you try to figure out why you made the proposals in the first place. When you find out why your proposals failed, you also realize something of significant value. This information was as available on the first or second call as it was on the tenth. All you had to do was have the right strategy.
Strategy
In using a selling system such as MeasureMax, your strategy is simple: Seek measurable details about customers’ purchasing decisions. Help motivate them to perform tests of reasonableness on whether they first, you second can achieve their goals. You do this before you mention any specific products. Then, working with measurable expectations, you see how well your products and services can produce the value they seek.
Note If you chose your market segment per MeasureMax requirements, the connections to customers between their goals and your products will be evident. Now they will be as motivated as you are to pursue those connections.
Example
Let us turn back the clock to our previous sales call. This time Bob, upon hearing Eileen’s interest in increasing data protection, alters his sales call from a tactical one to a strategic one by asking her to:
Explain what she means by increasing data protection—for example, decreasing the number of lost data incidents by 50 percent to only thirty per year.
Elaborate on what measurable value increasing data protection would generate—for example, thirty lost data incidents cost $2,000 each, which results in $60,000 savings annually.
Explain how Eileen will know if she achieves her goal of data protection.
With this information, Bob determines which products and services best achieve Eileen’s goals. However, without a goal-oriented strategy of defining what customers want to—and are able to—achieve, the results are up for grabs as is their choice of business partners. You will also see how you can gain competitive advantages when your customers (and competitors) do not know how to answer questions like the ones presented to Eileen, but you do. You become valuable to customers when they acknowledge you as their industry expert.
Customers, Selling Modes, and Measurability
In any sales situation, you use one of three selling modes as the vehicle to seek the metrics and details for the questions highlighted in the Eileen and Bob examples. The modes (in order of least productive and desired to most productive and coveted) are brinkmanship, courtship, or relationship selling. Because the courtship mode comprises both the relationship and brinkmanship modes, they will be discussed in the following order: relationship, brinkmanship, and courtship. Each one influences the amount and depth of details you gather. These details will ensure that your sales strategy drives your selling tactics.
Relationship Selling
The salesperson with the most long-term (that is, loyal) customers wins. You win because you made it to the coveted third and highest stage of a salesperson’s career, which is relationship selling. You enjoy the rewards of your professional and personal relationships with customers. Years of meeting or exceeding customers’ expectations will earn their loyalty.
Purchase orders become foregone conclusions. Customers have confidence that you listen to and act upon what they say and always put their best interests first. The benefits of relationship selling are huge: Customers willingly share their needs, deadlines, competitive data, decision-making process, and budgets with you. There are no secrets among trusted allies.
You answer each other’s questions with vast amounts of valuable (that is, measurable) details. Everyone knows that by sharing information you can select the best solutions. You coach each other on the best way to make sales happen. With patience reserved only for long-term business partners, customers help to fine-tune your proposals until the right needs-solutions-price combinations shake out. They take your advice on how to sell proposals to their organizations, knowing they will receive fair market pricing. You can count on them to return with signed proposals. Surprises or disappointments do not often happen with long-term customers.
You can even measure the value of relationship selling. Review what differential they paid for your relationship when competitors offered similar products. Past surveys suggest somewhere between a 5 percent and 8 percent premium. You will find that the measurable benefits of Column 2 justify a much larger price differential than the 5 to 8 percent that customers are willing to pay for your relationships. Measurable benefits are always worth more financially to your customers than your personal relationship is. The key is to motivate customers to understand both the value of your personal relationship and the value of the measurable benefits you provide. You now have earned a long-term customer.
Furthermore, relationships are a two-way street. At what point do you recommend competitors’ products because they provide more value in a given situation? You do so only when customers have measurable benefits that connect to competitors’ unique strengths (products only they provide). After all, you would rather lose an opportunity than a customer. Do not worry; when you choose your market segments as outlined in Chapter 3, that occurrence will be rare. After all, the selling methods in this book are not concerned with becoming a referral service for competitors.
In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, you also see the significant benefits of acknowledging to customers where your strengths lie—and where they do not. In return, appreciative customers do not ask you to work up proposals they will not seriously consider. In relationship selling, you and your customer place a strong premium on not wasting each other’s time. You will see in these chapters that the value differential between yours and the competitors’ measurable benefits—when known—can break down the barriers of mainly personal customer relationships.