iceberg ahead hinge
Customers disclose a filter that impedes their or your ability to achieve their goals.
indirect savings
Financial benefits derived from long-term and perceived results.
influencers
The five filters or purchasing constraints that influence your ability and the customer’s to achieve its goals.
in-person sales calls
Sales calls that involve face-to-face meetings with customers. These sales calls are your currency. You only have so many you can invest, and each one must provide a return to warrant further ones with the same customers. They are the power cells that fuel sales production.
internal focus
Benefits the purchasers of your products receive.
joint planning level
This level refers to the epitome of account management where you help the C-level set to achieve its long-term goals. You also help the D level do the same.
keys to previous successes/failures
One of the five influencer filters. It describes why customers approved or rejected past goals.
L-M
leveraged hinge
Customers leverage their concerns against a specific product. It occurs before salespeople know customers’ goals, measurable benefits, filters, and systems of evaluation. Salespeople cannot obtain a Measurable Phase Change and their associated calls for action.
life-cycle analysis
System of evaluation used to identify the costs associated with products over their life. These costs help offset lower-priced products by showing how they really cost more over their life.
logistics
The last step of MP 4: Implement Agreement. It involves knowing the details necessary to start and complete the sale on time.
lose the battle; win the war
One of the handling hinge tactics. Salespeople build credibility by acknowledging that customers’ concerns are accurate, but not sales stoppers. It involves using the downplay step.
market development
The selling strategy that focuses on generating business from new prospects and customers.
market focus
The first step in MP 2: Measure Potential. It involves displaying your knowledge of customers’ market segments by citing relevant facts about their company and industry.
market profile
Sales tool that analyzes your market segments in terms of how the benefits of customers’ goals connect to features of your products via systems of evaluation.
market segment
A group of customers that share the same organizational characteristics and goals, and react the same way to the same offer.
measurable phase changes (MPC)
Customers’ agreements that end a Measurable Phase while providing objective feedback of your progress and chances of success.
measurable phases
The four selling phases that indicate where you are in the sales process, and what you must do to provide more value to customers than competitors and receive compensation for doing so.
measurable value
The worth of a benefit determined by objective, proven, and documented criteria expressed in dollars.
MP 1: Spark Interest
The first Measurable Phase that motivates customers to pursue further their opportunities to achieve confirmed goals. Salespeople verify that customers are members of their targeted market segment.
MP 2: Measure Potential
The second Measurable Phase that determines how customers’ measurable benefits, filters, systems of evaluation, and conditional commitments affect their and your ability to achieve stated goals.
MP 3: Cement Solution
The third Measurable Phase that explains how your solutions achieve their goals within their conditional commitments.
MP 4: Implement Agreement
The fourth Measurable Phase where the order becomes the logical conclusion to a series of previously engineered agreements (MPCs).
MPC 1: Interest Confirmed
The first Measurable Phase Change that ends MP 1: Spark Interest. Salespeople confirm customers’ interest in achieving general goals.
MPC 2: Potential Confirmed
The second Measurable Phase Change that ends MP 2: Measure Potential. Salespeople confirm customers’ capability to achieve their goals.
MPC 3: Solution Confirmed
The third Measurable Phase Change that ends MP 3: Cement Solution. Salespeople confirm customers agree their solution achieves their goals.
MPC 4: Agreement Confirmed
The fourth Measurable Phase Change that ends MP 4: Implement Agreement. Salespeople confirm formal agreement to purchase products or services.
N-O
natural hinge
The potential concerns that arise naturally during the active questioning phase of MP 2: Measure Potential. Without any specific products mentioned, customers having nothing to adversely react to, or for salespeople to defend.
needs
Well-established problems or pain where customers feel they know the specific products required to solve them. Customers with expressed needs often view products and salespeople as commodities.
needs-satisfaction selling
Salespeople react to customers’ requests for specific products without knowing their goals, measurable benefits, filters, and systems of evaluation. The antithesis of MeasureMax’s selling strategy that centers on defining customers’ goals and planning, not reacting to sales opportunities.
negative customers
Organizations or individuals that have preferred in the past, currently prefer, and are likely in the future to prefer to conduct business with competitors. When purchasing decisions involve perceived value, they always choose existing suppliers. Demonstrating the measurable value they can receive from achieving their goals via your products can convert them to positive customers.
neutral customers
Organizations or individuals that do not prefer a specific company, and conduct business on what appears to be a random basis.
no blanks
The first step in MP 3: Cement Solution. It involves using your Q sheets to determine what measurable details and specifics about goals and filter are still missing—and how it will affect the sale.
no echoes
One of the six active questioning tactics. It involves using questions to rephrase, not parrot customers’ responses.
no loose ends
One of the six active questioning tactics. It involves making sure customers’ goals, filters, benefits, and systems of evaluation are measurable before pursuing the next one.
no return
Explaining tactic where you exhaust all measurable benefits and their features before going to the next one. Do not go back and speak more about a benefit that you have already covered.
noncyclical
The economic condition where the market segment includes companies with both manufacturing and service business units. Therefore, these market segments will redirect their investments (that is, sales opportunities) depending on the direction and condition of the economy.
number of calls
Actual number of in-person sales calls, which are salespeople’s limited currency. Only so many sales call in a year; each one requires a good return.
See also in-person sales calls.
objective decision making
One of two components that make up customers’ decision making. It focuses on measurable facts. You want this component to proceed, not follow the subjective one.
one up, one down
Strategy in which you meet with your contacts’ immediate boss and subordinate. You use these meetings to ensure they understand the measurable goals you achieved for their organization in case your contact leaves.
oops!
The third step in MP 3: Cement Solution. Salespeople prepare themselves to explain any misses of conditional commitments.
operating budget
Goals achieved through funding from existing budgets, which do not require specific allocations. Lowers decision making levels.
options
A broad array of features offered to customers with unclear goals or filters.
order
The logical conclusion to a series of previously engineered agreements known as Measurable Phase Changes.
organizational characteristics
Primary attributes that influence the way an organization views itself. They help to establish a customer’s core values, priorities, and goals.
outvalue
When you provide more measurable value than competitors and receive higher profit margins for doing so.
outweighing
The third step in downplay to handle hinges by showing how your proposed solution’s benefits more than offset any perceived liabilities.
owners
Individuals who fund the purchases of products and services—and who place a high premium on the dollar value of Column 2.
P
packaging
Combining the unique strengths or features of various products in a manner so customers view them as a single entity.
pain
Obvious needs customers want to address with specific products or services.
See also needs-satisfaction selling.
partner
Salesperson who focuses on helping customers make sure that any short-term solutions are consistent with their long-term goals.
Pat from Saturday Night Live
A tactic for handling hinges. It determines whether a perceived obstacle is really nothing more than a request for more information, a better explanation, or more documentation.
perceived value
Customers subjectively determine the worth derived from achieving their goals by individual preferences, background, and experiences, not by measurable criteria.
personal relationships
The friendly bonds that develop over time between salespeople and customers that increase their trust levels. Make your professional relationships as strong as your personal ones.
plans
One of the five influencer filters that describes what the customers’ plans are to achieve their goals.
planting seeds
The selling stage associated with the number of in-person sales calls invested in MP 1: Spark Interest and MP 2: Measure Potential to quantify the potential of sales opportunities.
position
The roles and responsibilities of customers in their organizations, which plays a major influence in determining the goals they seek to achieve.
positive customers
Organizations that have preferred in the past, currently prefer, and are likely in the future to prefer to do business with you. They always choose your perceived value over that of your competitors.
power words
Explaining tactic that uses terms to express confidence.
prerequisites
The four filters of attainment measurement, dates, funding, and decision makers that require satisfaction for a sale to occur.