It’s much more successful to grow your company if you regularly sell more business to key customers as well as getting new customers than if you focus too much effort on new customers and not enough on the ones you already have. Smart company leaders know this, but often they tell me that their company is not good at developing more sales with the existing customers. That situation is an internal business development problem, not just a sales problem. And the problem starts with “who’s responsible?” The answer to that question can be pretty complex.

As your company grows and more roles are differentiated, it’s important for the sales team to make clean hand-offs to the employees who fulfill the order, particularly if you sell services or products with services. As the sellers continue to go after new business, the fulfillment people are responsible to deliver everything that has been promised.  So a gap opens between the sellers and the harvesters in relationship to the customer. And in many companies, that gap widens over time.

On the customer side, people involved in the buying decision are not entirely (or at all!) the same people directly involved in receiving your services. On your side, the people who deliver are not necessarily the people involved in the sale.  Even if you  have some overlap in the buyers, sellers, and operations, new people will be involved from your company and the customer. Fulfillment may involve a whole new cast of characters on both sides and often operates at a lower level in the chain of command at the customer company.

Companies implement a variety of  business models to address these issues.  In the coming days, I’ll write about them and offer some examples of how I’ve seen them work or not work among our clients.  For example:

• Inside/Outside Sales:  The new account moves from the original sales rep to an inside sales team charged with selling repeat business.
• Account Managers or Project Managers:  The new account moves out of sales  and into operations.
• Executive Sponsor Programs: You match a non-sales executive from your company with a key executive from the customer to build an enduring relationship.
• Customer advisory board.  You engage key customers as advisors to your company.
• And of course, there’s always “we don’t have a plan,” or some undefined combination of the above.

Any of these methods can leave you vulnerable to the “who’s responsible” question. For today, here are six issues that you may need to assess and address:

• The natural drift of the relationship is from strong to weak and from strategic to tactical. Do you know how that’s working in your key accounts?
• Your Account Management team may not know how or when to escalate relationship issues that can impact future business. What can you do about that?
• Inside sales representatives become “order takers” rather than partners or strategic allies. How can you prevent it?
• The sales team maintains client relationships with inferior knowledge of how your fulfillment team is operating. How can you ensure great internal communication?
• Your policies on sales compensation, territories, new and repeat business, and who is responsible for the customer may be counterproductive to the results you want to achieve. Do you need to consider changes?

Building a long-term relationship for repeat business and new kinds of business with your key accounts requires a strategic, collaborative plan.  How does your company manage new business with key accounts?

Our friends at The Geehan Group are launching Sean Geehan’s new book The B2B Executive Playbook in January.  They’ve got two great events coming up on January 9 and 10th.  On the 9th, a live luncheon event at Aileron in Dayton, Ohio, and on the 10th, a webinar 11 am – 12 noon EST.

The webinar is presented by Gary Vastola, Vice President Service Offering Marketing & Field Support at Xerox and Karen Posey, Senior Consultant, Geehan Group.  The title is Drive Exponential Growth through Account Based Innovation, and the registration fee of $25 includes a copy of Sean Geehan’s book.

Geehan Groups works primarily with large companies to implement executive sponsor programs.  But even smaller B2B companies can learn a lot from them about taking care of key accounts.  I think you’ll find it worth while.

More info and registration here.

I’ve been writing about 10 Ways You Can Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best. Here’s the seventh way: You are internally focused.

Some companies that are the best in their field are completely focused on sales and delivery plus R&D to develop new products and services. You may have the resources and the market share to sustain that approach, but you may be missing out on market feedback, which over time diminishes the strength of your message to the market. Your new products and services are invented inside, not in concert with your customers.

I have also worked with a number of teams who believe that no one in their field delivers the level of product and service that they do.  However, they have no evidence to support this claim.  When teams like this lose business,  they blame it on “politics” or “incumbents” or “price cutting,” but the truth is they don’t have any idea why they are losing.  They do not interact with their market enough to have a pulse on what’s changing.

Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, wrote a terrific book (published in 1999) called Only the Paranoid Survive.  It’s about the need for relentless pursuit of market information and preparation for unforeseen market disasters.  And Jim Collins and Morten Hansen’s newest book Great By Choice (published October 2011) looks at ten successful companies and their leaders who managed to greatly outpace their competition in chaotic and unpredictable markets.  “Paranoia” was a key ingredient in their success–hard-nosed, direct confrontation of all of the possible ways that things could go wrong.  The bottom line is that things will go wrong; things going wrong is a normal state.

So, do you have a deliberate paranoia mindset?  Do you encourage all of the bad news and weird news to come to your attention promptly?  Do you refuse to blame a messenger?  The more you are outwardly focused, the better you will understand how to be the best and convey to your prospective customers that you are the best company to meet their needs.

I’m up to #6 of my Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  Here’s one that I see far too often: You are out of touch with your changing market.

This problem reminds me of the grand dame who was at the height of fashion during her early and middle years.  Today, however, 20+ years later, she is still sporting the same hairdo, the same clothes, the same make-up, shoes, handbag, jewelry–and she has become a “fashion police” candidate. She was the best–in her day–but the fashion market changed immensely and she failed to change with it.

For her, of course, it hardly matters.  She’s happy, and she’s not selling anything.  But for you, failure to recognize and adapt to market changes can be fatal.

How long have you been “the best”in your market?   What are your competitors doing to catch up with you or to overcome your advantage? Is there anything you are missing? When you stop thinking like an underdog and behave like the best in field, unless you are constantly vigilant  you can miss minor and even major signs that your marketplace needs and priorities are changing.

One circumstance you’ll encounter is that as you get bigger deals with bigger customers you attract an entirely new level of competition.  Often they are more sophisticated and experienced at the new market level than you are, and frequently they’ll pull out all the stops to prove that to a prospect that they’ve chosen to fight over.  It’s like being a business fashionista in Tampa and wearing your favorite outfit to Manhattan.  Fashion police! No offense to Tampa, but you’re safest in black in a New York board room.

Market changes are constant.  Your customers want different things, or they want things delivered in different ways, or they want to engage with you differently.  They want more, or they want less.  You need to be continually vigilant about what matters to them and how you can update your fashion to remain in style.  Ask them.  Bring on a customer advisory board.  Go out and visit, not to sell something but simply to listen.  They will tell you what you need to know.

What’s changing in your market?  What are you doing about it?

Today’s guest post comes from Anthony Iannarino, President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a best-in-class staffing firm, and the Director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy. He’s also the author of The Sales Blog

Companies spend time, effort, and money working to different their offerings from their many competitors. The more special their offering, the more value it creates, the greater its chances of being chosen by their clients. This differentiation also improves the margins the company earns by selling its offering and producing results.

Enter the salesperson. The deal in front of them is hot. They are competing against other firms, and they have used their company’s differentiation strategy to pull themselves out of the pack. But when all the numbers are entered into the spreadsheets, their offering isn’t the lowest price. In fact, it’s the highest of the three finalists.

Because the buyer really wants to buy from our not-so-fictional salesperson here, he
calls and says that he will sign the contract and give them the business if they can lower their price.

And this is the point at which the decision is made to commoditize the business.

It sounds like the decision is the buyer’s. He doesn’t value the differences in results that are created by paying more to obtain them. But it isn’t the buyer’s decision  to commoditize the business; it’s the seller’s.

The Slippery Slope

The slippery slope for salespeople and sales managers is allowing the business to be
commoditized and, over time, they allow the margins to be destroyed. In most
cases, the company’s ability to differentiate itself is predicated on having the margins necessary to produce a better result. Without the margins, the company not only loses the ability to differentiate—it often loses the ability to produce results.

Only later, after the lower price has been accepted and the work begins does the
lower price start to become problematic. The results promised aren’t produced, and the client isn’t satisfied. Then, based on the evidence, he says: “See? I knew I shouldn’t have paid more. You are all the same.”

This is why we don’t commoditize.

Protecting Pricing

To protect pricing, margins, and your ability to differentiate yourself and your offering, you have to resist becoming a commodity. Instead of accepting the business at the lower price, you have to make the case for the client paying a higher price (in all likelihood, the price they need to pay to get the result they really want).

It sounds something like this: “I understand that our price is higher than our competitors. That’s by design. I didn’t do a good job explaining how your greater investment is going to allow us to provide a far greater result and, ultimately, result in a lower cost. Can we get together and let me try to do better job explaining this and showing you how our price allows us to produce the results you need at a lower cost?”

The salesperson has the power to make a difference for both her client and her company here. She has the ability to resist being commoditized, and she has the ability to translate the price into value, shifting the decision from price to cost. By preventing the commoditization, she can protect the firm’s differentiation strategy and their ability to produce the results they sell.

Please join us!  I will interview Anthony on this topic (The Commodity Trap: How to Get Out and Stay Out) for The Whale Hunters Expert Series Call on Tuesday, September 27.  It’s a free call but you need to register here.

Today’s contribution to Fatal Sales Failures comes from Barbara Hauser, The Whale Hunters Certified Partner in Weston, Florida and president of Barbara Hauser Associates.

As I work with accomplished sales teams and their managers around the world, I experience a common phenomenon that I see as a fatal mistake for their organizations.  I see it as the fault line in many sales cultures that runs from the top down – and it shows up like the monkeys who can see, hear and speak no evil – no offense intended.

When business is on an upward, growth curve the monkeys can’t see the things that might threaten progress.  The blindness often keeps the monkeys from seeing how misguided compensation systems create competition internally and drive a wedge between departments.  It also tends to hide unnecessary costs and overhead and sees competition as a nasty speck of dust on their computer screens.  After all, things are good!

The monkeys are also hard of hearing during these times.  They listen to the opinions they agree with and filter out what they don’t like.   In some cases, they are so focused on talking and delivering the business case, they don’t even slow down long enough to give the customer a chance to get a word in edgewise.   Customer complaints are just static in the background, especially towards month end, a “no” isn’t really a “no” with legitimate reasons that could guide our offers– it’s an excuse to discount deeply to show the customer that they can’t make a good decision without our help.

The monkey habit that I think makes this a fatal mistake is that while things are on a roll,
there’s a tendency not to speak up on issues that need to be resolved.  With an attitude of wanting “solutions, not problems,” much of the early intelligence that sellers pick up from the market never makes it as credible data and evidence onto management’s radar screen. Instead, sales strategy that pushes people to do more of the same and try harder to perform arises from the insane logic (which seems totally reasonable at the time) that sellers could produce more if they wanted to – they just don’t have the “buy-in” and “commitment” they need.

3 things that will help you avoid the monkey trap

 1)   Hire an outside coach or consultant to challenge you and your team’s perspectives.  Find out who your best competitors are in your industry and research what they’re doing differently.

2)  Put feet on the street to listen closely to current and past clients.  Use the net promoter score or similar tool to rate their willingness to refer you to others.  Keep your focus on creating an outstanding customer experience.

3)  Train your staff continuously.  One of the greatest fears any adult performer has is to admit that they don’t know how to do something.  Help people feel comfortable expressing their limitations by being a good role model.  Make learning a number one team priority.

This month’s Expert Series guest is Anthony Iannarino, sales coach and writer of The Sales Blog.  I’ve been following Anthony on Twitter for quite awhile (@iannarino) and have always found his comments right on point.  I subscribed to the blog and was expecially intrigued by his many, many posts about “price” and “cost.”

A lot of The Whale Hunters client companies believe they are playing in a totally price-driven market.  They do not see any opportunities to compete other than on price.  When they lose a deal, they assume they lost it on price.

The problems with that zero-sum game are that there are always limits to how low the market can drive prices (before vendors abandon the market) and that every vendor is vulnerable to price-cutting by any competitor at any time.

So, when I read Anthony’s blog, I find really good insights and explanations as to how company management and sales people can take positive steps to avoid the Commodity Trap.  His insights are completely consistent with Whale Hunting philsophy–increase your confidence through research, preparation, and hard work–know your market, your customers, and your competitors–and constantly seek to add value.

I recommend you subscribe to The Sales Blog, and by all means reserve your space for the Expert Series call, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 12 noon Eastern time (9 Pacific; 10 Mountain; 11 Central).

One of the toughest sales is a new product or service to an existing customer.  Or to sell the same product or service into a different department or division of a large customer.  That crosswalk is very difficult to navigate safely and is full of confusing signals.  Many of The Whale Hunters’ clients struggle to get more business–bigger business–from their existing large account customers.  They have a few whales, but they’re not doing whale-sized business with them.

We’ve developed a strategic methodology to help your large-account team (sales, service, account management, etc.) systematically figure out how to grow existing business.  It’s called “Searching for Ambergris.”  Ambergris is a substance produced in a whale’s gut that becomes fragrant when exposed to sunlight and air.  For centuries it was the most valuable substance on earth!

We’ve always presented this method as a private workshop within a single company.  But this week, I’ll be introducing it to a broader audience in the first of two webinars on doing bigger business with your current accounts.  You can find more information and registration details here.

The webinar is $49 if you register for this one only; however, if you choose to become a Premium member of our Pier9 online llibrary and community ($299 per year or $29.99 per month), each month’s webinar is free to you.  You can check out membership options at The Whale Hunters website.

Today we’re pulling this August 2010 post from our archives. Enjoy!

For a long time, I’ve been exhorting clients to be certain that the sales team is selling what the operations or implementation team plans to deliver.  In the past couple of weeks, The Whale Hunters team has been on the receiving end of that potential mismatch, which compels me to write about it again.  Here’s some context that may resonate with you as a seller (and possibly even as a buyer)!

The Setting:    Your company sells a product with a service, or a service with a product, or a customizable service or product or both.  I have seen this issue surface repeatedly in software companies, professional services companies, and advertising/marketing agencies, to name a few.

The Sale:  Let’s take software as an example.  Your company provides an enterprise software solution that requires considerable integration into your customers’ existing systems.  Your project management/account management/customer service teams believe that you are selling a product that is basically one size fits all, although it could be customized with some bells and whistles–later–when all of the initial  installation stuff is done and the system is up and running.

The Snag:  Your sales team has fallen in love with the bells and whistles.  Rather than sell the boring one-size-fits-all product, they are selling the customizable parts.  Whatever the buyers say they would like to have, the sales team promises.  In fact, the sales team leads with the extras, not the basics.

So now you are stuck.  You’ve made this sale.  The sales team celebrates.  The customer is excited about their purchase and ready for implementation.  And your implementation team is . . . . oh my goodness . . . appalled.  “We can’t do that!”  or “We don’t do this!” or “We’re just not ready for that!”

As I said, this circumstance has been brought home to me in the past few weeks.  The Whale Hunters has been working on a major build of a new website that incorporates a content management system.  We decided to go with a product geared towards educational institutions rather than corporate solutions, having been assured that the product was completely customizable.

But once the sales team handed off to the implementation team, the bubble burst.  We heard, “We can’t do that” and “They shouldn’t have told you we could do that” and “It would cost a lot more for us to do that.”  And we didn’t hear nearly soon enough about some serious deal-breaker issues that they cannot resolve.

So it’s been a very painful reminder to me that your customer is going to be very, very unhappy if just from the get-go your delivery team begins to say “they shouldn’t have promised . . . . . whatever.”

If your company has ever been in the position of a disconnect between sales and operations or implementation areas, it’s time to correct that problem now.  If you land a large account with that kind of mis-match, they can cost you a lot of money, make your employees miserable, and quite literally force you out of business if the deal is big enough to get their serious attention.

So, if you’re not positive that both sides of your house know how to collaborate on a complex sale, it’s definitely time for them to learn.

Has your company ever been in this kind of trouble?  How did you handle it?

Hello and good morning to our awesome community of whale hunters! Today I want to do something different. We’ve had such overwhelming feedback and responses to our June blog posts, I wanted to recap the favorites for you. We really do appreciate the growing number of comments and Twitter action. These five posts got people talking and sharing their experiences/perspectives with us! All good stuff! So, here they are! The Top 5 June (which is more or less over) blog posts (in case you missed them). Enjoy!

5. Sales Should Not Be a Dirty Word by Lindsay Bayuk

There’s a friction in the land of sales between “old school” sales and current sales thought leaders. I’ve had many conversations lately about common perceptions about sales; I figured I’d write about it. There’s this perception out there that sales is a dirty word, a dirty profession. Are you picturing a used car salesman? I thought so. Read on…

4. Whale Hunting Before I Knew What It Was by Chad Root

When I started in “sales”, I didn’t want the word sales in my title.  In 1993, I graduated from Architecture school and took a job as “Sales Engineer” for a custom returnable packaging company.  Yes – I was responsible for selling, but I never really saw myself as a salesperson.  I saw myself more as a “figure out a way to solve customer problems in a way that my company could make money” person.  This became especially true as I grew in responsibility to become a business manager and owner of my own businesses. Read on…

3. Five Proven Ways to Generate B2B Leads with Social Media by Barbara Weaver Smith

Generating high-quality leads that fit your Target Filter requires strategic efforts.  If you randomly “market” your company, you may create leads, but they typically won’t be the kind you want.  Today’s post is about Tactic #3 from my article Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media:  Learn how to use social media to generate high quality leads. Read on…

2. People Buy from People They Like by Lindsay Bayuk

We believe that this old adage is for the most part true, but not quite so simple. Really, is anything ever that so simple? The more I thought about this saying, the more I realized that it fits quite nicely with what we teach to small businesses. Read more on what’s most important to establishing successful relationships.

1. Five Key Elements of an Initial Sales Call by Barbara Weaver Smith

Here are five key points to consider in preparation to make your initial call on a prospective customer.   No, they’re not about putting brochures in a folder or loading up the power point! Read on…

What was your favorite and why? We’d love to hear from you!

This post was the headline article in this week’s Whale Hunters Wisdom newsletter.

We came home from the grocery  with a little mesh package of new red potatoes.  Also a package of baby portabella mushrooms.  Planned to use them on the same day; did not demand that they stay fresh for even three days (although that wouldn’t be too much to expect, would it?)

As I started assembling the roast pork tenderloin dinner, I discovered that the potatoes were rotten.  Not just mildly old—completely unusable.  All of them.  So good husband returned to the supermarket to get replacements.  A few minutes after he left, I opened the portabellas.  Whew!  Old. Unacceptable.  So from a very expensive, high-end so-called “luxury” grocery store, I had two high-priced items on the same day that were unfit to eat.  From a provider whose minimum requirement should be “food that is fit to eat on the day you buy it.”

When husband returned to the store yesterday, DeAnna, the produce manager, opened multiple containers of potatoes and discovered that many had outlived their usefulness.  She opened as many packages as necessary to see that we had fresh potatoes.  And today, when we were back in the store, she graciously replaced the package of portabella mushrooms based on our report about yesterday.

So, do we “trust” them?  The answer is unequivocally NO.  Trusting them to rectify their mistakes is nowhere near to trusting them to deliver fresh, edible produce in the first place.  After all, they are a grocery store.  In fact, their brand promise is:  “we are a boutique gourmet market.”  I am always willing to pay for quality food products.  But when I shop in a high-priced store whose brand is all about superior quality, then superior quality is what I expect.

Here’s more from the store’s website:

“The Farmer’s Market at ***  is renowned for keeping impeccable standards when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables. We pride ourselves in procuring one of the widest selections of gourmet and specialty produce around!

***  features a vast assortment of domestic and international fruits and vegetables. The list of fresh exotic imports continues to grow as we search for the newest and most unique items Mother Nature can provide. Included in our extensive variety of fresh produce are many Asian, Latin, and European items that can’t be found anywhere else. There are no boundaries at ***when taking pleasure in eating an international favorite!

Let our experienced team offer suggestions on how to enhance the flavor of your meals with fresh cut herbs or add a colorful touch to your plates with a garnish of edible flowers. If you are looking to add variety to your culinary adventures, you’ll find it at ***  Farmer’s Market. “

This company has built its brand and justified its pricing on the promise of superior products and superior service.  When the products are markedly inferior, I have a big disconnect between the brand promise and my consumer experience.

I have no need or desire to embarrass this company; that’s not what my article is about.  The point I want to make is this:

There is a big difference between MAKING IT RIGHT after a big screw-up and DOING IT RIGHT from the get-go.

For all of us who are building businesses today, we simply cannot afford to make these trust-busting mistakes.  Yes, if you make one you need to fix it, promptly and courteously.  Nevertheless, if mistakes are a habit, you will run your company into the ground, and no amount of compensation will save you.

So, how could this grocer improve on quality delivery?

• Institute a policy to check freshness on all perishable products daily.
• Reward employees who discover inferior products
• Increase demands on produce providers for freshness and shelf life
• Enable check-out personnel to double-check freshness of produce before customers leave the store

I suspect that the store’s policy encourages employees to move aging products to the front of the display.  I suspect that the store’s policy discourages employees from bringing to light certain fresh products that are routinely over aged.  And I suspect that the check-out cashiers have no role in double-checking the freshness of the fresh products.

What is the cost of these mistakes?  I can shop at eight grocery stores within two miles of my home.  Why would I shop any longer at the one with the highest prices and a record of inferior merchandise?

What’s happening in your company?  How are you delivering your products and services?  Do you have a company fiercely devoted to getting it right the first time?  If so, you are well on the road to building trust with your customers.

Today’s post is by Holly Buchanan, author of The Soccer Mom Myth. Holly is our featured expert on our June Expert Series Call “How Big Companies Buy like Women” tomorrow at 12 ET. Join us!

Tom and Jean are in a meeting pitching their company. Tom is doing the presentation. Jean is surveying their prospective clients during the presentation. At the end of the meeting Tom asked Jean how it went. He thought it was very well received. Jean, however, picked up clues that said otherwise.

“I think we’ve got a problem,” Jean said.

Tom was totally surprised: “What do you mean?”

“Well, I saw some negative reactions,” she explained. “I don’t think they’re completely on board. I think we should set a follow-up meeting with the two members showing the most push-back.”

Sure enough, Jean was right on. Those members did indeed have concerns. Left un-addressed, it could have torpedoed the proposal.

Was it simply that Tom was so engrossed in giving the presentation he wasn’t paying attention to the room? Or did Jean pick up on something Tom could not see?

It may have been a combination of both.

There are natural advantages women bring to the B2B sales process including their ability to read a room and understand what’s going on inside a buyer’s head.   Women are especially good at reading emotions and assessing a buyer’s fear.

Women’s Super Powers

Most likely Jean was tapping into three super powers almost all women possess:

1. Reading facial expressions
2. Picking up on body language
3. Empathy/Understanding fear

These three super powers all combine to make women experts at reading the room.

Reading facial expressions

Research has shown that women are better at reading facial expressions and emotion.    Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that females, because of their role as ‘primary caretakers’, are effectively wired differently to detect distress in young infants.  Women excel at detecting distress.  Men, while good at picking up signs of anger (especially in other males), sometimes miss more subtle facial expressions.

Many a man has come home, asked his wife how she’s doing and gotten a brisk, “fine.”  Then a few minutes later he finds his wife is upset with him because it was clear from her facial expression and tone that she was not fine and he should have asked more follow up questions in order to understand she actually wasn’t fine at all.   (Yes guys, I feel your pain.)

Everyone transmits emotions through their face.  Women are just especially adept at receiving and translating what they see.  When you’re presenting to a team, women can pick up clues as to who is with you and who isn’t. Something as subtle as flared nostrils, scrunched eyebrows or lips stretched thin can convey concern, skepticism or even anger.

Ability to read body language

During your business presentation, one of the key decision makers crosses his arms across his chest.  The women on your team pick up on this right away.  It’s a sign of being closed off.  Women have fine tuned radars when it comes to reading body language.   Intuitively an alarm goes off in her head – what was said that made him close himself off like that?

Further into the presentation, a woman who had been nodding in the beginning has stopped nodding.  Again, the women on your team intuitively pick up on her lack of engagement as a red flag.

Just for the record, when women nod, they are not necessarily agreeing with you.  They are simply engaging with you and encouraging you to go on.   But if a woman starts out nodding, then stops, that’s a big warning sign.

Empathy/Understanding fear

What if you had the ability to read minds and could find out what your prospective clients biggest concerns were?   You could determine the one thing that is keeping them from buying from you.

While women can’t read minds, they are excellent at empathy, or understanding another person’s emotions.   Women are able to put themselves into that person’s position and look at the project from that person’s point of view.

Women also tend to be more risk aware.  Their brains are actually hardwired to plan ahead, think through what might go wrong, and find ways to prevent problems.  I call it the “What If Syndrome.”   “What if this project isn’t completed on time?”  “What if there are problems after implementation?” “What if I sign off on buying this whole new system and it doesn’t work?  Will I lose my job?”

Women and B2B buyers share the “What If Syndrome.”  This allows women on your team to help ferret out concerns and objections so you can address them and close more sales.

Bottom line:  Include women on your B2B sales team.  Tap into their super powers and ability to read a room.   You could gain valuable information and insight that could give you a real competitive edge.

Holly Buchanan is the co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth – Today’s Female Consumer, Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys. Holly’s specialty is marketing to women online. You can reach Holly at holly (at) thesoccermommyth.com

I published this post 2 years ago and resurrected & modified it based on more recent experiences.

We had a great whale hunting session working with the Asia/Pacific sales team of an international company. This company specializes in “spend management.”  They help their customers significantly reduce their purchasing costs for many goods and services.

In the course of the workshop, this team reached a very interesting and unexpected insight about their most promising business deals, which was this:

We are not closing the proposals that demonstrate the very best ROI for our prospects. In fact, on our very best proposals, where we believe we can have the biggest positive impact for our customers, we are only closing 20%.  

How would we explain that apparent anomaly? Something’s going on that they don’t understand.

From a logical standpoint, the solution they offer in these best-of-class cases is a slam-dunk no brainer for the client. Yet after they present these proposals, the whales stall, ask for more time to consider, postpone their decision.  They back off from the whole deal.  In whale hunting terms, the whale is afraid of something or perhaps many somethings.

If you’re making great cost-savings proposals that your prospects are not buying, here are some underlying reasons that you might consider.  I’ve also suggested “fear busters,” ways to alleviate each of the fears:

• Your proposal sounds “too good to be true.” The whale is afraid you cannot or will not make good on your promise.  [This fear is alleviated by customer testimonials.]
• The whale does not fully understand how you will go about achieving this benefit and is afraid that your solution may cause unforeseen problems with their employees or vendors. [This fear is alleviated by process maps and illustrations to demonstrate the simplicity of your implementation.]
• The whale is afraid of making a mistake, leaving it with an untried system or process or solution or product which might produce a short-term gain but will soon become obsolete and dysfunctional.  [This fear is alleviated by white papers, case studies, and customer testimonials.]
• The whale is afraid that your solution is better suited for a different kind of enterprise than the whale’s.  [This fear is alleviated by multiple case studies from different industries and by a clear process illustration that is not industry-specific.]
• The whale does not need “the best” solution and the potential disruption that its implementation might cause–it only needs a “good enough” solution.  [This fear is alleviated by evidence of your solution's simplicy and elegance.]
• The whale has other pains, problems, and opportunities that are more urgent or more important than the issue you propose to solve.  [This fear is alleviated with conversation and empathy.]

If you ever experience this kind resistance in your sales process, work with your team to brainstorm all of the possible explanations for the whale’s resistance. Even better, talk to the whales that have resisted your proposal and find out why.  You may be amazed at the reasons you did not anticipate.

And once you better understand the fears, work hard to identify “fear busters” that you can put on the table to alleviate those fears.  I invite you to download our “whale fears” and “fear busters” worksheets to guide your team in figuring out how you are scaring the whales and how you can overcome their fears.

Today we’re re-posting an article by Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith from our archives. Enjoy!

The trickiest part of whale hunting for small and midsize companies is to capture your sale: deliver your products and services as promised once you’ve made the sale. Big contracts with big customers are not business as usual for many companies. Smaller companies are often long on energy and enthusiasm but short on operational processes, policies, and rules. And big customers have higher expectations than many of your smaller customers have.

So, how do you bring a new whale on board smoothly?

• Collaborate. You need a seamless handoff from the sales and contract negotiation team to the delivery team(s). The more complex the sale, the more people need to be involved in the on-boarding process. Depending on your size, it’s an individual, a team leader, or an area head that needs to be represented on the intake team.
• Document. If you don’t have a detailed intake process, create one as you are serving this new whale. Assign someone to assist the project manager by capturing all the details of what your teams are doing, what the whale team is asking for, and how things are moving forward. Document any pitfalls or unforeseen problems.
• Communicate. Share progress on at least a weekly basis; daily if necessary in the earliest stages. Communicate internally with your team and externally with the whale’s team. Implement a formal process of communication and document all of your interactions.
• Escalate. If anyone or any team runs into problems, these need to be brought to the attention of higher management immediately. Leaders need to cultivate a culture in which people are encouraged to report problems rather than fearful of being criticized or worse. If a serious problem occurs, such as a serious lapse in your ability to deliver at the next step, your CEO should address it promptly and honestly with the whale while the team sets about to rectify.
• Debrief. Regularly discuss your progress with an eye to improving for the next time. Note problems and successes. Pay attention to deficiencies on the whale team as well as problems and opportunities on your own side. If the whale team is hard to pin down, for example, that may indicate a typical problem that you will encounter for which you need to devise more effective tactics. Include everyone who touches the whale in the debrief sessions.

When you master your intake process for new large accounts, your whales will be happy and give you repeat business, your team will gain confidence and poise, and your company will grow.

I received a very disconcerting email this morning from amazon.com.  It was the typical occasional email that amazon.com customers receive, recommending books that I might enjoy.

Amazon, of course, is known for its ability to understand its customers’ taste and to make recommendations on that basis.  The entire system is technology-based, not human-based.  That is to say, amazon.com doesn’t really know me at all; it creates the illusion of knowing me by crunching data about my browsing and buying habits on its site.

But they really proved that to me this morning!  I received a recommendation that reads like this: 

“Barbara Weaver Smith,

Are you looking for something in our Business & Investing books department? If so, you might be interested in these items:”

And first on the list is the book Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company.  I am the co-author of this book!  So obviously amazon.com has no idea who I am and how insulting that email would be.  But even worse, only the other author’s name was listed!  So, amazon.com is sending me an email recommending that I buy my own book but doesn’t even list my name as author!  I’m not a ghost writer or an “as told to” or a “written with” co-author.  I’m a side-by-side, names in the same font size co-author of a book published by a major publisher, Wiley.  And how many other hundreds of thousands of amazon customers got that same email, recommending that they buy my book without acknowledging me as a co-author?  Whew!

So, aside from the fact that amazon.com really failed at their attempt to connect with me this morning, I have a more important point to make.  If you want to convince your customers that you know them and therefore you care about them, there is no substitute for really knowing them.

That’s what small and midsize companies can do so much better than behemoth companies.  Yes, you can manage customer data with a CRM, and you should.  But beware of allowing hands-off data analysis create a pseudo-familiarity.  If your customers ever get an email like I just did, they will be very unhappy with you, for a long time.

P.S.  If you follow this blog, you know that it’s rare for me to rant.  This is about as close as I get!  Just take it as a sign of what happens when you #Fail!

I can’t tell you how many owners and CEOs I talk to who are looking for a rock star with a rolodex to save their sales.  But today’s complex B2B sales require thoughtful, analytic team players who can put ego aside and involve their company’s subject matter experts in the sales process.

Recently Gart Hart of SalesDuJour wrote a great blog post about what he calls the next iteration of sales:  E2E (eye to eye).  His post is about how buyers want salespeople to stay behind the keyboard and not enter their space!  This is an excellent analysis of today’s buyers, and I heartily recommend it.  Gary’s point is that buyers do not want to get their information from sellers.  They would prefer to “disintermediate” and get their information directly from your website (or someone else’s), social media sites, product review sites, and the like.

However, this is not the end of sales!  It’s simply another changing circumstance that’s been going on for a long time.  Gary Hart talks about the importance of “E2E” contact with buyers—that’s “eye to eye.”  But E2E contact is harder than ever to achieve.

So let me offer a suggestion.  In a large company considering a large deal, there are many buyers—many people who will influence the ultimate decision.  Although they are not thrilled with talking to a sales rep, they do want to meet their counterparts at your company, your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).  Teaching your SMEs how to participate in the sales process, and teaching your sales professionals how to orchestrate a team sale, will give you a huge advantage and lots of E2E time.

The Whale Hunters offers several free, downloadable tools  to help you teach your team, including the Buyers’ Table Tool (how to identify and understand all of the buyers) and Power Your Boat (how to prepare SMEs to participate in an E2E experience with the buyers.  Pier9 registration (basic membership) is required to access these materials.

Also on this topic is our article Elvis is Dead, about the rock star salesperson, archived in The Whale Hunters Pier9 community (registration is required).  You’ll find it in the section labeled Articles about Sales and the Sales Process.  The article describes the characteristics you should look for in a great salesperson who would lead a sales team effectively.

The world of large account sales continues to change and will continue to do so.  You gain credibility and E2E time with buyers when you educate and prepare your team as active participants.  Email me Barbara (at) thewhalehunters dot com if you’d like some help!

Today’s post is brought to us by Ron Wille of Black Tab Group in Rochester, NY. Learn more about Ron below. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us today, Ron!

Whether you are a die hard whale hunter or follow some other sales methodology, success in sales really comes down to following a defined sales process.  I am not going to get into the specifics about any one process, but I would like to talk about the value in pairing your process with the right technology. I look at technology as a tool and not an end in and of itself.  Like any tool, when it is used correctly, it can help you do great things.

I am going to keep this high-level for now but I might spin this into a series if I get positive feedback on what I am about to say. So here goes….
After documenting a solid sales process, I think the #1 tool that should be in place is a properly implemented CRM solution.  I talk with hundreds of sales organizations each year and I am still shocked at how poorly technology is being used to drive sales.  Either they have no solution in place or they have one but it is a glorified Rolodex.

An organization that is serious about driving new business should be able to use their CRM solution for doing, measuring, learning, coaching and driving a return on their sales investments.

For Doing – Most organizations that use a CRM use it for activity management. What are my reps doing every day kinds of stuff.  If they have good reps, the reps are using activities to keep track of next actions to ensure that they are keep promises and keeping things moving.

This is great but you need to be mindful that sales managers and sales reps do not fall into the trap of believing that sales activities = sales.  Activities are not the end, they are not the goal.  Organizations buying from you is the goal.

Organizations that have moved beyond tracking activities are using CRM to build complete customer and prospect profiles or as used in The Whale Hunters Process, Scouting Dossiers. This helps drive future target filters as well as have a more complete picture of a target organization so that you can watch for buying signals or in general ask them better questions in the sales process.

For Measuring – A well implemented CRM solution will help you measure what is working, what might need an adjustment and where your organization is against plan.

An organization serious about sales growth should be able to answer the following, and it should be a simple as running a report or viewing a dashboard. To name just a few of the important things….

• Sales Per Rep
• Sales Per Service / Product
• Sales Against Plan
• Win / Loss Ratios
• Pipeline

For Learning – Sales organizations that have moved beyond activity tracking are using their CRM for learning.

• What is your win ratio and why?
• What is does your pipeline look like? And is it shrinking or growing?
• What is the dollar value of deals sitting in each stage of your sales process?
• Where do your leads coming from?
• What is really your average size deal?
• How long is your sales cycle really?
• How accurate are your forecasts?

Just to name a few of the important learnings.

For Coaching – When I talk about coaching people automatically focus on coaching the sales reps.  But an organization serious about driving new business should be able to use their CRM solution to also coach their sales managers, their sales reps or the entire organization.  This coaching is often over looked.

CEO’s are hiring me to help their Sales Executives and Manager to better understand and use their CRM solution to manager their sales teams more effectively.  If your sales team is not performing is it a sales rep issue, a sales manager issue and an organizational one. Who really needs the coaching?

For Taking Action – Weather it is using your CRM to measure where you are against plan or to learn how long your sales cycle real is, it is really helping you to take further action.  Should you coach Jimmy the sales rep some more or let him go?  Do you need to drive more marketing because your pipeline is shrinking? Which lead generation activities are driving the highest return?

Sales is fluid and you need to move with it. Waiting until the end of the year to see how you are doing or what you should change is too late.  You need accurate and timely info a well implemented CRM can help.

For Driving Return – Organizations will spend thousands of dollars on training, seminars, marketing, defining new sales processes and on the most expensive resources…people. But they do not look to spend on their technology in support of these initiatives.  What is hard to believe is that everyone I speak with agrees that technology is a tool that will create leverage in their sales departments. That CRM is important. That technology will help their sales managers to be more affective, their sales reps to be more efficient, that it will help their organization to learn and take action. But so few are willing to invest what is really needed to give your organization the right technology, the right tools.

Websters defines a tool as “something necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession.” A well implemented CRM solution is not a nice to have, it is a necessity in our sales profession.

Ron Wille is a Certified Partner with The Whale Hunters. He has been helping organizations better leverage their technology to achieve superior performance for almost 20 years. Prior to founding BlackTab, Ron was the coCEO of NimbleUser.

Last week I was talking with a VP of sales, who had just returned from a “big deal” sales pitch across the country.  Expecting that his team was to present a multi-million dollar sales proposal to the senior executives of the prospect, he found instead a disjointed quasi-meeting.  The meeting started 90 minutes late.  The chief buyer did not remain in the meeting, but ducked in and out and finally left, turning it over to a team of others who had little idea of what to do or why this meeting was taking place and who, by then, were ready for lunch.  The VP said to me, “That was the most expensive sales call I’ve ever made.”  We flew in five people from around the country, in addition to our two locals, and we didn’t even get to make a pitch!  How could that get so out of hand?”

That’s a great question!  And the answer is, there was no system to prevent it from getting out of hand.  Here’s the circumstance.  In this company, a number of sales managers report to the VP, and individual sales reps report to the sales managers. 

In this scenario, the Sales Rep presented his case to his sales manager.  He characterized the opportunity as a “big deal” and asked for corporate support to close it.  He needed technical and training support plus pricing incentives, and he wanted the corporate sales VP as the trump card.  The sales manager agreed that it was a big enough deal to warrant that support, and went about securing the commitments.

The first thing that went wrong is that the salesperson misread the opportunity.  Clearly the prospective customer was not expecting nor prepared for a formal proposal presentation.  The salesperson did not “guarantee” the meeting with follow up phone calls or a formal agenda.  He did not take into consideration the history of his encounters with this buyer.  He did not request a formal list of attendees to share with his representatives, nor did he provide a formal list of atttendees to the customer.

At the next step, the sales manager failed to validate the information coming from the sales rep.  She should have asked key questions.  Is the prospect pre-qualified on pricing and timeline for decision?  With whom have you met to date?  Is there any influencer with whom you have yet to meet?  How can you be sure who will be at the meeting?  What have you done to ensure that it will happen as you plan?  How about if I go with you on a call before we bring in our VP?

And the Sales VP should have quizzed the sales manager more thoroughly.  How well do you know this prospect?  What are the signs of readiness to buy?  What makes you sure this is a big deal for us at this time?  What have you and the sales rep done to ensure full attendance at the meeting?  What is the agenda?  What role do you expect me to play?  What is the likelihood of closing this deal within the next month?

This is a classic case of management losing control of the sales process.  For a team to invest in a meeting this costly, there must be multiple check points, or hurdles, that the sales team should clear before calling in the big guns.  The Whale Hunters call this process map progressive discovery/progressive disclosure.  For each step in your sales process, there should be clear guidelines for the following:

• What do you need to discover (from the whale)?
• What do you need to disclose (to the whale)?
• Who from the whale’s team needs to be at the table?
• Who from your team needs to be at the table?
• How do we know when this step is complete?

If the salesperson is reporting regularly to the sales manager about progress according to steps like these, the manager will have much greater insight into how quickly the deal is moving along and whether it is as big and/or as ready as the sales rep reports.  What did you learn at the last meeting?  Who was there?  Did everyone come who was invited?  Who was missing? 

In an orderly sales process, there are few surprises like the one I described.  If all along the way, people are coming to the table as needed, and they are taking you seriously and paying attention, there is little risk that they will fail to show up for a significant meeting with your headquarters team.

Get your sales process under control, and you will stop wasting previous resources on “big deals” that are not big and not ready.

Our guest post today comes from our Certified Partner in Southern Florida, Barbara Hauser. Thanks Barbara!

You remember the old commercials – when you were asked to make a forced choice between two good options?  In syncing up with your prospect, I say you need both – good rhythm and good timing.  A successful sales person almost instinctively knows that a winning process includes getting into the customer’s sales cycle as early as possible and at a time when you can still prepare your team to deliver – especially, when hunting whales.  But once you get in the cycle, you’ll find that the customer’s rhythm is almost always a surprise – and different from yours and what you are imaging. Just like a good dance partner, as a vendor, you’re only as attractive as your ability to both follow and lead during the sales process.

What does that mean?  Five keys to feeling the rhythm include:

1.      Ask for an example of how a similar project was implemented.  Check for the steps (the what they did), but equally important, how long it took to go from step A to step B.

2.      Plot it out on a graph and match it with your team’s capability to deliver on each step.  Often you’ll find that you’re either ahead or behind.

3.      Make a preemptive decision about how you’ll handle the lag time and communicate that to the prospect.  “Mary, I can see where we’ll potentially be out of sync between my available resources to demo the optional features of our product and the dates you’ll anticipate wanting a demo.”  Be ready to strategize.

4.      Anticipate what your client doesn’t see.  Suggest:  “In similar situations, we’ve found it necessary to get additional licensing from the State to perform step 6.  Can you see that coming up?”

5.      Make sure you stay connected during the sales process.  You end up stepping on your prospects toes when you fail to check in on a regular basis.  You catch potential hiccups and put yourself in a better position not to miss a turn and respond with grace when you stay in the loop.

Good timing and good rhythm make the sales process feel good and pay off.

Barbara Hauser is a Whale Hunter partner and business coach located in South Florida. With over 20 years experience with business clients worldwide, she specializes in leadership and communication.

The Whale Hunters constantly preach about the The Buyers’ Table and the whale’s fears.  Understanding fear is a sales breakthrough. We have detailed processes to help your company’s cross-functional team identify all of the reasons that buyers might be afraid of you, and then detailed methods for creating the fear-busters that will help to put the fears at rest.  The bottom line is this: the whales (big company buyers) will not buy your advantages unless you can alleviate their fears.

Why is that so important to understand?  Because in a typical sale, your sellers go in the door touting the advantages of doing business with you; when, in fact, the buyers are only looking for the least risky solution, not the best.  The more “new,” the more “comprehensive,” the more “cutting edge” your services or products, the less likely you are to win.

I came across some fascinating, important research that both confirms The Whale Hunters Process™ and elaborates on our understanding of the buyers’ fears.  It’s a series of white papers based on extensive research about the BuyerSphere, how business buys from business.

The first paper in that series, Mapping the BuyerSphere, makes it clear that the buying process is irrational.  It’s about minimizing risk of two kinds:  risk to the organization (which is often mitigated through an RFP or other bid process) and personal risk to each individual buyer (which is much more significant and which you will have to work hard to mitigate).  The author writes that personal risk “creates different agendas and different evaluation criteria” among the buyers.  Interestingly, he discovered that “often, buyers are willing to pay a premium to eliminate a degree of risk . . . .”  Thanks to Holly Buchanan, author of The Soccer Mom Myth and Marketing to Women Online for bringing these studies to my attention.

But even if you do the work of identifying the whale fears, and if you do the work of defining and creating “fear busters,” how do you introduce the fear busters into your sales process?  You should do that thoughtfully and deliberately.

First, be sure to define a “fear buster” as something tangible.  It’s not just sales conversation.  A fear buster is a person, a process, or a technology.  It’s a graph or chart or white paper or testimonial or case study or web site or diagram or written example.

Second, understand that your most powerful fear buster is your team of subject matter experts (SMEs), who we call your “boat.”  In a complex B2B sale, the loner salesperson is no longer effective.  The buyers want to meet their counterparts on your team.  They want to know who they would be working with, whether they like these people, whether they respect your team’s intelligence and skill set.

Third, determine where the fear busters should be introduced during your sales process.  We call that process progressive discovery/progressive disclosure–what do you need to learn and what do you need to tell at each step in your process.  Build the fear busters into the specific steps.  Decide which SMEs need to be engaged at each step and what each should bring to the discussion.  We recommend a tool called the Power Boat to equip each of your SMEs with powerful questions, points, and tools that they are responsible to present.

If you follow this method, here’s what a step in your sales process map might look like:

Step 5.  First team visit to this prospect

What we need to discover:

• Pre-qualify who’s at the table
• Fact-finding mission
• Terms of engagement

What we need to disclose:

• Our SMEs (i.e., put a face on them)
• Our QC and compliance processes – fear driven questions
• Timing
• Capacity
• Ramp-up

Who are the buyers at this meeting?  CIO, COO, VP Sales/Marketing, VP Quality
What are they most afraid of at this step?

• The CIO is afraid of more work and is afraid of our systems
• The COO is afraid that we have not done a project of this scope before
• The VP of Sales and Marketing is afraid we can’t deliver the sales required
• The VP of Quality is afraid we are not good enough

Who from our team is at this meeting?  COO, CIO, CEO, VP Business Development

What fear busters will they present?

• Our CIO will present systems diagram, integration steps
• Our COO will present case studies about scope,  a standard ramp-up illustration, and quality assurance standards
• Our CEO will present  a published white paper about industry best practices
• Our  VP Business Development will present relevant testimonials and a timetable commitment

In this manner, you can integrate your sales process steps with your anticipation of their fears.  You can be specific about who is likely to have which fears.  You can match up your team with their counterparts so they will learn more about the buyers and their fears.

The buyers are not going to tell you directly that they are afraid of you, but your SMEs will be much better able to interpret and counteract their fears.  And only if your team can allay their fears will they be able to buy your advantages.

Many people don’t understand the distinctions between strategy, process and tactics.

A strategy is an overall plan to achieve specific, generally long-term, goals. It’s an approach, a broad, general road map, a way to go about doing business.  A strategy defines how an organization intends to get from where it is now to where it wants to be in the future, perhaps three to five years out.  Pursuing Whales to grow revenue is a strategy.  Going global is a strategy. Penetrating a specific industry is a strategy. Increasing visibility to raise awareness about a product or service is a strategy. A strategy may include time frames but typically they are ‘end point’ dates.

A sales process is repeatable plan.  It outlines milestones involved in bringing on new clients, moving the prospects from “Stranger” to “Raving Fan”, for example.  It defines what is needed along the way to move from one point to the next. A sales process will also help you determine how likely you are to close a particular deal. It is in some regards, independent of the people who implement it.  Obviously people are involved in the process but if it is laid out well, it mitigates the reliance on a Rock Star salesperson.  A primary principle of Whale Hunting states, “Success is 90% process and 10% magic”.  Once proven, people can be taught to implement the sales process.

The steps in a sample sales process might be as follows:

1. Qualify
2. 1^st meeting
3. Proof
4. 2^nd meeting
5. Proposal
6. Close
7. Intake

Sales tactics, on the other hand are day-to-day activities individual team members execute in service of the strategy that has been laid out.  Tactics outline what will be done.  They are measurable and can be assigned to specific individuals. They are observable and trackable.  A tactical plan (made up of a series of tactics) may cover a time frame of six to 18 months.

Let’s say a company decides to implement Whale Hunting as a strategy to achieve aggressive revenue growth targets.  The company will likely have already set specific revenue targets and due dates.  Here are some sample tactics for the various Whale Hunter Roles

• Chief: Schedule an in-house workshop to introduce Whale Hunting to the entire company
• Scout: Spend an hour a day researching and compiling dossiers on selected Whales
• Shaman: Recommend three whales to approach to Chief
• Harpooner: Contact a key decision maker at the prospective whale to schedule an initial meeting within 5 days of receiving a completed dossier
• Subject Matter Expert: Make a list of Good-to-Great questions for an upcoming meeting with a prospective whale

Defining and communicating a strategy throughout an organization helps align the staff and focus its attention on what’s important. Tactics help people find their place in and get engaged with the strategy. Tactics give staff personal accountability, ‘skin in the game’, that can be measured and rewarded.

Loretta Love Huff, a Certified Partner with The Whale Hunters is an award-winning business consultant and coach. She has a BS in Psychology from Howard University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago. Visit her at http://www.facebook.com/EmeraldHarvestLove

I wrote this post for B2BBuzz where it appeared 4/15/11.

The idiom to “set your sights on” commonly refers to aiming a gun, getting a target “in your sights” before pulling the trigger.  But in terms of your ideal customer, the image of a sextant makes more sense.  The sextant is the tool that measures the angle between any two objects in order to locate your own position.  So I don’t want to shoot at customers; I want to know where they are and where my company is in relationship to them.

Instead of randomly shooting messages out into the market and waiting for leads to come in, smart companies on a fast-growth path need a way to identify the specific prospective customers that ought to be their best candidates.  What if you could make a list of the companies that are best for you to go after instead of simply following up on leads or cold calling?

Three steps will get you there:  

1. Determine criteria and metrics.

If you want to do bigger deals, what kind of customers do you need?  Where should they be located?  What industries do you serve best?  Which of your product or service offerings should you focus on to grow the size of customer you can attract?

Bring your cross-functional team together to create a list of criteria that matter to you:  customer size, revenue, industry, location, reputation, business structure, need for your services, history of working with companies like yours (or no history of that?)  Start by defining your current best clients—what features do they have in common?  Are there bigger companies that have many of these same features?

When you think you have the right criteria, assign some metrics to those criteria.  For example, if the customer’s revenue is important to you, assign a number or numerical range to the ideal annual revenue size.  Are you best with companies that have $50 million in annual revenues?  Or hundreds of millions? Or do you fit better with much larger companies?  Or smaller ones?  Assign your metrics at three levels:  High, Middle, Low. 

Suppose your absolute ideal is a company between $50 and $100million.  Call that “High.”  What would be your next best size?  Would it be smaller than $50 million or higher than $100 million?  How small is too small to matter?  How big is too hard to handle?  Work through all of your criteria and apply metrics, in each case defining best, second best, and “low as we would go.”  So for example your Low metric would not be simply “less than $25 million.”  Rather it might be $25 million to $10 million.  And if so, you wouldn’t consider a company with less than $10 million in annual revenue even if other metrics looked good.

Don’t kid yourself on the metrics!  You’re trying to define the qualities of an ideal customer, one that you would invest resources to land.  If something smaller or less desirable comes in over the transom, you can still do the work if it’s good work.  But you don’t want to invest much effort in getting that business. 

2. Run your criteria through a business database.

Most public libraries and all university libraries will have access to some version of the major business databases:  Hoover’s,  Lexis Nexis,  Business Source Premier.  So visit your alma mater, befriend your local librarian, or just search for a library online to get access to free data.  Another good place to start is manta.com.  Manta’s company data is not as reliable as the others I’ve mentioned, but it will get you going on key facts and is easy to use.

All of these databases will help you find a list of companies that meet certain of your key criteria:  company size (in revenue and/or employees), structure (public or private), location, and  industry.  You can also learn about location of headquarters and satellite offices for larger companies.

3.  Research the highest-potential prospects.

Once you have a list of companies that meet some of your criteria, you may need to whittle it down to a manageable size.  You are not going to approach all of the companies on your list in the short term.  Rather, you are going to pick some to watch and determine when the time is right.  So, start out with what look like the top 25—because of their location or their size or their industry, for example.  Then learn all you can about them—through their website, the business databases, annual report, SEC filings, social media presence, blogs, and news media.  Be sure to include contact information for key executives that you would want to meet.

Start a digital dossier on each of these companies to record your key criteria and key findings.  Upload it to a shared space so your team can add more information or changes over time.

Finally, work your own network to find an introduction to one of the key executives that you would want to meet, to introduce your company.  I find LinkedIn to be the most productive online resource for that purpose, but you have all of the social media sites at your disposal plus your network of friends, customers, past customers, trade associations, and community groups.  Involve all of your team in finding a warm introduction:  someone will know someone who knows someone.  You will be surprised.

So instead of handing out tchotchkes to whomever shows up at another trade show, set your sights on your ideal customer and go after that one.

Today’s blog post is brought to you by Kelley Robertson of Robertson Training Group in Canada. Thanks for contributing today Kelley!

Navigating and negotiating a standard sale can be challenging at the best of times. However, when you add a team dynamic to the equation, it can be downright frustrating not to mention difficult. Here are a few guidelines to consider when several people on your team are involved in a particular deal.

First and foremost, assign a point person. Someone MUST be in charge and assume the lead role during the entire sales process.  Someone needs to maintain control and act as the liaison between the team and the prospect; otherwise three things can go wrong.

1.     Critical issues may slip through the cracks because no one has their eye on the big picture. However, when one person leads the sale, that individual becomes responsible for managing the details and all aspects of the sales process.

2.     Confusion. Too many people doing too many things usually leads to duplication of efforts and confusion, for both your company and your prospect. One person can coordinate communication and ensure that the right information gets to the right person at the right time.

3.     Loss of information. If too many people are acting individually, it is easy for information to get lost or misplaced.

Establish roles. Does everyone on the team have a specific role and do they know what that role is? It is usually easy to determine the roles based on the requirements of the deal; however, it is essential that all players on the team know exactly how to execute their role. You may have people from finance, IT, logistics, operations, marketing, customer service, etc. If each person’s role is not clarified in the beginning stages of the sales process, it is possible that some people will tread on someone else’s turf or territory.

Part of the role assignment is to determine who will present information. Not everyone can deliver a great presentation and the bigger the deal, the more important the sales presentation becomes. This means checking egos and politics at the door and doing what’s best to ensure a positive outcome for the deal.

Establish clear goals and objectives. Do you know what you want to accomplish at each stage of the sales process? Make sure this is clarified early in the process and as the sale develops and progress.  It sound easy but it’s not uncommon for each person to have their own objective and these goals can clash and conflict with others. For example, IT may want to provide additional support while a finance person is concerned with preventing cost overruns.

Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. This includes briefing the team on a regular basis and keeping everyone informed on the progress. When more than one person is required to visit or present to the prospect, it is critical that you plan your approach. You want to ensure that anyone communicating with the prospect has the necessary background and history so they have the big picture. I strongly suggest that pre-call meetings are conducted prior to ensure that all the details are reviewed.

Rehearse your presentations. This is essential especially if several people will be presenting at one meeting. Multiple person presentations can be tricky to execute and you want your presentation to flow smoothly from start to finish. This also prevents your team from inadvertently presenting conflicting information.

Negotiating a multiple person sale can be challenging but with some forethought you can reduce the chance of someone on your team making mistakes that cost you the deal.

Kelley Robertson helps people master their sales conversations so they can win more business and increase their sales. He does this by conducting sales training workshops and delivering keynote speeches at conferences, sales meetings and other events. Subscribe to Kelley’s newsletter at www.Fearless-Selling.ca Book Kelley for your next event: 905-633-7750 or Kelley@RobertsonTrainingGroup.com.