Pretest: Fill in the Blank
Think about the most important sales opportunity you are pursuing.
Now, complete the following sentence:
The executive, whose career and company’s success or survival depends on getting this purchase right, will buy from me because _______.
If you can’t fill in the blank or aren’t 100 percent comfortable that you have the right answer, read on . . .
Back in Chapter 11 when I talked about sales planning, I deferred the discussion of strategy. The reason? It is so critically important to win- ning. Nothing, I repeat, nothing can take its place, including, as many companies with tough competitors have seen, giving your product or service away for free.
Let’s review for a moment. Your sales objective is no more compli- cated than stating (1) what you will sell to your prospect, (2) for how
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much, and (3) by when. You can’t realistically develop an achievable ob- jective in a vacuum. It has to be derived from your in-depth assessment of this unique situation.
Devising a Winning Strategy
Because of buyer power, commoditization, and hypercompetitive- ness, it’s highly unlikely that you will be consistently successful using a default strategy for winning big deals. Every opportunity now has to be uniquely assessed, a sales objective derived from that assessment, and a strategy devised for that opportunity, at that time, taking a multitude of conditions into account.
Here are some specific considerations relating to your prospect.
• Their financial situation
• Their buying criteria, evaluation, and decision processes
• The criticality of this purchase
• Specific ROI guidelines
• The position and political ties of the real buyer
Here are some specific considerations relating to their market.
• Trends
• Issues
• Leaders
• Size
• Your prospect’s position
• Their goals and objectives—for example, targeted increases in market share
Here are some specific considerations relating to your competition.
• Company and product strengths and unique value as perceived by that prospect
• Company and product weaknesses as perceived by that prospect
• Sales strategies and tactics
• Market reputation as perceived by that prospect
• Allies in the account
• History in the account
Here are some specific considerations relating to your business partners.
• Company and product strengths as perceived by that prospect
• Company and product weaknesses as perceived by that prospect
• Selling capabilities
• Market reputation as perceived by that prospect
• Resources available to assist you in the sale
Here are some specific considerations relating to your company and ability to win this opportunity.
• Company and product strengths and unique value as perceived by that prospect
• Company and product weaknesses as perceived by that prospect
• Sales strategies and tactics
• Market reputation
• Allies in the account
• History in the account
• Resources available to assist you with the sale
You can see from Figure 16.1 that each component listed above is by definition variable by opportunity. If you look at each circle in the Venn diagram as an unpredictably revolving spotlight on opening night in Hollywood, you’ll see the analogy. The center—the confluence—of those five circles is where you have to be to devise a strategy for winning under those conditions.
My clients and seminar attendees are still winning big deals—mil- lion dollar deals, even hundred million dollar deals. Believe me, it’s not by chance. Every sales professional I know who has won a large, critical deal since the economic downturn beginning in March 2000 stated to themselves, their team, their management, and especially to the prospect exactly why the prospect would buy from them—their strategy statement.
Here are ten strategy statements that were the basis of actual deals won by some of my clients during even the most challenging times.
They Will Buy from Me Because ____ 153
1. The prospect will buy from me because I will prove that we pro- vide the lowest total cost of ownership.
2. The prospect will buy from me because we will (and are in the best position to) guarantee the successful installation of my prod- uct on or before a defined date for a fixed price.
3. The prospect will buy from me because we are by far the safest alternative.
4. The prospect will buy from me because I will prove I have the best understanding of their business and the capability to con- tribute most broadly to their success going forward.
5. The prospect will buy from me because we will deliver a custom- ized solution based upon their unique needs and requirements.
6. The prospect will buy from me because we are the best alterna- tive for the most critical subset of their overall requirements.
7. The prospect will buy from me because we provide the highest quality postsale support and service.
8. The prospect will buy from me because we have unparalleled integrity, a key requirement for this initiative.
9. The prospect will buy from me because I will leverage board- level relationships to validate our capabilities.
FIGURE 16.1 Unique Approach for Every Opportunity
Market
Competition Your Capabilities
Partners Company/
Department/Agency
© 2003 The Stein Advantage, Inc.
10. The prospect will buy from me because I will propose my solu- tion in phases to accommodate their budget constraints.
Remember that each and every one of these strategy statements was created after a thorough and objective assessment of that unique situation.
Your strategy may involve changing the prospect’s buying criteria, overpowering the competition in capability where you are very strong, delaying a decision, or even dividing up a larger opportunity into smaller pieces. Each of these approaches must be considered as well.
Here are some dos and don’ts relating to strategy development.
Do:
• Create a unique strategy for every opportunity.
• Make sure that what you are counting on to win has measurable and important value to your prospect and that it is either unique or indisputably superior to what your competitor offers.
• Create a series of events, tactics, presentations, meetings, etc., all of which will contribute to driving forward your strategy. (Please refer to Chapter 11 for sales planning and tactics.)
• Include the capabilities of your competition as they are perceived by your prospect, not as you see them or as the competitor mar- kets them.
• Completely understand the prospect’s buying criteria and deci- sion process before deriving your objective and devising your strategy.
They Will Buy from Me Because ____ 155
T a c t i c
Analyze the strategy statement (the customer will buy from me because . . .) for your last three wins and losses. (If you didn’t have a strategy statement at the time, what would it have been?) Now decide whether the ones you won ar- ticulated more unique value than the ones you lost. If not, why did you win those deals? Maybe, in retrospect, you had the wrong strategy statement, but the customer bought for the right reasons.
Don’t:
• Begin executing tactics without a strategy.
• Be ambiguous or indecisive in your strategy statement. Phrases like we can rather than we willmake a difference in intent and execution.
• Depend on something to win that a competitor can do just as well.
That’s a common strategic error.
• Build a strategy based upon playing up a competitor’s weakness.
Focus only on your strengths.
Be clear on your strategy, but learn to expect the unexpected.
Mergers, acquisitions, reassignment of key personnel, changes in strate- gic direction, new competitors, as well as regional, national, global, or industrywide economic trends—these things happen, more often than ever in today’s business world. Your assessment of the prospect’s situa- tion must be kept current, and any change should cause you immedi- ately to reconsider your sales plan, to adapt even the cleverest strategy.
GE’s former CEO, Jack Welch, knows the shortcomings of strategic planning in business. He quotes a letter written by a Bendix planning manager to Fortune magazine:
Detailed planning necessarily failed, due to the inevitable fric- tions encountered: chance events, imperfections in execution, and the independent will of the opposition. . . . Any cookbook approach is powerless to cope with independent will or with the unfolding situations of the real world.
—Jack Welch, Jack: Straight from the Gut The same is true for sales professionals. Every day in the field brings changes and new challenges to which we must adapt. Fortunately for us, a sales plan is only a microcosm of the kind of massive strategic business planning that Welch talks about. When you think about it, we have it pretty easy. When major changes occur in the business climate, a sales strategy is easier and faster to change than our clients’ corporate busi- ness plans.
Knowledge is the key. Your ability to anticipate how such events will affect sales is directly related to your knowledge of each account, your relationships within it, and a keen understanding of the competition,
your target market, and the way the business world works. In other words, you need to think like a businessperson, not just a salesperson.
When you do, you tune in to the signs and signals that changes are com- ing. Then by selling business value, rather than just the products or ser- vices that deliver it, you position yourself with key people in your accounts who can provide the business information you need.
So how, you ask, can anybody plan strategy without knowing what changes lie ahead? Isn’t it an exercise in futility to plan a detailed strat- egy, when everyone knows things will change but no one knows what the changes will be?
Keep in mind two words: reasonableand flexible.Your strategy should be reasonably detailed, down to the level where you are comfortable im- provising the finer points in the field. It should be flexible too—readily adaptable when you have to change direction unexpectedly.
Be flexible; don’t overplan. But above all, plan.
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C h a p t e r