Today’s post is a reprise from the archives–How do you know it’s a big deal and who gets to decide? Important agreements among senior management and the sames team.

Many companies get caught in the “Earn-it Trap” when they hunt whales, selling a small piece of work to a whale in the belief that it will lead to much bigger things. In our experience, this is a very low-yield strategy for agencies. Most of the time, if you go in through the small door, you get stuck in the little room. Why?

Here’s one angle. Suppose your resume, background, and education clearly qualify you for a senior position at a large company. You go to the Human Resources room, where no VP positions are available, but you can interview for an open job in the mailroom because that is the problem HR needs to solve today.

You don’t want to be a mailroom clerk! Sigh. But you do want to work at the big company. The HR person hints that this company promotes from within and you would have an advantage when the big job comes open.

So you take the little mailroom job hoping to get noticed and promoted when the timing is right. Time passes. Big jobs open and other people are hired or promoted. Often the person hired is both less qualified and from the outside.

You complain: “Hey, I am more qualified, I am a current employee, and I should be getting a shot at that job.”

Your boss tells you:

• You’re doing a great job and we really need you where you are.
• She didn’t know you had experience that qualifies you for that job.
• The company policy is that you will have to compete with outside candidates.
• All of the above.

In like manner, agencies fall for the Earn-it Trap all the time. They take a little deal with a lot of hope, and then they watch the big deals go to competitors.  Or they subscribe to a market “test” of some sort, with fuzzy metrics and vague promises.  And the first test is followed by a second test, and so on.  The lure of bigger opportunities to come almost always falls short, in part because the people who buy small projects are not the same people who buy big projects.

How can you avoid getting locked into the little room?

Knock on the right door. Anyone who has landed a top job with a large company will tell you that the last door to knock on is Human Resources. Likewise, if you are at the Procurement, Diversity, or Purchasing doors, you are starting at the wrong place. If you are calling on a local or regional presence of a national or international corporation, understand that it isn’t a door to the top.  The odds of moving up from local to national are extremely low because national buyers rarely choose to do business with the “lower-level” companies that serve their franchisees or regional affiliates.

Leave the wrong room fast. Sometimes through good intentions from a friendly referral source, you end up at the wrong place.  You know you are in the wrong place if you look around and there isn’t an end-user in the room. Trying to get directions from the wrong place to the right place rarely works. Better to stop, back up, and knock on a different door than to try to find the right door from the wrong room.

Beware of little nibbles with big promises. If a whale-sized opportunity is real, there should be an adoption schedule with volume commitments based upon performance standards for your firm to meet.

If you hear, “We’ll see how it goes,” just say no. If they have no plan, you have no path. No path means no commitment. Remember this: within a whale, any individual can make a promise, but only the Buyers’ Table can make a commitment. You don’t have a real sale unless you have an agreement from the buying group about how and when the rollout or ramp-up will occur.

If you are already stuck with your whale in a little room, understand that for now you have been pigeonholed and forgotten. Growing business with this whale will require a very different approach from your normal sales efforts.

A version of this post was published at agencyside in January 2011.

Let’s face it—most of your sales materials are all about you.

The sales rainmakers say, “I need a brochure about Product X.”  Or “When can you get me a case study on Project Y?”  Or, “I need a think piece on Topic A.”

Or the marketing team gets together, and decides that you need a new intro video, or a redesign of your website, or a clever new marketing piece on this clever new program you’re offering.

In each case, something about YOU is your company’s motivation for the new piece.

How can you turn that around and develop sales materials that are all about them–your clients and prospects?

The Whale Hunters have a method that we call “whale fears.”  The premise is simple.  If you are a small company, big companies are afraid of you.  (Small and big are relative terms, but I mean a company MUCH bigger than yours that does business with companies MUCH bigger than yours.) Big company buyers and end users fear four major things:

• Change—no matter how bad their current circumstance, changing it will be painful.  Will it be more painful if they choose you?
• Work—if they choose you, will they have extra work to bring you up to speed and teach you how their company operates?
• Conflict—will their internal constituents nag them for choosing an unknown rather than a name brand?
• Mistakes—if they hire you, will they get fired if you fail to deliver?

You can develop a clear understanding of these fears and use them to develop great sales materials.  Here’s how:

1. Bring your team together to brainstorm what the big companies might fear (or usually fear) about you.  Use the categories of change, work, conflict, and mistakes to prompt your thinking.
2. Identify tangible materials (“fear busters”) that you have or could develop that would allay those key fears.
3. Rate your current fear busters as follows:  + (we have one and it’s great); 0 (we don’t have anything like this) ; – (we have one that needs work).
4. Assign priorities to improving existing materials or creating new ones based on your team’s work.
5. Develop materials, test them out with prospects and current customers, and bring the team together to revise and improve on a regular basis.

Let’s see a few examples from an advertising/marketing agency that completed this activity.

Fear of Change:  Clients express fear, “Do they know how we do things here?”

Fear Buster:  Agency creates a detailed process map documenting the working relationship.  This reduces fear because big companies operate from documented processes.

Fear of Conflict:  Client expresses fear, “Will we lose decision-making power?”

Fear Buster:  Agency updates its Statement of Partnership, which clearly specifies points at which the client owns decisions.

Fear of Work:  Clients fear, “Will we get the A Team or the B Team? “  Presumably, there is an inferior team that will require much more work on the part of the client to bring them up to speed.

Fear Buster:   Agency develops multiple fear busters.  One is to introduce the actual team members during the sales process.  No substitute for this!  Second is an illustration of how teams are assigned and how newer team members are paired with veterans on every engagement.  Third is a set of brief bio statements delivered with each proposal, focused on the team for that contract.

Fear of Mistakes:  Client expresses, “Can they really deliver?”

Fear Buster:  Agency reviews and refines client testimonials and case studies with a focus on bottom-line results.

To sum it up, the best sales materials come from careful consideration of what frightens clients about choosing your company.  Instead of building your sales collateral around your advantages—your bells and whistles, your cool offerings—focus on their fears.  Once their fears are alleviated, they will be ready to listen to your advantages.  And I’ll bet you have great sales materials on those!

Do you have a replicable process for building new business with your current key clients?  Does everyone know who is responsible for maintaining relationships, for developing new relationships inside the client company, and for proposing new business ideas?  Are you in a relationship that is moving towards “trusted advisor” or is your company starting to look like a vendor to this customer?

I’m pleased to bring you an opportunity to learn about a valuable method for strengthening key account relationships: an Executive Sponsor Program.  In this strategic process, a non-sales executive from your team is responsible for relationship-building at the executive level with your key client.  When implemented properly, such a program has measurably powerful results.  On Wednesday, January 25 (8 am Pacific; 11 am Eastern) I’m hosting a teleconference with Karen Posey, Senior Consultant with Geehan Group and author of recent research about executive sponsor programs, and Gary Vastola, Vice President Marketing & Field Support for Xerox Managed Print Services Business Group, who is responsible for the Xerox Executive Sponsor Program, which Geehan Group helped to develop. Xerox has 100 clients who participate in the Program.

Most of you who read this blog own and/or work for companies much smaller than Xerox, so our conversation will focus on those aspects of an Executive Sponsor Program that a small to midsize company can implement successfully.  Click below for more information and to register for this free call.

Register for Explosive Growth with Key Clients

Dan Waldschmidt

I’m happy to welcome today’s guest blogger. Speaker, writer, strategist, Dan Waldschmidt is at war with conventional business strategy.  His Edgy Conversations© have turned hundreds of companies into rock-star businesses and the Wall Street Journal calls his blog one of the” Top 7 sales blogs” anywhere in the world.  He’s on a mission to empower millions of high-performers all over the globe.  For more information about Waldschmidt Partners Intl, go to www.EdgyConversations.com or call at 202-630-6730. Thanks Dan, for joining The Whale Hunters again!

You’ve been there before.

The phone rings — breaking you out of your concentration. You’ve been focused on a complex task. Trying to solve a problem that has stumped you for hours.

As the phone rings a second time, your hand moves from your mouse to the edge of the phone, ready to pick up the handset. Your eyes glance at the name showing on the screen. You pause for a second.

As the phone rings a third time, you realize that have just a second to make a decision. Do you take the call or do you get back to solving the hard problem that you have been working on all morning?

That’s reality.

You’re just on the other side of the call. You’re the one interrupting customers. Jolting them out of their concentration as they try to solve serious problems that have them confused and frustrated.

Your call only adds to that confusion.

But it also adds some clarity.

Your client only has a few seconds to make a gut-level decision about your value to them. That’s it. There’s no time for complex arguments or for them to scan your latest white paper.

In a few seconds, every thing that you have ever done for them pops to the forefront of their decision-making ability. It’s raw and gritty. It might make you uncomfortable. But it’s the most honest of business relationships. There is a decision — do they take your call or do they shrug you off?

They know the truth.

Do you provide value to them or do they know that you’re calling to “just check in on them” — probably peddling another technology solution that’s close to the one they already bought from you last year. Sure you might be calling to ask them to hang out with you for a beer or to grab a quick lunch, but they know that that’s all part of your plan to extract more money out of them. To close more deals.

And in a second or two it’s all becomes clear. You can’t fake it. You have to live it. The ringing phone demands a solution.

Which brings us to the point of this discussion.

You can’t provide value when you need to get results.

By then, it is too late.

The opportunity to create lasting memories is over. You have to start caring right now — even when it seems like you don’t really need to care.

The truth is, you’ve never needed to care any more than you do right now. Right now is all you have. There is no tomorrow unless you start caring today.

• There are no phone calls.

• There are no e-mail exchanges.

• There is no extra revenue.

It doesn’t work.

Nothing works until you start loving the people that you do business with.

If there’s one thing that we’ve all learned in the last half decade of economic decline around the world, it is that people are frail and hurting beings. We’ve learned that we’re a little more fallible than we thought we were before. We’ve realized that destruction and utter chaos is a possibility. Sometimes an inevitability.

Which is why the conversation needs to change from value and solutions and service to something much more powerful. To something much more potent.

Discussions with your clients needs to be about the gritty, personal side of life. You don’t need to be corny but you do need to be caring. This isn’t about passive aggression or manipulation; it’s about a heart-felt interpretation of life and the people doing business in that life.

To grow you have to love people.

Economic patterns come and go. Businesses will fall and they grow.

Most of that will never be in your control, ever — no more than you can cause the sun to shine or the rain to fall.

You are helpless when it comes to cosmic change. But you can change your own attitude about those you do business with. You can give a hand up instead of looking for a handout. You can be genuine instead of going for the jugular. You can love and care and cry instead of twisting and cajoling and pressuring.

The decision is yours.

As the phone rings, your business intentions stand naked before the judgments of your customer. No excuses. No explanations. Only the value you’ve created stands to persuade your client to pick up the phone and hear you out.

When you give as a strategy. When you give with intention. When you give more than people deserve to get, you create a relationship that drives your client to engage with you. They’re still busy, still frustrated, but willing to hear you out. Willing to give you a chance.

Because you’ve given them much more already.

Brooke Green

Today’s Guest Blogger is my great friend Brooke Green, principal at Caskey Achievement Strategies.  Brooke is passionate about her work coaching sales teams and beloved by her clients. Thanks for joining us, Brooke!

I always find this time of year interesting. If you have any responsibility for revenue growth within your company, I’m sure you’ve been asked to create a sales plan for how you will make that happen. My experience is that most are searching for new revenue, inside new businesses. Why would you not concentrate on what’s already there? Your key accounts.

Often when I ask this question, the response is the same “Well, yeah, of course I’ll continue to work with my key accounts . . . .” Don’t they deserve to be more than an afterthought?

In our practice we teach a sales process that never stops. There will always be new problems to solve for your clients, new expertise for you to bring to the table, new relationships to develop. However, more often than not, once the initial hunt is over we forget that the process should continue. How do you remedy this?

Put your KEY ACCOUNTS on the top of your sales and business plan. Be strategic. Work on the business, not just in it. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Who within the business deserves to know me and utilize my expertise (that I don’t already know)?

2. Do I know where the business is going and how the problems that I solve will fit into the future?

3. Have I provided a platform for learning, brainstorming and feedback exchange on the work we are currently doing and the current state of the business?

4. Have I shared the future of my business, what our company is striving to do and how my key accounts can benefit?

5. What are the threats to the partnership? Am I ahead of them or woefully behind?

If you don’t have a sales strategy each year (or even quarter) for your KEY ACCOUNTS you are diminishing your value to them and leaving money on the table. I know that the hunt for new business is exciting. Don’t let your inclination to look for the new, give an opportunity for the existing to bite you in the rear end.

How do you keep your key clients top-of-mind? Please post a comment.

Chris Conrey

This month we are featuring ways to grow new business with your current best accounts. Today’s guest post comes from Chris Conrey,  CEO of Post Modern Sales .  Follow @conrey and learn more about Chris on LinkedIn. Thanks Chris!

You’ve got big accounts, big ones that fund more than their fair share of your revenue, or with more of your reputation at stake than you’d like to admit. But often the ones that are most important are the ones that lock you up the most and keep you up at night. Here are 6 things you’re doing right now that you can stop and stop worrying about.

1. You lower your rate – You worry so much about losing this client that the moment they mention your rate at all, you drop it down to a much lower level than your other clients, often lower than you should. This kills you in two ways; obviously you make less money, but you also are devaluing your product. You’re setting a price that you shouldn’t because you’d rather take that pain than face the confrontation of charging what you should.  Solution – Hold firm on your rate for all of your clients, regardless of size or fear. It will make your life easier when you have to deal with billing, and you’ll show confidence and that you value your own product.
2. You let them take liberties – If you aren’t bending over backwards lowering their rate, you’re giving them special treatment that makes you run around in circles with faster than usual deadlines, more flexibility than usual, different payment terms, and a willingness to push yourself beyond your usual limits. Solution – much like the price problem above, you’re in desperate need of building your confidence. Believe it or not, many clients will respect a little bit of pushback on crazy demands.
3. You take them for granted – You’ve had this account for so long and they’ve been on your books for so long that you’re just used to sending the invoice. And yet you’re not providing the same world-changing service that they saw when you first started. Eventually they realize this and you’re suddenly one key account down.
4. You don’t call for the close – This is more often for the key account you’re working on and haven’t sealed yet. You get awestruck and treat them like rockstars and your heroes instead of like your prospect and potential client. Much like an autograph-seeking teen at a Jusin Beiber concert you find yourself tongue tied and unable to get your message out, so you lose the deal to someone who remembers they are there to close to deal.
5. You sugar coat bad news – This one is common amongst salespeople regardless of how key the account is, but you’ll be way more afraid to put the bad news right on the table for your best clients. Knowing how much they contribute to your company’s bottom line (and your paycheck) makes it more likely that you are going to soften the blow. This leads to all sorts of problems later when they realize how bad it was and you didn’t tell them.
6. You let them hold you back – Your company is changing directions or shifting away from some services but you have this one big account who still wants it. So you keep doing it just for this one client, which holds the whole company back out of desire to win this big deal. This leads to your company doing sub-par work, and ultimately your reputation being tarnished when you don’t back up what you’re selling.

The common thread here is fear. Have confidence in your abilities and your team, and put a little backbone up. This will only strengthen things for you in the long run and allow for true growth.

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?

For 2012, we’re planning a “theme of the month” approach on the blog.  January’s theme is new business with your best current accounts.  I’ve lined up a great list of guest bloggers to help explore this topic, starting today.

Please welcome Dave Cooke (@SalesCooke), CEO of Strategic Resource Group and an expert on how to grow key accounts.  Thanks for kicking off 2012 for us Dave!

The definition of business success is growth.  Increasing revenue drives most sales organizations.  However, there are two aspects of the growth formula that are often underlooked; or, at least, underemphasized– client retention and business development in existing accounts.

The most efficient channel for increases or improvements to profitable revenues is maintaining the business relationships you have and leveraging those relationships to offer and deliver more.

Your best customers are your most efficient channel for new business opportunities.  Yet, many organizations struggle to create and discover these opportunities.  For the most part it is because they have become so proficient at being satisfied with the existing relationship that they fail to understand or recognize how to
expand and build on it. 

The first place I would look for revenue expansion is with my best, favorite and most trusted clients.  Note, I would not be walking in simply trying to “sell them more,” I
would be working at discovering how I can become a better resource to them and what else I may be able to provide to improve or enhance their business.  Accomplishing this requires a focused strategic commitment to enhancing the relationship.

There are four steps to applying a business development strategy in your existing and key accounts:

1. Build a team and expand your contact base:
   Sales professionals are very proficient at knowing who their key contact
   is in an account.  Their traditional approach is to strengthen that single point of contact relationship to the fullest.  In a revenue expansion strategy
   that is not enough.  Instead of having a lot of connections over several companies, an effective business development strategy requires multiple connections throughout the organization at multiple contact points.  A single point of contact or a single contact point from your organization puts all relationships at risk. A strong business development strategy requires that your organization is connected into your key clients at multiple levels with multiple relationships sources, i.e. your CEO/Owner, VP of Sales, VP of Marketing, or Director of Customer Service, etc. having developed and leveraged relationships in your key accounts at similar valued levels.  Multiple relationships, at various organizational and functional levels, through varied contact points offer your organizational broader information, influence and insight.  This is a very powerful strategic tool.
2. Assign a knowledge holder for your key accounts: You can utilize a CRM to manage data and information; however, like a reporter, every key account requires a knowledge holder.  That knowledge holder is responsible for sharing the news of every single conversation with all others leveraging and developing relationships in that key account.  Sharing the information in a timely manner enables the team to make prompt strategic moves in that account and enables the team to be more engaged and proactive to news, information, and opportunity.
3. Create a metric and meeting rhythm for the team: Being on a key account team means nothing if people do not know their roles or accountabilities.  Every team member has accountabilities to the rest of the team for their role in building and expanding their relationship base in a key account.  They are also accountable for gathering and sharing information to the team in a timely manner through the “knowledge holder.” As a result, I would encourage everyone to establish a metric for “new relationships” and “impactful conversations” that is a measurable accountability tool.  Also, even if it is only a fifteen minute weekly huddle, all key account teams must connect, communicate, collaborate and strategize on a regular basis.
4. Pay attention to discover and create opportunity: You cannot create opportunity in an existing account just because it is a good idea – nobody cares what you want to accomplish or “sell”.  However,as you expand your relationship base within an account and become a more influential valued resource, the potential for the team to discover and create new business opportunities is enhanced significantly.  This is the value of a multi-faceted “deep and wide” business development strategy. More conversations, with more people, with diverse perspectives, opinions and needs provide a fantastic opportunity to add value.  The fundamental component of this strategy is found in creating a focused, disciplined, and intelligent process with a long-term commitment to its execution and development.

Businesses that grow best, grow intentionally.  Intention is the focused, disciplined, and
strategic application of a business development process that works.  The above business development process works best in your key accounts because you already have a valued relationship with them, you already have access to their team, and they already value what you are providing them.  To take this relationship to another level requires the commitment of a team, the productive gathering and sharing of information, and the ability to nimbly and deftly execute a timely growth strategy.  Nothing is more productive than growing within an existing account – the trick is coordinating the resources in order to accomplish it.

This was our all-time biggest blog traffic post, originally from June 2011.

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!

1. 1.Know the customer.  Some sales people call on prospective customers with little more than a “lead”—maybe only an address and a name scribbled on a post-it note.  But whale hunters do not call on a large prospect until they have a complete dossier prepared by a Scout, someone in sales support, marketing or administrative assistance who has been trained to conduct the essential research. Your dossier should include a complete description of the company and its history.  You need to know its major customers and competitors, key products and services, and its market position.  Record three years of data on revenue, gross margin, and operating margin.  Total assets and total debt help you create a snapshot of the company’s current position.What is the company’s current market strategy?  Are they gaining or losing market share?  Are they poised to introduce new products or services?  Are they B-to-B or B-to-C?  What kind of  budget have they had historically?  Who is or has been their incumbent provider?
2. Think like a buyer.  We tend to have a huge need to talk about US.  We blab about our services, our track record, our cool tools and metrics and stuff that we do.  And the more innovative, the more creative, the more bells and whistles we can present, the better we like it. Large account buyers, however, are not really looking for the best of all possible solutions.  They want a reasonable solution that will work.  They want a solution that will not cost them too much money or work or time or change or internal conflict.  They want to choose a provider that will not embarrass them or get them into trouble.  So they have a huge preference for big companies, with big brands, that are well known and comfortable.If you are a smaller company or a company unknown or little known to them, you need to learn to think from their point of view.  They are afraid of you.  Your job is to make them unafraid.  (For more on this topic, join our Pier9 library and read Think Like a Buyer.)They cannot hear your value proposition until they become less afraid of you.  So what can you do?
3. Ask great questions.  Instead of leading off with what you can do, lead off with rich, meaty questions about their circumstance.  I don’t mean just the ordinary questions to discover their “pain points.”  What are their aspirations?  What do they want or need to accomplish?  What obstacles are in their way?  How can you help them define and/or scope out their hopes in terms that make sense to them and to you? Great questions invite your prospect to talk about how things have gone in the past.  How things are going now.  What is the typical way his or her company responds to the current set of needs, challenges, or aspirations?  How have they handled this need previously?  What has gone well and what didn’t work previously? Of course your questions are about the company.  However, your challenge is to frame those questions in the context of the individual or team that you are currently talking to.  Make it personal; keep it personal.
4. Listen.  When you ask great questions, you will typically get very useful answers.  If you don’t get good answers, or if the person you’re talking to doesn’t really want to interact with you and your questions, it’s a good sign to walk away from this deal at this time.  So the first point of listening is to listen for signs that you do not want to pursue this relationship at this time. But when you have asked great questions and listened to your counterpart’s answers for 30 to 45 minutes, that person begins to believe you are wise and knowledgeable.  You have learned valuable insights about what the prospect needs, wants, and hopes to accomplish.  You may have told very little about your company’s capabilities.  Nevertheless, you have proven that you “understand” the needs and desires of the buyer.
5. Ask for a process commitment.  A key ingredient in large account selling is to get commitments from the prospect and test whether they can and will keep their commitments.  A very easy and significant commitment is the process map.  This is a simple exercise that you can conduct on a note pad or on their flip chart or white board.  Map out the steps in their buying process.  Find out who needs to be involved at each step and whether the person you’re talking with is willing to get the important people involved.  See if your contact knows the buying process and if their process is compatible with your sales process.

Follow these five steps and you will have more productive first meetings with large-scale prospects.  Then you will be armed with key understandings to share with your team to begin designing solutions.

As 2011 closes out, I’ll feature a few of our most popular posts of 2011.

This one, posted in June, has to do with building trust or fixing blunders.

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.”

Read more

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.

Today we welcome Dave Cooke (@SalesCooke), CEO of the Strategic Resource Group in Arizona and Michigan.  Thanks for blogging today Dave! 

Join us Wednesday, December 14, 2011 for a teleconference with Dave  on the topic of Selling Like a Team, including a discussion of “authentic sincerity.”  9am Pacific; 10am Mountain; 11am Central, noon Eastern.  It’s a free call; register here.

In my twenty five plus years in selling, I have had the opportunity to learn from the very best and the very worst of the selling profession. Also, I have had the dubious distinction of developing and applying my sales skills in several very unique and different industries. As I continue to share my experiences as advisor, educator, manager, strategist and coach one lesson rings truest over all others – nothing replaces authenticity and sincerity when it comes to building strong professional relationships. I am looking forward to the opportunity to share my professional experiences and perspectives on The Whale Hunters Expert Series Call.

While I enjoy recalling all my lessons and stories, it is my passion and commitment to enhancing the perception of the profession that drives and inspires me today. Most popular sales professionals and experts are very adept at using a very common vocabulary – listening, solution selling, relationship building effectiveness, etc. Unfortunately, the number of sales professionals who misuse, misapply, misunderstand, and simply ignore the shared vocabulary is much, much larger than the individuals who have made the commitment to utilizing it to the highest level of professionalism. As a result, the term “sales” continues to generate a negative reaction from which people recall their worst experiences of pushy, aggressive sales professionals who cold-called them to death, listened poorly, or displayed other disturbing behaviors. The biggest reason that “sales” continues to struggle to improve its image is that very few people hearing the lingo actually know what is involved to apply it effectively. The behaviors of “getting someone to buy” and “being persistent” [meaning aggressive] are consistently promoted as activities necessary to grow a business. These habits are encouraged, even expected, by managers and executives who are merely interested in transactionally-based, grow-now results and not as invested or knowledgeable about relationship-oriented, solutions-based outcomes.

While the more popular approach feeds the beast now at the expense of the long-term opportunity; the other approach, properly nurtured, satisfies the machine’s needs forever. Until people understand the power of the business relationship in the sales process, the profession will continue to battle with itself on this critical philosophical learning curve. We have all heard the phrase “people buy from people they know, like, and trust.” While I don’t completely embrace this as a formula for success, it is directionally valid.

Of the three words in this success quotient, the one that is most difficult to accomplish is “trust.” And, it is through trust where most transactional, self-aggrandizing sales professionals hurt the profession. Once a person trusts their sales person enough to enter into a transaction with them, most sales professionals consider their work completed, move in to complete the transaction, and then move on to the next one. Unfortunately, there is a higher standard of care required than merely obtaining their trust – they also must reward, validate, and appreciate their trust. Trust is not merely a step in the process. Trust is an honor that, once bestowed, must be revered and valued. It is up to the sales professional to build on that trust with honor, integrity, and concern for the person that is offering it.

Too many sales people find a way to gain trust and then take advantage of it rather, than reinforcing this placement of trust with integrity and commitment. It is this manipulation that costs the profession dearly. This is where authentic sincerity enters into the picture. Most people reluctantly trust their sales professionals. It is through our history that we have effectively, as a profession, earned the distinction of being untrustworthy and unreliable. Authentic sincerity is the process of being completely honest with our commitment to helping our clients participate in a positive experience to find and discover exactly what they need and desire without risk or compromise. This is the standard of care that must be at the foundation of every professional relationship. Without this standard, the sales profession will continue to struggle in its quest to be viewed as anything other than pushy, arrogant, aggressive, and unreliable. And, the path to improvements in revenue growth will always be a little more difficult. The alternative and productive approach would be to bring some authentic sincerity to the relationship and the buying experience – that is what brings clients back.

Join us Wednesday, December 14, 2011 for a teleconference with Dave Cooke on the topic of Selling Like a Team, including about how teams build trust during and after the sales process.  9am Pacific; 10am Mountain; 11am Central, noon Eastern.  It’s a free call; register here.

#10 is the most important in my list of Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.   Here goes: You underestimate the buyers’ fears.

Often you and the whole team are totally focused on the great advantages that you provide with your products and services. You consistently make a rational case for the sale of your products, unaware that 99% of buying decisions are made on irrational, emotional bases, led primarily by fear of making a bad decision.

Unless you develop powerful ways to address the fears, you will continually lose your bids and come in second on your proposals.  And second is the worst place to finish–you stayed in too long and you paid too much but you still lost.

This isn’t a new topic for me. See, for example,  It’s All About Fear and Holly Buchanan’s guest post Wonder Woman and the B2B Sale. Nevertheless, many sellers have trouble coming at the sale from the perspective of what makes the buyers afraid.

You think the buyers are looking for the best solution–the most creative option or the solution that will get them where they want to go faster, better, or cheaper than the others.  But in reality, they will go for a solution that will probably work and seems to be a safe choice.  ”Safe” as in, “I won’t get fired if it doesn’t work” or “I’m not going to be alone on this” or “I’m not putting my career on the line.”

To overcome this problem, you will need a collection of what we call “fear busters,” tangible tools to allay the buyers’ fears of change, work, internal conflict, and most important–making a mistake.

Assume that you scare them and introduce fear-busters throughout the sales process.  Once they are no longer afraid, the buyers can appreciate the added value that your solution represents.

We’re up to #9 on my list of The Top Ten Ways You Can Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.

And the 9th way to lose is:  Your team is complacent.

You’ve been so good for so long that your team expects that it will always be business as usual. You’re not scanning the market, not tracking old and new competitors, not learning every day about what’s going on in the lives of your customers.

Many growing companies are actually making a market, not taking a share of an existing market.  The more innovative and unusual your service or product, the more you are focused on a niche, the fewer your competitors, the more likely it is that you will experience a short-term success that you can’t sustain.

If you have been successful in bringing a new product or service (or product/service mix) to market, sooner or later other prospective competitors are going to challenge your dominance.  You will have painfully created a market–first persuading customers that your service is a great idea and then persuading them to buy from you.  When you hit a critical mass of customers, you will undoubtedly attract competitors.

Where will they come from?  Some will be new companies mimicking your business model.  Others will be diversified companies observing an opportunity that they’d missed.  Still others will be companies that have been very good at producing something that’s no longer valued in the market, and they are looking for a new thing that they can be good at.

There are ways to combat this tendency.  Here are a few:

• Conduct a Brand Promise Audit.  [This one-hour recorded how-to webinar is available to registered members of the Pier9 Premium resource site].  Review the marketing messages of your company and those of your competitors.  Revise your promises as required.
• Talk with your customers–those that you sold and those that you lost.  Be certain you understand what it is that people value about you and what it is that turns them away.
• Engage your team in bringing ideas and information forward.  The more individual employees who are engaging in social media platforms and knowledge bases, the more current your knowledge will be about trends that may not have even reached the “trend” stage yet.  Encourage your team to look for potential threats as well as opportunities.

Whenever you hold the position of “the best” for a period of time, you become vulnerable to many kinds of attacks.  You can’t afford for your team to become complacent about your #1 position.

We’re up to reason #8 of the Ten Ways You Can Lose Even When You’re the Best!  And reason #8 is:  Your company is too modest.

This one is sooooo hard for me to understand. But yes, we have clients who think that promoting the background and talents of their team, or documenting a few of their wins, or identifying key brands in their customer portfolio is inappropriate bragging.

This flaw can raise its ugly head near the very end of the sales process, when the buyers are making their final selection. You may have put a terrific proposal in front of them, quite likely better than the proposal from your closest competitor.  But the competitor included bio details about company leadership and key team members, success stories from several prestigious customers, a few succinct testimonials, and unique experiences or background that set them apart.

You’ve heard me say that you shouldn’t lead with the “all about us” stories.  But before you close the sale, the buyers should know what sets you apart as a delivery team.  Even having these things on your website and LinkedIn profiles is helpful because the buyers are going to check it out again when they make their final call.

A couple of examples.  One client reports on their website that “the founding partners, combine more than eighty years of color separation and printing experience.”  Well, let’s have their names and their particular background experiences–there are three partners and each brings unique talent and background to a project.  Further, this company has produced catalogs for some of the most exciting brands in North America, but they don’t mention it.  True, some customers will not permit you to brag about them.  But others will approve certain kinds of publicity.  If you have great clients and don’t mention them, others will assume that you do not have name brand experience.

We talked with leaders of a company that provides security services for industry, hospitals, airports, etc.  Their website mentions that the founding partners have US military experience, but does not include that at least two of them were in Special Forces units. To me that background would set them apart as an elite security team whose leaders have mastered the highest levels of security practice–not just theory.

The key here is to be specific. Citing some details of your past accomplishments and those of specific team members, calling attention to key customers that you have served well, and including some honest testimonials is not bragging.  Rather, it is helping your prospective new customer to feel safe in hiring you.  There’s no need to spin the details or embellish them, just put them forward.  Don’t force the buyers to put your story together for you–spell it out.

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?

We’re at reason #5 of Ten Reasons You Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  Today’s reason:

Your message is “overkill.”

When you are the best, and you know it, there’s a great temptation to document all the ways and all the reasons for which you are the best. That kind of message can backfire because it’s too hard to follow, too hard to understand, and especially too hard for your buyers to explain to their bosses.

What’s so hard to believe, and so painful to many companies, is that buyers in large organizations are not necessarily looking for the best, the most innovative, the most cost effective, or the most creative solution.  They are looking for a safe solution that will work–”safe” defined as they will not be in big trouble if it doesn’t work as well as it could or should.

So being “the best” could sometimes be defined as promising more than they can stand.  It comes in another version too.  That is the “too good to be true” version.  I worked with a global software and consulting company that specializes in spend management.  The sales team lamented that they were losing their best deals–those where they could provide the greatest savings for their prospective customers.  But in fact what they promised was so outstanding that the buyers didn’t believe it.  They had to learn to keep the promises more reasonable from the customer’s perspective, and then let them be delighted when they achieved even grater savings.

Keep your solution simple and your story simpler, and you’ll refrain from overkill.

Reason #4 on my list of Ten Ways You Can Lose . . . Even if You Are the Best is:  Your message is stale.

Maybe you are the leading authority in your market space. Over time, it’s possible that your message to market has become wordy or pompous or old-fashioned. You run the risk that an inferior upstart will capture a new tagline or a new promise and appeal to your market.

A message gets wordy when you try to capture all the history of your product/service.  It gets pompous when you use a lot of big words to prove you’re the best.  And it gets old-fashioned when the market needs or interests or even buzz-words have changed and you’re not keeping up with the dialog.

The recent Old Spice campaign is a great example of rebranding a stale message.  This is a product that’s been around since about 1934, purchased by Proctor and Gamble in 1990.  It’s a totally fresh approach, linking “how you look” to “how you smell” and particularly appealing to women to buy the product for the man in their life.  The products are now called “man fresheners”  rather than “deodorants” or “after shave.”

With well-known sexy (and funny) spokesmen they introduced a campaign to interact directly with customers on the air in 2010.  Their August 2011 YouTube video has had almost 2 million views in less than 60 days and the Old Spice YouTube channel records more than 28 million with 289,000 subscribers. They’ve kept the connection with seafaring but the captains are much younger and sexier than in the past.  One of the products is now named “Old Spice Swagger.”  The campaign “I’m on a Horse” was one of the most viral campaigns in ad agency history.

It’s not only the message that was stale; so was the advertising approach.  The social media approach to the new Old Spice appeals to a much broader and younger audience and is an integral part of the new message.

So if they can take a stodgy old brand like Old Spice and remake it for today’s buyers, what could you do with your stale message?

Yesterday I wrote about one of the Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best, claiming that you lose when your rules of engagement are too rigid.

Then what do you know I had a perfect example of how that works.  My husband went to Sears to buy a new gas grill.  A few weeks ago, he stopped into Sears to inquire about the grills.  The one he selected was a special order item.  The salesman told him they would have it shipped to the Sears store, and then they would need a few days to assemble it, and then they would deliver it (free) to our home.  But he said, “I’m not the expert, you’ll have to order it from (someone else at Sears).”

So yesterday husband returned to Sears.  He had a 10% off coupon plus a $40 gift certificate, and having shopped around, he knew that Sears had the best deal on this grill.  Until he went to order it.  The grill expert said, “It says here (online ordering system) we cannot have it shipped to our store.  It must be shipped to your home (unassembled).   And you will have to pay for shipping ($137).  And if we assemble it, we will have to send someone to your home, and we charge for that.”

Husband says, “That’s ridiculous.  I can buy this same grill from other places and get it assembled and then delivered.”  And she said sympathetically, “That’s what I think you should do.”

How many $1000+ sales can Sears afford to lose?  How many people are willing to go to Lowe’s and wind up paying more (no coupon; no discount code) for the convenience?

Lots of us.  Your customers are like that, too.  Do you have a “rigid rules” example? I’d love to hear it.

Yesterday I wrote about how you can lose a sale because your story is just too complicated or you are trying to be all things to all people.

Today’s post is about reason #3  of my Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best:  Your Rules of Engagement are Too Rigid.

There’s a fine line between doing whatever a customer wants, even if it’s not your core business, and learning from customers how they would like to receive your products and services.

How you present training, customer service, information or intellectual content is one example.  People learn in different ways and they have different preferences for how they take in information.  Some like to listen; others to read; still others want video.  Some people prefer live interactions in real time; others like to absorb at their own pace on their own time.  Some people like the phone, others like text; some like email, others like chat.  If you don’t offer easy alternatives for customers to select, you will lose customers.

I worked with a client that manufactures substances that are applied to road surfaces.  This client did not apply the substances that they sold; they only shipped them and then trained their customers on how to apply.  But eventually, they had to get into the business of doing the applications for those customers who demanded it.  Too many customers simply wanted them to do the entire job, and they found themselves leaving money on the table.  This company frequently–in fact perhaps always– had the best solution at a reasonable price for their prospective customer.  But they discovered that they were losing on some cases because the customer didn’t want to do the application, they didn’t want to learn it–even if that was the most cost-effective way.  The customers wanted greater simplicity, not less cost.

The way to balance flexibility with replicable process is to ask your customers, listen to what they say, and request a debrief every time you lose a deal that you expected to win.  Sometimes the reasons will surprise you and give you ideas for improvement.

Have you ever lost a deal because the customer wanted a different method of delivery?  Did it change your business?

On my list of 10 ways to lose (even when you’re the best), reason #2 is “Your story is too complex.”

Complexity in the sales story is a common flaw of young companies as they are growing.  You’re afraid to turn away any business, so you try to do almost anything that any prospect wants you to do.  Big mistake!  First off, it doesn’t work, and it will cost you money and anguish before you finally learn that hard lesson.  But also, it confuses your customers, making them afraid to buy from you, and leaving them unable to make a case for you to others who sit at the Buyers’ Table.  Large companies also fall into this trap as they add more products, services, and divisions.  Without careful management, these decisions dilute your brand and frighten your prospective customers.

A couple of examples.  One variation of this theme is the company that can do many things well, but these things are incompatible for various reasons.  Some time ago I worked with an early stage software development company that had a software product to feed data to a mobile handheld device, before this became commonplace.  This product could be used to develop and play digital games.  It could teach repairmen to fix office machines on site.  And it could help early responders find people who had been trapped in rubble from some natural disaster.  All interesting applications, for sure.  But the people who buy lifesaving equipment are a little freaked to buy it from gamers, and many prospects were worried about how much time, energy, and service would be devoted to their solution as opposed to the others which they didn’t want or need.  Too confusing.

Another variation is overkill in the marketing materials.  Several companies in the education industry have this problem; they offer so many reasons that their solution is the right one that school officials and school boards become overwhelmed.  What is the primary purpose, the primary benefit to the schools?  Cost savings?  Teacher support?  Better learning?  Improved assessment?  Up-to-date technology? Engagement with parents? Administrative services?  In some cases all of these benefits accrue to the buyers, but it’s a rare buying group that can comprehend it.  They need a simple story about a few salient points.

Two ways to help solve the complexity problem:

1. Simplify your business.  Make some hard decisions about your core business and target market.  Learn to say no to opportunities that don’t fit your Target Filter.  If you have several equally important lines of business, sell some off or market them through a strategic alliance.  Don’t allow your customers to be confused about who you are and what you do.
2. Simplify your story.  If you have a well-defined product or service that is by nature complex or solves multiple problems, work hard to craft a clear and simple message.  Remember that old five-paragraph theme you learned in Freshman Comp:  an introduction, three main points, and a conclusion.  Learn from your current customers what are the benefits they most value, and use that knowledge to keep it simple.

Have you ever had to simplify your story?  How did you do it?

Remember The Pretenders’ song “Brass in Pocket (I’m Special)?” [Go ahead--watch it! But come back, OK?]

There’s a sales lesson in those lyrics.

Yesterday I posted on Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  And the first way is when your service is too specialized.

“I’m special.”  “There’s no one like me.”

If you are the only company that does what you do, you have a serious problem.  You don’t have a market.  It is not generally a good circumstance to have no competitors.  In fact, it means you have create a market before you can even sell into that market.

“I’m gonna make you, make you, make you notice.”

How are you going to get noticed?  It takes a lot of work  with a new service that people aren’t thinking about.  There are lots of business services that we know we need–accounting, legal, telecommunications, insurance, office equipment, and on and on.  But what about services that come out of the blue?  One that comes to mind is “spend management,” pioneered by our client Ariba.   It’s big business now but was almost unheard of as a business service even ten years ago.

“Gotta have some of your attention, give it to me.”

How do you get in the door?  Who is your lead buyer?  Is anyone looking for what you are selling?  Who will pay attention? These are critical questions for the highly specialized company.  Your cost of sale is extremely high, your sales cycle is long, and your close rate is abysmal.

What can you do?  Companies that have successfully brought an entirely new service to market have effectively invented their new market.  Here are some strategies to consider:

• Aggressive thought leadership.  You’ll need to leverage all of your intellectual assets–especially those of your employees–to educate your potential customers.  White papers, newsletters, an informative blog, webinars (live and recorded) case studies of early adopters–all will be important to bring your concept to the attention of the new market that you are creating.
• Superior content strategy. Not only will you need to develop rich content to educate your buyers, you’ll need to get it out in public systematically and through multiple channels.  Make a plan for how to balance the social media sites with the sites you own (your website, your blog, your opt-in newsletter list).  What is the content you will post, what will you push, what will you pull, and how will you encourage your audience to react?  Don’t forget the live events either–executive briefings (ideally held at your location if it’s nice enough).
• Marketing/Sales Integration.  Far too many companies have a black hole between marketing and sales functions. But you simply can’t afford it.  What the sales team learns in conversations with prospects needs to be fed back into marketing, and both teams need to be on board with strategy and tactics.  You can’t market an unknown service with brochures.  You need dramatic, exuberant, visible tactics!

Have you ever been too special?  What did you do about it?

Image courtesy P5 Blog p5.blogspot.com