The movie won numerous prestigious awards including: Oscar and Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor awards for Melvin Douglas, Golden Globe Best Actor award for Peter Sellers and others. Perhaps the most telling award was the 2015 winner of the National Film Preservation Board. The National Film Registry selects 25 films each year showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation.

The movie is based on the book “Being There” by Jerzy Kosinski. The premise of the satirical book and movie is that a completely sheltered gardener (Chance) has spent his entire life sequestered in an affluent family’s estate tending to their garden and watching TV. He has no formal education at all and his total life experience is gardening and TV. He can’t read or write. When the old man of the estate dies, Chance is forced into the outside world which he has never experienced.

By chance (pun intended), Chance meets some highly powerful people after they accidentally hit him with their car while backing up and insist on taking him home to recover. They mistakenly hear him say that his name is Chauncey Gardiner when he says that he is Chance the Gardener. He is referred to as Chauncey Gardiner thereafter. They take him for an affluent and successful man because his clothes are the expensive hand me downs from the rich old man he worked for and lived with his entire life.

The satire and humor is subliminal in that these rich, powerful folks start to consider Chauncey an amazingly brilliant man due to his simple expressions. He equates everything to a garden because that is all he knows. The rich family that has taken him in are friends with the President of the United States. They introduce Chauncey to the President and he asks Chauncey his opinion on the economy.

Chauncey’s response to the President is just one of the many priceless lines of dialog in the film: “It’s like a garden. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. Growth has its seasons. There will be growth in the spring.” From Chauncey’s simple allegory, the President quoted him in a speech to the nation on the state of the US economy.

Then everyone starts wondering who this economic genius Chauncey Gardiner is. He is invited on talk shows. He is consulted by other powerful world leaders to offer economic advice to them. His favorite response to any question is: “I understand.” The humor stems from the fact that he has no understanding of these complex issues and his only frame of reference is tending to a garden his whole life and watching TV shows.

So, watch the movie as it is an all-time classic that still stands the test of time some 29 years later with brilliant acting performances and script writing. But remember my admonition to you is: be careful who you consider to be an expert. “I understand.” I engage in a ton of “so called” expert communities and there are far more Chauncey Gardiner’s out there posing than real experts.

Good selling!

The post Don’t Trust Chauncey Gardiner! first appeared on True Sales Results.

• B – Budget (What is the prospect’s budget?)
• A – Authority (Does the prospect have decision making authority, or is she an influencer?)
• N – Need (What is the prospect’s business need?)
• T – Time frame (In what time frame will the prospect be implementing a solution?)

In the early days of selling an intangible product (i.e., software or back then called data processing), this was a handy way of conducting some basic qualification around whether or not it made sense to invest your precious sales resources in a sales pursuit.

As an aside, I was providing sales training to a relatively junior sales team a few years back. They used BANT as a qualification framework for their SDRs. So, I asked: “Who invented the BANT qualification framework?” And one of their most successful SDRs replied: “Joe invented BANT.” Joe was their SDR manager and the one that trained them on it. Thus, I replied: “No, actually it was IBM.” To which another one of their SDRs replied: “Who is IBM?”

True story. You can’t make this stuff up. I came to the stark realization that I needed to update my frame of references with this group. It also begged the question…when is it time to put something out to pasture? I’d submit that BANT should have been put out to pasture a long time ago and simply does not work as prescribed in the current selling world.

One of the smartest and most successful sales leaders I have ever had the pleasure of working with had a great quote related to BANT. He would often say that: “BANT is one of the worst things that ever happened to enterprise sales qualification efforts. Why? Because it was a pursuit of 4 unknowable, irrelevant things.” 

Allow me to substantiate this assertion. How many times have you gone through your BANT qualification process and deemed it a qualified sales opportunity to pursue? And then you discover at the outcome of your sales pursuit that there were major inconsistencies in what the prospect represented to you in the BANT qualification process and what ended up happening in reality.

How frequently is there a disconnect between your BANT findings and reality? In my experience as a longtime VP of Sales that disconnect happens…almost every single time. Why does this happen? Well, prospects will misrepresent (e.g., lie to you) to get what they want. They want to see product demo. They want to see your pricing proposal. And they don’t want to give up anything from their end to get what they want.

Sometimes prospects honestly don’t know what the BANT answers should be, particularly in a large enterprise sale. Perhaps they are a low-level project manager or analyst tasked with doing some preliminary research on certain technology options. It is quite common for these lower level people to represent that they have decision making authority when they don’t.

Let me debunk the BANT qualification framework and why it doesn’t work anymore:

B – Budget. Yes, there are established budgets for major technology refreshes, upgrades, renewals, etc. But what if you are selling a truly disruptive and new technology in to the enterprise? There isn’t a budget line item for what you sell because they have never recognized the need before and have never bought anything like what you sell.

Have you ever sold your solution to a prospect that did not have specific budget set aside for what you are selling? Absolutely yes! How do you accomplish that? Aside from great selling, you build an incredibly compelling value proposition with the prospect that proves out the costs and risks associated with not doing something with your solution are far outweighed by buying your solution. And they go get budget/funds based on this joint business case.

A- Authority. Do prospects embellish their decision making authority in the BANT qualification process? Hell yes! Don’t be naïve. Please consider that the average number of stakeholders involved in a complex technology buying decision has increased to 7.2 stakeholders. Don’t they all have their own agendas and specific needs and priorities?

I’d submit that all of the stakeholders involved in your complex sales buying process are decision makers. There is no one (1) single decision maker in an enterprise sale. In order to be successful, you have to engage, influence and sell to all the stakeholders (i.e., decision makers). There may be a single Economic Buyer who hits the final proverbial approval key in their SAP procurement process. But don’t confuse that person (that you most likely will not be given access to during your sales process) as the “decision maker”.

N – Need. “Need” is a very subjective term by definition. Needs, like priorities, often are shifting in large companies. Needs are also not one dimensional. Rather needs are inherently dynamic and relational by nature. The prospect may represent to you during the BANT qualification process that this is a high priority business need for them. And at the time of the call, it is actually a high priority for them.

How many times at the end of an enterprise sales pursuit, does a prospect go radio silent on you? You’ve committed this deal on your forecast to upper management. The stress starts hitting you like a ton of bricks. You feverishly endeavor to get the deal “back on the tracks”. You pull in your Board and C-Suite in an effort to revive the deal at the end of your quarter. Finally, you get an apologetic response from the prospect letting you know that your deal is on the backburner due some crisis or unanticipated higher priority issue that they have to deal with.

T – Time frame. As mentioned above, in large company’s priorities and hence project timelines constantly change. The prospect may honestly communicate what they anticipate the implementation time line is only to have that change do to shifting priorities.

The last thing to note about time frames is that large companies report that the technology evaluation and buying process typically takes 2X longer than they had anticipated. Say hello to my little friend called the enterprise IT procurement process! Remember all those stakeholders involved that keeps increasing year after year? Well, they all have to get on the same page (e.g., consensus buying) and go through their individual approval processes. That is no trivial task. Be smart… double whatever time frame the prospect gives for an answer to when do you plan to implement this solution question.

Rest in peace my dear BANT framework. You have gallantly served us for many decades but it is time to modernize our discovery and discernment process. It is time for you to be put out to pasture.

Good selling!

The post To BANT or Not to BANT, That is the Question… first appeared on True Sales Results.

Rather than regaling you with the sobering statistics and trends on technology sales performance, I thought I’d share my real world experiences with you. I run a B2B sales enablement consultancy. In short, we help sales organizations learn how to engage and sell more effectively.

Technology sales has been my career and passion for over 25+ years. When I am conducting an introductory call with a new prospective client, I can now play a game analogous to the old magic parlor trick of “pick a card, any card…now don’t tell me what your card was and put it back in the deck and I will tell you what your card was.”

I simply ask the VP of Sales if they’d like to play a discovery game and learn about my prescient sales enablement abilities. This is typically followed by a nervous laugh and a reply of: “Sure, what the heck I’ll play the game with you.” Then I tell them that I’m going to share my screen with them. There are two slides on my screen. One is blank and the other is not blank but turned over (just like the back side of a playing card:-).

“Here’s how the game works…” As I further coach my potential new client on the rules of this game. I’m going to ask you to tell me what your top 3-5 sales challenges are and in real time, I’ll type them up so we both can see them on my shared screen as we fill out the blank card. Then I’ll turn over the card that is already filled out with the top 3-5 sales challenges that I hear from virtually every VP of Sales that I speak with. Let’s compare the cards and see if I was able to guess what your challenges are.”

What percentage of the time do you think the two cards match up identically? Let’s just say that my magic trick of predicting what their top sales challenges are is far less susceptible to “picking the wrong card from the deck” in the aforementioned old school parlor magic trick.

All of this begs the question…when will we grow up in technology sales? How long will we keep accepting abysmal and falling quota attainment rates? At what point do we stop accepting the failure rates and inefficiencies? The technology sales status quo desperately has to change. In fact, I’d submit that a huge transformation is needed now.

As a lifelong technology sales professional, I take this situation very personally. I take great umbrage at the current technology sales state of the union and simply refuse to accept the status quo.

I have been working on some new ideas around this whole technology sales transformation area and look forward to bringing some of those ideas to fruition in 2018.

Happy Holidays to all and close all your deals!!!

The post When Will We Grow Up in Technology Sales? first appeared on True Sales Results.

My Grandfather had to drop out of school at a very young age to help earn money to support the family. He told me he would leave his house at sunrise and would look for any odd jobs to bring home 20 or 25 cents for working 10-12 hours. His Stepmother took from him any money that he earned. He really had a hard knock life growing up, so he lied about his age and enlisted in the Navy during World War I. The irony is that my Grandfather never learned how to swim and yet was in the Navy during WW I on boats and in the water that he was deathly afraid of for years. He sent home his meager Navy paycheck and asked his Stepmother to start a savings account for him so when he got out of the Navy he could have enough money saved to marry my Grandmother, who was his next door neighbor since they were both born. 

Here’s the Disney movie twist, when my Grandfather got out of the Navy he found out that his Stepmother had spent all of the money that he was sending home to save and marry my Grandmother. So he was forced to sign back up again for another stint in the Navy to start all over again and save money to marry my Grandmother. This time he sent home his paychecks to my Grandmother to save in a bank account for him. This delayed their marriage by 4 years, so needless to say my Grandmother wasn’t terribly fond of my Grandfather’s Stepmother. My Grandparents lived through the Great Depression and worked incredibly hard to raise my Dad and Uncle. They saved their entire lives and bought a house. When my Uncle got married, as a wedding present my Grandparents gave him their house and they moved into an apartment. They never owned a home again for the rest of their lives. My Grandmother never had a driver’s license or drove a car in her life (she lived to be 93 years old) because they couldn’t afford two cars.

What did I learn from my Grandparents? That hard work, sacrifice, commitment and integrity are the keys to be successful in this world. My Grandfather always wanted to know what job I had and was I doing the absolute best that I could at that job. He helped to instill in me a competitive drive around always trying my hardest at any task or endeavor that I was undertaking. He modeled for me that your work ethic is what separates you from the rest and it can create great opportunities for you. 

Why do I have such a freakishly strong competitive drive? It’s probably attributable to several factors. Growing up, my older brother was always bigger and stronger than me, which he reminded me of on almost a daily basis by a friendly big brother pounding on little brother:-) He took his responsibility of toughening me up very seriously, I can assure you. Then my younger sister was a freakishly gifted athlete and faster than me. So I couldn’t catch her in a foot race. Being the middle child of us three kids was the root cause of my competitive spirit developing early in life.

So when you are slower than your younger sister and weaker than your older brother, how the hell do you compete? At first it was incredibly frustrating because I would pretty much lose at everything. And growing up, my family was all about the competition whether it was sports, cards, playing Yahtzee, Ping-Pong, eating food, anything and everything was a competition.  Since I hate losing and was always losing at everything, I needed to figure out a way to win. At least some of the time:-) I came to the realization that I needed to be more clever when competing and have a better strategy to win because I wasn’t going to win solely on my athletic abilities. 

I figured out that I could unnerve my sister during competition by trash talking her and getting under her skin. We would play tennis and while she was a better pure tennis player than me, she would lose every time because I’d get under her skin by trash talking and playing trick shots. With my brother, I’d only compete in games where strength wasn’t an advantage and that winning strategy determined the winner. We would play Ping-Pong endlessly and I would use spin shots to frustrate him while he would always try to slam the ball and hit it too hard. I was winning against him regularly and getting him to lose his temper was a factor. 

I’m probably one of the only people that knew I wanted to be a professional salesman while in High School. I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted to sell. I just knew that I wanted to sell. The irony is that there isn’t a College degree or program for selling. So I got a degree in Business with a concentration in Marketing. Why did I want to sell? Because sales represented the purest opportunity to compete every day in my professional life. I ended up getting into enterprise software sales 25+ years ago. I started off as an inside sales rep cold calling and sending letters (yes, I said sending letters, aka snailmail:-) to target accounts and prospects. Then I graduated to an outside sales role and became the #1 sales rep in the company. I got promoted to a sales director role, opened up our west coast office and grew it to be the biggest revenue producing region in the company.  I was blessed to be part of the team over 7.5 years that grew the company (I was employee#10) and that culminated in a successful IPO.

Then I went on to become a VP of Sales and transitioned more into a strategic role and leading sales teams. I started my own company 10 years ago that specializes in B2B sales enablement services and outsourced sales services. I’ve been quite fortunate in my career and as I move into the “back nine”, sunset years of my career, I like to give back by mentoring and coaching sales professionals. It brings back fond memories of growing up with my Grandfather and competing with my siblings. I believe that the competitive spirit is innate. You are either hard wired to be competitive and it’s in your DNA or you aren’t. Some people hate conflict or will do anything to avoid a confrontation. That doesn’t mean anything negative, it’s just how they are hard wired.

True competitors relish a challenge. We seek conflict when we can affect a more positive outcome than the status quo. We drive change because progress and improvement aren’t optional to competitors. We lead and blaze new trails with an insatiable thirst to discover new and better ways. We relentlessly analyze process and seek optimization. We aren’t afraid to experiment and fail. Just fail fast and learn from each failure so as to not repeat it ever again. Are you a true competitor?

The post Are You a True Competitor? first appeared on True Sales Results.

In the 1980’s, Ford Motor company has a slogan “Quality is Job One”.  This was in direct response to the Japanese auto manufacturers kicking their butts with fuel efficient cars while the Big Three (GM, Ford and Chrysler) American auto manufacturers fell asleep at the wheel (bad pun intended:-) and kept stubbornly manufacturing gas guzzlers.  The 1980’s and 1990’s also brought about an era of enterprise focus quality control and improvement initiatives.  Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award all emerged during this era with great fanfare and corporate participation.

I vividly recall my first software sales job back in 1989.  We used to print out all sales correspondence (sales letters, brochures, data sheets, presentations, proposals, contracts, etc.) and mail them to our prospects and customers.  If it was an important collateral piece like a proposal or contract, then we would FedEx it overnight with signature required to the decision maker.  Our small sales team had a sales proposal manager and he was responsible for drafting all sales proposals in the word processing software package WordStar. Mac had a Masters degree in English and was blessed with an incredible vocabulary, perfect grammar and both a wicked sense of humor and temper.  He personally had to review, proof and approve all sales correspondence before we could send it out to the prospect or customer.  Mac was a perfectionist when it came to writing and grammar.

One time I was under pressure to turn around a fairly complex and big sales proposal quickly.  Mac had a back log of proposals in his queue and I was trying to rush him to get mine reviewed and approved so I could FedEx it out to my hot prospect.  My draft had some grammatical errors and typos in it and every time he gave it back to me to correct, I would rush even more on the editing process and the next version would have new typos or errors.  We went back and forth and I grew agitated and said something to the effect of “this doesn’t have to be perfect Mac, you’re obsessing over the wrong things as we need to get this out or risk losing this deal”.  His response was something to the effect of “yes this does have to be perfect because it is a representation of this company (small software start up at the time) and all the people that work here including me.  And we risk losing the deal more by rushing and sending out a mistake filled proposal that reflects poorly on us”.

It was an incredibly important business lesson that I learned that day because Mac was absolutely correct.  We were a small software start up selling our HR software application to large, F1000 companies and everything we produced and sent to the prospect created an impression in terms of what type of company we would be like to partner with.  Mac and I worked together for 7.5 years.  I was given an opportunity to open the west coast office after closing our first enterprise deal with Intel.  Ironically, Intel was the proposal that Mac and I argued over.  As the SF Bay Area office that I opened for the company started to grow fast, I made a request to our CEO.  Could Mac relocate from Boston and manage the SF Bay Area office with me?  I had already discussed this with Mac and he had family in the SF Bay Area and loved the area so he was all for it.  He moved and was invaluable in supporting the growth and success of our west coast office which culminated in the company going through a successful IPO in the mid 1990’s.

So every time I receive an email or any form of sales correspondence that are chock full of typos or grammatical errors, I fondly remember the lesson that Mac taught me that yes, quality does matter!

The post When Did Quality Die? first appeared on True Sales Results.

Most political pundits suggest that over the long haul, the Hillary Clinton machine will win the Democratic nomination for President. Although I’m not sure that Bernie’s popularity is going to fade.  Rather, I happen to believe that his popularity and odds for winning the Democratic nomination for President are only going to increase over time.  Why?

The numbers don’t lie.  He is crushing Hillary in the youth vote category (18-29 years old) as young voters favor him by 84% to 14% over Hillary.  Another key metric to pay attention to is the number of contributions that Bernie has received.  He’s just about hit 2 million individual donations to his campaign from voters.  Relatively modest donations averaging $30 each, but nonetheless 2 million is a huge number.  In fact, he will easily surpass Obama’s 2012 re-election total campaign donations of 2.2 million in the next few months.  What’s so ironic about his popularity with the young voter demographic is that Sanders is 73 years old and by far the oldest candidate running for President in either party.

So I come back to my original question…. what can sales people learn from Bernie Sanders?  The answer is empathy.  What I’ve observed in every speech he gives or every debate he participates in, Bernie is a master empathizer.  That’s why he connects with the young voter demographic so well and that’s why he connects with the female voter demographic so well. Genuine empathy can be inspirational to people and motivate them to action.  Doesn’t that start to sound a little like what great sales people do?

My observation after 25+ years in enterprise sales is that empathy isn’t often discussed as one of the key traits of high performing sales reps.  But it should be at the top of the list or in the top few traits of high performers at a minimum.  I always hear competitive, aggressive, challenging, etc. as the key traits of highly successful sales people.  But I can tell you the two best sales reps that have ever worked for me were the opposite of competitive, aggressive or challenging.  They were master empathizers, first and foremost.  I nicknamed one of them the silent assassin because he would talk the least in every sales meeting.

While the other members of my sales team would take turns trash talking each and beat their chests proclaiming that they would sell more software and be the top dog at the end of the fiscal year.  My silent assassin would quietly, but lethally go about his business.  He listened and discerned better than any enterprise sales rep conducting discovery with a prospect that I’ve ever experienced.  He was incredibly insightful with his questions and observations.  He could come out of an intense full day meeting with key prospect stakeholders and tell me exactly what happened in incredible detail and formulate the right strategy based on what he discerned through the meeting.

True story alert! I actually had one software sales recruiter tell me once that what I needed for my open sales rep position was ” the kind of sales rep that will crawl over broken glass and kill bringing fresh meat home to eat”.  Needless to say this recruiter happened to have exactly that type of sales candidate at the ready, which he was more than happy to charge me the incredibly modest sum of $30K to hire.  I replied that it sounded too violent and bloody for my tastes and that we hired kinder, gentler sales reps that understood and connected with our customers.

What does empathy mean?  I happen to like the Wikipedia definition, which is: Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s position (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy).  The fact is that we are all hard wired in our DNA to want to feel understood.  It’s visceral need for all human beings.

Great sales reps do an amazing job of connecting with their customers and winning them over.  We convince them that we understand their pain. We know the pressures that they are under from a business perspective.  We know how to help them and overcome their business challenges.  We can make their pain go away and help them become more successful at their job and career.  We have lots of experience working with people (customers) just like you and helping them solve these same challenges and pain points.

The key to doing this well is to be genuine.  Bad sales reps attempt to empathize, but fail miserably and undermine their own credibility.  These are the same sales reps that never can understand why they lose more than they win.  These are the same sales reps that always ask the silent assassins of the enterprise sales world what their secret is for sales success.

So allow me to tie this all together with a pretty bow on top…Bernie Sanders is empathizing and connecting with his supporters by continually sharing with him that he understands their key pain points and frustration.  He knows most voters are disgusted by the state of Washington DC and the status quo.  He knows why people are angry at politicians and tired of being fed the same old line of bullshit.  His entire platform is an empathy based one and he’s sticking to that narrative because it’s working.

“Feel the Bern” is one of his campaign slogans and it’s all about the fact that he feels your frustration, understands it and agrees that the status quo has to be changed.  IMHO, Bernie Sanders is providing a Master’s level class in how to sell more effectively.  Just ask the millions of customers, ahem, I mean voters that he has won over. Hint: remember the definition of empathy I provided earlier in this post?  Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being is experiencing… Feel the Bern people, he’s empathizing with you.

The post What Sales Reps Can Learn from Bernie Sanders? first appeared on True Sales Results.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are in sales that really struggle with how to close the deal. I personally have had sales reps work for me that know how to work the sales process, position competitively and get the verbal nod and then are clueless as to how to drive the deal over the goal line to closure. They would just hand the negotiating and closing over to me. Many do the same with their VP of Sales.

I would submit that expert sales teams consider all sales processes to be binary, either it results in a closed deal/sale (success) or it results in a lost deal/no decision (failure). When you consider sales through that black or white aperture, it’s more important than ever to have an effective sales play on how to negotiate and close the sale.

Whether you’re brand new to sales, or you’ve been successfully selling for 20+ years, it’s always beneficial to refresh yourself with best practices sales negotiating and closing tactics.   This blog post will share my thoughts and a sales play framework on how to effectively close sales deals.

First of all, a bit of context would be useful. My background is 25+ years selling enterprise software and technology solutions to the enterprise (Fortune 1000 companies). My sales leadership experience is in managing classic B2B enterprise sales teams selling high-end technology solutions ranging from six figure to eight figure deals.

In this environment, the sales process can take between 6-18 months on average depending on multiple variables such as the deal size, maturity of the market that you’re selling into, the competitive landscape, the acuteness of the business pain for the prospect (i.e., have they hit a true inflection point or not?), etc. This is selling to an enterprise buying committee with a diverse set of stakeholders including representatives from the line of business (LoB), IT, finance, procurement, legal, etc. It’s not unusual to have to engage and sell to 6-9+ different key stakeholders during the sales process and your prospect’s buying journey.

During the buying journey, you’ll need to discover and discern the power structure and dynamics between all of the key stakeholders. Do they like each other? What is their personal win(s)? Are they aligned in their pain and value proposition? What resonates with them? Who has the most influence and power in the decision process? It’s a bit like putting on your Dr. Phil sales hat (http://www.drphil.com) and building a psychological profile on all the key stakeholders and then constructing an overall profile with the complex buying committee dynamics in place.

With that context in mind, I ask: “how many enterprise sales teams out there have an effective How to Close Sales Play or Framework developed?”. This is different from a generic closure plan or checklist, which tends to focus on the milestones and key people involved in getting a contract signed and purchase order issued. Rather this sales play is a strategy and framework for how you best prepare for the negotiations, what you should anticipate and how you should respond to certain actions that commonly come up during contract negotiations.

Here is a simple how to close framework and sales play that I have used previously with great success:

• Identify and cultivate a true champion – All great sales people find and cultivate a true Champion. That Champion guides them through the buying journey and provides coaching that helps the sales team successfully understand and navigate that companies’ buying dynamics. The Champion becomes most critical during negotiations, as they are emotionally invested in a successful outcome and can assist in dealing with the procurement process and people that don’t have the context or use case understanding. They become a confidant and trusted ally.
• Have a plan– What is your negotiating strategy and plan? Do you have one or are you going in to negotiations in a completely reactive mode? I can assure you that going into a negotiation without a well thought out plan and strategy most often fails. What are the most important aspects for the customer? What are the most important things for you and your company? How are you going to engage with them and guide this deal to closure? Who will be involved from your end and the customer’s end? What personality types will be involved in the negotiations? What are the negotiating style and tendency and culture of the prospect? The answers to those questions should inform a well thought out strategy and plan.
• Be willing to adapt your plan– All effective plans have contingency plans and back up to the back up plans. I once went through a business negotiating program where they present you with a blank plan for the original US Lunar Landing mission, i.e., our first landing of man on the moon. Our job in this exercise was to think through all of the things that could go wrong and assume that they would go wrong. Then consider the implications of multiple things going wrong at the same time or in different sequences. It was an analytically draining process that taught me there are an infinite number of things that go wrong in any process. Plan in advance for the common process breakdowns so you can recover gracefully and not commit a fatal mistake on something fundamental simply because you didn’t think it through properly in advance rather than in the heat of the moment.
• It’s not personal, it’s business– One of my first sales mentors always told me “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” Why did he constantly tell me that?   Because I have a tendency to be rather passionate and do take things personally when I shouldn’t. In any business negotiation, losing your temper or letting emotions weigh into your thought process is certain ruin. Don’t allow it to happen.
• Give personal wins, get personal wins- It sounds cliché but you need to understand and structure mutual, personal wins in to the negotiations. A one-sided relationship or agreement is inherently unhealthy and will typically fail down the road. You need to understand in advance what the prospect’s wins are and why and you need to share with them what your wins are and why. That baseline establishes a value parameter that is really helpful to come back to when negotiations are at an impasse. I.e., A why are we both doing this in the first place reminder….
• Remember your value prop- Good sales teams always have collaborated with the customer on building a business case and associated ROI for budgetary justification and approval. Don’t abandon that value proposition in your negotiations! In fact, come back to it and reinforce this is the process that both parties went through and this is why it makes sound business sense to move forward and collaborate. Let’s do this!
• Know when to say “No”- I wrote a separate blog post on the power of “No” in sales (truesalesresults.com/2015/10/the-power-of-no-in-sales)…all shameless promotion aside, it’s a good read that got a lot of positive response. And it certainly applies to negotiating and closing the deal.
• Don’t be afraid to walk away- One of the hardest things for sales teams to do after they’ve invested a ton of time and their heart and souls in a sales process is to walk away. Aside from the commission dollars, it’s a matter of personal pride for extremely competitive people who like to win and/or hate to lose. Suffice to say you need to think through when it makes sense for you to walk away from the deal and have the conviction to do so when that line is crossed.

Curious to get your thoughts on sales best practices how to close frameworks and sales plays on how to close the deal artfully….

The post Closing the Sales Deal Like a Champ (AKA: The How to Close Sales Play) first appeared on True Sales Results.

Over the next 3-4 months, I had more coffee/lunch/dinner/cocktail meetings to introduce my new business and consulting services than I ever could have imagined.  I always insisted on picking up the tab for the coffee/lunch/dinner/cocktails as I invited the colleagues to the meeting and I valued their input and feedback.  A lot of times, the initial person that I met with didn’t have an immediate opportunity within their company, but they would refer me to someone they knew that was potentially in need of my services.  I made sure to keep meticulous notes on how the networking connections and meetings were originated because I was meeting with folks that were 3rd and 4th level degrees of separation from the original contact in my network.

My business plan called for me to secure my first paying client within six (6) months.  I committed myself to developing the business without a dime of incoming revenue for 6 months, after that I was prepared to update my resume and start interviewing for a full time VP of Sales position.  My first client contract was signed after 5 months and 30 days of starting the business.  That is the absolute truth without an ounce of sales embellishment! I ended up winning my second client a month later and True Sales Results was officially off to the races as a business.  Over the last ten (10) years, I’ve learned a lot about being an entrepreneur and what that means to me.

First, let me provide some context for what being an entrepreneur means to me (after all, that is the name of this blog post)…it means waking up every day for the past ten years without a salary or a guaranteed income.  It means not having a company pay for your health insurance, vacation, retirement, sick time or any benefits.  It means that I’m sales, customer service, accounts receivable and payable and chief bottle washer all rolled up into one.  It means that having the confidence in my abilities to generate enough value and corresponding revenue to properly support my family from a financial perspective.

Here are some of the invaluable lessons that I’ve learned as an entrepreneur over the past 10 years:

• Focus – Be laser like focused on what you deliver for a service, it’s value proposition, and how it’s different and better than alternatives.  Too many entrepreneurs fall prey to the “kitchen sink” mentality and complete lack of focus.  Their web sites read like an unabridged dictionary with all of their service offerings.  I’m often reminded of the figure of speech; “A Jack of All Trades and Master of None”. Note to self, people are strongly inclined to prefer working with the “Master” versus someone who doesn’t specialize in one or two particular areas.  What are you truly an expert at? Whatever is your strongest business skill set should be your focus area and you shouldn’t deviate from it.
• Conviction – Being a self-employed entrepreneur isn’t for everyone.  There is a certain risk tolerance level that you inherently either possess or you don’t.  I offer a lot of coaching and mentoring to people that are considering starting their own consulting business.  Invariably what cracks me up is people that start off by asking for starting their own business advice and then in the next breath saying that they are open to a full time job if I know of one.  Do you have the conviction to go 6 months without a penny in income?  Are you confident in your abilities to generate business and revenues from scratch over a sustained period of time?  If you are trying to straddle the fence in between full time jobs, don’t bother hanging your “consulting shingle” out there because savvy business people can see right through that guise.
• Be Choosy About Your Customers – I’m quite fortunate in that I’ve had the opportunity to work with some awesome customers over the past ten years.  I learn from every new engagement.  The bulk of our business is repeat business or word of mouth referral business.  At this stage on my professional career, I insist on working with smart, cool people that are doing interesting things.  And yes, I’ve “fired” a few customers over the years. And it’s liberating to be able to tell someone that they can keep their money, you don’t need it badly enough to warrant working with assholes.
• Trust Your Gut – There have been a few instances over the years where there have been some awkward signals that emerged during the business development process with a prospect.  Twice I have ignored my gut instinct to walk from the client because they were unreasonable or seemed difficult to work with.  In both cases, I came to regret ignoring my gut and had awful experiences that were quite painful.  If your gut is telling you this prospect isn’t a good fit or likely will be a problematic customer to please, then cut bait and run away as fast as possible.  Life’s too short to waste working with jerks.
• Be Passionate About Quality – Repeat business is earned by delivering a high quality service and customer experience.  Refuse to accept anything less than the highest quality standard that you can possibly deliver. And be passionate and ruthless in delivering on that highest level of quality.  Don’t allow anyone or anything to compromise your quality, as that is your brand, so guard it maniacally.

Over the past ten years, we at True Sales Results have trained over 10,000 B2B sales professionals globally.  We’ve delivered Global sales kickoffs in Asia, Europe and North America for multiple Fortune 1000 companies.  And we’ve helped start-ups going to market with a new product ramp up and train their sales teams and sales coaches.  We’ve developed and delivered well over 100 custom Sales Playbooks to our customers.  We’ve helped sales teams learn how to engage and sell more effectively.  We look forward to working with the next 10,000 B2B sales professionals in the years to come!

The post What does being an entrepreneur mean to me? first appeared on True Sales Results.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_you_know_where_your_children_are%3F)  So I’m rephrasing that question for all B2B technology solutions companies and asking you: “It’s 10pm, do you know where your value proposition is?”  The obvious insinuation stemming from the fact that it’s getting late and you had better know where your children are at 10pm or 1pm…or else bad things would happen to them.  Thus if you are trying to sell your software solution to the enterprise, then you had better know where and what your value prop is before it’s too late!

It never ceases to amaze me is how many B2B technology sales organizations struggle with articulating their value prop.  Either they really haven’t figured out what it is or they don’t know how to tell it simply and clearly.  Being based in Silicon Valley for the past 20 years, I know first hand how much we love to take the simple and clear and make it complex and confusing.  It’s almost as if we feel that the more syllables and complicated words we use to describe our value proposition, the more valuable it will become or be perceived.  Unfortunately, that verbose and complex variation of a value prop backfires all too often.

What is a value proposition?  There are many definitions out there.  Some of the definitions are simpler than other.  Not surprisingly, I prefer the simpler versions of the definition.  I would define a value proposition as “The promise of value that you can deliver to your customer that is easily measured and received by your customer as a result of working with you.”  A perfect example of this is FedEx.  In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, FedEx used an advertisement campaign that famously declared in their tag line:  ““When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight.”  They changed the game against their much larger competitor at the time Emery Worldwide and ended up establishing themselves as the de facto overnight shipping company (source: http://www.tronviggroup.com/value-not-price/).

Why was the FedEx value prop so effective? It was simple to understand.  It was clear and credible.  It was memorable.  And they focused on delivering this value proposition with a money back guarantee if they didn’t deliver your package overnight successfully.  So if you had to have something delivered overnight, why would you even bother considering anyone other than FedEx?  It’s a pretty compelling example of the power and effectiveness of a great value prop applied in the business world.  We can and should learn from the FedEx lesson and do the same in the B2B enterprise software sales world.

Here are some tips and advice for building an effective value proposition:

• If it’s more than two sentences long, it’s too long.  But don’t create one long run on sentence, because it will still be too long!
• If it takes you more than 20-30 seconds to tell it, it’s too long
• An 8th grade student should be able to effectively tell your value prop, or it’s too complicated
• Every customer should easily understand and believe your value prop
• Every customer should easily be able to quantify and objectively measure the value that you are delivering to them
• You should have real world examples to substantiate the assertions and math behind your value proposition
• Avoid fuzzy or gray area aspects in your value prop because if there is even an shadow of doubt about the validity of one element of your value prop, then the whole thing won’t be believed by your customers
• Ask yourself: Is it credible? How do I prove it? Is it clearly differentiated from my competitors value prop?
• Use simple words and business terms that will resonate with your customer

A litmus test question that I like to ask my customers about their value prop is: “What is the single most important area of value that you deliver to your customer?”  Most sales people are guilty of talking too much.  They tend to think that if they tell a value prop that has lots of different elements to it, then it will be more valuable to the customer.  I submit that is exactly the wrong approach to take because you then dilute and undermine the credibility of your value prop by bringing up things that the customer doesn’t care about.  Another great barometer of identifying what your value prop is to ask existing customers that have been using your products or services what value they have derived and in their experience what is the single most important area of value that they have received.  How did they quantify or measure the value that your product or service has delivered to them?

I’ll share a real world anecdote around the struggles companies experience in knowing their real value proposition.  We develop custom sales playbooks for our customers.  Every engagement kicks off with a deep dive discovery process.  We conduct discovery calls with their top sales performers, execs, product managers, marketing, engineering and a select few of their most successful customers.  In this real world anecdote, this was a successful software company that was growing fast and had been it business for over ten years.  They had an excellent, very experienced sales team (i.e., sales reps, sales engineers and first line sales managers) that all had worked together for many years and had built a strong chemistry internally and externally. Their customers absolutely loved their software product.  Many of their customers started out using their software product in one line of business (LoB) and then due to the success of the software product, expanded it’s use across multiple LoBs and even enterprise wide in several of the largest enterprises in the world.  That’s a VP of Sales fantasy dream as it was a classic “Land and Expand” sales play tailor made for the enterprise and F1000 companies.

Here’s what is so interesting about this story.  Their execs and sales team did a phenomenal job on all of our discovery calls.  Their depth of knowledge about their customers, their products, the competition, etc. was unparalleled based on our ten years of experience doing this with software and technology companies.  They were struggling to get a few of their best customers to agree to do the discovery call with us due to common reasons: need them for reference calls, they just spoke at our user conference, we’re in the midst of a sensitive licensing negotiation with them and can’t risk jeopardizing it, etc.   So we started writing the draft sales playbook and I went back to the VP of Sales one last time and reiterated the importance of capturing their customers’ perspective in the playbook.  They ended up getting a CIO from one of the largest Financial Services firms in the world to agree to do the call.  It was incredibly insightful as he shared some really important things with me that had not come up during the initial discovery calls with their sales team.  He told me that they had learned what was most valuable about the software wasn’t something that was included as part of my client’s value proposition that was articulated to them during the sales process and his buying journey.  In fact, it was something that they as a customer learned over time as they expanded the use of the software across multiple LoBs within their huge organization and gained more experience with the product.

I went back to the execs and sales leaders and shared the new value proposition with them.  What really resonated about what the CIO told me is how he replied when I asked what they saw as the most important aspect of the value prop: “It’s ironic that you asked that question because my team recently had a meeting about company X and their software product and we were all laughing and saying that if we had known about the core value proposition that we’ve discovered during the sales process and negotiating process, then we wouldn’t have needed the detailed proof of concept (PoC) or waited so long to expand use of their software.  The value prop that they shared with us during the sales process sounded very similar to their competitor’s value proposition so we didn’t know whom to believe.    And what we discovered as their unique value proposition to us through using the product, was truly unique to their product and no other competitor offers that in the way that they do.”

Needless to say we added that customer’s version of the value proposition to the sales playbook and focused the sales training exercises and proficiency role playing exams on this key point.  They’ve now discovered a better way to sell by learning their real value proposition from a customer.

My wise grandmother always used to tell me starting in High School that “No good things happen after midnight.”  And if you think about it, she was absolutely right.  When do you hear about “good” news stories or happenings after Midnight? So use this metaphor and real world sales lesson to go find your true value prop before it’s too late!

The post It’s 10pm, Do You Know Where Your Value Prop Is? first appeared on True Sales Results.

Suffice to say, all sales leaders hate surprises.  Going back to the definition of the word above, it really does feel like you are under attack when you receive a sales surprise.  One of the core qualities of top sales leaders is that they have good and accurate visibility into their sales pipeline and forecast. Their sales teams tend to consistently produce the revenues that they forecast on a quarterly and annual basis.  Top sales leaders pride themselves on accurate forecasting and refuse to accept sales reps on their team getting surprised.

When I assess the quality of a sales team or organization, some of the first things I want to know are:

• How often do you experience sales surprises?
• What % of those sales surprises are positive versus negative?
• How do you reconcile the surprises?
• What impact have these surprises had on your business over the past year?
• How do you prevent the same negative surprise from happening again?
• What have you learned from these surprises?
• Is it the same sales rep(s) or different sales reps that the surprises happen with?
• What was the cause of your negative sales surprises?

The answers to those questions really helps inform me of their sales culture and where there may be immediate opportunity for sales improvement. The most common cause underlying almost all negative sales surprises is a failure in the sales discovery process.  Here are some root cause examples of common “Sales Discovery Failures”:

• Sales efforts were not aligned with the actual buyer’s journey (no inflection point hit)
• Didn’t probe and discover deep enough (i.e., 2^nd and 3^rd level questions)
• Didn’t engage wide enough with all the key stakeholders
• Failed to confirm that there was both a Champion and an Economic Buyer
• Failed to reconcile discovery findings contradictions
• Selling the product too soon (i.e., bag diving)
• Inability to really listen and discern (i.e., “happy ears”)

All of these symptoms above of sales discovery failure causes lead to what I often refer to as: “How to get blindsided in a sales opportunity”

The question then becomes how do you prevent sales surprises from happening. Here is a simple, prescriptive approach for how to prevent sales surprises from happening:

• Have a well developed discovery framework and sales playbook
• Identify all the key stakeholders that need to be engaged in selling your solution, what matters to them, how they are measured and what should specifically resonate about your solution to each stakeholder
• Create a succinct list of “smart questions” tailored to each stakeholder
• Get your best sales reps and video tape them conducting mock discovery calls with subject matter experts (SMEs) playing the various customer stakeholder roles
• Create a discovery checklist tool that sales managers use with their teams and can provide weekly coaching and feedback through
• Identify the evidence and facts necessary for sales managers to confirm and validate that their sales team members are executing effective sales discovery with every opportunity
• Practice discovery role playing sessions and workshops with your sales team
• Have real customers come in and share their perspective of what they liked and didn’t like about the way that your sales team engaged them and conducted discovery
• Hold people accountable for negative and costly sales surprises that could have been avoided
• Create a short list of what common sales surprises you’ve experienced, what the root causes were, and how they could have been prevented in the first place

So if you don’t want to be the red faced sales leader that has to explain to the C-level execs why you were blindsided on a key sales opportunity, incorporate some of these sales best practices into your sales culture and fabric. Doesn’t the picture of the cute little red headed girl really capture the essence of being surprised?

The post When was your last sales surprise? first appeared on True Sales Results.