I will bet you have lost a sale and it seemed to come out of the blue and you never saw it coming. For weeks or months you kept telling your boss that you were 95% confident the sale would close soon. But, then it didn’t.
Have you heard that people make decisions based on emotion and then justify it with logic? What if that emotion was confidence they had made a high quality, low regret decision? What if you were building their confidence step by step over time so that the justification was “along the way rather than after the fact?”
Having worked in large corporations, I know how hard it is to compete for money, manpower, attention. I’ve heard, “maybe next year” all too often as I tried to convince management that new equipment would pay back handsomely, or more manpower was needed to adapt to changing technology.
One of the most difficult challenges was after spending 3+ years creating a consortium of companies to build a multipurpose radio with applications from a number of companies and hardware accessories from others. Sixty-five companies were signed on to support the Truck Productivity Computer. We could not call it TruckPC since that moniker was already taken by a company out of Utah. All was good until the 2002 dotcom bubble burst and trucking went very much south. A new CEO and a new strategy. Forget building share and concentrate on making profits.
At least they gave me a chance to shop the idea around the world. Too bad no one was interested in investing for the long term on this new product and technology. Today, we call it CarPlay by Apple that did not hit production until 2014. I got to take my shot, but did not hit my target. At least, as Alexander Hamilton sang in the musical,
I am not throwing away my shot
Hey yo, I’m just like my country
I’m young, scrappy and hungry
And I’m not throwing away my shot
It’s time to take a shot!
Over the years, I have learned to appreciate good sales people and to understand why they often rise to the top of organizations. They understand people and know how to adapt. They know when to go slow to develop a relationship and build trust. They know when to provide information and wait for it to be digested. They know when to press—sometimes ever so slightly.
One of my early consulting clients was schooled in “The New Power Base Selling” by Jim Holden. After reading that book, I recognized how some good sales people identified me early on as an ally and a fox. I helped them get support for my items in other parts of the organization, and helped him get support for other products as well. Sales are much more difficult when multiple people are involved. On one plan for a $10 million dollar simulation lab, I recall sitting in the CFO’s office and virtually slashing my wrist to convince how confident I was that the money and effort would pay back—especially in terms of preventing expensive warranty issues and recall expenses. Think about all the software recalls that are now occurring in cars and trucks.
One of the best books I read in the last decade is “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. Most recently, at the recommendation of a colleague, Mike Garrison of “Can I Borrow Your Car,” I read one of their sequels called “The Framemaking Sale.” I’ve not read, yet, The Challenger Customer.
The concept is that the customer needs to build confidence in the decision more than in you or your company. You may work hard to get them to trust you, but can they trust themselves. How many “digital transformations” or other internal strategy changes or culture changes or changes anything fail internally regardless of the trust in the supplier. They cannot trust themselves to deliver on the promise.
The Framemaking Sale quotes that caught my attention for today’s sellers and consultants looking to build trust. It’s trust in their ability to make a confident decision, not in you the seller.
- “It’s no wonder that 40-60 percent of B2B deals end in no decision. This stuff is hard.”
- “the best way to sell more predictably is to help customers buy more confidently”
- “sellers will first have to stop focusing on their ability to deliver value and instead build customers’ belief in their own ability to extract value.”
- “the pain of same is greater than the pain of change,”
- “fear of missing out and fear of messing up”
- “think of Framemaking as a fear-reduction toolkit:
- “No question, sales has always been about effective teaching. That hasn’t changed. But what has changed, and changed dramatically, is customer learning.”
- “Framemaking marks an important shift away from improving selling to improving buying.
Lost to a Parking Garage
In the book the Chief Medical Officer of a hospital did everything to prepare management and the board to buy a new, expensive imaging system. But, the Chief Marketing Officer identified a more important problem. People were going to other hospitals because the parking situation was terrible. The board selected to invest in a parking garage rather than the new imaging equipment.
The ReWild Group defines Business Development as
- Marketing
- Sales
- Customer Relations
Marketing finds and targets the right customers at the right time. Sales takes over from prospect to a closed sale. Customer Relations makes sure the promise is delivered and searches for additional business. Not every organization has people for these activities to all be separate people or organizations. The ReWild Group’s 7 Stages of Growth can help you transition from the founder doing it all, to having a single person for all of the Marketing/Sales/Customer Relations responsibilities to having a team internally and externally to support your growth.
Suppose you are a small company with just one sales person. You can learn, from these resources, how to approach and sell to your much larger customers that have multiple people that will be involved in the decision to buy. Even buying windows for your house, or cremation services or a new roof, often require the spouse to be present for the free meal introduction so that ALL the decision makers are involved.
Some additional quotes/thoughts from me:
MRR is a false indicator if you are not creating value each month, and letting people know they have made and are continuing to make a “high quality, low regret” value-based decision consistent with THEIR priorities.
There’s a better way that simplifies the complex and makes things clear. Create a Decision Rubric through lots of passionate discussion to build consensus and confidence.
“Fairytale endings are not business cocktail story endings” Paul Menig
Listen to Matt Pohl of The ReWild Group tells his own story of growing from a life-style business to an 8 figure exit in 3 years with 6X growth.
