Are You Desperate for a Sale?
October 22nd, 2009 by David Utts
Given our recent economic woos, Many senior executives are asking their key client facing people to be more aggressive in the market place. For example, many partners in professional services firms we work with are feeling the pressure to engage their clients, focus on building a pipeline of prospects and most importantly close new sales. And for many professional services firms whose services where highly valued and utilized prior to the economic crisis and before – consultants are rusty, at best, in ramping up the mindset to sell. Yet many partners and senior executives being asked to engage in more selling have never had to do it this intensely their entire careers! This creates a particular challenge for many firms who feel the need to speed up the selling process in order to get results.
Now before I say anything else, it must be reinforced that there is a lot right with reinforcing a sales oriented culture. To be even more candid – pipeline development and harvesting needs to be your philosophy in good times as well as challenging ones! Hopefully the wake up call that has been ignited from these challenging times will continue as a standard operating approach.
When your business development efforts are driven from more negative states of mind – your client and prospects will sense this. When they do they will tend to withdraw and worse yet if they perceive your approach is one primarily focused on your need to sell – it can generate negative opinions about you and your company. Not only will this approach generate fewer sales – when the economy does turn in a more positive direction (which it appears to be starting to do) and clients begin to invest more in external resources – your approach may have downgraded their trust in your intent and therefore lead to few opportunities over the long term.
Here are a few mistakes organizations make during tough times that get them in trouble:
- As indicated before, we go into “blitz mode.” Maybe if we were more consistent prior to the downturn – that would not be necessary.
- Sales quotas are driven from the top of the organization and those out there selling your company have no ownership of them. Many times when this downward pressure is felt without ownership you may get lots of activity but it will be ineffective activity for the most part.
- Ineffective measures like the number of calls made, conacts or appointments generated or time spent selling are used to monitor those in the field and assume that such activity will bare fruit.
- When you don’t have a natural sales culture and you drive the messages above - you overlook the necessary change management practices that will support the transformation you desire. Specifically this means supporting people with coaching and training as well as helping them deal with the natural time constraints that come from jugging bigger sales goals with their other responsibilities. Unfortunately, organizations lose site of this and even cut budget on the very things that support people going out to actively sell.
You may say “but we don’t have any other choice – we have done all we can with the bottom line – we need revenues! Is not setting big expectations a driver for success?” Well yes and no. The proof is in the results. I suppose you need to ask yourself how are you doing with your current strategy. If that strategy is not baring fruit – you may want to take a hard look at what you are doing. I can almost guarantee you one thing – your best rainmakers do not take a break and they are likely not worrying about the pressure because they have taken care of business all a long and have maintained some level of pipeline. In any event, if your strategy is not working – your consummate rainmakers are the ones to seek counsel from.
Yet, let’s take a moment and suggest more powerful applications to jump starting your sales.
“The problem with most sales approaches is that at a certain point we stop trying to understand our client’s needs and start focusing on our own needs as sellers to close the sale. When this happens we miss tremendous opportunities because we stop listening and start proposing too early. The key to success is maintaining focus on your core business(es) and to embrace an authentic conviction in the value you offer. With this foundation the goal is to meet with as many clients and prospects as you can. When you do meet – go in with a high level of curiosity. Sit side by side – shoulder to shoulder with your clients and prospects then try look out at the opportunities/problem from their perspective. Seek to understand the impact on them and their organizations. As important, is taking the time to understand their buying patterns or how they evaluate purchasing a service or product. With this approach we can not fail!”
David UttsCEO – Executive Skillworks
Here are some positive steps you can take:
- Think longer term. What is your vision for business development over the next 2 or 3 years?
- What big hairy audacious goals would support reaching that vision?
- Who in your organization needs to lead the effort and how can you grow your pool of solid rainmakers?
- If this is a major shift for your organization:
- How can you communicate this early and often
- What processes do you need to put in place to support building and maturing the pipeline?
- What training support is required to add velocity to the process?
- Are there old belief systems that are getting in the way (e.g. we need to move from a farming business development culture to a hunting one) and how are you going to work to shift these beliefs?
- Offer to do a lot of upfront work at no charge to support your clients and demonstrate ROI – once they see results – they will fell obligated to give you the business.
- Yes – spend more time in the market. Yet, make sure you Listen, Listen, Listen! This requires that you shift your focus away from your need to increase revenues and shift it to the unique client needs you can meet. If you do this on a consistent basis and are able to deliver you will have more than enough business!
- Get to know the key person(s) in your key clients or prospects by making sure you understand both their business and personal aspirations! If they get you truly care about both – work will likely come.
Tags: Business Development, business development during downturns, client relationships, executive development, selling in recession, Succeeding During Down Economic Times, Success Principles
