Are You Waiting For The Customer To Call?

‘Everything comes to the who waits’ – that is an old saying that doesn’t quite fit with modern business. Indeed in selling you would expect the opposite to be true – “everything comes to he who hustle while he waits.” Surprisingly however research suggests that there is a whole lot of waiting in sales.

Is Sales A Waiting Game?

‘Tick-tock, tick tock’ – that is the sound of another sales organization waiting to be asked to tender or quote. It is a common sound, with some research suggesting that salespeople wait to be contacted by the seller a whopping 97% of the time.

In other words only 3% of buyers in the survey by DemandGEN had been contacted by a salesperson in advance of the buyer reaching out. So it is welcome to the big waiting room that is the sales department in many organizations.

What proportion  of opportunities in your pipeline resulted from your customer picking up the phone?

Waiting For The Call!

Sales is a waiting game – at least that is what the research suggests. Because the figure is so startling (and indeed alarming) we conducted our own research to validate it.

We asked more than 100 participants on a Citrix sponsored webinar we were delivering to a UK audience recently if they were called by the customer, or the other way around. The results, although not as dramatic, show that waiting is in reality a big part of the seller’s job description.

According to the majority of sellers (77%) no more than 4 out of 10 deals in the pipeline are originated by the salesperson.

Indeed, for almost half (46%) of those polled fewer than 2 out of 10 deals involve the salesperson originating contact.

In other words the sales department would be very quiet if it wasn’t for the prospect picking up the phone, or clicking on the seller’s web site. These figures suggest that sales in a dangerously reactive mode in many organizations.

Is there enough outbound sales activity in your business?

The Wait Is Getting Longer

The trend is towards longer waiting times in sales.  That is because the buyer is waiting longer before making the call.  More of the strategy setting, information analysis, requirements gathering and solution definition is being undertaken independent of the seller.  

An organization can be talking about buying many months in advance of calling a seller. It may have been on the agenda for many internal meetings, stakeholders may have been engaged with, the internal assessment of needs may be completed, with work on scoping the solution under way. By the time that the seller gets the call the buying process may be closer to the end than the beginning.

Are your customers involving you later in the decision making process?

Most buyers are no longer content to be dependent on the salesperson.  They have access to many sources of information and expertise other than the salesperson.

The late calling of the salesperson can mark a fundamental shift in the relationship and perhaps even a marginalization of the role of the seller.  It can result in an asymmetry of both information and power. It is what makes waiting for the customer to call particularly dangerous.

The Cost Of Waiting

Waiting is not a virtue in sales, indeed it is the opposite. By waiting for the customer to call the salesperson has become a follower rather than a leader. But that is not all. By waiting for the customer the seller risks missing out on the most foundational elements of the sale.

Are you paying a price for waiting to be called by the customer?

There is a price to be paid for waiting on the call. It can be calculated in terms of access and engagement, but ultimately in terms of margin.

Sellers who wait to be called late often find that there is little to discuss when they arrive other than price. With the specification set, they inevitably struggle to move the conversation off price and onto value. Indeed they may simply be invited into a competitive tendering situation.

How To Make The Waiting More Bearable?

The challenge (and indeed opportunity) is to get involved earlier and stay involved for longer.  It requires the sales organization to:

• Breath new life into account management – switching the focus from managing to developing accounts
• Continue to invest in demand generation, and in particular creating and sharing useful resources for customers (especially those that are highly credible)
• Look beyond this quarter –  nurturing sales opportunities across several quarters, with a nurturing process that nudges prospects towards a decision based on their stage in the buying process and pace of buying
• Balance nurturing and pre-qualification – having to create a laser like focus in terms of target customer profiling and to ban such terms as tyre-kickers from the vocabulary
• Create a new synergy between sales and marketing – to synchronize watches between sales and marketing and to forge a new more seamless partnership between the two functions. It is time to stop taking marketing for granted – the above results suggesting that marketing (brand awareness and reputation) generates more opportunities than salespeople!

Do you appreciate your marketing and its role in generating enquiries?

• For the salesperson it means being the type of salesperson that the customer wants to engage with – that means being seen in the role of an expert and trusted advisor
• Look out for trigger events that will earmark a company as potentially being in the market for a solution and use more sophisticated tools (e.g. ExactTarget, Marketo, OneSource or InsideView)

One thing for sure, simply turning up the volume of cold calling is not the answer.  Doing that in isolation of the above will pay little dividend, except perhaps to reduce the volume of in-bound calls to a trickle.

Why not set a goal for increasing the proportion of opportunities where you engage in advance of the customer making the call?

What is the business case for not waiting? That is something we will address in another blog. 

References

Collis Ray: Buyer Seller Insight: Sellers: Are You Waiting For The Customer To Call? Retrieved October 24, 2013 from http://buyer.sellerinsights.com/2013/06/20/are-you-waiting-for-the-customer-to-call/

Blanka Cigler

Senior Consultant, Coach & Project Manager

What is the first thing to look for when searching for a great employee?

 

   
                                                                             Figure 1: Personality is the key

There is nothing more important for a business than hiring the right team. If you get the perfect mix of people working for your company, you have a far greater chance of success. However, the best person for the job doesn’t always walk right through your door.

The first thing to look for when searching for a great employee is somebody with a personality that fits with your company culture. Most skills can be learned, but it is difficult to train people on their personality. If you can find people who are fun, friendly, caring and love helping others, you are on to a winner. 

Personality is the key. It is not something that always comes out in interview – people can be shy. But you have to trust your judgement. If you have got a slightly introverted person with a great personality, use your experience to pull it out of them. It is easier with an extrovert, but be wary of people becoming overexcited in the pressure of interviews.

You can learn most jobs extremely quickly once you are thrown in the deep end. Within three months you can usually know the ins and outs of a role. If you are satisfied with the personality, then look at experience and expertise. Find people with transferable skills – you need team players who can pitch in and try their hand at all sorts of different jobs. While specialists are sometimes necessary, versatility should not be underestimated.

Some managers get hung up on qualifications. I only look at them after everything else. If somebody has five degrees and more A grades than you can fit on one side of paper, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are the right person for the job. Great grades count for nothing if they aren’t partnered with broad-ranging experience and a winning personality.

That doesn’t mean you can’t take risks when building your team. Don’t be afraid of hiring mavericks. Somebody who thinks a little differently can help to see problems as opportunities and inspire creative energy within a group. Some of the best people we’ve ever hired didn’t seem to fit in at first, but proved to be indispensable over time.

If you hire the wrong person at the top of a company, they can destroy it in no time at all. Promoting from within is generally a good idea as the employee who is promoted will be inspired by the new role, already know the business inside out, and have the trust and respect of their team.

Equally, bringing in fresh blood can reinvigorate a company. Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia recently brought in CEOs from outside - John Borghetti at Virgin Australia and Craig Kreeger at Virgin Atlantic. They have brought a lot of fresh ideas into the company, as well as experience of what the competition is doing well and what they are doing badly.

When companies go through growth spurts, they often hire in bulk and company culture can suffer. While it may seem a desperate rush to get somebody through the door to help carry the load, it is worth being patient to find the right person, rather than hurrying and unbalancing your team. I heard a great line by Funding Circle CEO Samir Desai at the IoD Conference in London (quoting Apple's Dan Jacobs) about making sure you hire (and fire) the right people: “It’s better to have a hole in your team than an asshole in your team!”

   

References 

  

Richard Branson: How I Hire: Focus On Personality. Retrieved October 8, 2013 from http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130923230007-204068115-how-i-hire-focus-on-personality

Blanka Cigler

Senior Consultant, Coach & Project Manager

Are you a Change Warrior or a Change Worrier?

Many management gurus, academics and CEOs are writing on change, yet there is a difference between the theoretical and academic, and actual change. If you are entrusted to make the change happen, run a division, have a strategic HR role or are in the C-suite, think about what it takes to get to the actual essence of facilitating change. 

When successful change occurs, those involved feel like authors of change not objects of change. They feel fully invested, accountable and energetic about the future, even in the face of huge challenges. The most successful approaches include a Re-visioning process of rewriting the Vision, Values, Mission and Purpose (VVMP). 

Along with revising the VVMP, many companies embark on Reengineering, Total Quality, Lean Manufacturing and changed practices and procedures manuals to give people a new set of Commandments from which to operate. 

Although well-intended, these approaches often fail. Why? Without realizing it, the energy behind the VVMP is a top-down compliance approach, where the senior team determines the new direction, strategies and mission. In some cases, after much effort, leaders give up or lose energy. Some even find that people are more disillusioned than before. Yet there are successes -- when leaders become Change Warriors and not Change Worriers. 

Scars from Change
Anyone who has tried to help companies and leaders change may bear scars from their efforts. The key to successful change is not learning to be better commanders or lecturers. The key lies in understanding change from a brain-based perspective that focuses on how change is a process "we" do together, not one "I" do alone. 
Change only takes place when we are engaged with others in co-creating conversations. These are conversations full of discovery and questions that open our thinking. When our "brain-hardwiring" changes then, inevitably, we change. 

Scar 1: Managing resistance. Resistance and skepticism are companions
to change. When people are asked to do things differently, they naturally resist, seeking to comprehend the implications of the change in their lives. Yet too often we interpret this resistance as a "no." Then when tell or sell doesn't work, we resort to yell. Either way we are not dealing with resistance productively because we don't see that resistance is to be expected. Instead, we fan the flame and make resistance and fear a way of life. 

Solution 1: Reframe. Accepting resistance as a natural part of change. People need to challenge new ideas before they can accept them. For full ownership and accountability to take place, people need to feel attracted towards the change pull energy. To generate pull energy, ensure that they are actively involved through active participation. Have authentic, meaningful dialogues (not Power Point presentations) about how, why and how fast to change rather than being asked to merely comply. This will release new energy for change. 

Scar 2 Underestimate the amount of conversations needed. Don't underestimate the time required for needed dialogue about change. When stressed, people's mental acuity and processing circuitry closes down. Fearful of the future impact of the changes on their lives, people listen for how change will affect them. Each person is having his or her internal dialogue, hypothesizing what these changes might be. Usually they fear loss instead of anticipating gain. 

Solution 2: Changing mindsets. Create forums where people can have open, candid conversations to learn their place in the emerging social order. Transparency and openness have a facilitative impact on transforming fears into constructive strategies for success. Putting the fears on the table and facilitating open conversations about what's in it for them and why and how changes are taking place, helps people shift from loss to gain and from fear to hope. 

Scar 3: Change is head, heart and soul. If we give employees the facts, and explain why change needs to take place, they will "buy into the change," right? But we know from our work with clients that people are emotional during change, and logical facts fail to speak to the limbic brain, which is the social emotional brain. We overestimate logic and underestimate the power of tapping into the emotions through the use of telling stories. 

Solution 3: Storytelling. A better alternative is to use storytelling and narrative to constructively engage people. Storytelling triggers the Head, Heart and Soul and causes us to "bond." Oxytoxin is a hormone that causes us to bond with others in times of stress and change. Positive, uplifting storytelling actually increases the levels of oxytocin, which in turn creates uplifting and positive outcomes. The fearful "I's" become "WE's." When this happens, a group becomes a strong team of individuals poised to work together to createchange. 

Scar 4: Speed of change. Often we want change to happen fast. We have little patience in living through change, and instead move quickly into convergent decision making about what to change and how. We've each been part of many Change Management programs that end in a new set of policies disseminated with the belief that "zapp" the culture will change or "shapeshift" into something new overnight. These are not change-worthy practices for changes in DNA. 

Solution 4: Navigational communications. Create conversational practices where people can co-create the future together. This is not a quick fix, policy, lecture or tell-sell-yell approach. This is about navigating with others from many perspectives to arrive at practices and rituals that "we" all embrace. 

Change Leaders who become Change Warriors learn to create fear- and threat-free conversational space for change. They help people find their place in the change process, enabling everyone to join together to shape the future. 

References

Judith E. Glaser, CEO Benchmark Communications: Change Warriors: They Master Four Solutions. Retrieved October 8, 2013 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-e-glaser/change-warriors-they-mast_b_4048842.html#

Blanka Cigler

Senior Consultant, Coach & Project Manager

Are You Only The Tip Of The Iceberg?

When it comes to the customer’s costs, your price may only be the tip of the iceberg. That is important if you are selling a quality solution and want to avoid being hammered on price. 

The Iceberg Principle In Selling

Just like an iceberg much of the bulk of the buyer’s total cost may not be obvious. The price of your solution is plain to see, however it may account for only a relatively small proportion of the customer’s total cost.

If the customer is not aware of that fact then he or she is going to be more difficult to sell to when it comes to price.

By making your customer aware of The Iceberg Principle you can move the conversation off price and onto value.

Total Cost Of Ownership

The iceberg principle is a powerful metaphor for your customer’s Total cost of Ownership. It suggests that:

• There are costs that are often hidden. They can dwarf the purchase price.
• The cheapest solution can turn out to be the dearest. Buying a cheaper solution is a false victory, unless it improves the total cost equation.
• It is important that your customer has an accurate picture of the total cost of fixing their problem or addressing their need, as well as of the price of your solution.

Draw Your Iceberg

Draw the iceberg for your customer – showing the cost price of your solution above the water and the rest of the customer’s other costs below the water. Such costs might, include:

• Internal time and resources
• Overheads
• Expenses
• Opportunity cost

These can exist under headings such as the following:

• Buying (sourcing, selecting, contracting, procurement, etc.)
• Inventory
• Logistics
• Packaging
• Customization
• Quality control
• Implementation
• Switching costs
• Training
• Support
• Ongoing licences
• Maintenance
• Energy and other operating costs

The list of possible costs that make up TCO is endless – so it is important to determine the specific costs for your customer and how they are measured.

When you have your iceberg created help melt your customer’s iceberg, starting from the bottom up.

Price Really Isn’t Everything

Today’s buyers are increasingly obsessed with price. However, most salespeople can justifiably argue that when it comes to buying their solution “price isn’t everything!”

A supplier price renegotiation may only be a false victory for the buyer, where the purchase price accounts for only a small proportion of the buyer’s total cost. While negotiating hard on your price the buyer may be missing out on the real source of savings.

Where Savings Can Really Be Made!

The supplier’s price, while it is the most obvious place to look for savings, is rarely the most profitable. This can be seen by reference to the table below.  

For example, a saving of 10% (left hand column) on a purchase price that amounts to only 15% of the total cost (top row), results in only a saving 1.5% overall.  

Indeed on the same basis saving just 5% of the overall total costs would require a massive 35% cut in supplier price.

The lesson is an obvious one – buyers are often focused on getting savings in the wrong areas. Sellers must help the buyer to cut the total cost of ownership.

                                                                                          Figure 1: Price saving ratio

Use the table above to calculate the relative scope for savings based on the proportion of total costs accounted for by your solution.  

Then draw the buyer’s attention to the fact that the savings that can be achieved by working together is many multiples of a supplier price cut.

Inspirational Icebergs

Swiss industrial faster supplier Bossard uses the iceberg model to powerful effect. It is what they call “The Rule of 15-85″ in respect of the TCO model in fastening:

Figure 2: The Rule of 15-85

Here is how the explain it on their website:

“On average, the fastener itself makes up to only around 15% of the total costs. The remaining 85% of the costs come from development, procurement, testing, inventories, assembly and logistics. This chain of events is adding costs to the entire fastening ecosystem. Experience in the industry has shown that cost savings of 50% and more can be achieved in the areas of logistics and engineering. This has a lasting effect on the total costs of the end product.”

How does this fit into the company’s sales proposition? Well, “at Bossard, every solution we create, is designed to reduce costs, according to the TCO concept in fastening. ”

Slippery Icebergs

Yes it can be difficult. Calculating the TCO is is not straightforward. Here are just some of the challenges:

• Different aspects of the TCO may come out of different budgets and accounting periods
• Many of the costs may be discounted as soft rather than hard savings by those who apply accounting principles
• May be fixed costs – for example salary overheads
• It involves assumptions and scenarios

Add to these factors the fact that the seller may only have limited access to the information. But just because it is difficult that makes it all the more worthwhile.

Icebergs can be dangerous!

Selling to a customer who has only a surface level appreciation of the cost puts your margin and perhaps even the deal at risk.

• The buyer who does not spot the iceberg is a risk of an unpleasant surprise.  He, or she has clearly not got their numbers in order and sooner or later somebody is likely to draw attention to it.   It may call the very viability of the decision into question, or cause the purchase to stall.
• If the seller is unaware of the total iceberg in terms of costs then he or she is disadvantaged in terms of negotiating on price and will struggle to move the conversation off price and onto value.  Helping the buyer to build the justification for the decision requires that the customer understands their total cost.

References

Collis Ray: Buyer Seller Insight: Sellers: Are You Only The Tip Of The Iceberg? Retrieved September 19, 2013 from http://buyer.sellerinsights.com/2013/06/13/are-you-only-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

Blanka Cigler

Senior Consultant, Coach & Project Manager

In complex sales, your fiercest competitor is often “do nothing”

It’s bad enough when, after a long, complex and resource-intensive sales campaign, you end up losing to the competition. But at least you’ve got the satisfaction of knowing that somewhere in the process you were probably outsold, or failed to acknowledge a competitor’s advantage that was always going to be difficult to defeat. 

But what about the growing number of apparently well-qualified sales opportunities that fade away with the prospect deciding to “do nothing” at the end of the day? You might attempt to derive some comfort from the fact that at least you weren’t beaten by anyone else. However, that’s a pretty unsatisfying conclusion.

According to research conducted by CSO Insights, “do nothing” decisions have become increasingly common - and in today’s risk-averse buying climate you can understand why prospects behave in a deliberate and conservative manner. But what causes “do nothing” decisions, and what can you do to avoid them? Here are 3 common reasons: 

The issue was never important enough

You can persuade prospects to talk to you - often at length - if you have something that is interesting to say or offer. You can get them to conduct a serious evaluation if what you have to say or offer is interesting to them. But unless you’ve identified an issue that is critical and urgent, chances are they will stick with the status quo. 

Successful selling requires you to satisfy the following questions, in approximately the following sequence:

• Why should the prospect change at all?
• Why should the prospect change now, rather than later?
• Why does your approach offer the least risk of all available options, including “do nothing”?

If you haven’t successfully answered all three questions, you probably deserve to lose - and you’d be better off recognising that early, and changing your sales strategy or qualifying out, rather than throwing resources at a dead or dying cause.

Your “champion” was never influential enough

It doesn’t matter how supportive your champion is - or even how positive the whole buying decision group are - if they lack the power and influence to get their recommendation approved by the final authority.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve beaten off all the obvious competitors - at this point, the real competition are all the other things the prospect organisation could do with the money and resources that could be spent on your project. This isn’t just about creating a positive ROI: it’s about emerging as the best of all the options open to them.

Not spending the money at all is one obvious choice - and if you haven’t equipped your champion to make the strongest possible case for change, it's an uncomfortably likely outcome. But the real competition could be a completely different project, potentially in a completely different part of the business.

You can be sure - particularly if your project is budget and resource-intensive - that someone in authority is going to ask something like “can you tell me again why we need to do this, and why we need to do this now?” If your champion doesn’t have a good answer, you’re probably toast...

Your sales people weren’t smart enough 

It’s bad enough when sales people get outsold by the competition. But I'd argue that it’s no better when they get outsold by the status quo - and that’s where sales managers have a key role to play in curbing the sales person’s natural optimism and enthusiasm. 

“Tell me again, why is it that the prospect actually needs to do anything” and “what else is going on within the prospect that could compete for the budget and resources” are two questions I suggest every sales manager should ask of every sales opportunity.

And if you don’t like the answer, make sure you do something about it. Stimulate your sales people to think "out of the box" and put themselves in the prospect's shoes. Is their current approach really strong enough to challenge the lure of the status quo? 

References

Inflexion-Points: Building Scalable Businesses. In complex sales, your fiercest competitor is often “do nothing” Retrieved September 19, 2013 from http://www.inflexion-point.com/Blog/bid/100863/In-complex-sales-your-fiercest-competitor-is-often-do-nothing

Blanka Cigler

Senior Consultant, Coach & Project Manager

Why sales people should NEVER DEMO their PRODUCT?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a product demo that seems to go on interminably until you feel that you have lost the will to live? Ever felt that the sales person is simply lobbing feature after feature at you, desperately hoping that that at least one of them will be of interest? Ever believed that they aren’t going to let you out of the room (or off the call) until they have shown you absolutely everything? 

Well, you’re not alone. That’s exactly how most prospects that have been subjected to a classic “everything bar the kitchen sink” product demo feel. As a fellow victim recently remarked, “it’s as if they are just flinging a random stream of s**t against the wall in the hope that some of it will stick”. And these deluded demo-ers aren’t just boring or irritating their victims with this approach (as if that wasn’t bad enough, anyway) - scientific studies have shown that this  information overload has a slim-to-none chance of being retained. 

The argument for delaying the demo 

Don’t get me wrong. Demos have a place in many complex sales processes. But far too often, they are used way too early in the sales process - before the prospect has any context for what they are being shown. It’s been said before, and it bears repeating: your prospects are not interested in your products, they are interested in how you can help them to address their business issues. 

And if the demo-er doesn’t know - and hasn’t agreed - what the prospect’s critical business issues are, they are inevitably inclined to show them everything in the vain hope that the prospect might somehow be capable of joining the dots up for themselves. Which - unless you’re in an early adopter market full of smart dot-joiners, is unlikely. 

If you're in a mainstream market, then you’ve really shot your bolt, because what sane prospect would want to subject themselves to more torture later? The simple fact is, most demos happen too early. And even if your prospect has asked you to show them your product, you should hold back, until you know enough about what they are interested in to show them something that is specifically relevant to their situation. 

Demonstrate potential solutions, not products

That’s what I meant when I declared in the headline above that you should NEVER demo your product. But it does not mean that you should never do a demo. It simply means that you should defer your demonstration until you’ve got to the point where you have a clear sense of what a potential solution might look like, and show the prospect that. 

When you demonstrate a potential solution, rather than a product, good things happen:

• You can be selective about what you show the prospect - and restrict the demo to things that you know are going to be relevant to them
• You can put each feature in context with what you know that the prospect is trying to achieve in their own business
• You can construct a compelling narrative and storyline that allows the prospect to visualise how your solution could work in their environment 

Of course, this requires preparation. It requires a proper discovery process. It requires that your sales people invest in understanding their prospect’s situation, and not just their own product’s capabilities. But the rewards - in terms of demo-to-close ratios - can be spectacular. It’s not unusual to see a 10-fold (or more) advantage between a properly tailored demonstration and a spray-and-pray approach.

Flinging is not a strategy

Here’s a final thought: if your sales people are happy to take a “flinging s**t against the wall, hoping it will stick” approach to demos, what do you imagine they might be doing during the rest of the sales process? And how much of it do you imagine any sane prospect is going to be prepared to take?

References 

Inflexion-Points: Building Scalable Businesses. B2B Complex Sales: why sales people should NEVER demo their product. Retrieved September 17, 2013 from http://www.inflexion-point.com/Blog/bid/98255/B2B-Complex-Sales-why-sales-people-should-NEVER-demo-their-product

Blanka Cigler

Senior Consultant, Coach & Project Manager

Calculating How Getting Involved Earlier Could Help You Sell More

Figure 1:  How Getting Involved Earlier?

You wouldn’t show up 30 or 40 minutes late for a 60 minute meeting with a potential customer, would you? The answer of course is ‘No’.

But everyday sellers are doing something similar, even worse – they are turning up more than half way through the buying process. This tardiness is costing sellers dearly.  

In this insight we will help you to build the business case for getting involved earlier in the prospect’s buying process. 

Buyers And Sellers Live In Different Time Zones!

We asked a group of 81 sales people from more than two dozen industries what when they entered into the buyers buying process.  

Using the industry standard seven step procurement model (with which so many professional buyers are familiar) we asked salespeople what stage they became involved.  The results are shown visually below. 

Figure 2: When do Sellers get Involved? 

As the visual above suggests buyers and sellers exist in different two time zones!  But what is the business case for getting involved earlier? 

The majority of salespeople surveyed are arriving late in terms of the buyer’s process, with 6 out of 10 only getting involved at step 5 in the buying process.  That is the point where supplier were contacted and proposals or quotes requested.  

How Late Is The Typical Seller?

 

There is a price to be paid for showing up late in the customer’s buying process. It can be calculated in terms of access and engagement, but ultimately in terms of margin.  

Sellers who arrive late in the buying process often find that there is little to discuss other than price. With the specification set, they inevitably struggle to move the conversation off price and onto value. 

Are you arriving too late in the buyers process?

We asked people what they thought the probability of success was if the seller arrived at the point where multiple potential suppliers were being asked to quote. Most people suggested somewhere between 0% and 20%. That resulted in a staggering insight: 

Figure 3: Are You Arriving too late in the Buyers process? 

From the seller’s figures it can be inferred that:  60% of the time the seller is engaging in opportunities with less than a 20% rate of success. That is a worrying figure and a problem if a good overall win rate are to be achieved.  

Only A Minority Get Involved Earlier

Only a minority of sellers get involved at the earlier stages of the buying process.  In our survey only 3 out of 10 got involved at step 2 in the buyer’s process – that is the buyer’s supply market assessment.

In these cases the seller’s attention was typically triggered by an inbound inquiry, a white paper download from their website, or somebody signing up for a webinar.

Just 1 in 10 sellers said they got involved at step 1, that is the internal assessment of needs within the buying organization. The reason being that they were considered an expert or trustworthy adviser. 

By getting involved at these earlier stage they believed that the chances of winning the sale jumped to 60% and above.  That means ‘the early bird gets the worm’ is a principle that applies in selling too. 

Figure 4: What Are The Chances Of Success? 

Only one or two salespeople said their objective was to get involved before step 1, to trigger the needs analysis. As one salesperson put it this was sales nirvana – although it was associated with a very high cost of sale. 

So, what do these numbers really mean? Well, we believe it is the outline data that enables building a proposition, or business case for getting involved earlier. 

If we told you that you could double your chances of success with respect to new deals you would no doubt be curious. Not surprisingly however, there is a string attached. In order to do make it happen you would need to double your cost of winning the sale. Would you still be interested? 

Figure 5: The Proposition

The Case For Earlier Involvement

Let’s recap on the proposition: 

• A 200% increase your chances of success on a request for tender, or quote
• A 200% increase in the number of selling days involved for each opportunity.

What do you think – would you go for it? 

On paper at least you’d more than likely be a lot better off.  You can download this spreadsheet if you want to explore what the maths look like.  It will allow you to establish the business case for getting involved using your own metrics.

The Cost Of Getting Involved Earlier

Not surprising most salespeople recognize that there are additional costs associated with getting involved earlier. It is going to involve more emails, calls, meetings and so on.  It means investing in opportunities that may not pay back this quarter, perhaps even this year.

Our analysis suggests that in many cases getting involved at step one as opposed to step 5 in the buyer’s process will double the sales effort (measured in days). Where air travel and overnight accommodation is involved in meeting the customer the extra associated costs can be significant too.  So the spread sheet applies this to calculate the impact of getting involved earlier.

So getting involved earlier is going to cost you. But then getting involved late is costing you anyhow, specifically in terms of a lower win rate and the increased price pressure associated with being involved later in the sale.

The Trade-offs To Be Made

The reality is that you are probably going to need to significantly reduce the number of opportunities pursued.  That is unless you can increase the size or capacity of your sales team. 

However, even when this happens the maths is still very good.  In the spreadsheet we have assumed a 20% reduction in the number of opportunities that are managed in the ‘getting involved earlier’ scenario. 

Investing additional sales time in each opportunity in order to reduce the risk, or more precisely increase your odds of success, would appear to make sense.  This is particularly true where opportunities are effectively pre-qualified, or at least profiled. 

Putting It Into Action

Take 10 deals where you were involved early and 10 where you were involved late. Then compare the win rate and margin achieved in respect of each group.

Use the spreadsheet to calculate the impact of increasing the proportion of deals where you are involved earlier.  In doing this you are building the business case for earlier involvement.

Finally, set about creating a plan to get involve earlier.  That is going to involve working more closely with marketing, as well as a system to nurture those prospects who you contact but are not ready to buy. 

References

Collis Ray: Buyer Seller Insight: Sellers: Calculating How Getting Involved Earlier Could Help You Sell More. Retrieved August 27, 2013 from http://buyer.sellerinsights.com/2013/08/08/why1/

Blanka Cigler

Senior Consultant, Coach & Project Manager