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AValue-Driven,Diagnosis-BasedSystemforComplexSales 63
traveled through the Prime Process have a clear under-standing of their challenges, and they know what the best solution will look like. In fact, they have become co-authors of that solution. That is why sales professionals who use the Prime Process, and have not disqualified the customer by its final phase, experience exceptional conversion ratios. That is also why the final step and ultimate goal in the De-liver phase is not to close the sale, but to maximize the cus-tomer’s awareness of the value derived from the solution that is being implemented.
The tasks in the Deliver phase begin with the prepara-tion and discussion of a formal proposal and the customer’s official acceptance of the solution. The next steps include the delivery and support of the solution and the measure-ment and evaluation of the value that has been delivered. The final task of the Deliver phase is to serve the customer and grow the relationship.
In the Deliver phase, we want our customers to see us as dependable. We literally do what we said we were going to do and deliver on the value we promised. As we complete the sale, our customers should be thinking: You are here for me and you will take care of me. I can depend on you now and in the future.
The four phases of the Diagnostic Business Development system—the Prime Process—represent a fundamental re-engineering of the conventional sales process. The process eliminates the inherent flaws in the sales processes of previ-ous eras, directly addresses the gaps in our customers’ deci-sion processes, and helps ensure that sales organizations connect the value of their companies’ solutions to their cus-tomers’ situations. It is a process done with the customer in a very transparent fashion, not a process done to the cus-tomer in a covert manner.
64 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES
TheRightSetofSkillsforComplexSales
The second element of any profession encompasses the knowledge and skills that its practitioners need to achieve their goals and the tools that support the skills. In Diagnostic Business Development, most of the skills and tools are ap-plied in specific phases of the Prime Process, and I will dis-cuss them in later chapters. But there are three major skills and their associatedtoolsthat spanthe entire selling process.
These skills and tools help successful sales profes-sionals answer a critical set of questions that are present in every Era 3 complex sale:
How is value created within your customer’s business?
Who should be involved in determining the existence and financial impact of the problem?
What are the problems the customer is actually expe-riencing or the risks to which he or she is exposed?
How are those problems impeding the customer’s ability to accomplish his or her business objectives?
How are the problems affecting your customer’s customer?
How will the customer achieve successful business outcomes?
How are those outcomes connected to the salesper-son’s solutions?
Who should be involved in the design and the imple-mentation of the solution?
The answers to these questions can be stated in the form of an equation that must be solved to successfully navigate a complex sale:
RightPeople:ManagingtheCastofCharacters 65
RightPeople:ManagingtheCastofCharacters
In Era 3, salespeople must be skilled at identifying and assembling the network of people who are needed in order to answer the questions mentioned previously and reach a quality buying decision. The single decision maker, as we saw in Chapter 1, is a myth. So too is the idea that the customer, without assistance, can assemble the best group of people to be involved in this work. Logic dictates that if our customers don’t have quality decision processes, they won’t be able to identify and as-semble the right decision teams.
There is another reality that sales professionals must recognize. A customer’s decision team is not just a group of people who have the power to say ‘‘yea’’ or ‘‘nay’’ to the sale. A quality decision team must be far more comprehen-sive, including people who can assist in the diagnosis of their current situation and the identification of the best solution. Thus, the task of assembling the right team of decision makers, advisors, and influencers is now more sophisticated and complex than ever.
One telling observation from the field is that when it comes to identifying and interacting with a network of decision makers, advisors, and influencers in a complex sale, the most successful salespeople don’t passively accept the decision team identified by their customers. They take an active role in building the optimal ‘‘cast’’ with their customers. They seek to identify the important
66 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES
cast members in the customer’s organization, involve each in the decision process, and ensure that each has all the assistance required to comprehend and quantify the problem, the opportunity, and the solution and its results. Effectively managing the decision team is a job that spans the entire sales process.
A very important characteristic of the cast of charac-ters in a complex sale is perspective. In every sale, there are two major perspectives: The problem perspective includes members of the customer’s organization who can help identify, understand, and communicate the details and con-sequences of the problem. The second perspective, the so-lution perspective, includes those who can help identify, understand, and communicate the appropriate design, in-vestment, and measurement criteria of the solution.
The challenge of casting the complex sale doesn’t stop here. We need decision team members who can bring to the surface the problem and solution perspectives available at different levels within the organization, such as executive and managerial levels, and operational and functional lev-els. Sometimes, depending on the sale, we may also need to include cast members from outside the customer’s com-pany, such as the customer’s customers and business part-ners who might also be affected by a decision.
Why go through all this work? The obvious answer is that there is no other way to ensure that you are developing all of the information required to guide your customer to a high-quality decision. There are also other less obvious rea-sons. For instance, would you prefer to present a solution to a group that has had little or no input into its content, or would you rather present a solution proposal to a group that has already taken an active role in creating it? Would you prefer to deal with a newly installed decision maker who has replaced your single contact in the middle of the sales process, or would you rather face that new decision
RightQuestions:QualityConversations,VitalInformation 67
maker with the support of all the remaining cast members and with full documentation of the progress already made? The answers to these questions should be clear.
The successful sales professional assembles and or-chestrates the group of players who have the most informa-tion, insight, and influence on the decision to buy. This shortens the sales cycle by effectively reaching the right people, creating a sense of urgency, and helping them make high-quality decisions. A full cast also helps sales profes-sionals overcome the unexpected surprises that sink sales, enhancing predictability and increasing the chances of a successful engagement.
RightQuestions:QualityConversations, VitalInformation
All salespeople are taught to use a variety of questions in the sales process, but most use them in ineffective ways and in dubious pursuits. They ask questions to get their cus-tomers to volunteer information that they think is critical to win the sale, such as, ‘‘How will you buy?’’ and ‘‘What will you buy?’’ They ask future-oriented questions that have little connection to the customer’s current problems versus present-oriented questions that tap into the evidence of urgent problems and risks. Worst of all, the questions they ask subvert the most valuable use of questions—to diagnose.
The most successful sales professionals are skilled and sophisticated diagnosticians. They understand that to effectively and accurately diagnose a customer’s situation, they must be able to create a conversational flow designed to ask the right people the right questions. The diagnostic questions that these salespeople use to understand and communicate customers’ problems include:
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