I was having a great discussion with a very successful entrepreneur yesterday, and as we were talking about articles he had read on this blog and with the things that I’ve been doing at QuotaCrush, he said to me,

“Mark, all this stuff you talk about is great.  Its the right message, and the right way to sell and think about sales.  However, no matter how much you talk about partnership, and solution selling – remember that most of the world still thinks of you simply as a peddler.”

How true that statement is.  The first impression that most people will have from you in the cold call, at trade shows, or wherever you meet them, will be that you are a salesperson and that you are trying to sell them something.  Therefore, that is why we need to work hard to make sure that our prospects understand that we ARE about finding the right solution that we ARE going to sell them something they need – and that we aren’t trying to just sell them something just to make a commission.

Establishing trust with your prospects is key to crushing quota.

Sales, in a rough economy, is not fun.  Its hard, as you get a flood of recections, to not recall the famous paddle scene in Animal House.   As you get rejection after rejection, you have to stand up, and try to get the next sale – no matter how much losing that last sale hurt.

But… isn’t the whole point of QuotaCrush to get LESS rejections?  Indeed it is, but the facts remain that in a bad economy, no matter how good your sales process is, there are customers that just cannot get the budget for your product – regardless of how much more efficient it will make them, how much money it wil save them, or how much it will increase their own sales. 

Think about your own life.  In my own house, it would probably make a lot of sense for me to replace the windows.  The old ones are much less efficient than new ones would be, and I’m pretty sure that most of the gas between the panes is gone.  I probably would get an ROI on the window investment in about 4 years.  I plan to be in my house for more than 4 years, so rationally, this is a purchase I should make, right?  Well, like most of you, I make money on sales and I know that if this economy turns south again, sales may drop in my clients, and I may have an income drop – so I will delay the replacement windows until I feel a little more secure that the economy is indeed headed towards a recovery, and I’m not going to need my savings for other things.

Your prospects are going through this same type of struggle as they decide whether or not they should purchase your product.  What this means is that you need to have a bigger pipeline, patience with clients, and more creativity in how to price and sell your product.

Unfortunately, its indeed a numbers game.  Different prospects will be at different points along this scale, so you need more prospects to make more sales.  While this truth always exists, it is especially true in hard economic times because, like my example, what seems perfectly logical is not often what is driving the decisions.  Clearly, we want more companies to think long-term knowing that the economy will, at some point, turn around, but unfortunately, for us salespeople, that is not always the case, and we have only limited power to change their thinking.  So, you need more prospects so that you can find the ones that will buy – despite the economy.  And.. if you do your sales job correctly, when the economy DOES turn around, you can close everybody who was on the fence.

So as you get paddled by your pipeline over and over again, its important not to lose momentum and not get discouraged.  Find the reason that you are doing this and focus on it. 

The three faces above are the real reason I’m in sales.  I have goals to build my company, to help entrepreneurs build their own companies, to help salespeople, and of course to make money.  But, the real reason that I take the constant barrage of rejection that accompanies sales is for those three people (oh… and my wife too )

So… in order to not get discouraged by all the rejection, you need to find your rock, and focus on it.  When that happens, you will find it much easier to deal with the rejection – and also keep you  focused on your end goal.

A few weeks ago, Josh Kopelman wrote a great post on entrepreneurs having transparancy with their board.  Within the post, he spoke about how several of his portfolio companies give him full access to their sales data so he knows where they are at any moment.  That struck me as genius – to provide the board with full access to the pipeline, and I’ve been thinking since then about a response to that – how it benefits the VP of Sales.  As I thought about it, I began thinking more deeply about transparancy in the sales process.   I realized in my own discussions with salespeople, I was advocating transparancy with prospects, and thought that instead I would write about that.

I got a call from one of the salespeople I work with and he asked me, “Mark, I want to close this account by Tuesday so that I don’t walk into the board meeting without this deal closed.  What should I say to the customer to get them to close by Tuesday.”  My answer?  “Tell the customer you want to close the deal by Tuesday so you don’t walk into the board meeting without the deal closed – and you want to know if there is any way to make that happen.” Complete honesty… what a concept, right?   Guess what?  He closed the deal.  He had to give a little on price, but he got his deal.

Another salesperson asked me, “Mark, a client just told me they wouldn’t buy my product because they don’t use services like ours in their process.  I’m embarassed that I didn’t do better market research to know not everybody does this.”  My response, “Tell them that you assumed that they would use services like yours because their competition does.”  Result?  The customer became intrigued enough to find out more about why their competition used services like theirs, and ultimately decided that this product needed to be part of their process.

Yet another salesperson asked me, “What do I do when a customer wants to know who I see as my competition?”  I say, “tell them exactly who your competition is and how you are better AND how you are worse.”

Total transparancy is something that prospects will respect you for – and something that will build trust in you and your company.

Once you have that trust, you will find that in general, people like to help people.  So, when you call and ask for that deal, and you are honest about why you want to close that deal by a certain time, prospects who trust and respect you will generally do what they can to make that happen.  Its not a guarantee for a sale, but it certainly is something that may help you get the deal sooner.

There was an instance where I had developed rapport with a prospect, and the deal was dragging out for a very long time before being closed.  I had a trusted relationship with the prospect, and I called one day to find the status of the deal.  When the prospect told me that it was going to take another week to get the deal done, without really thinking, I said, “John, I know that closing this deal next week is no different to you, but if I bring this in before the end of the quarter its about a $5,000 difference in commission to me.  Another week delay is just killer to me.  Is there ANYTHING we can do on this.”  I didn’t expect anything, but my reationship with the prospect was so good, that he made it happen.  He respected my honesty, my transparancy on why I was pushing, and he wanted to help make it happen.  And, I’ll tell you that I made sure he was a happy customer thoughout his experience with that company.

Clearly (pun intended), there are times when you cannot be completely transparant in the sales cycle, but in terms of determining the close, I am a huge proponent of explaining to the prospect exactly wht you need/want to get the deal done.  They will respect you for it – and may even reward you with the sale for it.

In sales, its very easy to start celebrating the minute a deal is closed. In fact, celebration often starts once the verbal commitment is given. But, if there is one thing that experience in sales will teach you, is that you really can’t celebrate until the contract is signed – and furthermore – you really can’t celebrate until the cash is in the bank.

The past month has been an interesting one for two of my clients. For both of them, there were enough deals on the one yard line that the odds seemed very likely that the goal would be hit, yet so many of the deals got pushed into May that both missed the mark.   Its worth noting that nearly all the deals are still in play.  All that failed was creating enough urgency that the deals were able to close at the end of April. 

In at least half of the instances, the objectives were very clearly outlined..

“Fred, if I give you this deal, will you get us a signature before the end of the month?”
“Mark, I can certainly have this done before the end of the month and really want to.”
“Great, so is there anything that would stop this getting signed and implemented?”
“No, Mark. I’ve read the contract and it all looks great. I’m bringing it in for signature tomorrow.”
“Thanks Fred, looking forward to doing business with you.”

and then…. total silence. No return phone calls, no indication of good or bad, no contract. 

So what happened?  Well, clearly there was an obstacle/objection that was not known, and the urgency that was created wasn’t enough to move the needle.  Perhaps it wasn’t a fault of not asking – perhaps it was something that came up afterwards, but either way, it shows that even when your prospect tells you without a doubt that they will buy, and that the deal is done…. its not done, until the ink is on the paper – and the cash is in the bank.

For the most part, I believe the failure was in creating urgency to buy now.  End of the quarter is something that people understand and expect, and “end of April” pushes did not resonante as well.  For both clients, there are a lot of additional triggers that can be used, and in May it will clearly be to use those triggers to help get people to move rather than to just rely on “making our monthly number.”  In your own sales efforts, you need to find those things that will get people to want to close now rather than later.  Perhaps it is the lost revenue opportunity, or cost savings opportunity, or the summer sales rush, or free upgrade promotion, or something else.  The key to getting those May deals across the finish line in May and not in June – will be that specific urgency goal.

Its OK to enjoy a verbal commitment with a smile, but unless you’ve found that urgency, its not a done deal that you will get that deal done right away – and regardless of whatever deal you have made – they may expect that special pricing, or freebies – regardless of when it is signed.  So, just make sure that you don’t ring that gong until the contract and cash are in hand.