E Book Complex Sale 2 0

How to Compete and Win in a
Complex Sale 2.0 World
Scott Miller

Principal

The Complex Sale, Inc.

E-book by Scott Miller/ The Complex Sale, Inc. How to Compete and Win in a Complex Sale 2.0 World
www.scottymiller.wordpress.com 1 of 40

The world of selling is changing and the change is wrapped up in the
catch phrase, “Sales 2.0.” On the buyer’s side, best practices are more
readily available, as well as information about solutions and competitors.
In some cases, buyers no longer rely on a sales people for product demos
or access to their customer base.

Barry Trailer, co-founder of CSO Insights frames the phenomenon: “. . . essentially universal
Internet access provides unprecedented (some might argue unlimited) insights to product features,
benefits, applications, pricing, successes and failures—even before a sales rep is involved in the
conversation. This shifts the dynamics (i.e., power) in the buy-sell equation. Sellers unwilling, or unable,
to leverage the various communication channels available to facilitate buyers' investigations will
increasingly find themselves less successful in their sales efforts.”

Sales people can no longer use traditional techniques as effectively as they
once did. Picking up the phone, making a cold call, scheduling an
appointment, doing discovery, demonstrating capabilities, competitive
differentiation, handing a proposal, providing references, and negotiating


a deal were once done on the sellers terms because they had all of the
information. The irony is that many of us have been selling information
technology that would eliminate manual process; but, we were never
affected by it on a personal level. With tools like Google, Facebook,
Wikipedia, Podcast, Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, consider that
chapter of selling closed. The information is now, quite literally, at your
finger tips.

Forward-looking sales organizations are embracing this change. Terms
like social networking, mobility, online presence, and search engine
optimization have given marketing a well-earned seat in the board room.
Now, sales people need to be able to compliment marketing’s efforts by
selling to buyers the way they are buying today and, most certainly will
buy, tomorrow.

As Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway, authors of the book Sales 2.0 state, “Sales 2.0 practices
combine the science of process-driven operations with the art of collaborative relationships, using the most
profitable and most expedient sales resources required to meet customers’ needs.”


The Evolution of Selling

The evolution of selling began as B2C: business to consumer. I have a
grainy image of pioneering Americans flipping through a catalog back in
the old west. Then, as the world began to industrialize, businesses were
created specifically to sell to other businesses, hence the genesis of B2B
selling.

At first, B2B selling was as simple as you need “X” and I have “X,” sign
here. Then, Neil Rackham created the SPIN selling mechanism while
working for Xerox. He found that the most successful sellers were the
ones that listened. They pointed their focus on the customer and away
from the product.

Sometime later, Michael Bosworth created the Solution Selling method to
help sellers understand that pain is fluid. Pain can start high and trickle
down or osmose from the bottom to the top. He also taught us to align
with our buyers’ vision of addressing that pain. Jim Holden taught us
organizations have a few key personalities with power when he
introduced Power-based Selling.


Rick Page ties the concepts of pain and power together and adds the third concept:
preference. Preference gives deeper insight in respect to competition and politics, ideas
once thought taboo by earlier methodologies. He then added prospect, part and plan to
create the ground breaking R.A.D.A.R.® methodology to win the complex sale.

Our challenge is quite simply this: How do we take the new reality that is
Sales 2.0 and marry it with the best practices of winning the complex sale?
After all, if buyers don’t need sellers, how can we at least stay relevant
and KEEP OUR JOB?

Lucky for us, buying rarely has an altruistic and utilitarian decision-
making process. In a complex selling environment, there are multiple
decision-makers and multiple vendors. Each decision-maker will be
impacted by the selection differently and they make their decision based
upon that impact! Stated otherwise, complex sales have risky, political
ramifications for the decision-makers.

The marriage of leveraging emerging technologies and selling the greatest
amount of impact to powerful people is Complex Sale 2.0.


Complex Sale 2.0

The purpose of this e-book is to expose emerging technologies that allow
us to communicate with buyers in the new age. Then, we must use these
emerging technologies to incorporate a strategy to win a complex sale. It
might read like a sprint, and it should. Keeping up with the speed of
information is critical to our success. In this e-book, I will introduce 4 key
concepts:

1. Consolidate emerging technologies and strategy into the CRM to
create a sustainable competitive advantage for your sales force
2. Add value beyond the traditional buyer/ seller paradigm to gain
trust and relevancy and sell peer to peer (P2P)
3. Bring experience, empathy, and mutual interest into the sales
process using the three minute rule to regain control
4. A stage by stage action plan on how to compete and win in a
Complex Sale 2.0 world


Consolidate Emerging Technologies and Strategy into the CRM
One thing all sales leaders should know is that poor CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) adoption from the field is the rule, not the
exception. Most sale professionals see very little value in the CRM
because there is very little value in recapping their activity. In their eyes,
the CRM is for management oversight. As Rick Page, CEO of The
Complex Sale, Inc. states, “the last thing we want to do is turn six figure
big game hunters into data entry clerks.”

We, as sales leaders, need to change that perception by equipping our
reps with the best possible tools available for success. With emerging
technologies changing the rules of buying behavior, the CRM must keep
pace. It must be a single source of competitive advantage and the first
place your sales force goes for strategic selling information.

There are many CRMs to choose from, but I recommend and use
Salesforce.com because of its ease of use and wide adoption within the


profession. More importantly, I recommend Salesforce.com because of the
App Exchange. The App Exchange is where users can install pre-
integrated tools to make the database into the strategic arm of your sales
team. Think of it like the iPhone, where hundreds of applications are
available to choose from.

For a CRM to work optimally, it needs to mirror your sales cycle. For a
sales cycle to work optimally, it needs to match your customer’s buying
cycle. As an example, every natural milestone in your sales process needs
to be reflected as a stage in your CRM:

Buying Cycle Selling Stage
Understand and Develop Need Territory Coverage
Sponsor Project First Call
Research Vendors Discovery
Evaluate Solutions Proof of Concept
Select Vendor of Choice Proposal
Submit for Funding Approval


Within each stage, we need to come to agreement upon and document the
tactical best practices that will progress the sale to the next stage. These
best practices should be embedded inside the CRM as reference points, or
even check points, as to whether we continue working an opportunity. As
the buyer becomes less and less dependant upon the seller, sellers must
become more and more insistent that they are doing the right things to
progress the sale.

Create (Demand Creation) Win (Opportunity Management)

(Phase 1) (Phase 2) (Phase 3) (Phase 4) (Phase 5)
Territory Coverage First Call Discovery Proof of Concepts The Proposal

Webinar Research: Pain Demo Solution Will we win
Cold Call Individual Prospect Link Pains Will it close
Web Visits Position Preference Sell to Power How much
Trigger Event Company Process Differentiate What’s our plan
Trade Shows Industry Power
Social Network Plan


As a salesperson, I know I am doing the right things to progress the sale
to the next stage by documenting the best practices. As a sales manager, I
can feel comfortable that my rep has an understanding of my
expectations. It might be easy to do a “quick online demo” or submit a
template pricing proposal, but we shouldn’t without reciprocity that will
help us win.

A Sales Culture of Accountability – KPIs

A recent survey from the Complex Sale found that 93% of sales leaders
thought that having a sales culture of accountability was the number one
cause for success! Oftentimes, sales organizations use revenue attainment
goals as the key metric for success. The revenue attainment objective is
owned by one person and divided among that individual’s direct reports.
This process continues throughout the sales organizations down to
individual sales representatives quotas.

Revenue, however, is a lagging indicator of success. The best practices
implemented by the world’s greatest sales forces also attach leading key


performance indicators as goals. The goals start at the top and cascade
down to the field, just as revenue attainment quotas.

Leading Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are specific to individual
sales organizations based upon their clients buying cycles and revenue
generation targets. Most successful organizations start with how much
revenue they need to attain from the base of accounts and create metrics
around account penetration and retention. An example of leading
indicators for account management would be net new opportunities,
renewal rates, and percentage of growth, as applied to each account. We
prescribe other goals for opportunity management and demand creation.
These companies track the progress of these KPI’s on a continual basis
(monthly or quarterly) through a KPI dashboard inside of the CRM.

We see that the most successful companies use this process to hold sellers
accountable for the correct activity and management accountable to the sellers.
This practice leaves out any uncertainty in expectations throughout the sales
organization.


Peer to Peer Selling (P2P)
A new study by Forbes finds that 53% of C-level executives do their own
research online, well before they delegate a project or contact vendors.
Therefore, sales people need to add much more value than the standard
discover, present, pricing method that permeates our business. The buyer
wants to buy from someone who can add value well beyond your
offering. They want advice from a peer who has seen everything and
provided a solution to a problem, not a product.

Successful sales forces are able to take their operational features and
functionality and translate their benefits into a compelling value
proposition for non-technical buyers. As you begin to sell more complex
solutions, more stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process.
These stakeholders often do not have the technical expertise to
distinguish your solution from the competition or other in-house
alternatives.


Inherent in a value proposition is a keen understanding of the pains of the
non-technical buyers and a linkage of your solution to solving those
pains. Many organizations make the mistake of having one generic value
proposition; when in fact, the value proposition must be tailored to the
individual to whom you are selling.

As a go-to-market strategy, successful sales organizations take a census of
every potential stakeholder in their sales process. They uncover every
potential pain this individual could have and link their solution to solving
that pain. If they don’t have a solution for a pain, they stay involved and
recommend someone who does. They also take inventory of every
potential competitor and create competitive position statements and ways
to handle objections. They lean upon the expertise of their best
practitioners and marketing departments to create an easy-to-access tool
kit or playbook for the sales force.

With this knowledge and confidence, they become more of a peer to their
prospects. With social networking, they can communicate with them as a
peer.


Territory Coverage

Demand creation in a Complex Sale 2.0 world can be summed up in one
word: touches. You don’t know how your prospects want to be
communicated with, so you cast as wide of a net as possible. You don’t
know what message will resonate, so you offer many. Additionally, you
don’t know when your prospects are ready to hear from you, so your
outreach is constant. The medians available to you will not replace the
telephone as the primary means of communication – they will enhance it.
Sellers don’t want to make a cold call as much as buyers don’t want to
take them.

Your buyers need your information. They just don’t want to talk until
they are ready. Brian Carroll of InTouch writes an excellent e-book
entitled Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. Carroll explains the
multimodal approach to engage prospects in a manner that they prefer,
before they are ready to make a purchasing decision.

Steve Woods, CTO at Eloqua, wrote a great white paper, Digital Body
Language. The premise is that by using Eloqua’s tracking capabilities,


sellers can know when prospects hit their website, what pages they go to,
and how often they do so. By creating an algorithm that weigh all three,
the prospects score themselves and sellers use that score to triage their
selling efforts, all inside of the CRM. For example, pages on your website
that indicate cursory interest, like the home page, result in a low score.
Pages that reflect deep interest, like an online demo, reflect a much higher
score.

Buying Cycle Selling Stage Web Page
Understand and Develop Territory Coverage E-books / Blog / Webinar
Need
Sponsor Project First Call Online Assessment / RFP
Template
Research Vendors Discovery Product Datasheets / About Us
Evaluate Solutions Proof of Concept Online Presentation / Trial Offer
Select Vendor of Choice Proposal ROI Calculator / Clients
Submit for Funding Approval Terms & Conditions / Financials


Social Networking

Peer to Peer salespeople understand that building your personal brand is
just as important for you as building a corporate brand is for the
marketing department. The first place to build an online presence to
network is LinkedIn. Using social networking sites like LinkedIn is peer
to peer selling. My LinkedIn profile is a virtual billboard about my
accomplishments, people who network with, and recommend me.
LinkedIn allows you to view up to three degrees of separation to see the
mutual contacts you have with your connections. It also allows you to
communicate with your network en masse or one-off. There are a number
of applications one can add to their profile that raise awareness about
what you are reading, shared presentations, polls, and personal blogs.
LinkedIn also allows its members to form and become members of other
liked-minded groups. The Complex Sale, Inc. has created its own group
called the R.A.D.A.R.® Alumni Association. Our members are updated
via e-mail on group discussions, shared best practices, news links, job
openings, and Complex Sale points of interest. Afterall, the best prospect


is one who has bought from you in the past. In sum, social networking
tools like LinkedIn are a great way to stay connected.

I also have an account on Twitter for those that prefer communication in
that median. This is an emerging technology that has gained controversy.
The median has grown well beyond a way to tell your friends what you
are doing. While twitter may not be the median of choice for your buyer,
it can most certainly be used to gain information about their interests and
company. Simply type in the key words that your target buyer would
care about and see the results. (As an example, try this key word search
on sales 2.0 and see all of the thought leaders tweeting on the topic.) I
recommend following thought leaders in your industry and sharing their
insights with your buyers in a median that they prefer. It is a source of
endless competitive advantage.

By following your customers, competitors, and industry, you will become
a better resource to your buyers, perhaps even becoming their peer. But
remember, for social-media to be effective, it must be relevant and
consistent. You must be willing to connect and follow people that connect
and follow you.


Today’s buyer needs to hear from you well before they need your
solution. WebEx and Gotomeeting.com are both great tools to share
thought leadership via a webinar or podcast. The webinar is a central
focal point for a campaign-based demand creation strategy. Like all
social-networking, webinars need to be relevant, thought provoking, and
consistent. Try to deploying polls to keep the attendees engaged and keep
the dialogue conversational with panelists instead of a one-sided
infomercial. Invitees that accept share their interest in your topics/
service, and those that accept multiple invites show allegiance to your
brand. Attendees that express they want to be contacted at the end of the
webinar should be put into the CRM as a lead. Recorded webinars should
be on your website and catalogued to pique the interest of your visitors.


Trigger Events

Jill Konrath, in her best selling book, Selling to Big Companies, coined the
phrase, “use the news.” What she refers to is allowing your prospects to
tell you when they are ready to buy. Organizations offer press releases
about new position appointments, quarterly earnings, partnerships, new
initiatives, etc. in an effort to generate public relations and investor
interest. Lead411 offers daily e-mails showcasing trigger events on
selected companies by using spider technology. Savvy sales people take
this information to be the first knock on the door linking their solution to
facilitate enterprise-level changes.

Google allows its users to create a personalized home page to consolidate
social networking sites and RSS feeds of industry content. The Google
reader feature allows for centrally located content to be catalogued under
various headings without having to go directly to a variety of news,
industry, or trade websites. I recommend setting the personalized Google
page, iGoogle, as your home page to be notified of “trigger events” every
time you log onto the web.


The Three Minute Rule
Complex selling used to be about the three foot rule meaning that you
For further information on the need to be face to face, within three feet of your prospect to influence
crucible concept, where rational their buying decision. Today, with Sales 2.0 technology empowering the
evaluation processes become buyer with information they need to make a buying decision, you need
political decision making the three minute rule. I define the three minute rule as the three minutes a
processes, click this link for an seller needs to explain to the buyer why they need to trade information.
e-book. For example, complex sales stall for one of or all of the reasons below:

1. Vendors look alike – Prepare for this by linking your
differentiators to solving pains for stakeholders.
2. They consider the cost of doing nothing – Prepare for this by
withholding pricing until the decision-maker has given a
quantifiable cost justification.
3. Camps Divide – In this scenario, the most powerful people will
exert their influence on the process to break the deadlock. In order
to win their vote, you must sell to those decision-makers in terms
of risk mitigation.


To avoid the pitfalls of a complex sale, sellers need to devise a plan to
overcome early in the sales cycle. You know what you need, access and
information, and you must be prepared to exchange it for what the
buyers need. I recommend creating a checklist from which to barter:

What You Need What They Need
 Understanding of the decision-making process  Needs assessment
 Understanding of the decision-makers’ pains  Demonstration of capabilities
 Understanding of the competitive landscape  Competitive differentiators
 Acknowledged competitive advantage  Technical resources
 A date they can no longer go without a solution  Statements of work
 Acknowledged business case your solution provides  Pricing
 Decision-makers’ preference for you  References
 Access to the decision-makers  Access to our executives


Here, true selling in a Complex Sale 2.0 world and the three minute rule
come into play. You need to convince your point of contact that it is in
their best interest to give you the things you need in return for what they
need. William Ury writes in his book, The Power of a Positive No, that
you gain respect in negotiation when you position yourself from a point
of experience, empathy, and mutual interest. This is the crux of selling
peer to peer. After all, sales people have been down this road before and
this could be the only time the buyer has been in this position. You must
sell them on following your process to give them exactly what they want:
a thorough evaluation with the best outcome. This is how you regain
control in the sales process.

From my experience working with sales forces using Sales 2.0
technologies, it is far too easy to let the prospect dictate the sales process.
First calls and demonstrations can be done virtually, and pricing comes
from a template. Sales people must have the discipline to withhold these
treasured bits of information in exchange for what they need. They must
remember that selling isn’t about how many deals you are in; it’s about
how many deals you win.


A Stage By Stage Action Plan to Win the Complex Sale 2.0
Create (Demand Creation) Win (Opportunity Management)

First Call Discovery Proof of Concepts Proposal

Probing Model: Stakeholder Plan Demo Checklist Sales Prophet Review
 Point of View Statement  Pain  Agree on Terms  Pain Linkage
 Gather Information  Prospect  Demo Solution  Differentiation
 Understand Impact  Preference  Link Pains  Preference of Power
 Confirm with Metrics  Process  Sell to Power  Source of Urgency
 Create Mutual Vision  Power  Differentiate  Decision-Making Process
 Discuss Proof Methods  Plan  Approval Process
 Get Return Ticket Punched  Qualitative Value
Stakeholder Analysis  Quantitative Value
Opportunity Plan Shark Chart  Competitive Strategy
 Why Buy? Plan for the Crucible  Political Strategy
 Why Now?  Closing Strategy
 Why Us?
 Who Cares?
 Who Matters?
 What’s Next?


First Call – The Probing Model:

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, yet I hear so
many sellers stumble out of the gate with questions such as: “What keeps
you up at night?” As discussed, a peer is seen as an equal with similar
acumen and experience. A conversation with a peer is not a series of open
ended questions, rather a conversation with a purpose and path.
Successful first calls are executed by following a model that begins with a
“point of view” and follows a six step process:


The point of view statement is an observation about the prospect’s
industry or business followed up with a closed-ended question.
Remember the trigger events that spark evaluations. As an example:

“I read that your company is expanding your product offering to include
a software as a service platform. We have seen that companies usually
have a six month lag in revenue with this type of change because it takes
marketing and sales that long to get on the same page with sales ready
messaging. Is that something you have factored in?”

1. This starts the conversation on a path that will help you gather specific
information. The prospect will either answer the question “yes” or “no.”

To prepare a provocative point of view for a first call, I recommend
InsideView. This tool can be embedded inside of your CRM on the
account level and gives you everything available about the company from
the blogosphere, LinkedIn, Jigsaw, Facebook, and Twitter. InsideView is
offering a free version right now that is well worth the time invested.


2. To understand the impact that a six month lag will have on the
individual and their organization, simply ask the question: “What impact
will that have on your company?”

3. Next, confirm that impact in terms of metrics. If you are going down
the right path, there will be a tangible repercussion. You will want to ask,
“Just so I heard you correctly, a six month lag in revenue for this product
line will mean $15,000,000 in lost revenue?” You would also want to add
some clarification to address a date by which this problem must be
solved. “When is the product due to go-live?”

4. You want to create a mutual vision to address this pain because it is
very important to align with their vision. You want to collaborate with
them by asking, “What are your plans on getting sales and marketing
aligned before the product release?” Then, follow up by sharing how you
have helped similar organizations in similar circumstances.

5. Your next step is to offer a method of proof. Most complex sales will
require some deeper discovery with individuals in the company. We
want to get sponsorship of this discovery step, but not without giving a


“high-level” overview of what you are trying to achieve. “Our Sales Tool
Kit will provide sales ready messaging at the time of product release to
avoid the six month revenue lag.”

6. Finally, ask then for the prospect’s sponsorship on a deeper discovery
and a time to demonstrate your proof of concept. “As a next step, you will
introduce me to your VP of Marketing and the Sales Operations
department to tailor a proof of concept demonstration of the Sales Tool
Kit. We can have something prepared for you by month end. Can we
schedule a time for our next meeting then?”

Tools to Help with the First Call

Selling like a peer means thoroughly researching all of your potential
stakeholders to be well versed in their position and the challenges they
face. Successful companies take this research and put it into a sales
playbook for consistency throughout the entire sales force. It is vitally
important to have a central repository of best practices in messaging,
competitive positioning, objection handling, and probing questions to
prepare for a first call. The playbook should be housed in the CRM, and


Kadient offers a content management tool that fully integrates with most
CRMs.

At the Complex Sale, Inc., we believe in Stephen Covey’s third habit:
Begin with the End in Mind. We think that big ticket, multi-vendor,
multi-decision maker evaluations will always have political impact, and
therefore, the potential to stall. To avoid the stall, you must prepare for it
with a strategy from the very first call.

The Complex Sale offers our GPS R.A.D.A.R.® tool off of the App-
Exchange which facilitates the critical thinking sales rep needs to create a
political solution and closing strategy for their opportunity. For
customers who use R.A.D.A.R.® as their sales methodology, we transfer
the learning from the class room to the opportunity, on a deal by deal
basis. This tool is embedded inside of the opportunity tab on
Salesforce.com, and is available on most CRMs.


The R.A.D.A.R.® process begins by applying the six keys to winning a
complex sale to qualify the opportunity:

Pain: Why Buy?
Prospect: Why Now?
Preference: Why Us?
Process: Who Cares?
Power: Who Matters?
Plan: What’s Next?

On a first call, your very first plan is to fully understand the six Ps of the
account. As stated before, the buyer is becoming less and less dependant
upon you; therefore, you must become more and more insistent that you
are doing the right things to progress the sale. If you don’t know the six
Ps, then your plan is to figure them out. Use this information to qualify in
or out of the account.


Discovery

By definition, a complex sale has multiple decision-makers, multiple
vendors, and usually distinguishes between evaluators and decision-
makers. Successful sales people take a census of all the potential players
in an opportunity and then understand what role these people play in the
buying the process. You can take the same six Ps used to qualify the
account and apply them to each stakeholder in the buying process:

Pain: What pain will my product solve for this person
specifically?
Prospect: What personal risk does this person have with this
project?
Preference: Do they acknowledge our competitive advantage?
Process: What role do they play in the decision-making
process?
Power: How do they influence the decision?
Plan: How do we earn the stakeholder’s vote or live
without it?


Building Preference in Discovery

The Complex Sale deploys the Shark Chart to help
you better align with your buyers and speak with
them in a language they understand. When
performing discovery, you want to understand the
impact that the strategic, political, financial, and
cultural pains have on the organization. Your
discovery should be tailored to uncovering pains
specific to the individual buyer to build preference.
This is how you begin to be seen as an experienced
peer who is offering a solution to a problem, rather
than a sales person offering features and benefits.

You build competitive preference by linking your
unique differentiators to solving acknowledged
pains and avoiding general benefit statements.


With the information you have uncovered in the first call and discovery,
begin to create your plan to win the votes of the powerful people by
creating a “Stakeholder Analysis” out of the six Ps. In the chart below,
Pain is detailed by type: Strategic, Political, Financial, Cultural, or
Operational. Power is on a scale of +5 to -5, and Preference for your
solution is from +50 to -50. The part allows you to see the role the
stakeholder plays in the decision.

Person P a in Power Preference P a rt Plans

Smith Strategic +5 + 50 PS, DM Support

Jones +2 - 40 Gatekeeper Disconnect

Wilson Operational -5 - 50 Tech Buyer Ignore

Allen Operational -1 + 50 R Coach

Pierce Cultural +4 + 40 NP, PI Involve

McCune +4 + 40 NP, PI Raise Pain

Millen Financial +5 - 40 DM Out Vote

Turner Operational +4 - 20 DM Change Preference


Proof of Concept

When you move to the point of proof of concept, you must first set the
ground rules. This has been stated before, but bears repeating. Even
though there is technology such as Gotomeeting and WebEx, you must
resist the temptation to demo without bartering for access to power.
Think of the three minute rule. If you haven’t performed discovery with
all of the potential decision-makers, then how will you link your solutions
to solving their problems?

Successful sales organizations don’t have standard presentations. That
bears repeating as well. Successful sales organizations don’t have
standard presentations. The Complex Sale website has a recorded
demonstration of our GPS R.A.D.A.R.® product, and anyone is welcome
to view it. It is a great compromise for people who want to see the
product, but aren’t ready to buy. (Tire kicking) However, I will not show
a demonstration of our product without first conducting a stakeholder
analysis. If I cannot get the individuals I need to submit to some form of
discovery before a proof of concept, then they have qualified themselves
out.


Person P a in Power Preference P a rt Plans

Smith Strategic +5 + 50 PS, DM Support

Jones +2 - 40 Gatekeeper Disconnect

Wilson Operational -5 - 50 Tech Buyer Ignore

Allen Operational -1 + 50 R Coach

Pierce Cultural +4 + 40 NP, PI Involve

McCune +4 + 40 NP, PI Raise Pain

Millen Financial +5 - 40 DM Out Vote

Turner Operational +4 - 20 DM Change Preference

When you can agree to terms on a demonstration, you want to use the
stakeholder analysis to create a unique presentation based solely on the
participants’ pain, power, preference, and part. Using the chart above,
there are three decision-makers (DMs): one is solidly against you (-50),
one is solidly for you (+50), and one can be swayed (-20). One plan for this
demonstration will be to raise the preference of Turner (-20) by linking
your unique differentiators to solving her operational pain.


Another plan could be to involve an additional powerful person,
McCune, in the decision. The NP part means Non Participant, but with
high preference (+40) for us and power (+4), we could ask for his help.

The overall point is that the proof of concept phase is too important to
your overall plan not to tailor it. And, you can’t tailor it without
discovery.

Proposal

Outside of your own personal expertise, the most valuable piece of
information you can offer buyers is your pricing. In the Complex Sale 2.0
world, buyers are gaining more and more control because information is
becoming more and more available. Therefore, you should only share
pricing when/ if you feel you have positioned yourself as best as you can
to win the business. If there is information you still need, you will not get
it AFTER you send a detailed proposal.

Integrated into Salesforce.com and other CRM s, The Complex Sale’s Sales
Prophet tool helps managers know if they are in a position to win.


Will we win?

 Is their pain linkage?
 Have we differentiated our solution?
 Do we have enough votes to win?

Will it close on time?

 Is there a source of urgency?
 Do we know the decision-making process?
 Do we know the approval process?

Will it close for the amount forecasted?

 Have we quantified the value?
 Do we understand the political risk?

Have we prepared for the crucible?

 Are we anticipating counter-attacks?
 Can we navigate the political landscape?
 Do we have a closing strategy?


Your confidence in winning should be based upon these 11 objective
questions. The more you can answer “yes,” the more confident you feel
that you can win and vice versa. The Sales Prophet tool assigns a
forecasting confidence level (red, yellow, green) based on how you
answer these questions.

The biggest mistake we see sales managers make is to base a forecast on
stages in the sales cycle. Just because you are 75% into a sales process
doesn’t mean you are going to win the business. If you are in a
competitive deal, your competition should be in the same phase. You
need to compliment this quantitative step of forecasting with the
qualitative step of a Sales Prophet deal review. Our research shows that
25% of forecasted deals are lost to competition by not taking this factor
into account.

Our research also shows that 25% of forecasted deals are lost to no
decision. That is why it is imperative to have the business case established
before you present pricing. If you don’t understand the quantifiable
metric upon which your decision-makers are going to base their decision,
then you have a good chance of losing to no-decision.


Approval

The approval process is the most important step in a sale, but perhaps the
most often overlooked. What a waist of time to usher an opportunity all
the way to the end, only to see it stall in legal or finance. When forced into
negotiating with procurement, legal, or buying committees, keep this
acronym in mind: TIP. After all, how many proposals do you think the
CFO has on his or her desk besides yours?

Timing – Organizations will forgo a purchase until they simply cannot
anymore. You must know that “source of urgency” that will spark a
purchase.

Information – You must know all the stakeholders and the pain,
preference, and part they play in the process to avoid little white lies that
could trick you into concessions.

Power – Those that have the most risk in a decision will influence the
decision-making process the most. You must be sponsored by these
people when you go into the approval phase.


In Conclusion

The world of selling is changing, and you must embrace this change.
Buyers want the freedom to evaluate on their own, and you should
provide as much information to them as they need. However, to
successfully navigate this new world you must:

 Consolidate emerging technologies and strategy into the CRM to
create a sustainable competitive advantage for your sales force
 Add value beyond the traditional buyer/ seller paradigm to gain
trust and relevancy and sell peer to peer (P2P)
 Bring experience, empathy, and mutual interest into the sale process
using the three minute rule to regain control
 Have a stage by stage action plan on how to compete and win the
Complex Sale 2.0


About the Author

Scott Miller is a Principal at the The Complex Sale, Inc. (TCS). TCS is a
sales consultancy focusing on accelerating the revenue lifecycle. To our
clients such as Apple, Deloitte, and SAP, that means we help them create
more demand, win more opportunities, and grow key accounts. Scott is
responsible for over 20 clients at The Complex Sale, having implemented
the concepts, methodologies, and execution skills referred to in this e-
book.

For more information, please contact Scott at (770) 771-5130 or e-mail him
at smiller@complexsale.com. You can follow Scott on Twitter, read his
blog on WordPress, or view his profile on LinkedIn.


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