Opportunity Pursuit – part 2, making sales
Opportunity Pursuit – part 2, making sales
The first article on Opportunity Pursuit highlighted the distinction between identifying and creating opportunities. This article identifies key factors in mounting the response, and in the next article, I’ll cover the mechanism of Quantification for ensuring a more productive bid.
Getting over excited that there is an opportunity to bid can be dangerous as it could distort your objectivity. Creating a plan to cover the whole bid cycle will help you to avoid this trap.
Bid/deal plan
Once you reach the stage of actually planning a bidding campaign, you are past the stimulation and specification stages of the buying process.
The prospect is now moving into the three final stages of their buying process; search for and select a supplier, substantiate the selection, and sign-off and sanction the decision. Your bid plan must include everything that you need to do to meet the customer’s timetable for the buying cycle, and also how you will manage the customer relationship as they go through the process of selection, sign-off and sanction. You also need to agree with the prospect exactly what form your proposal will take.
I cannot over emphasise the importance of good quality information to underpin your bid plan and proposal. The result of incomplete information is imperfect opinion that will lead to poor judgement in how to mount your bid.
Account planning and Account networking
We previously talked about the different roles within the account, the key ones being; gate keeper, influencer, information provider, coach, buyer, decision maker, user, and budget holder. During the customer creation process you will have identified and got to know these people and they will have helped you to understand how their organisation functions. Now, these people will be very useful to you, and the relationships built up over time will prove invaluable. For example, anyone wearing the hats of influencer, information provider and particularly coach will clearly be of great value to you. However, if you do not know who these people are, it is too late once you have an opportunity to work on, perhaps with only 10 – 14 days to respond. Knowing these people in advance is not necessarily enough, you must gain their agreement that they will continue to talk to you once you have submitted your proposal.
The account plan comes into its own now as the repository, collecting and collating all the information you will need when bidding for an opportunity.
A valuable selling process involves anticipating and pre-empting objections. By providing your proposed solution in a form that includes answers to questions and objections that you expect the prospect to raise, you are controlling the high ground when it comes to the negotiation stage. You can only achieve this if you have good information and you can only gain good information through careful research cross-correlated with your inside contacts.
Value Propositions and ROI
During the process of creating a customer, you can help them to understand, in general terms, the value of your proposition and the value of their relationship with your company.
For an individual opportunity you need to establish specifically what really matters to them and why. What is it that they will be prepared to pay extra for? It could, for example, be about a guarantee of on time delivery, it could be about the quality of your creative work, or it could be about risk mitigation. You have to establish all of their buying and selection criteria so that you can present your solution in the most favourable light when measured against their buying criteria and your competitors.
If you do not do the work to ensure you are perceived in terms of value then you will probably be perceived as a commodity and the decision may well be made on price alone.
Win/Loss Review
Whether you win or lose, find out why. Understanding fully why you win, as well as why you lose, is vital for future planning for other work both with the individual customer and with other prospects as well. The output from the win/loss process should be fed back into the qualification and quantification process for the individual customer, and also for other suspects and prospects in similar market sectors and segments as there may be common lessons to be learnt.
The win/loss review process should not be undertaken by the sales person who was involved in the bid as they are too personally involved for the customer to be completely honest and objective. For important customers, it is very impressive if the CEO of the supplier takes the time to undertake the review. It can also be done by an external company or someone other than the sales person from the supplier; perhaps the quality manager, technical or financial director. You should create a simple check list to ensure you ask all the questions you want answered.
Tips:
* Create a bid plan
* Include a resource plan to ensure the right resources are available at the right time to work on your bid.
* Create a multi-skilled bid team for both creation and review; use people with different skills from within your business, plus external experts where appropriate, to review the bid. Several pairs of eyes are better than just one.
* Include a networking plan to cover all relevant contacts within the prospect’s organisation.
* Ensure your bid plan covers the whole buying cycle – don’t be left wondering what is going on because the customer clams up having received your proposal – ensure you have contacts who will keep talking to you.
* Ensure you have as much relevant information as possible; gleaned through Qualification and Quantification.
* Do not be seduced into using too much standard material in your proposal – customers will spot boiler-plate a mile off and it will leave them feeling less than special.
* Don’t assume you know what will impress the customer – ask them what criteria will really count when they are making their selection.
* Understand and then pre-empt their likely objections.
* Present value or be treated as a commodity.
* Win or lose, understand why and make good use of the information for future bids.
Copyright © Performative plc 2001-2006. All rights reserved.
Opportunity Pursuit part 2 making sales - To learn more about this author, visit Phil Shipperlee's Website.
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Finally! This is the stage where you get to make sales, take orders and earn money for your business.
The first article on Opportunity Pursuit highlighted the distinction between identifying and creating opportunities. This article identifies key factors in mounting the response, and in the next article, I’ll cover the mechanism of Quantification for ensuring a more productive bid.
Getting over excited that there is an opportunity to bid can be dangerous as it could distort your objectivity. Creating a plan to cover the whole bid cycle will help you to avoid this trap.
Bid/deal plan
Once you reach the stage of actually planning a bidding campaign, you are past the stimulation and specification stages of the buying process.
The prospect is now moving into the three final stages of their buying process; search for and select a supplier, substantiate the selection, and sign-off and sanction the decision. Your bid plan must include everything that you need to do to meet the customer’s timetable for the buying cycle, and also how you will manage the customer relationship as they go through the process of selection, sign-off and sanction. You also need to agree with the prospect exactly what form your proposal will take.
I cannot over emphasise the importance of good quality information to underpin your bid plan and proposal. The result of incomplete information is imperfect opinion that will lead to poor judgement in how to mount your bid.
Account planning and Account networking
We previously talked about the different roles within the account, the key ones being; gate keeper, influencer, information provider, coach, buyer, decision maker, user, and budget holder. During the customer creation process you will have identified and got to know these people and they will have helped you to understand how their organisation functions. Now, these people will be very useful to you, and the relationships built up over time will prove invaluable. For example, anyone wearing the hats of influencer, information provider and particularly coach will clearly be of great value to you. However, if you do not know who these people are, it is too late once you have an opportunity to work on, perhaps with only 10 – 14 days to respond. Knowing these people in advance is not necessarily enough, you must gain their agreement that they will continue to talk to you once you have submitted your proposal.
The account plan comes into its own now as the repository, collecting and collating all the information you will need when bidding for an opportunity.
A valuable selling process involves anticipating and pre-empting objections. By providing your proposed solution in a form that includes answers to questions and objections that you expect the prospect to raise, you are controlling the high ground when it comes to the negotiation stage. You can only achieve this if you have good information and you can only gain good information through careful research cross-correlated with your inside contacts.
Value Propositions and ROI
During the process of creating a customer, you can help them to understand, in general terms, the value of your proposition and the value of their relationship with your company.
For an individual opportunity you need to establish specifically what really matters to them and why. What is it that they will be prepared to pay extra for? It could, for example, be about a guarantee of on time delivery, it could be about the quality of your creative work, or it could be about risk mitigation. You have to establish all of their buying and selection criteria so that you can present your solution in the most favourable light when measured against their buying criteria and your competitors.
If you do not do the work to ensure you are perceived in terms of value then you will probably be perceived as a commodity and the decision may well be made on price alone.
Win/Loss Review
Whether you win or lose, find out why. Understanding fully why you win, as well as why you lose, is vital for future planning for other work both with the individual customer and with other prospects as well. The output from the win/loss process should be fed back into the qualification and quantification process for the individual customer, and also for other suspects and prospects in similar market sectors and segments as there may be common lessons to be learnt.
The win/loss review process should not be undertaken by the sales person who was involved in the bid as they are too personally involved for the customer to be completely honest and objective. For important customers, it is very impressive if the CEO of the supplier takes the time to undertake the review. It can also be done by an external company or someone other than the sales person from the supplier; perhaps the quality manager, technical or financial director. You should create a simple check list to ensure you ask all the questions you want answered.
Tips:
* Create a bid plan
* Include a resource plan to ensure the right resources are available at the right time to work on your bid.
* Create a multi-skilled bid team for both creation and review; use people with different skills from within your business, plus external experts where appropriate, to review the bid. Several pairs of eyes are better than just one.
* Include a networking plan to cover all relevant contacts within the prospect’s organisation.
* Ensure your bid plan covers the whole buying cycle – don’t be left wondering what is going on because the customer clams up having received your proposal – ensure you have contacts who will keep talking to you.
* Ensure you have as much relevant information as possible; gleaned through Qualification and Quantification.
* Do not be seduced into using too much standard material in your proposal – customers will spot boiler-plate a mile off and it will leave them feeling less than special.
* Don’t assume you know what will impress the customer – ask them what criteria will really count when they are making their selection.
* Understand and then pre-empt their likely objections.
* Present value or be treated as a commodity.
* Win or lose, understand why and make good use of the information for future bids.
Copyright © Performative plc 2001-2006. All rights reserved.
Opportunity Pursuit part 2 making sales - To learn more about this author, visit Phil Shipperlee's Website.
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Cheryl MatthynssensCheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur. Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well. A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles. She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide- to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being. Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com - Visit Cheryl Matthynssens's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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