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So What?

May 18, 2012 By 2 Comments

It’s hard to sell when your customer doesn’t get a word in edgewise. For all your lecturing, demo-ing, and just plain showing up and throwing up (ah, what a wonderful phrase), you finally come up for air. And the client is still looking at you.

No comment. No interest. No way are they going to buy whatever it was that you convinced yourself you would try to sell them.

Because they weren’t interested in buying in the first place. And now they are mentally kicking themselves for ever letting you into their office or taking your phone call.

Put yourself in their shoes. All your lofty rhetoric adds up to one question in their minds: “So what?”

If what you are discussing doesn’t answer that question, you have no business trying to win business with that customer. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , ,

The Fable of the Funnel of Doom

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Once upon a time, some very nice engineers working for a custom manufacturer were told by their Boss that they had to SELL. Or else they might lose their jobs.

The engineers tried to sell. They thought of the word “sell” as the equivalent of a four-letter s-word! They were cursed! They huffed and puffed and asked their current customers for RFPs, lots of them.  Pretty soon, they had more RFPs than they could handle, and no time to do their engineering. They were trapped in the Funnel of Doom.

The Boss looked in the mirror, who told him: “Bring in that consultant.” And he did. The consultant (who did not fly in on a broom) met with everyone many times. She gave them homework to do. She taught them some business-building aerobics. And then “poof” she was gone. Until her next visit….

Two weeks later, things were a lot different at that company…..

  • Things were cleaned up. The company was no longer an RFP mill. The engineers-turrned-sales-reps jettisoned the backlog of RFPs they solicited from current customers (who had no interest in awarding them business). They concentrated on doing work for paying customers. (Whew!)
  • Upper level management conceded that telling engineers to “sell” by asking for RFPs was busy work with a dead-end probability of landing a deal. (A major epiphany for upper level management. Their sales paradigm was changed. No more business as usual.)
  • Two of the four “sales” engineers contacted companies they identified as potential targets for their own company’s core capabilities.
  • Since the engineers were jazzed about contributing their skill sets to the target companies, they had decent conversations with peers, did some internet research on trigger events about the target company, and discussed their findings with the CEO and the VP of Sales.
  • The leads provided by the sales engineers were intriguing to the CEO and the VP of Sales, who decided to make follow-up phone calls to these target companies and have true C-level peer conversations.
  • The CEO and VP of Sales had the “sales” engineers sit in on their conversations. What an epiphany for the engineers to hear what a C-level discussion sounds like (e.g., not exactly design issues).
  • The CEO and VP of Sales broke down the status-quo corporate silos and freed their engineers from their towers and cubicles! They shared information with the “doer” engineers. And they did something significant: they debriefed with them  after each phone conversation, comparing what each of them heard.
  • The recently-anointed sales engineers became enthusiastic about identifying and qualifying more leads opportunities, especially since the CEO and VP followed up on most of these leads, or told them why the lead wasn’t viable for their business and strategy.
  • The curse was lifted! Everyone started contributing to the bottom line. And they could complete the requirements of the original position they were hired – and paid – to do.
  • One of the “sales” engineers was so good at identifying leads opportunities that he began making appointments with prospects and went on initial sales calls.
  • The newbie sales engineer started reading more about sales, took a few courses, and transformed into part of the sales arm of the company.
  • Upper level management was thrilled to have some of the weight of business development taken off their shoulders by staff engaged in leads identification.
  • And they closed more business with new customers.
  • Did they live happily ever-after? The anemic division covered their operating expenses. No one was fired. No downsizing. The company is still in business.
  • Everyone realized there are “personalities” involved in what makes them viable, and not. They are still dealing with those “personalities.”
  • This company did break down the tower of status quo silos. They did learn to sell, together. They liberated themselves from the Funnel of Doom.
  • They understand that selling is an opportunity to showcase their core capabilities, not an excuse to turn their company into an RFP mill.

Have you found yourself in the same place? Then you know it’s no fairy tale.

Let’s talk about it.

My book, Do YOU Mean Business? Technical/Non-Technical Collaboration, Business Development and YOU, shows you how your functional role, not your job description, allows you to positively impact business development. Click on the link for more information. Available in April, 2012, on Amazon.com.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , , ,

Building Business or a Funnel of Doom?

March 13, 2012 By 2 Comments

My customer leaned back in his chair and sighed: “Look at this drawing the engineering department at Company X created.”  He opened a folder, took out a drawing of a funnel-shaped spiral, and pushed it across the table.  The top of the funnel was labeled “RFPs.” The bottom of the funnel, the narrowest part, was labeled “Doom.”

Here was the Owner of a small, family-owned business – a manufacturing company -  with multiple divisions and gross annual revenue we had grown into hundreds of millions USD.  Yet the only people generating business were his two sons, a few sales reps at one of the companies, and a “well-connected individual” who went to a lot of local and regional meetings and “made connections”. The Owner had no sales force or manufacturers reps. He wasn’t actively involved in the sales process, either, since he felt “everyone knows who we are.”

Hmmm…. There was more than just a Funnel of Doom going on here.

The Owner asked the engineers at Company X  to help generate business. The way he saw it, they needed to start earning their keep more effectively.  He also knew if Company X didn’t start generating more revenue, he’d have to sell that division. The Owner didn’t want to create hardship for these employees, but they were an underperforming division. And he suspected there was more than one reason for why customers and prospects didn’t want to do business with them.

The employees figured they had the boss over a barrel. So they dug in their heels, made a few feeble attempts to generate sales, drew their Funnel of Doom to document their failure…. and wagged the dog. The Owner was not pleased.

“Can you teach these guys to sell?” he asked me. “Root causes can have really big contexts,” was my reply. “There’s some psychology going on here and not just a failure to sell.” We decided to tackle the problem incrementally and sat down with the engineers. Here’s what we found out:

  1. The engineers-turned-sales reps called their peers at legacy companies asking for RFPs to respond to. That was what these engineers thought was “sales” because an RFP was the only document which resulted from someone else’s “sales” efforts at their company. So this was their status quo perception of their company’s sales process.
  2. The amount of business legacy customers conducted with Company X had diminished over the years.  But there were always RFPs they threw at Company X.  So it “looked” like they were still interested. In reality, they weren’t. Company X lived – and was going to die – by RFPs/RFQs.
  3. The engineer-reps were so thrilled to have “won” the right to respond to these RFPs / RFQs – due to their own efforts – that they continued calling peers at their customers’ shops in order to generate more “sales.”  
  4. The engineer-reps were now spending 90% of their billable hours – yup, you guessed it – responding to requests for quotes. They hadn’t been awarded one contract yet, but were asked to refine drawings as the contract award date was pushed back. These guys were obsessed and consumed by the demands of their Funnel of Doom.

Does this sound like the churning and burning and dialing for dollars that goes on in sales organizations, where there’s no target, just a Ready-Fire-Aim numbers approach? (e.g., if you call enough prospects – or respond to enough RFPs – someone will buy from you).

For starters, I asked the engineer-reps to think about:

  1. How easy it is to get someone off the phone by telling them to complete an RFP , which would go nowhere.
  2. How it feels to be the “third bid company.” Because their company had become, over the years, an RFQ-mill, nothing more.
  3. Which legacy / current customers were the best targets for their efforts, when the goal was NOT to be invited to provide an RFQ, based on one phone call.
  4. Whether pulling financial data from the past three years would help the engineer-reps (and the Owner) identify existing customers generating the biggest positive impact on revenue stream – and the best initial targets.
  5. Collaborative business development was part of everyone’s job description, from top to bottom in the organization.

The engineers reached for their Funnel of Doom drawing, which they carried with them, and crumbled it up.  They looked at the Owner. Clearly, we had some homework to do. However, this time around, they were going to do it. Together.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , ,

Creating A Sales Funnel Or an RFQ Mill? (Part Three)

May 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

 

How many of you exercise? How frequently? Now and then? Or do you have a regular schedule that you keep, say, at least four times a week for at least 30 minutes?

Think of how it was when you started your exercise regimen, or perhaps took up a new sport or tried out that new golf swing you read about. You weren’t very good, were you?  And thinking about doing this perfectly doesn’t increase your level of fitness or effectiveness. You have to practice to get better. Eventually, muscle memory kicks in: through a consistent and methodical training program your muscles remember the right way to execute.  You successfully change your habits and the positive results are tangible.

Business development is the same way. You must approach business development as a discipline you are in the process of mastering. You need to focus on the basics, consistently, every day.  You want to invest in some decent equipment, like free downloadable podcasts on the web or subscribing to thought leaders’ blogs, so that you are constantly incorporating different perspectives and  subsequently improving your technique and level of fitness. Think of the sales process and business development cycle as Sales Aerobics for Engineers.

We’ve looked at the importance of prospecting referrals and having peer-level discussions with Key Decision Makers in winning business for your company. How do you get to the place where you have Sales Aerobics for Engineers Muscle Memory: you are naturally incorporating a business development perspective while simultaneously implementing engineering projects?

This doesn’t have to feel like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. In fact, it may be easier than changing your golf swing.  

Think about how you begin each day. Most of us have a schedule. If we work for a company, we go to work, where we have activities scheduled. Many times we engage in firefighting and accomplish little of our scheduled activities. Same thing if we work for ourselves, except the activities we have scheduled are directly dependent on our ability to create our livelihood and income stream.

Sales Aerobics Discipline #1: make time every day to identify companies with whom you’d like to work.  Ask yourself why these companies interest you. If you are interested in these companies, you are not churning and burning through call lists as a means to an end. Which means you are prospecting instead of cold-calling.

Think about it. These organizations may be companies you’d like to prospect, in terms of business development. However, in this economy, these entities also may be companies for whom you’d like to work.  So how do you get on their radar screen? The more you learn about these companies, the more familiar and comfortable you will be when conversing with their Decision Makers.

1.    Read about them online

2.    Find out about their structure and hierarchy via Hoovers or other online corporate information services.

3.    Go to their website and get a sense of their corporate culture, mission, deliverables, track record.

 

Sales Aerobics Discipline #2: make time every day to create and add to your list of high-level expertise that you bring to the table.  What do you do best, across all projects, over all career choices? Think about it. You will determine your common denominator. Be strategic rather than tactical. Are you the type of engineer who always brings in projects on time and under budget? Are you an innovator and how have your innovations impacted your customers’ bottom line? What you do best is your Personal Brand. And make sure this resonates in your LinkedIn profile.

Sales Aerobics Discipline #3: focus on working with those clients and on those projects that bring out your best skill sets and value sets, including areas which are new to you and a source of personal growth. This is where the rubber meets the road. You may work in a corporation where you can’t pick and choose your project assignments. However, you can bring your best stuff to each one of these projects. And you can grow and learn from each project.  If your entire day is spent on non-fulfilling activities, review Sales Aerobics Discipline #1.

Sales Aerobics Discipline #4: write your personal list of criteria for the type of company, client and projects that are an “ideal” fit for what you bring to the table.  Then review Sales Aerobics #1, #2 and #3 to determine how you can move your personal scorecard and dashboard so that WHO you prospect, WHO you win as customers, WHO you work with as existing customers and WHAT skill sets you develop are constantly moving towards the ideal.

When you work with the best – and they, in turn, are working with the best – you do your best work. And you provide value to yourself, your customers and your organization.

Time to start your Sales Aerobics for Engineers regimen?

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Creating a Sales Funnel or an RFQ Mill? (Part Two)

May 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

 

Part One of this three-part blog post looked at the importance of PROSPECTING. Although you may dread this aspect, let’s face it: it’s the start of the sales cycle.  Prospecting includes enlightening current customers on the value of expanding the scope of services they receive from you.

Part Two focuses on the WHO of Prospecting. Prospecting practices make the difference between creating opportunities for relationship building versus generating redundant efforts in responding to RFQs. Even if you currently do business with a company, you and your own company might be a well-kept secret. If you are only engaged in peer relationships, your internal contact may not be advocating the value that you provide to his or her company. No one may realize that you are behind your engineering solutions.

The only way to get your light out from underneath the proverbial bushel basket is to prospect the Decision Maker instead of relying on others to spread the word.

Keep in mind that Key Decision Makers are solutions-focused:  they seek comprehensive rather than tactical answers that result in improved company image, competitive advantage, increased revenue and cost-containment.

Some guidelines to keep in mind when successfully prospecting Key Decision Makers include:

  1. Prospecting does not involve cold-calling.  If you are calling anyone you can get hold of at a company, you will end up in voicemail.  Even if you have a well-crafted voicemail message, it will not be returned unless that individual knows you.
  2. Call on companies where you have a referral.  If you have an internal contact, or even that peer engineer to whom you’d rather be talking, ask who the Key Decision Maker is.  Ask that engineer to refer you to that Key Decision Maker, which includes having them send your LinkedIn profile as a means of introduction.
  3. Do your homework about the company you want to call on – even if you currently do business with that company. Go online, Google the company and find out the latest news about them. Go to their website and read about their products and services. Go to LinkedIn and do a company search to determine whether the corporate hierarchy have profiles. Find out about the personalities behind the brand.
  4. When you make your initial phone call to that Decision Maker, you still may be put into their voicemail.  Don’t take this as a sign of disinterest. There are not enough hours in the day for folks to answer every phone call.  Reinforce your referral status in your voicemail, let them hear what your voice sounds like.  Leave them a message that makes them think.
  5. Leave an engaging voicemail that validates you and justifies their choice to answer the next time you call…even if it’s to ask you to call back at a different set time and date.

“Hello, this is Sally Jones from Awesome Engineering.  Sam Bennett from Engineering recommended that I contact you about some engineering solutions we’ve discussed that can significantly improve productivity and reduce maintenance downtime at your Company.  I will call back on This Day at This Time.”

6.  Then follow up.  Make sure you do what you say you are going to do. That voicemail message differentiates you from engineers that are simply asking for the opportunity to respond to an RFQ to get their foot in the door. When you follow up with the Decision Maker, continue that discussion you started in your voicemail.

 

I recommend reading Selling to Big Companies, by Jill Konrath.  This slim book offers a comprehensive review of prospecting Decision Makers.  Her account entry strategies emphasize your becoming a resource to your prospects, who then become your customers.

Be prepared to walk your talk. By LISTENING. It’s more productive to ask good questions and let the Decision Maker do the talking. You can discover far more than tactical problems by conversing on a peer level with the Decision Maker.  Good questions start by putting yourself in their shoes and asking open ended questions.

 “Mr. Decision Maker, in working with my customers, I’ve found that near-capacity production goals have impacted the ability to schedule maintenance downtime.  How does this situation play out over the course of the year for your company?” 

Keep in mind that you didn’t just dream up this question. You did your homework about the company and hypothesized that based on their current track record, this might be a situation that applies to them. And the Key Decision Maker knows you did your homework – and appreciates your effort.

Ask the question and be prepared for the fact that they may take it in another direction, such as responding “We don’t have to worry about that situation because…..” or “That doesn’t apply to us.” In which case you ask “What are the biggest challenges you are facing in meeting production schedules…?”  Start a dialogue.  Start a peer conversation.

Colleen Francis, of Engage Selling, focuses on becoming comfortable engaging your prospects and current customers in interactive discussions.

Keep in mind that every discussion doesn’t result in a project to bid on. You are simply starting a discussion that may lead to more discussions. If you revert back to Order-Taker vs. Innovator mentality, you’ve blown your credibility and Mr. Decision Maker will feel duped by your voicemail message to engage in a discussion that is nothing more than a sales pitch in the long run.

If you are going to engage at the C-level, start to learn how to have a C-level discussion.  You have so much expertise to offer these individuals. And they have so much strategic insight to offer you. And there’s only one way to learn. By doing.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Creating a Sales Funnel or an RFQ Mill? (Part One)

May 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

 

What’s your least favorite task? Ah, the dreaded “P” word: PROSPECTING. If you’re in business for yourself or work for small to mid-sized companies, you probably wear multiple hats. You do the engineering but are also responsible for developing new business for your company. Without new business coming in, you might not have all that much to do in the workplace, right?

With today’s economic challenges, engineering staff are often asked to fulfill a sales function.  They tend to fall into the trap of calling prospective companies and asking to bid on upcoming projects.  Engineers equate the RFQ process with selling. In fact, it’s the quickest way of turning your company into an RFQ mill – providing multiple responses to what may involve the same RFQ being bid on by multiple vendors.

An RFQ mill doesn’t create the proverbial sales funnel needed to drive revenue. In fact, it’s the quickest way to deplete your pipeline or fill it with less-than-profitable jobs due to the amount of time, rework and rebid that goes into participation in the RFQ mill. If done to excess – or as the sole means of business development - there will not be enough hours in the day for you to respond to these RFQs.  Which means you won’t have enough time to devote to those projects already won that are the basis of your job function.  Think about it.

An RFQ mill is not a sales funnel. It’s the road to business development insanity. And we know Einstein’s definition of insanity.

This three-part series looks at the three critical-to-success areas impacting business development.  

  • Part One deals with WHO you are calling on
  • Part Two looks at WHAT you are saying when you call folks
  • Part Three examines WHEN you need to understand the sales process, work outside your comfort level and talk to key decision makers – which is all the time

So just WHO ARE YOU CALLING ON WHEN YOU PROSPECT?  

Most of the time, you are calling on your peers. Why? Because it’s easier to have a conversation with someone you know. So keep in mind that when you are prospecting, you want to create that type of rapport - even with folks you might not know, initially.   

Otherwise you are basically talking to yourself…. with a person who may not be a decision-maker….at your company’s hourly billing rate….on a project that may or may not be approved let alone funded….and spinning out “what-if”….and giving away your precious expertise….so that the individual on the other end of the phone/email/table can take your knowledge and apply it to someone else’s solution.

That doesn’t sound very productive let alone profitable.

I recommend your looking at Anthony Parinello’s Selling To VITO book and website, Selling To VITO. While it may or may not fit your personal style, to me the most important learnings from this book are the personality portraits and decision-making algorithms of  the prospective company’s hierarchy. 

If you know the mindset of the person you are talking to, they become your peer – even if they are several layers up the food chain from where you sit. And they will value this type of discussion.

CEOs, VPs, GMs are solutions-focused, interested in gaining market share, improving their company image, being competitive, increasing revenue, decreasing/controlling expenses and waste and measuring tangible results of the benefits and advantages your services provide. They are NOT interested in features or discrete projects or outcomes.  These are the folks you should be initiating your discussions with.

Technical Sales Staff and Engineers are well-educated, extremely loyal, risk-averse (and therefore hold their cards close to their chest), divisionally aligned and tend to immediately focus on features and discrete outcomes rather than advantages and benefits. Unless they are the Owners, these individuals can influence a C-level decision but may not be able to clinch the deal. Asking them to make your case to their higher-ups is asking them to take a risk on your behalf. Keep in mind that they tend to be risk averse. So why are you depending on them to win business for you? They are stuck in the same place you are.

Internal Support Staff are job- and task-focused and want to preserve their position within the company. They stick to the status quo.  They are a good resource to find out more about the culture of  their organization.  They usually have no decision-making impact.  Choose your time wisely.

If you want to get out of RFQ Mill Syndrome, you MUST engage the top level staff in your initial discussions. OK, get off the mental ledge you just climbed onto.

The good news is: while it may be outside your current comfort level, you already have the knowledge base to provide a high level conversation that says a lot about the value you and your organization bring to your prospective customer’s table.

Now let’s get to work on your tools and skillset.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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