E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 63 traveled through the Prime Process have a clear under- standing of their challenges, and they know what the bes t solution will look like. In fact, they have become co-authors of that solution. That is why sales professionals who use the Prime Process, and have not disqualified the custom er by its final phase, experience exceptional conversion ratios. That is also why the final step and ultimate goal in the De- liver phase is not to close the sale, but to maximize the cus- tomer’s awareness of the val ue derived from the solution that is being implemented. The tasks in the Deliver phase begin with the prepara- tion and discussio n of a formal proposal and the customer’s official acceptance of the solution. The next steps include the delivery and support of the solution and the measure- ment and evaluation of the value that has been delivered. The final task of the Deliver phase is to serve the customer and grow the relationship. In the Deliver phase, we want our customers to see us as dependable. We literally do what we said we were going to do and deliver on the value we promised. As we complete the sale, our customers should be thinking: You are here for me and you wil l take care of me. I can depend on you now and in the future. ÃÃÃ The four ph ases of the Diagnostic Business Development system—the Prime Process—represent a fundamental re- engineering of the conventional sales process. The process eliminates the inherent flaws in the sales processes of previ- ous eras, directly addresses the gaps in our customers’ deci- sion processes, and helps ensure that sales organizations connect the value of their companies’ solutions to their cus- tomers’ situations. It is a process done with the customer in a very transparent fas hion, not a process done to the cus- tomer in a covert manner. A Value-Driven, Diagnosis-Based System for Complex Sales 63 E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 64 The Right Set of Skills for Complex Sales The second element of any profession encompasses the knowledge and skills that its practitioners need to achieve their goals and the tools that support the skills. In Diagnostic Business Development, most of the skills and tools are ap- plied in specific phases of the Prime Process, and I will dis- cuss them in later chapters. But there are three major skills and their associated tools that span the entire selling process. These skills and tools help successful sales profes- sionals answer a critical set of questions that are present in every Era 3 complex sale:  How is value created within your customer’s business?  Who should be involved in determining the existence and financial impact of the problem?  What are the problems the customer is actually expe- riencing or the risks to which he or she is exposed?  How are those problems im peding the customer’s ability to accomplish his or her business objectives?  How are the problems affecting your customer’s customer?  How will the customer achieve successful business outcomes?  How are those outcomes connected to the salesper- son’s solutions?  Who should be involved in the design and the imple- mentation of the solution? The answers to these questions can be stated in the form of an equation that must be solved to successfully navigate a complex sale: 64 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 65 Right People: Managing the Cast of Characters In Era 3, salespeople must be skilled at identifying and assembling the network of people who are needed in order to answer t he questions mentioned previously and reach a quality buying decision. The single decision maker, as we saw in Chapter 1, is a myth. So too i s the idea that the customer, without assistance, can assemble the best group of people to be involved in this work. Logic dictates that if our customers don’t have quality decision processes, they won’t be able to identify and as- semble the right decision teams. The re is another reality that sales professionals must recognize. A customer’s decision team is not just a group of people who have the power to say ‘‘yea’’ or ‘‘nay’’ to the sale. A quality decision team must be far more comprehen- sive, including people who can assist in the diagnosis of their current situation and the identification of the best solution. Thus, the task of assembling the right team of decision makers, advisors, and influencers is now more sophisticated and complex than ever. One telling observation from the field is that when it comes to identifying and interacting with a network of decision makers, advisors, and influencers in a complex sale, the most successful salespeople don’t passively accept the decision team identified by their customers. They take an active role in building t he optimal ‘‘cast’’ with their customers. They seek to identify the important Right People: Managing the Cast of Characters 65 E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 66 cast members in the customer’s organization, involve each in the decisio n process, and ensure that each has all the assistance required to comprehend and quantify the problem, the opportunity, and the solution and its results. Effectively managing the decision team is a job that spans the entire sales process. A very important characteristic of the cast of charac- ters in a complex sale is perspective. In every sale, there are two major perspectives: The problem perspective includes members of the customer’s organization who can help identify, understand, and communicate the details and con- sequences of the problem. The second perspective, the so- lution perspective, includes those who can help identify, understand, and communicate the appropriate design, in- vestment, and measurement criteria of the solution. The challenge of casting the complex sale doesn’t stop here. We need decision team members who can bring to the surface the problem and solution perspectives available at different levels within the organization, such as executive and managerial levels, and operational and functional lev- els. Sometimes, depending on the sale, we may also need to include cast members from outside the customer’s com- pany, such as the customer’s customers and business part- ners who might also be affected by a decision. Why go through all this work? The obvious answer is that there is no other way to ensure that you are developing all of the information required to guide your customer to a high-quality decision. There are also other less obvious rea- sons. For instance, would you prefer to present a solution to a group that has had little or no input into its content, or would you rather present a solution proposal to a group that has already taken an active role in creating it? Would you prefer to deal with a newly install ed decision maker who has replaced your single contact in the middle of the sales process, or would you rather face that new decision 66 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 67 maker with the support of all the remaining cast members and with full documentation of the progress already made? The answers to these questions should be clear. The successful sales professional assembles and or- chestrates the group of players who have the most informa- tion, insight, and influence on the decision to buy. This shortens the sales cycle by effectively reaching the right people, creating a sense of urgency, and helping them make high-quality decisions. A full cast also helps sales profes- sionals overcome the unexpected surprises tha t sink sales, enhancing predictability and increasing the cha nces of a successful engagement. Right Questions: Quality Conversations, Vital Information All salespeople are taught to use a variety of questions in the sales process, but most use them in ineffective ways and in dubious pursuits. They ask questions to get their cus- tomers to volun teer information that they think is critical to win the sa le, such as, ‘‘How will you buy?’’ and ‘‘What will you buy?’’ They ask future-oriented qu estions that have littl e conne ction to the customer ’s current problems versus present-oriented questions that tap into the evidence of urgent problems and risks. Worst of all, the questions they ask subvert the most valuable use of questions—to diagnose. The most successful sales professionals are skilled and sophisticated diagnosticians. They understand that to effectively and accurately diagnose a customer’s situation, they must be able to create a conversational flow designed to ask the right people the right questions. The diagnostic questions that these salespeople use to understand and communicate customers’ problems include: Right Questions: Quality Conversations, Vital Information 67 E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 68 1. AtoZquestions, which frame a customer’s process and then enab le the salesp erson to pinpoint specific areas of concern within it. 2. Indicator questions, which uncover observable and quantifiable symptoms of problems. 3. Assumptive questions, which expand the customer’s comprehension of the problem in nonthreatening ways. 4. Rule of Two questions, which help identify preferred alternatives or respond to negative issues by giving the customer permission to be honest, without fear of ret- ribution from the salesperson. These diagnos tic questions, which I will detail in the chapters that follow, are purposely designed to avoid turn- ing our conversations with customers into rote interviews, useless fishing expeditions, or worse, irritating interroga- tions. Instead, they help salespeople develop conversations in which the customer ’s self-esteem is protected, communi- cation is stimulated, and mutual value is generated. (Silence and listening skills, as I will describe later, also play impor- tant ancillary roles in diagnostic questioning.) Most importantly, they enable sales professionals to ask questions that customers have not thought to ask them- selves. These questions expand the thinking of customers and their comprehens ion of their situations. Therefo re, they stimulate the decision to change and create excep- tional credibility for the salesperson in customers’ eyes. Right Sequence: The Bridge to Change and Value Clarity Just as complex sales involve multiple decision makers, they also require multiple decisions. The content and 68 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 69 sequencing of those decisions is what allows us to connect our customers and the problems they face (or the value they require) to the value inherent in solutions we are offering. In short, this creates value clarity. To accomplish this goal, weneedtoestablishanordered, repeatable sequence of questions that will guide our customers through a series of high-quality decisions. The sequencing of questions must be custom designed for your solutions and it must be navigated in different ways according to the physical reality of each individual customer. All sequenced diagnostic maps TM are based on a generic format that I call the Bridge to Change (see Figure 3.2). FIGURE 3.2 Building the Bridge to Change Right Sequence: The Bridge to Change and Value Clarity 69 E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 70 The Bridge to Change is patterned after the tools and methods that physicians use to diagnose complex medical conditions and prescribe appropriate solutions. It guides sal espeople by establishing a question flow, in a decision- tree format, that is capable of leading their customers through complex decisions. More importantly, it allows salespeople to pinpoint the areas in which t hey can con- struct value connections that will benefit their customers. The bridge has nine main links; each increases the customer’s value clarity. It starts at the organizational level by examining the customer’s major business objec- tives or drivers a nd the critical success factors (CSFs) that must be attained to achieve those objectives. It seeks to identify the individuals responsible for each CSF and to understand their job responsibilities and personal per- formance objectives. The bridge prompts the salesperson to identify value gaps by probing for the physical evi- dence of performance shortfalls and risk, uncovering their causes, and quantifying their consequences. In its last links, the bridge helps define the expectations and alternatives for solving the customer’s problems and then narrows the search to a final solution. When the Bridge to Change is customized for your solutions, it serves as a decision tree that maps value. You and your customer can follow this decision tree to diagnose missing value, create solution parameters, and finally, identify the metrics that indicate value achieve- ment. The value of a decision tree is that only the branches that are relevant must be followed. Thus, it offers a very effective means of quickly homing in on the areas in which your solutions offer the greatest value to the customers. When each rele vant branch of a decision tree has been completed to a customer’s satisfaction, all of the potential objections have, by definition, been re- solved. In fact, when you hear customer objections, what 70 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 71 you a re actually hearing is a lack of value clarity, the di- rect result of a skipped or incompletely followed branch. The customer can, of course, still refuse to buy/change, but it is unlikely that his or her refusal will be based on any reason within the salesperson’s control. When we build decision trees for our clients, we re- verse engineer the Value L ife Cycle. We start with the myr- iad elements of value that can be delivered by their solutions. Then, step by step, we track each element back to the physical evidence that would be present and observable in our client’s customer’s business if that value were not present. This is the evidence that proves his or her perform- ance is at risk in absence of the solutions our client provides. The construction and design of decision trees is a complicated process that bec omes more and more diffi- cult and more and more involved as solution complexity rises. For instance, when we created a decision tree for one client, it quickly grew to over 650 branches. But the rewards for undertaking this effort are correspondingly high. The decision tree provided our client’s sales team with just seven questions that the team could ask to quickly identify not only whether a prospect was a viable customer, but also which specific branches of the tree would offer the highest value to that customer. Perhaps the most interesting outcome of this effort was that b y providing its sales engineers with a standardized, consist- ent means of mapping customer value, the client was able to reduce the time it took for a graduate sales engineer to become proficient and operate profitably from 5 to 7 years to just 12 to 18 months. ÃÃÃ The cast of characters, diagnostic questions, and the Bridge to Change are the key skills of the diagnostic sales profes- sional. They also represent the three components of the Right Sequence: The Bridge to Change and Value Clarity 71 E1C03 02/03/2010 Page 72 complex sales equation: right people , right questions, and right sequence. The Discipline for Mastering Complex Sales The final element of the Diagnostic Business Development platform is the discipline with which top-performing sales- people approach their work. In Era 3, this is perhaps the most critical component of their success. Just as the flawed assumptions of Era 2 sales methodologies doom those who accept them to ineffectiveness and miscommunication, the mental framework with which we approach today’s com- plex sale acts as the enabler of all that follows. Without the proper mind-set or point of view, the best systems and skills cannot be consistently executed. Three statements summarize, in broad terms, the mind- set or discipline needed to succeed in Era 3’s complex sales. 1. The most successful sales professionals recognize that a sale is, first and foremost, the result of the customer making a decision to change. Thus, when they are working with a customer, they are actually helping the customer navigate through a decision process rather than a sales pro- cess. This is a critical distinction in terms of the salesp er- son’s mind-set: A decision process is aimed at assisting the customer in making the best choices. A sales process is aimed at moving goods and services. Further, all the deci- sions tha t customers make during a sales engagement add up to one thing: whether or not to change. Alltoooften,asalesprofessional uncovers a serious problem within a customer company, which the customer acknowledges and wants to solve. They discuss the solution options together, the customer agrees that the salesperson has a solution that can eliminate the problem, and yet, the customer does not buy. Why does this occur? It occurs 72 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES [...]... business-think, and sales professionals who adopt it act as business advisors to their customers and thus are regarded as contributors to their customers’ businesses When I suggest to salespeople that they should serve as business advisors to their customers, they invariably and unanimously agree They have heard this before But their thinking process becomes very clear when we ask them what happens after the customer... their products and services The best sales professionals, however, act like doctors, diagnosing each customer’s condition individually, bringing great clarity to the customer’s situation, and prescribing solutions that fit the unique circumstances of each case Accordingly, their customers see them as professionals who are willing to take the time to understand their problems and who can be trusted to. .. presenting and selling his or her solutions and is ignoring the critical elements of managing decisions, risk, and change The most successful salespeople, on the other hand, are noted for 74 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES FIGURE 3.3 The Progression to Change their ability to understand and guide the customer’s change progression (see Figure 3.3) A key insight in the large body of psychological and. .. agrees to buy The typical answers include ‘‘we coordinate the installation,’’ ‘‘we train the customer,’’ and ‘‘we get paid.’’ The interesting thing about these responses is that they are focused on what the salesperson and his or her company do next The business being developed is the salesperson’s, not the customer’s When we ask the best sales professionals what happens after their customers agree to. .. to which the answer could confirm that there will be no sale Compare this attitude to that of the Era 1 and Era 2 salespeople who are taught to always be going for the yes They allocate their time equally among the entire universe of opportunities, and when they get in front of potential customers, they stay there as long as possible—often pressing to remain in the engagement even after customers have... deal directly, and in real time, with the critical change and risk issues that their customers must resolve Instead of selling a rosy 76 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES future, they focus on helping their customers identify the consequences of staying the same or not changing their negative present When they help customers understand the risks of staying the same and quantify the specific financial... qualitative, and competitive business drivers at work in their customers’ companies It means that, as business advisors, they frame their communication with customers in terms that customers understand and that matter to them Finally, it means that when the sale has been consummated, sales professionals measure and evaluate success from their customers’ perspectives and make sure that their customers achieve the. .. price; and (2) the seller’s agenda, which is often represented by a selling process that is designed to move products and services at the highest price These two agendas, with their conflicting goals, naturally generate tension and mistrust Working from the perspective of a decision to change, however, allows the salesperson and the customer to work toward a mutual objective—understanding the customer’s... to buy, they say things like, ‘‘They are on their way to achieving their objectives,’’ or ‘‘We can start to measure the customer’s results in terms of reduced costs or increased revenues.’’ The business they are developing is the customer’s business Approaching a sale with a business-think mind-set means that sales professionals develop the acumen and take the time necessary to understand the financial,... Poirot.2 These detectives don’t become emotionally invested in the outcomes of their cases They don’t threaten suspects; they remain cool, calm, and collected They rarely even raise their voices They are mild-mannered and nonthreatening to the point of appearing ineffective—a 82 A PROVEN APPROACH TO WINNING COMPLEX SALES characteristic that causes everyone involved in the case to underestimate them and . advisors to their customers and thus are regarded as contrib utors to t heir customers’ businesses. When I suggest to salespeople that they should serv e as business advisors to their cu stomers, they. 75 E1C03 02/ 03 /20 10 Page 76 future, they focus on helping their customers identify the consequences of staying the same or not changing their negative present. When they help customers understand the. however, allows the salesperson and the cus- tomer to work toward a mutual objective—understand- ing the customer’s problem and business objectives, and aligning the desired outcomes with the best available