Making Complex Sales Simpler

Another element adding to the complexity of the selling process today is the sale of services and product systems rather than items. You probably don’t sell a line of widgets; you sell “widget-based interior manufacturing process solutions.” You don’t sell a bookkeeping service; you sell “digital financial management decision and accounting information systems.”

The more complicated the product, the more “experts” required to make a decision about buying it. And the greater the number of incremental or interim decisions that have to be made before the final order is placed.

One of the many pitfalls in a complex sale is the “whisper down the lane” problem. You’ve probably played that parlor game where one person whispers a phrase to the next, who repeats it in the ear of another person until “Mary is going down to see Phil” becomes “Mary’s gong rang on Sea Hill.”

This is going to happen to you and your proposal when a flak catcher says to you, “Mr. Big is too busy to see you now, but I’ll explain your proposal to him for you.” This is not a good thing.
Not only is the flak catcher unlikely to get your proposal right, it’s a given that he or she won’t deliver it with the same enthusiasm and positive energy as you would. In fact, he’s very likely to start his pitch of your idea with, “I don’t know if you’ll like this, but.…” and go downhill from there. Remember, it’s the flak catcher’s job to say “no” to proposals, so he has to at least imply that answer to Mr. Big.

That’s if he takes your proposal into the inner sanctum at all, of course. Most of the time, he’s giving you that routine for the same reason a prospect says, “I’ll think about it” rather than giving you a simple “no.” It’s a convenient, low-risk way to get rid of you for a while. In fact, when you call back to see how Mr. Big liked the idea, the flak catcher can tell you “no sale” and blame it on Mr. Big. And you have no way of knowing for sure whether Mr. Big actually saw it or not.

This same problem is magnified when you’re forced to deal with a buying agent of some sort. They really have a vested interest in keeping Mr. Big in the dark about your proposals. And they will go to great lengths to make sure you don’t even think about going around them.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

How To Sell Despite Gatekeepers, Flak Catchers, And Other Obstacles

Many times you’ll have to fight your way through an army of flak catchers to get your proposal in front of the people who matter. Flak catchers, by the way, are those people noted author and social commentator Tom Wolfe identified as the ones sitting in the outer office whose job it is to intercept incoming shrapnel, complaints, and sales pitches to protect the real decision makers inside.

There’s a great temptation to try to blow right by the flak catchers and get to Mr. Big. The problem with this tactic is that it backfires too often. You never know just what the relationship between the two may be. Many a busy executive will take cues from an administrative assistant because they work so closely together day after day. And the assistant will know just how much power they have, too, and not hesitate to use it if they feel slighted in any way. Remember how much trouble Marie Antoinette got into because she brushed off the concerns of the little people.

You have to be careful, too, about job titles. Does the Senior Vice President of Marketing make the final advertising budget decisions? Does the Operations Manager buy the production line equipment—or does that job belong to the Purchasing Manager? Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on the company and their practices. You obviously need to do your homework and ask lots of questions as you’re working your way through the maze.

The decision influencer that will really drive you crazy is the invisible one. I don’t know how many times I’ve worked for months on a prospect, making endless presentations to person after person only to get a final “no” because there was an unidentified decision influencer I missed along the way. You just never know and unfortunately you can’t count on the prospect to offer you all the guidance you’d like to have. Ask, ask, ask.

Another source of sales insanity is the self-appointed expert. Every prospect seems to have someone on staff whose main job responsibility is to pass negative judgment on every sales proposal. They always seem to be hardest on those proposals that didn’t start in their office, too, which is an interesting coincidence.

Some product and service lines draw these experts worse than others. More than two-thirds of American homes have computers, so you can count on at least half the prospect’s employees having an opinion on your product if you sell information systems. Everybody is an expert on advertising too, of course, since everybody is exposed to it every day.

The strategy I’ve adopted to deal with all these contingencies is to make the presentation to anybody who will listen to it, whether I think they’re directly involved in the decision or not. With a complex sale, you can never be sure who’s doing what or who has the stroke, so cover them all. Since a complex sale can take time (weeks, months, or even years) to complete, it’s not unheard of for someone you’ve pitched to get promoted, transferred, or terminated before the final decision is made. So cover all your bases and make the presentation to anybody you can corner long enough to hear it.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Selling In The Face Of Empowerment

Companies who "empower" their employees will proudly tell you that you don’t have to pitch your product to Mr. Big because any number of subordinates can make the final decision. Mr. Big will go along with anything they decide. Did you notice that Mr. Big still has the final word? To me, just saying that he will go along implies that he also has the option to not go along.

Unfortunately, at least in my experience, many of the employees who have been empowered don’t want the responsibility that goes along with the territory. Some people subconsciously feel threatened by the responsibility that comes with decision-making. They may even believe that upper management is copping out on their responsibilities by pushing decisions down in the organization. They’re much more inclined to say “no” than “yes” because keeping the status quo is almost always felt to be the safer decision. And a great deal of second guessing goes on, too, especially among those who live to please upper management and as such are mostly concerned about what Mr. Big really wants them to decide. There’s a tendency to push the decision back up the corporate ladder—or worse, not make any decision at all—if they can.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s one that you have to deal with constantly when you're in sales.

The biggest reason you’ll constantly be involved in complex sales is that the fabric and structure of many industries have become more complex. The Mom and Pop grocery store has given way to the hypermart. The independent local realtor is now a franchisee of a national financial conglomerate. The local lumber yard has been replaced by a big box store and the neighborhood hardware store is under siege. Waves of consolidation have swept through every industry from toy stores to funeral homes.

And with size almost always comes complexity. The management of a nationwide chain of service stations has a vastly more complicated structure than the one running your local two-pump corner gas station. There are local managers reporting to regional managers reporting to division managers who draw on the resources of the corporate marketing, finance, legal, engineering, and administrative staffs. The decision to buy a new digital sign, for example, may have to be approved by a dozen individuals. At the local sole-proprietor gas station, one person—the owner/operator—will make that decision alone.

Since creative sellers focus on the larger potential accounts, they almost by definition pursue the national organizations rather than the mom and pops in their industry. You must develop a set of tools and tactics to reach and persuade the multiple decision influencers in your prospect’s company.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Closing Sales To Decision Influencers

Have you ever heard this sales adage: Never take “no” from someone who can’t say “yes?” There’s more than a kernel of wisdom in it, but this truism undoubtedly pre-dates the age of virtual corporations with horizontal organization charts describing the functions of an empowered workforce. In most complex selling situations, the first hurdle to overcome isn’t “no,” it’s identifying all the various players with something to say about the decision.

When it comes to identifying the people involved, I refer to decision “influencers” as well as decision “makers.” That’s because there are many people in the modern business structure who don’t have the authority to say either “yes” or “no” but whose opinions are solicited by the final decision makers. Even seemingly simple decisions often go through the influencer mill. This happens for a variety of reasons.

For one, a large number of executives today practice consensual management. The old autocratic “buck stops here” decision maker is out of sync with the latest in management theory. These modern executives believe (and rightly so) that involving more people in a decision improves the ultimate acceptance of that decision. If you’ve ever sold consulting services, for example, you know that the client staff members who are going to be affected by the project can destroy it if they don’t “buy in” early in the decision-making process.

There’s also a widespread belief that the more people involved in a decision, the better that decision will be. It’s a safety procedure practiced by decision makers who prefer to spread the risk among a larger group. Of course, decision making by committee has its downside, too. It tends to produce “safe” decisions because a group tends to grind all ideas down to the most acceptable level.

Group decisions may be safe, but they’re certainly not necessarily better. Each member of the group has his or her own agenda and will act to carry it out within the group with varying degrees of success. I’m sure you’ve heard the story of the committee charged with designing a horse. Every member added the features they wanted. One suggested the beast have four legs and another made them long and added large, flat feet for traction on soft surfaces. Another insisted on a tail to shoo away flies while yet someone else modified it to not be bushy so maintenance would be lower. And so the process went through meeting after meeting until the committee to design a horse produced instead a camel.

Here’s a scary number: 27. That’s the number of “yes or no” interim decisions that need to be made in a situation where a committee of just three people is deciding whether to buy an item with three specifications (like size, color, and quantity) and where each person has to consider and agree/disagree with each of the others on each possible combination of specified features. And what’s really scary about that number is that it does not include the final yes or no buying decision! Unfortunately, sound management practice or not, decision-making committees are often part of the complex sale.

That’s one reason I suggest eliminating as many of the interim decisions as possible when you put your proposal together. If you give the committee just one decision to make (buy or don’t buy), you’ve eliminated all of the interim decisions they have to debate.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Westchester's Incredible Shrinking Libraries Do More With Less

As library funding continues to come under pressure from ever-tightening governmental budgets, the quality and level of service is bound to suffer. Librarians are super managers, but they're not magicians.

According to the annual NY State report released September 30, 2011, here's what happened to Westchester County's 38 public libraries from 2005 to 2010:

Total circulation went up 12%, but total materials purchased declined 10%. Annual materials expense dropped 13%.

The average minimum weekly total hours open went down from 50.1 to 48.6 even though the number of library visits increased 4% to 7.8 million.

Paid staff (FTE basis) went from 800 to 728, a decrease of 10% and the number of reference transactions declined 12% (it takes people to answer questions!)

Continued chopping of library budgets will further impact the level of service provided to the more than 500,000 people who hold Westchester County library cards and the countless thousands more who use our public libraries without one. Let's hope the municipalities and other entities now contemplating library budgets for next year realize the full impact of what they are doing.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Business Strategy Accounts For Change

Nothing is so permanent as change. The customer you deal with today will not be the same one you see tomorrow. Your employees will have a different outlook on work when they get up in the morning and your vendors will come through the door with new products, new prices, and oh, by the way, new corporate owners with new credit requirements. More of your tools will have LCD screens and many of them will talk wirelessly to your customer and to each other. You can only hope they keep talking to you. In every type of business—change happens.

Some of us fight change and some of us embrace it, but we all have to deal with it. “You have to respond to the market,” says Michael Young, owner of Street Rods by Michael in Shelbyville, Tennessee. “If you can’t adapt, you’re not going to be here in five years.”

Consider your customers. Most company owners are justifiably very proud of having a base of loyal customers. If they rely exclusively on those loyal customers to support their revenue stream, though, it won’t be long before they see their sales decline. Why? Because customers change. Consider just one simple fact: twenty percent of Americans move every year. While not every one of them moves across the country and therefore out of your market area, many do. And even those that just move across the street put a dent in their disposable income with moving expenses, etc., that cut into their budget for other things—like what you sell. Those lost sales have to be replaced by sales to new customers just to stay even.

Even the customers who do stick around change. Their tastes evolve, they learn new things, they get bored and want to do or own something different. If nothing else, they get older. The baby boomers, the generation that gave us the Rat Fink and American Graffiti, has started cashing Social Security checks. How will that change their propensity to spend money on hot tubs, designer denims, or flat screen TVs? And will the younger customers who hopefully come along to replace them be looking for the same things? Not likely. That’s one reason you see more muscle cars on the street and fewer ‘34 Fords; more Hondas and fewer Chevrolets. It’s not just a change in fashion—it’s a change in the customer.

Don’t fight it

So how do you deal with change? To start with, don’t fight it—you can’t win. Instead, open your eyes to the inevitability of change, make yourself and your company ready for it, and embrace it when it comes. The first step, if you want to keep up with changes in the marketplace, is to make a conscious effort to listen to what the customers are saying to you about themselves and what they want.

“Customers are more knowledgeable,” observes Sales Manager Tom Dickinson of AP Tuning in Lebanon, PA, a company that specializes in high-performance automotive work. Not too many years ago, hot rod magazines and mail-order catalogs defined media for that market. Today, enthusiasts can learn about the sport from an ever-growing number of media outlets—everything from the Internet to entire television networks devoted to it. Enter a term like “torque converter” into Google, and you’ll get 743,000 listings. When Dickinson’s customers see somebody on TV winning races or shows with a car like theirs, they become a more informed—and generally more demanding—customer.

“It used to be that you learned about cars by talking to the guy in the next pit stall at the track,” according to Darrick Klima, also in the automotive performance business as owner of Belleville Motorsports in Belleville, KS, where they build over 100 race cars a year. “One of the bigger things these days are race car workshops and driving schools. People are spending money to become better racers because they’re spending more money on better race cars. It puts a lot of pressure on everybody.” Klima attends schools and seminars himself so he will know what his customers are being told.

Klima also spends a lot of time getting feedback from customers. “We meet change by listening to our customers,” he says. “All I do all day is talk to people who are racing our cars.” He says he and his staff listen to the drivers’ ideas, bounce them around internally, then try them out to see if they work. If they do, the new concepts become incorporated into all their products. “We have to definitely spend more time and money trying to come up with a better mousetrap.”

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.