I know that mid-year is an odd time to think about resolutions, but September marks the re-invigoration season and the beginning of the rush to the end of the year. If the year is good so far, you want to close it with even more success. If it’s been a tough year, you want to close it strong. Here are five tactics that can propel growth through the end of the year and beyond.
Understand each sales situation from the customer’s perspective, not from your goals and objectives.
The customer doesn’t care about your year so far. They care about themselves. Start from there, and you can shorten your sales cycle. Understand in their words the customer’s needs and desires. Ask what is important, and why it is important. Paraphrase comments back to customers to ensure your understanding. With this level of understanding you stand the greatest chance of closing the deal.
Follow the 80/20 rule and stop selling to “no sale” “no profit” customers.
Selling is a 100 percent expense until the deal closes, and for every deal you pursue you want the close probability as high as possible. Focus on successes, and expand and extrapolate your sales efforts around them. Follow the 80/20 rule and focus on the 20 percent of potential customers who will return 80 percent of your sales.
Manage customers’ pain.
The adage is that people will change when the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of changing. Help the customer understand the causes of their pain, and show them how inaction will result in the pain getting worse. Then present your unique solution in the form of a pain reliever. Build the financial justification for your solution around the customer’s pain — you relieve the pain and deliver an ROI that justifies the sale.
Focus on the “right” call level.
The right call level is where the pain is most acute. It is here where the ROI of your solution will be most openly received. Understand the financials of the customer’s operation, and who has the budget and P&L responsibility. That is where the good decisions create heroes, and the bad decisions are blamed. “Follow the money,” as Woodward and Bernstein learned in “All the President’s Men.”
Get invited into the prospect’s business.
Invitations are usually warm introductions best obtained through referrals. If you do nothing else to increase success between now and year-end, do this — focus on referrals. With so few degrees of separation, you should be able to track back connections into companies you want to call on. Referrals practically eliminate the timing issue associated with selling. Again, the length of the sales cycle is shortened.
The bottom line to accelerating sales and revenues is giving customers a compelling reason to buy. In most instances, those reasons are tied to pain, not gain. Focus on customers and prospects where the pain exists. Call on the individual who feels the pain. Explore with them the cost of the pain, and then show how your solution not only stops the pain, but also delivers a positive ROI.
These tactics, while not easy, are eminently doable. The renowned philosopher Saint Francis of Assisi had an interesting perspective — “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you’re doing the impossible.” Focus on these tactics and do what is necessary. The impossible may soon follow.n
Ken Cook is managing director of Peer to Peer Advisors, an organization that facilitates business leaders helping each other. You can reach him at kcook@peertopeeradvisors.com.
