The "Column Fodder" Principle in Action
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 7:00AM I received this story from a client who had recently gone through a Solution Selling® workshop: What follows is a re-creation of the events that took place. The names have been left out to protect the successful.
“I was given a potential lead for a large customer by my CEO. I made the call and was easily able to get an appointment. I was excited about this meeting. Early in the meeting I was told that they had already been given samples and pricing from my competition - at least it was nice they were up front with me. What they didn’t know what that I was familiar with the “column fodder” principle. They wanted to know what I could do for them. After a brief discussion, I determined that they were going to use me to negotiate with my competitor. During our discussion I saw one of the decision makers writing in a notebook from my competitor, at that point I realized that I had nothing to lose so I decided to react with what they probably would not expect. I closed my notebook, put it in my briefcase and stood up. I thanked them for their time and said I didn’t want to waste any more of THEIR time as it seemed as if they already made their decision to go with my competitor. I said if they wanted to have a “fair” side by side comparison and look at our capabilities give me a call. I finished by saying that I didn’t want to be just another vendor they use, I wanted to be their exclusive vendor. Needless to say, they were stunned and asked me if I was really leaving. I turned, opened the conference room door and left. One person followed me and asked again why I was leaving.
Again, I explained that it seemed that they made their choice and I didn’t want to waste THEIR time.
Also, I didn’t want them using my capabilities and prices to leverage a better deal with my competition. He told me he respected my decision and asked if they put the project on hold and gave the time and access I need would I work with them. I said yes.They did. I did. And after we worked through an evaluation I made the sale. Did it go 100% according to Solution Selling® principles? No, not 100%, but I was able to use the concept to navigate through this situation to turn around a Column Fodder situation to reengineer their vision and win the deal!”
Epilogue: By understanding where the buyer is behaviorally and procedurally, we can make an educated business decision what to do. It may be difficult to muster the courage to walk out, but now I know the power of understanding and applying the Column Fodder principle to my advantage. I can’t wait for another one!
How's Your "Middle" Doing?
Many of the prospects I initially call on tell me going in that they have a sales process in place. At first look, that often appears to be the case. Most have an installed CRM system and a long list of internal activities/ steps that sellers are suppose to follow, i.e., make 25 phone calls a week, make five in-person sales calls a week, enter all data into CRM, issue contracts, etc. It all looks good. The problem is none of it has anything to do with how their buyer’s buy—- buyer alignment.
Almost anything entered into the CRM system is categorized as a qualified opportunity. It can sit there for a long time… four months, six months, eight months and even longer. Often the next step is: has the deal closed? What’s wrong here? The middle part —- the most important portion —- of the sales process is missing.
So, many times I basically see a two step process for opportunities: create and close. Alignment with the buyer is not incorporated into the process. Key steps of qualification, development of the solution, proof and negotiation are not formalized. Additionally, implementation, a key step after close, is not accounted for in the sales process at all.
The “middle” steps of sales process allow sellers to develop situational fluency by thoroughly diagnosing a customer’s pain, providing a vision of a solution and positioning value throughout the entire process. These key steps move sellers from product-centric selling to consultative or “Solution Selling®” (meaning both the trademark intellectual property AND the core methodology in practice).
Now, tech companies often have a middle step and it’s called the “demo”. Get the tech guy, book a time and show the prospect a real time demonstration of the technology. Problem is, without the other “middle” steps of sales process, the demo may not be providing capabilities that the prospect needs. So, many demos are delivered for opportunities that will never go anywhere. It frustrates sales management and dramatically drives up the cost of sales.
Without a buyer-aligned middle part of the sales process, it is impossible to weed out the bad deals or, conversely, find the great deals that may require more resources and support. Forecasting for sales managers becomes a complicated, separate process that consumes way too much time and rarely results in better forecast accuracy.
How’s the “middle” part of your sales process working out?