Errol Greene

The other day, one of our prospects asked me to explain the difference between demand creation and a standard cold call. “Honestly Errol, I don’t get the difference” he said. “Why is demand creation any more effective than one of our people just calling in, giving our value proposition, and asking for a meeting?” I told him this.

Imagine you’re at a party. You’re talking with several of your friends, when, suddenly, another partygoer approaches, interrupts you, and proceeds to change the conversation to what they want to talk about. What would you think?

“It would make me pretty angry, I suppose,” he replied.

Fair enough, but why?

“Well, it would be rude for one thing—and it would be annoying as well. Assuming I was already in a conversation, it would be socially awkward and would cause us to stop what we were doing to focus on something we didn’t want to talk about.”

OK, I replied. Now, let’s take that same situation, but this time, the same partygoer steps into the conversation and, instead of changing the conversation, he adds a new dimension to it.

“Such as?” he asked.

Suppose you’re talking about how you’d love to find tickets to a sold-out event you wanted to go to, but you’d had no luck and were going to end up missing it. Suddenly, this same person overhears your conversation, interjects himself, and says, ‘Hey, I just heard you needed tickets. I have a friend in my office that can help you out—she always has spares that she’s looking to sell. Give me your name and contact information and I’ll hook you up with her.’ How would you feel now, I asked?

“Well come on… that’s clearly very different,” he replied. “This was someone enhancing the conversation instead of changing it, plus it offered help with something I was focused on already. So obviously, it would be fine and completely different from the first scenario.”

Don’t Change the Conversation–Enhance It

That’s the difference, I told him.  Instead of changing the conversation to what the salesperson wanted it to be, the salesperson joined the conversation in progress, looking for a way to help. People get upset at a cold-call because it interrupts their day and attempts to refocus them on the salesperson’s “topic” (product) and on getting them to spend money. It’s rude and unwelcome—and that’s why cold calls don’t work for the most part. Demand creation however, seeks to determine what the prospect’s conversation currently is, and then to help the caller join in. It challenges salespeople to enhance the conversation in progress so that they are perceived not as an intrusion, but as a welcome addition to the discussion. I asked my prospect if that made sense.

There was a brief moment of silence followed by a smiling agreement that could be perceived— even over the phone. “Yes, you definitely made your point- no comparison between the two,” he concluded.

The message to salespeople and marketers is this: It’s rude to interrupt someone in the middle of their conversation—being uninvited no less—to  ask them to stop what they’re doing and do what we would like them to do. Why do we continue to do it? Yet, this is the primary and accepted method of cold-calling that salespeople use every day. Wouldn’t it be better first to understand what your prospects are talking about—what matters to them—and to then join the conversation?

If you were the prospect, which would you prefer?

Ginger Cooper

When you hire someone to teach you a skill, it makes sense to choose someone who is exceptionally good at that skill. Along those lines, if you hire a sales trainer, you want someone who can:

• Understand and communicate their value proposition quickly and concisely, even in hyper-competitive environments with many players,
• Clearly demonstrate ROI, and
• Position as a trusted advisor within the sales process.

These skills should be second nature for good sales trainers, and most especially for those considered best in their field.  After all, they’re on the frontline—preaching and teaching these techniques daily.  But for executives seeking out a sales training company—be it for the first time or because their salespeople need more than what their existing vendor can provide –differentiating between the major players can be difficult.

Visit the websites of many of the leading players, and you’ll notice similarities more than differences. Even those with pages like “Why We’re Different” don’t necessarily succeed in communicating what sets them apart. Check out a “Top 20” list, and you notice that the brief descriptions of each trainer again sound alike. Granted, they’re all teaching you how to sell, they don’t want to “tell too much” and risk losing a competitive advantage, and certain vendors will definitely be better matches for you depending on your needs and industry.

But if you hire someone to help you stand out, shouldn’t they stand out? Even if, for the reasons listed above, they do seem confusingly similar online, their executives and trainers absolutely should be able to nail their competitive differentiators in person. They should employ their own methods in how they treat you, and that should make them stand out even more. How quickly do they respond? How effectively? Do you get the sense that they’re merely going through the motions, or do their words and actions really reflect what they teach?  In short, you want them to “wow” you in the same way that you’d like to “wow” your own prospects.

My Experiment: Determine What REALLY Sets Each Player Apart

At Verity, we do market research and lead qualification. Sometimes, we work with clients who clearly could benefit from formal sales training—a service we don’t provide. So with the goal of making more informed recommendations for our clients, I decided to try an experiment: Contact leading sales trainers and figure out what really makes each unique. At the same time, I wanted to see who went beyond just words and truly walked the walk—who had their methods and techniques so ingrained in their way of thinking that they naturally treated me the way they’d train clients to treat prospects?

There are a number of “Top Trainer” lists out there. For my informal research, I chose the annual “Top 20 Sales Methodology Training Companies” published by TrainingIndustry.com. I contacted each vendor on the list and left the same message—that I was writing an article to help confused prospects better understand what made each trainer unique.  I requested that they have someone contact me who could clearly explain how they differed and why a prospect should choose them over the other 19 companies on the list.

My Criteria

While many training vendors might not consider me a hot prospect, my hope was that they would at least treat me as a potential prospect. After all, I was asking for information about them, would be giving them media exposure, and could end up recommending them to others. As the vendors began to respond to my calls, I watched for:

• Which ones responded? I made the initial calls a few months ago. So far, I’ve had conversations with twelve of the Top 20.
• How quickly did they respond? Response times varied from minutes, to weeks, to not at all.
• Who responded? I was fine speaking with anyone in the organization, but my calls were most frequently returned by CEOs, VPs of Sales/Marketing, and VPs of Business Development. Several vendors arranged conference calls whereby I spoke with two or more executives.
• How did they respond? Most vendors immediately set up conference calls with me, but one or two promised to get back to me and then disappeared.
• Did they “walk the walk”? As I spoke with various trainers, I found that some clearly employed their methods while talking to me. They’d done their homework and had some idea of my background prior to the call. They clarified what I needed. They asked me to summarize what I’d gleaned from them, and some asked for my take on how they stacked up against their competition, based on my other conversations. One or two identified ways they might could assist me. Clearly, they thought this way 24/7—everything about what they said and did seemed second nature. With those organizations, I came away with the same, consistent, positive impression from everyone with whom I spoke, be it the receptionist, the PR Director, or the CEO. With others, I much more had the sense that they were feeding me the information I requested, and that was that. While that was fine, it spoke volumes to me about who really had their methods ingrained “in their DNA” (to quote Steve Andersen, President/Founder of Performance Methods, Inc.—one of the vendors on the Top 20 List).
• Could they succinctly differentiate themselves? Most all of the vendors acknowledged that, to an extent, their offerings sounded confusingly similar. Also, given their highly competitive environment, they didn’t want to reveal too much to their competitors. While certainly understandable, some of the executives with whom I spoke could quickly and immediately nail why I should choose them, while others struggled to answer the question effectively.

Game Plan: Stay Tuned for “Who Stands Out”

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be covering the results of my findings within this blog. First, I’ll post actual interviews I had with each of the vendors who contacted me. Then, I’ll provide my thoughts on who stood out when all was said and done. I’ll also be making suggestions and recommendations for those of you who may be seeking a sales trainer.

Did certain vendors stand out? Absolutely. Did some fall short of my expectations? Definitely. Did I experience any surprises along the way? Yes.

In my next blog, I’ll discuss some of the jargon you can expect to hear from most every trainer, along with info on how the economy impacted their businesses and their offerings. Then, I’ll begin posting the actual interviews. Stay tuned, and good selling.

So now it’s now easy to get your message out, but getting your message heard can feel almost impossible—a bit like screaming at a football game. How can you stand out from the millions of other marketing “white noise” messages being sent every day?

Traditionally, the focus in outbound lead generation has been to lead with a few key benefits, but the problem with this approach is that it no longer works as well as it used to. A few short years ago, leading with something along the lines of, “I’ll be in your area next week and wanted to stop by for a few minutes and let you know about our ability to reduce your costs” might have gotten the job done. Problem is, the benefits that most of your competitors use probably sound remarkably similar to yours—and they just don’t stand out.

Our own internal research has shown that the amount of time you have to gain a prospect’s attention has dropped even further than it was only a year or so ago—down to just a few seconds—to the point that we recommend introducing yourself with your name and company name as quickly as possible and then immediately jumping to your prospect’s pain point. Don’t waste any time talking about your company at the start. Instead, jump right to what you’ve determined to be the most painful and costly problem for the person with whom you’re speaking. Then follow with a strong example of how you helped another company with that same problem, and be sure, when possible, to back that up with a dollar value reflecting cost savings or revenue increases.

How do you determine what keeps your prospects up at night? The short answer is: Research. When prospecting, there are a variety of search methods that can be used to uncover pain points. As with most things, start with a Google search on the company. More than likely, just a few minutes of research will be well worth your while. (For additional information on this subject, see Ginger Cooper’s article, “Five ways to Uncover your Prospects Biggest Pains”.

Consider the example of a recent experience I had. I’d been purchasing a company’s product and services for some time and had no intent of switching. Fairly often, I’d receive calls from competitors of this company, but the messages all sounded the same, and my goal was to get the sales reps off the phone as quickly as possible. Then one day, I received a call from a salesperson who made me want to listen. “I bet you’re paying around X amount for these products and services if you’re using them, and you might be encountering these problems (he listed  few things), ” he said in his message. “But if you’ll call me back, I’ll show you how you can get a similar product, with free support, shipping, better service, and a great warranty”. I called him back, and he won my business. This was the one in a hundred marketing attempts that got my attention and broke through the white noise.

What was different? This sales rep had clearly done his research before calling me. Rather than a pitch about who he was and what his company did, he hit me with specific issues that he knew were likely to get my attention. He left a voice mail that was, in short, a perfect prospecting call. He’s doing quite well I understand. I’m not surprised.

Before you call into prospects, take some time to understand the relevant issues in their industry (a good way to start this research is to find industry conference and webinar calendars). Use social media tools and do Google searches to seek out specific problems. Talk to your customers and use their experiences to position yourself and gain an understanding of the dollar impact of your products/services to their business. In the new economy, this approach will have you quickly realizing that sales opportunities do in fact, still exist—for those who know how to uncover them.

by Errol Greene

A sales training guru once told me that if she followed up only on prospects who said they needed sales training, she’d have been out of business 20 years ago. Her point? Many prospects don’t know that they need what they need. They’re busy, and they have multitudes of people trying to get their attention.

Because they’re so busy, your prospects frequently don’t have time to research various products and services that can help them become more effective. And when you call on them—even with a solution that could prove beneficial—they want you off the phone because they’re thinking one or more of the following:

1. I don’t have time for this call.
2. It’s likely that I don’t really need this solution.
3. Even if the solution has potential, my budget’s too tight to be making unplanned purchases.

For prospects having these thoughts—and in this economy, that’s pretty much all of them—the most disastrous thing you can do is to call in with a general value proposition.  Instead, you’ve got to do your homework—identifying prospect needs and pain points prior to even making the call—and you’ve got to craft a message that, within a matter of seconds,  clearly communicates measurable value to that specific company.  This rapid, value-based approach has been the focus of numerous sales blogs and publications of late, and it’s dead on. But it begs the question, How do I even locate solid, qualified prospects to focus on in the first place? In today’s market, a good prospect can be hard to find.

Qualifying Prospects in the New Economy

Even in this difficult market, however, there are companies that continue to grow. As we’ve researched these companies, we’ve found that many of the fastest growing and most effective ones have been adopting non-traditional ways of uncovering hard-to-find opportunities.

ValueSelling’s data—and our own experience backs this up as well—indicate that salespeople who can uncover this information and then link  a prospect’s “known” needs to issues and solutions of which the prospect was unaware have a much higher success rate. In fact, they have an 80% greater chance of winning the sale over competitors who haven’t prepared in a similar fashion.

So how and where do you find this data? We discussed some hands-on tactics in a prior blog, and much of it boils down to creative information gathering that’s “outside the box”.  But another option is through third-party sources. It’s a long-established fact that people will be far more candid with a third party than they will with salespeople. These days, when everyone is “crazy busy” (to quote Jill Konrath), not only are they more likely to reject your call, but if you get them, they’re far less likely to take time to candidly describe all their pains to you. That’s where a third party can make a difference, often uncovering facts that would be far more difficult for a salesperson to obtain.

We drove this point home recently with an executive who thought his own salespeople could gather as much information as we could on a prospect. His sales team had uncovered some valuable data, but as an independent third-party, we were able to call in to that prospect, have a non-sales discussion that uncovered a number of pain points, and subsequently pinpoint opportunities that the sales team had missed. Even the prospect was unaware of some of these opportunities. Armed with this additional data, the sales team crafted a powerful message that not only got their prospect’s attention, but ultimately landed them a $1+ million sale.

Clearly this is an economy in which traditional sales approaches—searching for existing projects, requesting blind meetings, and fostering a general value proposition discussion—don’t work. Today, success in sales is all about super-qualifying prospects, identifying pain points, and then rapidly demonstrating value—not in minutes, but in seconds. To that end, employing an independent third-party to gather information above and beyond what your sales team can glean just makes sense. In this new economic reality that we all face, doing the same, only harder, doesn’t work. Innovative approaches that zero in and target customer needs will have far great efficacy and might just make the difference between surviving and thriving.

by Errol Greene

We hear it all the time: What are customers actually buying? Thanks to tough worldwide economic conditions, money is tight, sales have never been tougher, and qualified leads are much harder to procure.  Is there a way to get prospects to buy?

In our research, we’ve found that companies still want and need what you’re selling. They’re looking for ways to improve business efficiencies and reduce costs, but there’s a key difference: They need your help to make purchasing easier and to reduce their risk.

Overcoming Your Prospect’s Aversion to Risk

Selling in today’s down economy is a two-stage process. The first stage is the same as it has always been: Uncover your prospect’s needs and find ways that your product/service assists in fulfilling them—simple enough. But the second step is the new, critical one that separates many winners from losers right now: You must make your solution easy to buy. Even those companies doing well in this market and with discretionary funds available are highly risk-averse. They simply don’t want to take any chances, so you’ve got to think in terms of how you can reduce their sense of risk as much as possible.

To do this, many of the fastest growing innovative companies have started offering risk-free trials, money-back guarantees, try-before-you-buy offers, pay based on the value received, and detailed ROI analysis that removes any sense of risk from a purchase. They promote cost savings heavily in their value proposition, and they’re finding ways for many customers to realize savings before payment is due.

One company we’ve worked with started offering leasing services that defer payments for anywhere from three to six months—enough time to realize a substantial ROI that will more than compensate for the cost.  Another has switched from a one-time upfront purchase of its solution to offering smaller segments over the course of a year and beyond.  This tactic has proven successful and has helped remove the “all or nothing” mindset that predominated before. Now this company’s clients feel a much greater sense of control over the scope and cost of their purchases, and its revenues have started climbing as a result.

How Can I Make It Easier for Prospects to Buy My Solution?

What options can you offer? As with so many questions, the answer is “it depends”.  The possibilities will vary depending on your product, your industry, your competition, your client demographics, and more, but you can start by doing the following:

• Ask yourself, If I were my prospect, what are some new/different ways of purchasing this solution that would feel “safer”? Get creative.
• Do your homework. Find out what your competitors now offer in terms of buying options. Figure out ways to match or improve upon those.
• Call into your existing client base. Ask customers how their purchasing process has changed and what it would now take for them to buy your product. Also ask for ROI testimonials. Poll them for ideas on ways they might be willing to pay for your solution if they were to buy it now.
• If you work with resellers or distributors, encourage them to provide suggestions on how to make your solution easier to buy.
• Look for new ways to segment your product, service, or pricing that could lower any sense of perceived risk.

In times like these, thriving—or even just surviving—requires that you offer extreme value with little or no perceived risk. Adding to that, you’ve got to do so at the very outset of the sales cycle, since any further in is often too late. Seek creative, innovative options that are above and beyond what you now offer.  Don’t wait for your prospects to pull the trigger and buy. Instead, show them how to pull it.

by Ginger Cooper

When you research prospects, you’re really trying to uncover their greatest pains—those issues they’re experiencing that make them need your product or service. If you successfully communicate that you understand those pains and have ways to address them, you’re far more likely to get the prospect’s attention.

Most salespeople start their research with the obvious—going to the prospect’s website and Hoovers.com for an overview of the company, its executives, its product/service offerings, its client base, and (from Hoovers) an idea of the competitive landscape. These are good starting points, but neither blatantly broadcasts what you’re really after—information on the prospect’s business problems that impact its sales and potentially the job security of its key decision makers. When you’re ready to track down this information, try these tactics:

1. Go to the Better Business Bureau website. Since most people don’t bother to file a complaint with the BBB unless they’re really angry, this site can be a great source for uncovering product and service issues within the prospect company. Once on the site, click on “Check Out a Business or Charity” and then type in the prospect company name. You’ll get a BBB rating—an A – F letter grade that’s based on the number of complaints received and the average time it took for those issues to be resolved. You’ll also see a breakdown regarding the nature of those complaints. Use this data as a springboard for doing a more refined Internet search. For instance, if you see that a prospect has 19 service issues, first click on the number in front of the problem (19) and you’ll get a more detailed breakdown as to what’s happening. Next, do a Google search using the issue (“service”) and the prospect company name/product name as your keywords. Also, for some companies listed on the site, you’ll get the option of clicking on a “detailed view” and an “industry comparison”. These provide additional data and also give you an idea of how often other companies in that industry receive similar complaints.

2. Check out Alexa.com, which follows website traffic and demographics. At Alexa, you’ll see traffic for the past month and three-month periods for your prospect. You’ll also find demographics on the gender, age, marital status, and education level of site visitors, as well as keywords they use to find the site and other sites they click to upstream and downstream of this one. The trick with Alexa is to also enter URLs for your prospect’s competitors (there’s a feature in Alexa that lets you compare sites) so you get a picture of any trends, dips or surges in traffic and an idea of how, in terms of website visits, this prospect stacks up against its competition. Additionally, by searching on the keywords used to find the prospect site, you can track down your prospect’s smaller competitors.

3. Conduct a keyword search using negative words/phrases in conjunction with the prospect company/product name. You’re missing a veritable goldmine of information if you neglect to search on any bad buzz your prospect has received via blogs, opinion sites, and more. For your prospect, be sure to do a search on both the company name and on specific products/services offered. Alongside the product/company name, try typing in the following words: frustrated, disappointed, irritated, worst, hate, angry, problematic, terrible, cons, shortcoming, weak, weakness, don’t recommend, problem, issue, challenge, don’t like, and anything else you can think of—you get the picture. You’ll be amazed at what you can uncover using this simple tactic. You might also consider searching on these same keywords for your prospect’s competitors.

4. Do a keyword search on your “prospect name vs. its competitor name” and on your “prospect product/service name vs. its competitor’s product/service name“. For example, enter “Costco vs. Sam’s” or “iPhone vs. gPhone”.

5. Visit your prospect’s industry association websites and review topics for upcoming webinars and conferences. Speakers base their presentation choices on high-interest, high-pain themes for the industry they’re addressing. By pulling up posted conference agendas, you can gain quick insight into issues that your prospect company is likely to be facing. While you’re at it, check to see if any of your prospect’s execs are on the speaker list and which topics they’re covering.

Taking A Test Drive

Now, let’s put this strategy to the test. First, I’ll choose a random company name—I’m not going to disclose the name for obvious reasons, but it’s a real company. I check out the company website and then go to Hoovers.com. From these sites, I get a pretty good overview of what the company does and to whom it sells. From Hoovers, I learn that inventory management and marketing are two factors that present challenges for this prospect’s industry. Now I go to the following:

· BBB.org: I see that this company has had 994 registered complaints in the past 36 months—ouch! —and I look at the breakdown of these by type. I’ll hone in on one—repair issues—and I see that about 25% of repair complaints pertain to delayed completion of the repair. If I have any kind of solution that pertains to improving response times, this information alone could prove valuable.

· Alexa.com: I find that my prospect’s website traffic is down 37% over the past three months. People hitting the site are typically aged 45-54 and don’t have a college degree. That surprises me a bit, as I would have thought otherwise on the education level. I click on “high impact search queries” to see which products are generating the most interest among site visitors. I also see that the majority of people go to Google before and after coming to this site, but I also see that many are visiting the competition from here. I enter the top 3 competitor site URLs and see that all have experienced similar rises and dips in site traffic, but the competitor most resembling my prospect has had an elevation in traffic. That competitor also has 13 reviews, some good and some bad, which I might use as competitive knowledge when talking to my prospect.

· Keyword search on “worst”, etc.: I find that my prospect has quite a few people who have gone vocal with their service complaints, and their issues stem from delayed response time on the initial call (and not returning calls period) to incompetent service. I also find a number of entries noting that this prospect’s salespeople don’t understand all of their products that well.

· Keywords “prospect vs. competitor”: I immediately hit on a great article about this company’s business plan. Its strategy right now is to go head-to-head with its two largest competitors. The article outlines how the plan could work and also covers its potential risks. Interestingly, the article points out that my prospect prides itself on employee training, but I know from my prior research that many customers have complained about employee incompetence and lack of knowledge. This article was published a couple of months ago, so I find it curious that website traffic for my prospect is down—compared to its chief competitor—after it announced an aggressive growth plan. I suspect my prospect is feeling some pain and also that I may be able to focus on enhanced job security as a plus for the decision makers.

· Associations/Webinars/Conferences. I find an annual industry report, and after six more queries, I hit on a conference in which one of my prospect’s biggest competitors will be talking about the market and its business strategies for the current economy. I also discover that another well-known company is about to enter my prospect’s market—this could be perceived as a big threat. Given the size and reputation of this new entrant, my competitor must be bracing for a serious battle. When I make first contact with my prospect, I will definitely outline how my product can help differentiate it from this newcomer.

]]> http://verityinsightpartners.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/5-surefire-ways-to-find-your-prospects-biggest-pains/feed/ 1 verityinsightpartners gingercooperphoto http://verityinsightpartners.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/4-reasons-why-your-prospect-may-have-done-a-disappearing-act-and-what-to-do-about-it/ http://verityinsightpartners.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/4-reasons-why-your-prospect-may-have-done-a-disappearing-act-and-what-to-do-about-it/#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:40:00 +0000 Errol Greene http://verityinsightpartners.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/4-reasons-why-your-prospect-may-have-done-a-disappearing-act-and-what-to-do-about-it ]]>

by Errol Greene

The prospect was a solid fit for your company’s value proposition. You sent salespeople on site, spent money on demos, supported testing, and then…the key decision maker suddenly stopped returning your calls. Now, the same people who consistently called you back are no longer available. You begin having one-way conversations with their voicemail. If you actually reach them, you’re met with a “no decision” or “we’re holding off” excuse that rings quite hollow. What’s happening? And, more importantly, what should you do?

If your prospect suddenly becomes unreachable, ask if it could be for one of these reasons—some of the ones we encounter frequently when conducting sales loss analysis.

Reason 1: Your Prospect Experienced Unanticipated Financial Difficulties

In the current economic environment, this reason may not seem so surprising. But even in the best of markets, executives at private companies don’t want to disclose financial data, most especially to sales reps. To that end, if a prospect experiences unanticipated financial hardship, decision makers may hesitate to tell you why they can no longer afford your products or services.

Solution: These days more than ever, you can’t just sell to prospects. You’ve got to make easier for them to buy. For some companies, this means offering creative finance options or pay-as-you-go plans that may not have been available in the past. One company, for instance, completely overhauled its pricing strategy last year and went from charging on a per-day basis for its service to a much lower cost per-year plan. This strategy enabled the service provider to take on more, smaller customers by giving them an option that had been unaffordable in the past, and it worked. In a market in which most of the competitors operated in the red, this company stayed in the black. If your company can provide financing alternatives, make the prospect aware of this as early as possible in the sales cycle. Doing so will help you address a silent sales killer before it strikes.

Reason 2: You and Your Prospect Didn’t “Mesh” Well

Sometimes, it just happens: People meet, and for some reason they feel at odds with each other. In situations in which the prospect could be an ideal client, a gear change may be necessary to save the sale.

Solution: Regardless of how good your salesperson is, if you’ve got a personality conflict on your hands, your best bet may be to shift to another sales rep. Provide a no-questions-asked option of turning over the opportunity to another rep—one whom you feel can build stronger rapport with the prospect. Offer a split commission based on the amount of time and effort each salesperson put into the sale. And understand that bad things can happen even to the best of salespeople, so it’s important to present this as a solution rather than as a punishment. That said, if the problem becomes consistent, you probably need to retrain or re-evaluate that salesperson’s role in the company.

In one situation we encountered, a salesperson understood her company’s product thoroughly and presented it well, but she lacked strong relationship-building skills. Despite training in this area, she simply didn’t have a personality that made prospects want to do business over the long-run. The company had invested time and money in her, and management appreciated that she had developed a strong knowledge base. Instead of letting her go, they were able to reassign her to a technical support position that was a better fit. With a new salesperson assigned to the territory, sales improved—and the company was able to retain an experienced technical resource, representing a win-win for everyone involved.

Reason 3: Your Competitor Offered Lower Pricing at the Eleventh Hour

You’ve done all the work and have spent the better part of a year on a particular sale. Then, just before the sale should be closing, a competitor sweeps in and now your prospect—who happens to be your last, best hope for nailing your quota in this challenging quarter—won’t acknowledge that you exist. You’ve just become victim to the “eleventh-hour interloper”, a competitor who knows that: 1) He has little or no money invested in the prospect to date, so he has nothing to lose and plenty to gain, and 2) To be able to compete this late in, he’ll have to pull a rabbit from a hat. Most of the time, the “rabbit” is an incredibly low price for a comparable offering.

Solution: Find the means to get small, initial buy-ins during the sales process, and continually look for ways to make yourself/your company indispensible to the project at hand. One company inserts their people into the prospect’s operations and offers unique services at no charge—pertaining to software and device management—that their competitors don’t provide along the way. By doing this, they create an environment in which prospects will derail their own projects if they change vendors. Even if a competitor comes in at an extremely low price, the cost of starting over with a new company—both in dollars and time—makes it a losing proposition.

Get creative—put yourself in the shoes of your prospects and ask how you could make yourself a critical component of their business during the sales process. If you’re comfortable doing so, you might also gather feedback from customers with whom you were directly involved in the sales process and ask them to recommend possible options that could make you invaluable to prospects.

Reason 4: Your Competitor Provided “Insights”

We’ve all heard the saying that “a picture paints a thousand words”. With one company, we actually saw PowerPoint presentations—created by a competitor—that purported to show the “cheap internal workings” of this company’s hardware. Had the pictures been accurate, they could have been considered fair game, but they had been altered—drastically. Prospects rarely consider the fact that they might be viewing false pictures or information, and it’s amazing how effective this unscrupulous sales practice is, especially in software and hardware sales.

Solution: Despite the fact that most salespeople play fair, misrepresentations of a competitor’s product/service occur frequently. The key here is knowing how your competitors sell against you. If you can’t glean this information from the prospect in question, consider using a third party or talking to salespeople that work for other competitors. Once you’re aware of what’s really going on, you can warn prospects in advance and let competitors dig their own graves when they falsify information.

If your best prospects start “falling off the face of the earth”, it’s time to take a fresh look at your sales team, your prospect needs, and your competitor’s positioning of you and your offerings. Armed with a better understanding of what’s really going on, you can start taking measures that make this “unexplainable” phenomenon begin to fall off the face of the earth itself!

You had every reason to win the sale, but you didn’t. Your prospect was well qualified, and your product/service clearly outshined the competition’s. Still, something went wrong. Exactly what could be any number of possibilities—you can read about most in the myriad of sales-related books and articles on the market—but sometimes sales are lost for less obvious reasons. The current economic climate, for instance, has fostered a hyper-competitive sales environment, and, unfortunately, it’s one in which salespeople and their companies don’t always play fair. Take these real-life situations we’ve encountered in recent loss-analysis cases:

• A mobile devices vendor started losing sales to a particular competitor, even though executives knew they had the better product and salespeople were doing their jobs well. When prospects in these lost sales were interviewed, they claimed the competitor’s product appeared just as durable, or even more so, at a better price. Price wasn’t a true issue—salespeople could demonstrate that over the life of the product, their solution actually cost less—but the durability claim made no sense. This vendor clearly had a superior product, and side-by-side tests at the client site should have confirmed this.

What was happening? In the face of falling market share, the competitor had installed extra padding in the test versions of its devices. Since prospects weren’t likely to pry open hardware when testing it, they thought they were seeing an equal or better product at a lower price—and they wouldn’t know otherwise till well after the sale. Armed with this knowledge of their rival’s deceptive practices, the vendor’s salespeople began advising prospects to insist that all test devices be opened up on-site. The competitor immediately backed out of these sales, and the hardware company began winning deals again.

• A staffing company has business clients who renew their contracts annually. These are generally “easy” sales that follow a standard procedure: The clients send out an RFP, and this company rebids for the business. Since the staffing company provides excellent service at a competitive price and is a key player in its industry, it has a history of repeatedly winning the business of its biggest clients.

Last year, however, company executives were shocked to learn that they’d lost a contract with one of their largest customers, and they’d lost to a much smaller contender with fewer resources. Until the moment when they lost the sale, everything had gone according to plan. The salesperson on the account had done her job flawlessly, and the Sales VP couldn’t find anything that pointed to a problem. The whole situation “just felt wrong”.

In this situation, the only thing different from the prior year was the addition of new Board members within the client company. As it turns out, one of these Board members, in his eagerness to help a friend whose staffing business was struggling, quietly (and illegally) provided his friend with a copy of the proposal submitted by the incumbent staffing company. When this friend subsequently submitted a proposal that—line for line—matched or beat the incumbent’s proposal, the Board member argued on his friend’s behalf. In these difficult times, he said, it made sense to go with a smaller, less expensive firm that would be trying all the harder to please.

Though the real reason behind this lost sale eventually surfaced, this story didn’t have a happy ending. The staffing company’s attorneys maintain that they have the option to sue and may do so, but suing will require a long, expensive legal battle that could drain precious resources in an already bad market. For now, the company’s executives have decided to shoulder the loss and use the resources to pursue new business, but they took a huge financial hit in letting go of such a big client.

• A large technology company relies solely on indirect sales channels to sell its products. After launching a new product line, the company’s executives anticipated strong returns, so they were surprised when sales growth remained flat. It would be easy to blame a bad economy, but that wasn’t the case. A number of this company’s “resellers” were in fact selling products for the competition. They signed on as resellers so they could gain competitive intelligence to better position their other offerings. When the technology company learned that these “resellers” had no intention of selling its solutions, it swiftly severed its relationship with them.

Digging Beyond the Usual Reasons

The above are just a few examples of dishonest sales practices adopted during these tough times. Most businesses continue to operate ethically, but there is a lesson here: If you’re losing sales when you’ve got every reason to win, it may be time to look beyond traditional causes and do some digging. Hopefully, you’ll uncover problems that point to a fixable change on your part, but if not, you may need to start thinking outside the box. Keep your mind open to the possibility of encountering situations you haven’t seen in the past, and trust your instincts. Where do you start? Try these tactics:

1. Define what’s happening.

Look at every step of your sales process, and watch for patterns or stages where things come to a halt. If you find sales breaking down at the same stage, ask if this is a matter of inadequate sales training or perhaps a sign that you need to revamp certain aspects of your selling resources or even your product/service offerings. Don’t be too quick to assume foul play, but if things don’t add up, start brainstorming as to what your competitors could be doing that would drastically turn the odds in their favor. Could they be misrepresenting your product, service, or company? Could they be doing something that artificially makes them look better? We encountered one situation in which a company’s competitor provided false financial information that made the company appear to be faltering. In another case, salespeople blatantly lied about their rival’s product—where the components were made, what was actually inside the product, and more. Prospects felt like they were getting the inside story when in fact they were receiving lots of false information. Because the competition’s sales reps were so good at building rapport, however, prospects weren’t doing their homework and getting to the truth.

2. Go back to the prospect.

Ideally, you’ve asked for the option to follow up earlier in the sales process, but if not, find a way to get the prospect talking. You’ve already lost the sale, so some prospects may not consider it worth the time to speak candidly with you. Make it worth their time. Be clear that you’re not pursuing the sale, and find a way to offer value so the prospect wants to speak with you. Perhaps you can provide information that helps the person do their job better. You might try offering a gift card to a nearby restaurant, from amazon.com, or any number of other places. When you reach prospects, be careful not to take up too much of their time (15 minutes should be adequate), and be prepared with highly targeted questions so you don’t waste one moment. Opt for open-ended questions that give you the opportunity to spot red flags.

As numerous studies have indicated, prospects and customers tend to be far more candid with third parties than they are with the company in question. If you feel that you’re not getting the full story, consider going through a sales loss analysis firm or some other outside source. You may pay a bit extra, but the information you glean is likely to more than pay for itself.

3. Seek out your internal champions.

If you have internal champions within the prospect company (and you should), contact them. Often, you’ll learn more from them than you will from the decision maker since, after all, they wanted to see you win. Along these lines, do your best upfront to build some type of relationship with various members of the prospect’s Board of Directors. This isn’t being underhanded. It’s being smart, and you should do so with the cleanest of intentions. Early in the game, go to the prospect company’s website and do a little research on each member, then look for opportunities to reach out. When there are changes within the Board, act quickly to build rapport with new members.

4. Hire a “secret shopper”.

If you’re concerned about a potential problem with resellers, try sending a “secret shopper” (ideally, someone within your company) to trade shows. Have this person ask generic questions and ask resellers for their opinions on five or six vendors rather than specific questions on your product/service. This can quickly give you an idea of how your product/service is being positioned against others.

5. For proposal issues, understand your options.

If you suspect a problem pertaining to a proposal you’ve submitted, your options can vary depending on the size and nature of the company issuing the RFP. According to Kent Webb, attorney at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice in Atlanta, many large companies now have hotlines through which you can file a complaint. To locate this number, call the business directly, check the corporate website, or do an online search that includes the company name along with keywords such as “procurement hotline” or “ombudsman”.

When the business involved is a government entity, you may be able to access the other proposals submitted, or at least the winning proposal, thanks to what are referred to as “Sunshine Laws” (there’s a federal version of this and many state ones as well). These laws promote open records and guarantee public access to information held by the government entity. In the case of the staffing company mentioned earlier, this is where executives spotted their red flag. They found a small footnote on a single page of their rival’s proposal that became sufficient grounds for a lawsuit.

If you’ve submitted a proposal to a small or mid-size company and suspect foul play, Webb notes that your options are more limited. For any proposal you submit, regardless of company size, you should include a confidentiality provision or request that the company sign an NDA (non disclosure agreement). These are typically included in the original RFP documentation as well, and they can provide grounds for you to pursue legal recourse should you choose. In this scenario, you would need to go through an attorney, file a suit, and have the competing proposals released for review through pre-trial discovery.

A word of warning here: Should you suspect foul play and consider filing a protest, be prepared to face possible repercussions. You may find yourself making accusations against Board members or executives at the prospect company, for instance, and those people may have friends or peers within your client and prospect businesses. Sometimes, painful as it may be, it makes better sense to walk away from these lost sales than it does to pursue fighting them.

Trust Your Gut

It’s always important to understand why you lose sales, and most of the time, you’re likely to find a flaw in your process. In the current economic environment, however, it makes sense to be on the lookout for “unusual” causes once you’ve ruled out the more obvious ones. If your gut feel is that something really is off, it very well may be.