Deal Stalling: Not tied to exec priority
Promising deals stalling late in the process is one of the most frustrating outcomes for a seller.
You can have a champion, multiple great meetings, earn access to the economic buyer, and lose after the final presentation.
If you find yourself losing at this stage, one (or more) of these is likely happening:
3 Steps to Double Your Win Rate
Let’s talk about how to leverage previous users to accelerate multi-threading and win more deals.
Smart AEs leverage previous champions and enjoy 114% higher win rates (solid).
Genius AEs leverage previous champions to multi-thread and enjoy a 215% higher win rate (phenomenal).
Here’s how to be a genius:
Discovery + Demo in 30 Minutes
I was recently asked if I had a framework to introduce the company, run discovery, and demo in a 30 min call.
I love this question because sometimes our buyers need us to be able to help them evaluate fast. We don’t have time for a drawn out discovery process followed by an hour long demo just for the buyer to understand our offering.
Here’s the framework I provided:
Balancing showing too much vs too little in demos
One of the most challenging balances in sales: showing too little of your solution vs. showing too much.
If you simply meet buyer requirements, you’ll lose to a lower cost competitor.
This sounds like:
“You had everything we need but we found it all somewhere else for less.”
If you sell more than they need, you’ll lose for being too fancy.
Your buyer will say:
How High Cost Beats Low Cost (and vice versa)
Competitive industries are saturated with high-cost and low-cost providers.
Regardless of where your solution fits on the cost spectrum, you can win more than your fair share by understanding how to sell against competitors with a different approach.
How to Engage Executives in B2B Tech Sales
You are constantly being told to “sell higher” and involve economic buyers/execs in your deals.
It’s not an easy request for your champion – they risk their reputation when they connect you with an executive.
Here is a three step framework to build their confidence enough to schedule the exec meeting:
Capture (and keep) you buyer’s attention in software demos
This week we are breaking down how to capture (and keep) your buyer’s attention by bucketing your demo into three categories.
Here’s how you can improve your demos by bucketing each feature you show into these three categories:
Accelerating Your Sales Career by “Shifting the Burden”
If pressed to offer universal advice for sellers, I think I’d say, “shift the burden.”
Here’s what it could look like when selling, looking for jobs, and working with your manager:
Defending Unique Product Differentiators
Effectively using unique differentiators can be the difference between winning and losing a deal.
Unfortunately, most AEs use them wrong. Here’s why and how to fix:
A unique differentiator is a feature/solution you offer that your competitors do not.
AEs love to bring these up in sales calls:
Time Kills Deals – How To Increase Deal Velocity
As we approach the end of the year you may be worrying about getting deals closed before end of quarter.
One way to increase deal velocity is to stop looking at the “deal cycle” as a period of time.
Instead of “our typical deal cycle is 3-5 months” think, “our typical deal cycle is 5-7 decisions.”
Here are some of the decisions made in a deal cycle: