Every salesman know that the future sales can be predicted by looking at the prospects in the funnel. Often times this implies that to meet the number targets, a salesman has to either stuff his funnel with a large number of small prospects or plan on winning a few big deals. On the surface, the obvious choice is to go for the later - aim to win few big customers. But the challenges of winning a big customer is so huge that most salesmen prefer not to chase big customers - instead aim on winning a large number of small customers.
Being a marketing professional, I can vouch that winning a big customer is a challenge and to overcome such a challenge one needs a dedicated focus. Currently I am concentrating on winning a big order from UK’s largest telecom operator. Based on this experience, here are a few tips on winning a big account.
Big Deal is a Big Advantage
To win big you will need a big customer - who has the ability to spend big amount of money and who is also into selling big. Larger companies have larger budgets - its that simple to understand. Often times to win a $1,000,000 deal, the work involved is not 10 times as much as a $100,000 deal. The real effort is only a few times more. Therefore as a salesman, if I were to look at my ROI - winning a big deal is the way to go.
But the challenge is that one needs to be twice as creative and work twice as hard to win a big deal - when compared to an average deal.
Selling to a big company does not mean one will win a big deal
The revenue of your customer has nothing to do with the size of the order you are selling. As a salesman selling IT services to UK’s largest telecom operator, I see that many of the deals we have won are small deals - mostly in $100,000 range or even lower. But these small wins helps me to gain a foothold in areas where we can snag a big contract. I can quote a situation where we entered with a small order for about $120,000 - but that opportunity is now becoming a multi-million dollar deal. Remember: without the small wins, big wins will never happen. In other words, to win big you will need to win small deals.
What the little win does is that it opens the door to another, bigger deal. If you do a good job in the small deals, then you will know the key persons required to win the big deal. These contacts will be your coaches, mentors - secretly working for you within their organization - trying to influence other stake holders. So your chances of winning a big deal greatly depends on winning the small ones first.
Learn to get around the Roadblocks
Big deals also means intense competition and numerous roadblocks. A salesman must know how to get around these roadblocks. In all big deals there will be numerous stake holders and each of these stakeholders have their own agenda and interests to protect. If these stakeholders feel threatened - they will create barriers to your big deal. So the first step is to identify all the stake holders for that big deal, then identify their objectives - both implicit and explicit objectives. Getting around the road blocks involves:
a. Start with building a Business Intelligence System.
See Sales - Knowledge is strength & Marketing - Developing Market Intelligence . I have written about this topic in great details in the earlier articles - so please refer to them.
b. Create a cross functional consultative team. The members of the team must be selected such that each functional member in the buying team has a counterpart in your sales team: An technical architect is paired with customer’s technical architect, your financial manager is paired with the customer’s financial manager, your legal advisor with the contract manager, your business strategist is paired with that of the customer’s strategist etc. The basic idea here is that your sales team should always be in a position to offer intelligent, meaningful consultation to the customer. At any point of time, your team should not be in a position where it cannot answer the customer’s questions. Or in other words - your sales team is now doing consultative selling. See: Consultative Selling - Way to sell Enterprise Software
You, as the salesman must be in charge of selecting the members for this sales team. While selecting team members looks for intelligence and judgment, their capability to anticipate challenges and their ability to work around the obstacles. ( Note that selecting your sales team is not easy. Often times political compulsions may force you to select members who are not the ideal members to have in your team )
c. Be flexible. Often times the vendor needs to be flexible in order to get around the road blocks. One must be flexible and creative with big accounts. You have to do things the way they operate and fit into their process. This implies making exceptions and customization to win the customer. Large companies always expect customization.
Learn How your customer sell to their customer
In other words, treat your customer the same way they treat their customers. Typically any large deal will involve some upfront investments at the beginning. So if your customer is experienced in selling big - or making big deals, then it is beneficial to follow their selling techniques. If they invest in a deal to win a big account, you too should do the same. If they use sophisticated marketing tools: High profile seminars, presentations, sponsorships etc., you too need to do something similar. By mimicking the customer, you are making the customer feel comfortable by making them think that you are also one of them - "Just like us".
Learn how to Close the Deal
Winning big deals depends a greatly on the salesman’s ability to close. Often times, salesmen are reluctant to bring in a closure - because they are afraid that they might lose if they try to close the deal early. So instead, the salesman keeps feeding more information to the customer that the customer now has too much information on hand - and that results in a "analysis paralysis".
Knowing when to push for a closure is an art. It varies with deal to deal, customer to customer. The one way I use to decide on when to push for a closure is called as "50-70% rule". This means that if my probability of winning the deal is greater than 50% and my confidence to the win the deals is about 70%, then I go for it. This is based on my gut feelings and not on experts opinion. Remember that your sales team may recommend against it and they have their "expert" opinion - but experts often lack judgment, So go with your gut instincts
Closing Thoughts
Developing relationships within the customer organization is critical for any deal. By developing relationships inside of large companies, you often have the chance to pursue big deals. To win big deals, one needs a lot more than just relationships - one needs a sales team, business intelligence, flexibility to tailor your offerings and the ability to close the deal. It takes confidence in your selling ability to keep your sales funnel lean and tackle big deal opportunities, but the reward inherent in winning them can be huge. Your sales skills and your organization's flexibility may be put to the test, but big deals can ultimately lead to more stability and growth within your company.
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Wednesday, September 06, 2006
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