4 qualifying questions: Do we want this customer? Do we want this deal? Can we deliver? How can we win?
1. Do we want this customer? Or maybe: how much do we want this customer? Here, determine the strategic importance of a contract with this potential customer. After all, what we want is a customer who will give us a great reference, not a one-off deal. The effort is almost the same and the return is so much greater with a customer who recommends you to his/her network.
2. Do we want this deal? What does this contract mean for us, in terms of turnover but also in potential?
3. Can we deliver? Here we record the buy-in of the delivery organization and prevent sales from “throwing a deal over the wall” to the rest of the organization.
Only if questions 1 to 3 yield a clear yes, do we turn to question 4:
4. How can we win? Now we inventory the Value Proposition, the network/connections and the competition
Value Proposition
The Value Proposition was conceived by Holden Company and is part of their Strategic Value Selling. I grew up with it, and I firmly believe in this way of working.
A Value Proposition is a statement about what customers get when they buy your product or do business with your organization.
An example as we use at SalesPulse: “For entrepreneurs who want to boost their sales by at least 100% in 1 year, SalesPulse is the commercial partner. We do this by sharing our knowledge and network that spans 2 generations, from Digital Marketing to Top Notch executive Sales power and at a fraction of the price of a classic team.”
A value proposition is therefore a statement of what exactly customers can expect from your company – and no, it is not a slogan!
Different is Better than Better
“In the end a customer is not happy because he chose you, he is happy because he made the right choice”.
What inspires a customer to grow the relationship with a supplier?
Customer Satisfaction
Motivation to Change
Decision Confidence? —-> almost 100%
The internet gives us the basic information immediately. Salespeople can streamline and simplify it.
Sally Hogshead – Different is Better than Better – Gartner speech
She told us how she used to be bullied at school for her last name. I can relate – my own last name seemed very annoying to an eight-year old boy in the 70s: every adult had experienced history with John and Robert Kennedy and had a good laugh as soon as my last name was announced at school. It wasn’t until I went to work that I started to see the benefits: easy to remember, good in multiple languages and yet gave some association with the time when the U.S.A. still had allure. Although in our youth it often feels so annoying to be different, later, you discover the benefits.
It is easier to color within the lines. But, in real life, the innovation and entrepreneurship more often come from people who dare to be and remain different. So why do companies and people so often try to just be better? After all, better is temporary and can be determined differently by everyone; what is great for one person may not be relevant for another. Hence the statement: Different is Better than Better.
“If you want to be even more successful, don’t change who you are, become more what you are”.