When Sticking With a Deal Can Work
When Sticking With a Deal Can Work
I’m a big proponent of eliminating opportunities from your pipeline. I encourage sales professionals not to fall in love with their prospects. As a matter of fact, I actually ask them to critically evaluate each prospect in each stage of the sales process. Just because a prospect is a fit after you initially qualify them doesn’t mean they are a fit after you do a detailed discovery. You need to have the guts to say goodbye to them.
Fear Creates Dysfunctional Sales Behavior
How many times have you said at the end of a deal, “I had a feeling from the beginning that the prospect wasn’t a fit” or “I knew this deal wasn’t going to work out because in the first meeting the CFO said…”?
I often talk about the “f” word. It is the most common thing that keeps sales professionals from succeeding – FEAR. In this context it is about three things:
- Fear of losing the deal
- Fear of having a depleted pipeline and how it will look to your boss
- Fear of not knowing where your next deal is coming from
In my next three blog posts, I will deal with each one of these fears and give you strategies on how to overcome them to the benefit of the prospect, your boss and yourself. But for this post, I want to talk about understanding when you should keep pursuing opportunities that don’t close when expected.
The Deal I Couldn’t Let Go
In some situations, we run into those accounts where we are disciplined about our sales approach, and yet the deal is taking a long time to close. I recently had an opportunity go that direction.
I was referred in by one of my best partners. This potential client was thorough. We had four different meetings. Two with just the CEO, another with CEO and COO/CSO and another with just the COO/CSO. All of the meetings went well. They verbally committed. It was a great fit. I gave them the proposal, and they responded quickly saying they wanted to continue. However, they needed to wait as they had some changes going on in the organization and the CEO would be out of town for a month.
I followed up, and I saw the COO/CSO in person. I sent valued added emails. I had partners putting good words in for me, and, yet, they never answered. But something told me they were still interested because I knew they needed my help. So I kept after it, professionally of course. The COO/CSO told me twice they were still interested but just needed to get some things completed, and I believed him.
Finally, last week, I sent one more note with our new website link and the message to let me know if I could help with the evolution of the sales organization. In less than a ½ hour I had a response. By the end of the day we set our next meeting. By the end of the week we had our agreement signed and a start date solidified – 4 ½ months after I gave them the proposal.
It is the 2nd largest deal of 2015 so far with potential to grow.
Does It Make Sense?
When does it make sense to continue to pursue a prospect?
- When you have done your due diligence and know you have the right solution for them that will enable them to accomplish their outcomes.
- When they are a great fit for your company, delivery wise and culturally.
- When you have frank discussions with them and know they are genuinely want help. They are interested in you, your company and your product or service.
- When the financial value of the opportunity warrants it.
The key ingredient here is you have to be honest with yourself. Have you done your homework, followed your process and determined this is worth continuing to pursue? If so, lay out what you have done and communicate this with your boss and ask for help. Give yourself a deadline (mine was 3/31/15) when you will take them off of your follow up list. This will force you to be creative and persistent.
Then, when the opportunity arises, close it!
