You’re probably saying to yourself: “This guy must be crazy! My reps can sell more by not thinking? Preposterous!” Allow me to clarify. Of course, critical thinking skills are essential in sales (as in most professions). We use them at ever stage of the sales process to advance and ultimately sell deals. That’s not what I’m talking about.
I’ve conducted countless opportunity/deal reviews with sales reps over the years and there is a pervasive type of thinking that is really detrimental to winning business. I’m talking about “thinking” something is true when we really don’t know. This usually comes up when I start probing around how well the rep has qualified the opportunity. An excerpt from the discussion often goes something like this:
Me: With whom in the prospect’s organization have you been dealing?
Sales Rep: Sandy, she’s my contact.
Me: And does Sandy have the authority to purchase your product?
Sales Rep: Well, I think [you can substitute “I assume”, “probably”, etc.] so. I’m pretty sure.
Me: Hmm. Did you ask her who else might be involved in the purchase decision?
Sales Rep: No, but I really think she’s the decision maker. She told me she has responsibility for the project, so even if she needs her boss’s approval, it’s probably [another term for “I think”] just a “rubber stamp”.
[I’m exaggerating a bit here to make my point but not much!]
Me: Well, for the rest of this discussion, please don’t tell me what you think. Tell me what you know. And if you don’t know we can talk about ways to gain the insights you’ll need to either win this deal or qualify it out.
Why does this happen so often? I suspect there are a couple reasons. Maybe the rep doesn’t know how to properly and thoroughly qualify an opportunity. But sometimes they’ve been taught, but just don’t think it’s important. “Why waste time with qualifying when the prospect wants a proposal? I can accelerate the sales cycle!” (goes the thinking). The rep is so busy pitching product, racing to demo or submit a proposal that they don’t qualify effectively (if at all). Rather, they think (kid themselves; blindly hope) that the prospect presents a real sales opportunity. I’ve seen so many supposed opportunities die because of these types of assumptions.
What should reps do? Ask the right questions! Get clear, fact-based evidence and confirmation about the critical factors that need to be understood to have any chance of actually winning the business; things like the other people involved in the buying decision, alternatives the prospect is considering, what is causing them to move from the status quo, etc. It’s really just basic qualifying, yet so many fail to do it. It seems they’d rather not ask the right questions out of some fear that they’re being too assertive, or maybe they are just so keen on the faux feeling of advancing the sales process that issuing a quote or proposal creates. They can usually tell me all the prospect’s demands, like when a proposal is due or that the prospect has asked for a demo, but they miss the fundamental SALES qualifying discussion; often don’t even think about it.
So when I review their deal that they thought had a high probability of closing (sometimes it’s in their forecast), it has so many holes in it that it resembles Swiss Cheese! I then send them back to properly qualify the “opportunity”. Sometimes that effort yields important insights that indicate the need for a course adjustment and the deal ultimately closes. Other times the insights are not so positive. But a least we learn that this so-called prospect was never a serious buyer in the first place, or we’ve been talking with the wrong (or not enough) people in the account, or they have no real incentive to move from the status quo, or that a competitor is well entrenched…the list goes on. What’s so unfortunate about learning this late in the process is that we’ve wasted a lot of time! We’d have been better off asking the right questions much sooner and moving on to other opportunities that might have a real chance of closing.
Interestingly, Sales Leaders often think their team has a closing problem. They cite stalled deals and losses as the symptoms. In most cases I’ve seen they’re wrong. They have a qualifying problem. And they have that problem because their sales people are simply reacting to their prospects’ demands and not doing the important work that is really what selling is all about! So when you’re conducting an opportunity review with your sales reps, don’t settle for what they THINK; ask them what the KNOW!
