BIG Opportunity (BO), they spend lots of money on what we do! We are WAY better then who they are buying from, so “This BO should be our Client”!
Have you even had that conversation with your team or at least thought that as you once again strategized to win that BO business?
Odds are if you have been a sales person or business owner, you can relate. No doubt there are times where you just need to do a better job winning the BO over and earning their business.
BUT there are lots of times that just working harder and pouring in more resources is not the smart answer. You can chase them, woo them, strategize how to win them with no win. You can give them references, invite them to lunch, and do lunch-and-learns and still not have a contract. You can raise your value, lower your price or try to get to their CEO, but most of the time you NEVER win the business, and those times when you get a trial order it ends BAD.
So what is going on here, and how do you avoid all the investment and heartbreak for this fruitless BO chase?
“Revenue Generation” is a diagnostic science, so let’s diagnosis this situation. To do that, we will use two tools. The first tool we have written about before, and that is the BellCurve.
A refresher regarding this tool shows us that every product, offer, company (both buyers and sellers), and employee lives on this curve somewhere based on how much brain vs. how much stuff they are either trying to buy or sell.
New products that buyers have NEVER heard of, don’t know how to buy or use are born over in the far left corner. Since the buyer has no experience with this type of offer, they depend on the seller to bring brain to the buyer so the buyer can apply this new product to solve major problems in their world.
Buyers and sellers are at every spot on the BellCurve, however most SME (Small Medium Enterprise) companies are left of center. As the BellCurve shows only a small number of buyers live in that small left-hand area of the curve, but they are willing to take the risk to spend big money on something they have never seen before.
For all the buyers across the BellCurve (BO or small), you can chase, strategize and invest forever, and MOST buyers will never leave their current place on the curve. So Revenue Science™ suggests that you place yourself as the seller on the curve by the brain / value you sell vs. selling stuff. Next place the BO buyer on the curve by the amount of brain / value they want to buy vs. buying stuff. Now see how close the two organizations are.
If on the curve you and the buyer are more than one track apart, it is unlikely the deal will ever happen, and if it does, it will be ugly.
The second diagnostic is “the buyer’s rules of engagement,” and this can be applied with the BellCurve or as a separate way to diagnose if you want to invest in a BO target.
Definition of “Buyers Rules of Engagement”: How does the buyer do business today? Do they want vendors or partners, do they always use a RFP process or do they sole source, do they lease or buy, do they ever do prototypes or trails, do they pay promptly, does every conversation go through purchasing, etc.?
Most SME (Small, Medium Enterprise) companies know who they are calling on. They can easily know how those BOs do business, and they can have enough information to compare the buyer’s (BO or small) “engagement model” with their selling model.
In all but the rarest cases, the engagement elements of the offer (partner vs. vendor, Brain vs. Stuff, installation, warranty, on-going support, joint SOW, price vs. cost, etc.) are as important and often more important than the core product or service.
Every buyer has a culture, which includes their “rules of engagement,” and it takes a LOT to engage outside that culture. If the buyer breaks their “rules of engagement,” the engagement between the buyer and seller is tough since every process, activity, relationship is out of the norm. When things are out of the norm, they are hard to keep on track and they are subject to problems unrelated to the product or service. Offers out of the norm not only impact process but the ROI, the metrics, the people and the way the organizations perceive the outcome (a risk for both buyer and seller).
Big companies may not already know about the prospective buyer but they have the resources to quickly assess the buyer’s “rules of engagement” before investing a lot of selling or delivery resource into a risky or low-return engagement.
“Buyers Rules of Engagement” by themselves give us great reasons to pursue or avoid possible relationships and should always be considered as early as possible and integrated into weighting a BO target for initial or continued resource investment.
The combination of the BellCurve and “Buyers Rules of Engagement” creates a powerful diagnostic approach to pursuing the best and avoiding the worst BO.
Take the time and do the diagnostics before committing the resources, and when you have been chasing that BO for a long time, stop and use these tools to review your next steps.
Chasing the wrong BO costs a lot of resource and seldom results in a positively leverage return on resources. So diagnose, say NO to the wrong BOs and build a strategy to win the right BOs.