Have any of these happened to you:
1. Your territory list for next year shows five new large accounts. As you dive into research on these accounts it is clear three of those five should be your customers in a big way.
As you go through the year you have your strategy, you know the players, you invited them to trade shows, sent them web links for the most obvious products and services, alerted them to special pricing and gotten everyone to a demo where you handled all the questions.
It is now the fourth quarter and you need at least one order to make your quota and two will get you to Leader’s Club and a bonus for your new car. It is too late to start with other territory targets, but it feels like neither will close this year and you will miss your most basic number.
2. They keep changing their minds, the specs, the timeframe and the players. Everyone seems to like our products, but they don’t seem to “get” our value or have a handle on how to work with us. You’re now on a first name basis with the security guard, have submitted two proposals that are both tabled and no contract in sight.
3. A project manager from a current client changed jobs and alerted you to her new job with a company you have not done any business with. She also promised to introduce you to her new boss who has a project very similar to the one you two had just worked on.
You call her boss and in 20 minutes schedule a project review meeting with him, your reference and the manager of all projects to explore this project. You follow-up the call with an agenda for the project review meeting including your assumptions about the purpose of the meeting and everyone’s role. You also introduce your associate from your engineering team whose role is to clarify exactly the problem to be solved, what an ideal outcome would look like, what an ideal engagement experience would be and to answer any questions about your tools and process.
Your meeting goes so well within 30 minutes it is redefined as a Joint SOW effort that goes another 90 minutes with a next meeting set for the following week to preview the outcomes that would be achieved by doing this project together.
The preview meeting results in a joint agreement to a contract outline that morphs to a complete contract the following week with no price conversation.
Looking at these three scenarios it looks like:
#1 never had a conceptual selling conversation over all those months even with all those different buyers and different face-to-face meetings. The buyer got a lot of free consulting and probably used all they learned to sign a contract with a competitor.
#2 may have been shopping and got free consulting but may just be one of those places who want to keep you warm in case the first team fails, and they need a backup.
#3 in 20 minutes was clear that if what you said was real they wanted to consider using you to solve this problem you helped them define (when you help define the problem there are no competitors). Since you uniquely can solve the problem it is appropriate you brought the Joint SOW process to build the solution, which controls time to decision. Since the Joint SOW process clarifies the problem and the value at risk final pricing was no problem because both of you got ample value.
A conceptual sell starts with a very short conversation. A perfect conversation of this type is about purpose. There is little or nothing about the details of the project, product or service. The logic is if the buyer doesn’t like the relationship purpose proposed by the seller (at the concept level) they will never be a contract based on the detail. If the seller doesn’t feel they can uniquely solve the problem, they help the buyer by not hearing lots of detail and making a quality referral to who can do the work.
If you find our purpose compelling and we are sure that solves the problem, you have in a unique high-value way then we are willing to invest more time in learning more if you are willing to do the same.
For The Revenue Game®, our purpose is to give organizations the ability to predictably grow sales and profits. If that matches their problem and both are willing to spend more time to review status and goals we will schedule a next call to do a Joint SOW that leads to a preview of outcomes from our partnership.
The power is the Conceptual Sell is the next step based on a clear understanding of each party’s goals and the problems to be solved to achieve the goals. If the goals are aligned and compelling the next step is the Joint SOW (process owned by seller) and if during or after the SOW, the goals don’t align or aren’t compelling the two parties part for now or forever.
Other conceptual sell outcomes are that both parties remain in integrity because of full transparency of purpose, save a lot of time and can be referral partners for the other.
Additional benefits on the seller side are that forecasts are not out of whack because the salesperson is hoping for a prospect to suddenly fall in love with a two-month-old “best guess” proposal and the sales team has time to go after closable deals. Lastly and not least is the conceptual conversation is a conversation of partners not a buyer with a vendor, which is how you want to launch the relationship.
Conceptual selling and Joint SOW are skills that all value-added salespersons can learn. Get started with the perfect practice of your conceptual selling process now, so you can use the Conceptual Sell Now.
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