Abstract

Chapter 1 - Sales in Real Life – Creating the Pragmatic Pipeline

The Vision

“I’ve been working this job for 3 years now, I know how to sell! I don’t need all this!” Chaz thought to himself as he was preparing for a field visit with his manager.

Tony, his manager, requested that he book meetings with a director’s level or above for a business review. Historically, Chaz only met with manager levels and below. They were all in his most frequently visited area of the building so he could “get the job done faster” as he had told Tony in the weeks prior. Chaz set up the business review meeting with two director levels. One leader was the Director of Operations across the company network, and the other was the Director of Supply Chain. This was the first meaningful meeting either director had with Chaz for anything more than a 10 second chat in the hallway trying to book the meeting. Tony had lengthy conversations for weeks with Chaz preparing for this meeting and strategizing how to drive the conversation.

“Chaz, when leading the conversation with the customer, try to go for an hour without bringing up the product in the discussion,” Tony challenged Chaz. “This will ensure your discussion can be focused on the customer’s business challenges and not your product.”

In effect, Tony was asking him to diagnose (Dx) the customer's issue before (B4) prescribing (Rx) a solution to that problem, formulating DxB4Rx for the creation of a vision. 

“How can you quote a new container system when you don’t know why the customer wants to buy?” Tony probed.

“I just want to deliver a proposal for replacing a competitive product and standardize the solution on our offering. They can’t issue a purchase order if they don’t have the quote!” Chaz responded.

As soon as the meeting started, Chaz opened his folder and started to pull out the quote. “So here’s the quo —”

“Actually, do you mind if I approach a couple of topics prior to quoting anything?” Tony interjected.

“Sure, that’s all right with us,” the customers replied.

For the next 50 minutes Tony went on a probing quest with the customer on different topics. They discussed current failure points or inefficiencies in their processes and products they use and their issues with their department all the while never mentioning a single product his company sold.

“How many suppliers do you currently use for your instruments?” Tony asked the director.

“That is part of the problem, we don’t know. We have always purchased the least expensive products from whatever vendor supplied our need at the time.” 

“I see, how does this create problems with your team building sets correctly for the next procedure?”  Tony continued.

“This is a big problem for us, first our set-sheet lists of specific instruments, that go into each container for next use, can’t be followed because of the variety of options of similar type instruments being supplied by multiple companies. This lack of tribal knowledge has prevented us from having consistency.” Continuing, the director stated, “not only are our set-sheets inaccurate, but we are also challenged with high attrition rates because of the frustration levels of not having accurate set-build information to assemble sets for the next use.”

“What impact is there on your internal customer when incomplete sets show up?” Tony asked.

The customer shook his head and admitted, “we have many delays and unhappy users because they don’t have the instruments they need, and it results in adding more instruments to the already overloaded container sets.  It’s a vicious cycle of inefficiency.”  

Tony understood the customer’s challenge was far bigger than a replacement container system that Chaz wanted to quote.  He then completed this line of probing by defining the actual cost to the customer’s department of added reprocessing time, overloaded sets, delays, attrition, and unhappy users all because they don’t have accurate and complete set information easily accessible to their staff.   Tony then conducted a mini-waterfall summary of all he learned around the problems created by multiple vendors and inaccurate set sheets. 

“Yeah, that’s right, unfortunately you are seeing my pain,” the customer responded.

A key takeaway from this real-life example is that you never heard Tony discuss his product or software a single time in the entire meeting. The discussion was completely focused on diagnosing the customers’ problems for understanding before prescribing or quoting any solution to them.  Through this journey, you are going to learn a more effective approach to probing the customer and do so in the context of a larger strategic approach where your sales force can all speak the same language, thus eliminating your need to filter opportunities and create a more pragmatic pipeline.

DxB4Rx – Diagnose (Dx) Before (B4) You Prescribe (Rx) a Solution

Do you have confidence in your current pipeline? Do you significantly filter the expected deals coming in each month for a more realistic representation of deals that are “closeable?”  In that opening narrative, Chaz would have led with the quote and discussed features and benefits then reported back to his manager. What would your impression have been if he said he had a great proposal set up and all that’s left to do is have the client and their team discuss it internally? This turning point, the point where you think you’ve done enough and the next step is wait on the customer, is what I like to call a Critical Path Moment. The moment that a deal either stalls or continues to move forward. A moment in time where Chaz could manage the deal but instead let the deal manage him.  With this mentality, Chaz would have made a critical mistake.  A mistake that matters and run the risk of affecting the trajectory of the deal by, at best lengthening it, or worse, killing it. If you’ve ever done this, or noticed someone on your team doing this, don’t worry. Misinterpreting that his deal was progressing because the “customer was driving it internally” is a common mistake in sales. But, as salespeople, we should be driving the deal, not waiting on the customer to drive it for us. 

Perhaps you’ve heard these types of ideas expressed in your pipeline reviews but never knew how to take action. My hope is that by the end of this book, you will confidently be able to understand and answer the two questions above. “Yes, I have current confidence in my pipeline.” And “yes, I must significantly filter his expected deals for those more realistic and ‘closeable.’” 

If Chaz had pulled out the quote and only focused on the container deal, he would have been 6 months or more away from a purchase order being issued and not be assured the purchase would be for his solution. Recognizing this brings you one step closer to effectively repairing cracks in methods that fail to close the sale. Chaz jumped into the meeting with no business justification vocalized, no confirmation with the customer as to why they needed his solution, and he did not identify his necessary economic or technical champions.

Now compare that line of reasoning to the one I propose to you. During the probing process we need to explore several different areas where our company could meet our champions’ need. Now I’ll be the first to admit, we’ve all probably been a Chaz at some point in our career. And if we haven’t, we’ve all probably seen a Chaz in action and felt powerless to stop it. But with the proper tools on how to diagnose our clients’ problems we can feel more confident that our deals are going to happen. That is the dynamic chasm I am going to help you cross throughout this book.  How to get from where you are now to becoming a professional probing sales force skilled at diagnosing customers’ issues before prescribing a solution.  Thereby becoming the trusted advisor our customers need.

The plan moving forward is to dive into a paradigm shift in how you approach selling. The pipeline is a small but important end-piece, not the beginning, to that effort. Successful businesses need sales leaders that understand the approach applied here. They can live and teach this approach to others. This book will give you a better understanding of how selling is a teachable skillset by taking the time to learn this approach, like it is a playbook to winning more deals faster.  You will have the chance to bring visibility of accountability to your methods. Accountability is a funny word, many use it, but few adhere to it. But from my own experience and reflection, results will be clear if you stay the course. If you stray from this approach, you might flounder, or worse, you may fail to sell bigger deals in your desired time frame.  Not only will following this method give you the tools to succeed, but you will also have more insight into how and what enabled you to succeed.

Throughout my career I've spent weeks and months on educational courses that focused on top-down selling techniques. These were all ineffective, for one main reason, they did not engage the customer or attempt to understand the business issues with which they were challenged. My goal in sharing my sales approach with you is to show you a method that allows you to flip the standard way of doing things on its head and develop your sales from the bottom up. Now, this will require an investment in your sales force and a desire to improve, but I hope you can see throughout this process that there are those willing to meet this challenge and those that are not. I hope you choose to stay the course.