Identifying and Managing
Sales Cycle Negatives!
How can an account executive premeditatively deal with perceived negative issues from a client? First, you need to list every negative issue the prospect may have about your firm, its services and/or products.
Ten Commonly Perceived Negatives
By Executive Buyers
- Your firm is too big.
- Your firm is too small.
- Your firm is financially unstable.
- Your product/service is too expensive.
- Your product/service is too inexpensive.
- Your product/service is too new.
- Your product/service doesn't fix a company pain or doesn't increase company income.
- Your product/service will take too long to install.
- Your product/service support is not quality based.
- Your technology product/service has too many flaws or is unproven.
These examples, and many more, lurk in the minds of business executives trying to make a rational business decision about buying from you.
So, the first step you need to take is to put together a list of what could be perceived as negatives by your targeted prospects. Be honest in your observations. They do not have to be true negatives, only potentially perceived negatives by a prospect.
In sales, perception is reality!
How to Use Negatives to Your Advantage During Your Sales Cycle
Once you have listed your prospect's perceived negatives about your firm, you can prepare to use them to your advantage. In sales, there is no strength in being in a defensive position. Have you ever wondered how those small, unknown companies you read about in trade publications go out and close a $10- to $30-million deal with a Fortune 100 player against entrenched competitors?
This is how they do it.
The key to selling more is turning your weaknesses, or perceived weaknesses, into your strengths.
After you create the list of your firm's weaknesses, list all your known competitors' weaknesses so you can compare their sales position against your own. Some examples may include:
- If your firm is a small player in a land of giants, then your firm could focus on personal service.
- If your firm is financially new, then as a small firm, your pricing may be more competitive.
- If your firm is engaged in a very competitive market against Fortune 500 players, then you can position your firm as a "specialist" versus the competitor being a "generalist."
Now that you have isolated your firm's weaknesses and strengths as well as those of your competitors, go back and build a "talking point" list. This "talking point" list should become part of any and all prospect presentations. By turning your negatives into positives and then discussing them early in your presentation, you will never be placed in a defensive position again.
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Negative Sales Position Case Study:
Several years ago, I was a VP of Sales for a VC-funded startup that sold software and services to senior executives of Fortune 1000 companies and presidents of small firms. At the time, I was faced with competing with two entrenched Fortune 100 players and one Fortune 1000 player (all public companies) on a daily basis. Their sales forces were ten times the size of my team, and between the three they held over 60% market share in this multi-billion dollar space. To say we had perceived negative sales issues was an understatement. Our sales negatives included: being a new company, minimal client installations, being a small company, having undocumented financial strengths, and having a higher-priced product than the established players.
We were about to launch our software and services nationally at the annual major trade show, so we had to do something to get the attention of senior executives.
In anticipation of our national launch, we rented a 20 x 20 booth (big for us at the time) located right in the middle of our competitors. Then, like the above recommendation, the sales staff and I locked ourselves into a conference room and came up with every conceivable negative that our Fortune 1000 senior executive prospects could possibly present, and we listed them on the wall for identification. Next, we documented every strength we had (technology superiority, ease of use, etc.) next to our weaknesses. Based on these isolated facts, we built an outbound sales campaign where we turned our weaknesses into strengths.
Here is what we did. We created a very formal looking three-page white paper, which said "Five questions to ask every xxxx vendor here at the show about their software and services". These questions obviously were built around all of our strengths and our competitors' weaknesses. One week prior to the show, we mailed these questions to the top three senior executives of the 100 largest prospects via second day mail with an introduction letter and our booth number.
Then, we created a negative talking point list for all of the account managers, so that we had a standard company response if we were asked any tough questions about our firm. We focused on taking our negatives and turning them into the best positive response. On the day of the show, we had one of our marketing reps standing in front of our booth handing out the five-question document to prospects as they walked by. Additionally, as every prospect walked into our booth, each salesperson was instructed to hand them the questionnaire and to engage them in conversation on the questions.
Here is what happened. From the trade show, we generated 350 leads, many from the targeted 100 executive players to whom we sent the questionnaire. During the show, you could see our prospects walking around with our questionnaire in their hands, heading into our competitors' booth (right across the isle) and asking them our questions. From that day forward, we continually worked on turning our negatives into positives. Today, this firm is number 1 or 2 in new business in their technology space and now their competitors are the ones worrying.
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Remember, it is not what product or service you sell -- it is who you sell against!