THE 5G OF TACTICAL SALES DECISION MAKING

THE SALES-PERSON’S MALAISE

Being a B2B Consultative High Tech Salesperson for the past 22 years, I always wonder : is Sales a Science or Art? Like my brethren, I have been through many Sales Trainings- MEDDIIC, SPIN, Value Selling, Target Account, Command of the Sale and Command of the message : you name it !

Of course, these Sales Trainings have been very helpful and have contributed to laying out structure for the sales cycle, review and feedback, but I have always had these thoughts :

1.      Don’t so many of my peers and competitors also undergo the same sales training ?

2.      I seem to tick all the boxes in the sales cycle, then why aren’t my deals moving? They seem to be stuck in a limbo.

3.      Why do I always seem to be putting my eggs into 1 basket?

4.      How do I handle coping with failure after a long hard frustrating large deal loss ?

5.      How can I maintain my enthusiasm, energy and self-motivation as I could do 5 years ago ?

6.      Why is my luck more rotten than fresh?

7.      How I wish my sales success of 2013 repeats this year?

I am sure many of us have had similar thoughts more often than not and these thoughts seem to be all pervasive as we grow more experienced and seasoned. With age, while we do seem to gain in diversity and experience, we sometimes lose on tolerance, enthusiasm, energy and the ability to bounce back.

All these diverse vacillating thoughts can be broadly classified into 2 broad reasons :

A.     We have limited time

B.     We owe a large percentage of success (or failure) to external factors – mainly customers which are beyond our control

Looking at my own Sales journey when I was a rookie in the late 90s, I feel I have gained on experience, versatility, diversity, situations but have lost on enthusiasm, tenacity and the ability to bounce back from failure.

THE 5G OF SALES TACTICAL DECISION MAKING

Well, Sales is a mix of Science and Art : and the percentage constitution of either depends on the industry, geography, product and service. The Sales Models listed above are fantastic, but I feel the efficiency of these models can be considerably enhanced if we could somehow incorporate the Tactical Decisions and Experience that all of us Salespeople have.

We are confronted with and make day to day tactical decisions with our customers and prospects every day, irrespective of where they are in the Sales cycle. And this does influence our win rate and success in negotiation as well.

Without further ado, I would like to introduce the 5G of Sales Tactical Decision Making, if applied judiciously can make our Sales Models and Cycles to be very efficient and address the 2 underlying questions which I mentioned in terms of optimising our time for success and reducing variability of out-of-control factors.

The 5G of Sales Tactical Decision Making addresses the softer skills, the human factors and also adapts as we grow in experience over the years.

Having worked with telecom customers and partners over the years, I would like to categorise this evolution of the Sales Tactical Decision Making aspect as analogous to the 2G-3G-4G and now 5G evolution of Telecom innovation over the years

THE ROOKIE : THE 2G

As we embark on our Sales Journey out of college or campus, as young people armed with our wonderful family values and education, we as rookies focus on the 2 Gs :

• Grit : We have always been taught to be hard working, diligent and have a never say enough, never say die attitude. We all believe in the fact that hard work pays in the long run and perseverance always wins in the end. And very rightly so. So, we must move our customers forward through the sales cycle, handling all objections, working hard in positioning and convincing.
• Grip : We must have visibility and control (to the maximum extent possible) on the situation, deliverables, communication, feedback with our customers and prospects.  We need to have a grip on the reality and not what we wish to hear.

THE SMART ROOKIE : THE 3G

From our childhood, we have been taught to be polite, unobtrusive and reticent. Being pushy and direct make us less likeable and popular. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. What if our Rookie could add a power magical 3rd G that could disrupt and add much more efficiency to the Sales Cycle ?

• Guts : We would be surprised at the outcomes when we have the guts to ask, to question, to challenge, to give correct sometimes unpleasant feedback, to apologise and accept mistakes, all albeit under the most professional conduct and communication. When in doubt, when to reinforce, when to push back, let’s all have the guts to ask and tell and customers and partners more often than not give us correct feedback. So if we have the guts to ask the customer for the budget upfront, or if they are likely to award the contract to their group company IT provider, we would be better off in walking away from a never-ending, hopeless sales cycle early on and channelizing our energies elsewhere and not having to deal with a grave disappointment after many more weeks of efforts and follow ups. When we are interacting with multiple stakeholders in a customer, many a times : having the chutzpah to ask the budget owner gives us the correct perspectives, no matter what the other influencers are talking to. On the upside, we could align our appropriate product version or model basis customer budget and not having to offer discounts and do mix and match at the later negotiation stage. So, it’s better to have the guts to ask rather than have the customer shrug sheepishly and say : Why didn’t you ask !

 THE SMART EXPERIENCED SALESPERSON : THE 4G

There is one aspect of humanity that differentiates us from the bots/ AI in decision making : intuition, educated guesses, feeling whatever, we call it. Well, one can argue that some people are born with it, others say it cultivated but the 4th G that can be a significant addition to the salesperson’s armour is :

• Gut: We all have feelings in absence of any logical data : be it in the form of deciphering body language, reading between the lines, past experiences in similar situations ? Whether inherited or nurtured, gut feeling is a very important aspect and as we grow in experience, the accuracy of the gut feeling seems to increase. While it may be premature to walk away or change our sales strategy based on gut feeling only, this should at least propel us to Invoke the Guts and Grit have a Grip on the real situation and take a more logical decision henceforth.

How many times has our Gut told us that our customer has already made up his mind with another vendor and is using our proposal to complete the procurement check boxes and formality. Can we investigate further from our competitive intelligence or champion ? Listening to our Gut can save us considerable time, energy and heartache. Conversely, so many times our Gut tells us that we are the vendor of choice and the customer is delaying matters and negotiating just to drive home a hard bargain. So, isn’t it better to hold our horses, maintain our position of strength and get 1 X in a 1 week rather than 0.8 X in 2 days ?

In a new assignment, the biggest demotivator and downer for enthusiastic positive minded salespeople across all experience levels to quickly build a substantial pipeline of good prospects , which have ticked the overall qualification and navigate through all the SPIN, MEDDICC and other sales cycle to reach a black hole of a loss or worse case no decision. The thought then “ Is all this time, effort and strategy all for in vain” What can, or I do, or should I have done?

If we could have applied the 4G at regular intervals in our Sales cycle, we could have at least spent our time chasing newer prospects and closing other deals.

THE SALESPERSON OF STRENGTH : THE 5G

We are ultimately people in this vast cosmos with a higher power overseeing us. Without getting into theology or religion, I personally believe in God and his all pervasiveness, omniscience and omnipotence. I also firmly allude to the saying that “God helps those who help themselves” and “Do your best and God will do the rest”

Salespersons of Strength have belief in the 5th G whether we term it as God or Divinity or a Higher Power, even after correct application of the Sales Models and the 4Gs of Tactical Sales Decision making, there will always be scenarios such  as Covid19, a quick acquisition of our prospect right before the deal was about to be signed, anti-trust acts, investors pulling out and so on and so forth. The 5th G will add the following ammunition and make the salesperson of strength :

• God:

1. There are still many variables beyond our control. We will have negative scenarios of force majeure, investment exits, management changes and positive scenarios of old prospects coming back, RFPs re-floated, Replication deals coming out from nowhere and so on and so forth
2. Learning how to be consistent, humble, and positive demeanour and not overtly boastful and over the moon during success and paranoid and depressed after failure. We must thank God for his Grace, remember our past successes, learning from our failures and moving on
3. The work never stops and there is no rest however believing in the Higher Power and being good human beings lends an aura of positivity and positive attitude leads to more positive outcomes than downside
4. It maybe generalistic but I have personally seen the 4th and 5th G more prevalent in highly experienced salespeople 

In conclusion, continuously applying  the 5G principles of the Tactical Sales Decision Taking of Grit, Grip, Guts, Gut and God during our sales cycle no matter which model we follow will most certainly add value to us Salespeople. We always struggle in terms of managing and optimising our time, dealing with more failures than success, cutting our losses, increasing win ratios, and ultimately managing happiness and stress. This is essential to our evolution.