Coaching On Late Stage Deals

Coaching Late-Stage Deals

Lessons We've Learned

We've coached billions of $ in new and renewal deals in the mid-to-late stage pipeline. There is strong evidence to prove that effective coaching will drive 30% improvement in win rate.

We've learned a few lessons we'd like to share.?

Common Mistakes

Typically as we near the late stage, buyer tactics become more aggressive and, more often than not, sound something like this:

"I can get the same thing from your competitor so give

me 10% if you want the deal"

MISTAKE #1

What we see reps, managers, and deal teams do is focus first on appeasing the demand of 10% discount.

What we need to do first in a late-stage deal is to analyze the "same thing from a competitor". Before we talk about meeting commercial demands, we need to know if we need to meet this discount request or ignore it. This requires diagnosing their alleged “same thing” alternative. When we do this, more often than not, they are bluffing and it is not the same thing.

Correcting this first mistake guides us on how seriously we need to take this threat. The threat could be “I will do nothing” or “I will build it myself", it doesn’t matter.?

MISTAKE #2

The second mistake is focusing on that concession out of context with all the other commercial terms.?

In the event they are focused on price, most likely your price was set based on volume commitments, length of contract, etc. We should never agree to concede on one variable. We should always trade for more volume or longer term, etc. If we move on price, we have to move on something else.

It may sound basic, but more often than not, we do not see a systematic approach to "trading".?

MISTAKE #3

The final mistake is presenting one offer.?

When one offer is presented, the buyer hears “this is my price of product.” As humans, they can't help themselves, they will ask for that offer cheaper (or some other giveaway). We should always give them 2-3 paths forward at varying investment and effectiveness levels.

This approach changes the conversation from the price of an offer to the value of three different business solutions with varying levels of business impact. More often than not we end up co-creating a fourth option with the customer.

How Is Late Stage Coaching Different Than Early Stage?

We like to say, the world shrinks as deals progress. Coaching in the early stages is very broad and wide. As we near the close, in order to win higher quality deals we need to narrow in on what matters.

PEOPLE

At this stage, we need to narrow down from all the possible decision-makers to the one or two that influence the rest.??

DECISION CRITERIA

As the decision influence narrows, the criteria used by decision-makers also narrows. Our win/loss analysis informs us that we win when we show customers how we meet their needs at higher confidence and lower risk than alternatives."? This typically comes down to 2-3 reasons “why you”, not the long laundry list of criteria.

TERMS

There might be 10-15 different commercial terms that need agreement. In our experience, there are 2-3 items that will receive the most concession pressure. Typically these are areas of high importance to both sides where we have a wide variance on what the final # should be. We need to anticipate these and plan to create quid pro quo trades.

FINALLY

We find a super dialed-in approach to coaching late stage deals has the best results in terms of deal quality and win rate. The good news is that there are fewer people and variables but the challenge is we need to know them better than the competition and sometimes better than the customer.