Hottest One At The Bar Theory

Gisele walks into a bar. Every guy and girl in the bar hits on her. End of story.

Why is this relevant to sales? The Fortune 1,000 is just one thousand winning companies; the highest revenue generating companies in the world.

Sellers have gotten so desperate they literally send bottles of fine French champagne and CXOs are so deadened to it, they give it to their neighbors and post to complain about it on LinkedIn.

Everyone is trying to do a deal with Coca-Cola. Everyone is trying to date a 12 out of 10 for a significant other (whatever that means to you!).

So if desired people and companies are like a magnet and they're pulling and you try to do something heroic to generate their interest, two opposing forces or like forces will cause you to repel. If you reach, they'll withdraw. If you sound subservient like everyone else, they'll get bored and lose interest. If you bend over backwards accommodating their every whim in your sales process, you'll fail. If you send them flowers, chocolates and roses after one meeting, you'll look weak.

Pull marketing was born to handle this upstream, writing genius Challenger, insight laden copy to pull the fish to your brand rather than hunting them with spears relentlessly with the phone. It's the right way to do Marketing with Guerrilla activations, truly exclusive events and building a garden that attracts the right Queen Bees to it.

Ever noticed how Lone Wolves who act like douche bags, tend to score a ton of big sales? I knew one nicknamed the Honey Badger that would just send Contracts, no proposals - nothing. Incredibly, it worked!

We have all seen the dynamics that play out in human relationships govern sales relationships in a very similar fashion. In fact, InsideSales.com launched a study which highlights conclusive evidence from 10 million anonymized sales interactions, that high-pressure closing tactics on the end of each quarter, actually cut deal sizes in half and extend sales cycles unnecessarily. Why?

Hunger. Interest. Need. Reverse polarity. Repel.

So how you do the opposite? Create desire. Pull. Become interesting rather than interested. Radiate confidence and always be willing to walk. You don't need the business and they know, you know it.

So where am I going with this enigmatic blogicle. You need to practice something that I talk about in my book called "The Law of Principled Disinterest." You need to be present to communicate compelling business value and insight but you cannot be a face-humping alien from Alien I. You can't be a golden retriever running at a frisbee. You cannot be David Duchovny in Californication or "Winning" like Charlie Sheen!

Here are some ways to get the "hottest one at the bar" aka the person that can do a profitable deal with you that all your competitors are calling, emailing, inmailing, and trying to get referrals into - to notice you beyond just generally exhibiting a bad ass attitude:

• Have you performed a Google Search on the prospect name and company and clicked on News to find excerpts where they are quoted? Have you sent that quote to them referenced in an email/InMail subject line or left it on a voicemail?
• Have you read the prospect company's annual report S-1 and the CEO's letter to the shareholders and tied this back into an ROI business case that your solution aligns with?
• Have you spent the money to appear at the kind of events they attend? This includes holding your own VIP dinner at a Michelin Star restaurant with a room of CMOs without any product pitching. The event is built by the presence of other peers with whom they wish to rub elbows. Get your tickets to Davos Switzerland and TED Monterey. I'm serious.

• VITO Envelope: Have you had a courier or Fedex deliver a manila envelope (marked with only their name in your best cursive) that contains a super precise value proposition and case study, with a time that you will call to follow up with them?
• Have you built groundswell with their team who are victims of the problem and will actually benefit when implemented and had them champion you to the decision maker, internally?
• Have you built a lead generation engine through Native Advertising on LinkedIn with vertically targeted white papers to drive form fills (aka opt-in email capture) inbound?
• Have you worked with Mike Scher at FRONTLINE Selling to break through the noise for you and set meetings with impossible to reach prospects in the Fortune 1,000 and transfer them to you, almost automagically?
• Are you running retargeting in Facebook? Are you adding prospects on Facebook, using Facebook messenger or sending text messages? Scared yet?!

• Have you convinced your own CEO to reach out to theirs? Your VCs to reach out to theirs? Your CMO to connect with theirs? Your best customer to be a reference (as long as they're not competitive). Your CTO to sync with theirs? Your engineers to connect with theirs?

You must magnetize your space to you. You must build a secret garden that attracts butterflies. You must build content, forums, events and spheres of influence that radiate authority and thought leadership to pull C-Levels towards you. As a company, as an individual seller.

You must radiate confidence that you don't NEED the business. You must educate in a detached fashion before you persuade. Run a 3X pipeline and always be willing to walk on the deal. Read them the Riot Act when they demand a free pilot. Play good cop, bad cop with your direct to create a buffer if they hard ball you. Negotiate 101? Perhaps 202.

Practice non-hunger and leverage strategic disinterest. "So how do I reconcile this with passion, Tony? I thought you told me I had to have a true passion for the product." Therein, lies the rub: the paradox. Think about it this way. If a CEO or President or even CFO were to authorize investing $1,000,000 in your solution today, how risky is that? And if you, yourself, had to spend a million dollars, how much risk would you feel? Now magnify that with some fast talking, slick, people-pleasing, smarmy yes man, sitting in front of you telling you everything you want to hear, buttering you up, promising the world and sounding just like the other umpteen thousand reps you ever dealt with in your career, and you can understand the 7.2 magnitude nature of this problem.

"Mrs. Customer, our product may or may not be a fit. Let's take some time, share what some of our similar customers in your vertical are doing that might be relevant as it is positively impacting their bottom line, and go from there. How does that sound?" Disarming, non-hungry. Powerful.

Get in the habit of telling prospective customers things they don't want to hear like flaws in your solution. Like, the truth. Vulnerability and transparency open magnificent doors and speed to trust. Honesty, rather than spin, is the best policy. You'll stick out like a sore thumb and they'll want to buy. It's how the Trusted Advisor is born. The force awakens!

You need to read everything Charles H. Green wrote, the sexiest man alive, who taught us all about doing and saying the right thing within the process of good business. He's a 12 in my book!

“Sales” and “Trust” rarely inhabit the same sentence. Customers fear being “sold” — they suspect sellers have only their own interests at heart. Is this a built-in conflict? Or can sellers serve buyers’ interests and their own as well? The solution is simple to state, hard to live—and totally worth the effort. - CHG

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' button and also share via your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook social media platforms. I encourage you to join the conversation or ask questions so feel free to add a comment on this post. Please follow my LinkedIn post page for all my articles and visit me at www.tonyhughes.com.au if you are looking for a keynote speaker. Go to www.RSVPselling.com for sales methodologies that generate pipeline and manage complex opportunities. Flickr: Gisele: Tony, Wolf yawns: Denali National Park and Preserve, Sea Urchin: City Foodsters, Facebook: Xiaobin Liu