Referrals, references, connections, networking, social media: they’re all about access and leverage. You get access to the people who make things happen and are able to leverage these relationships.

I want to focus on the second part: Leverage. How do you get the most leverage during the sales process from your past successful client relationships? If you have read my materials, you know that your prospects have to overcome their fears and concerns in buying from a small company before they buy from you and not from a better-known, bigger company. References can be a tremendous asset in getting a buyer to overcome that fear, or they can be perceived as worthless commentary delivered by your buddies. So, how do you get the most out of your best client relationships?

A couple of techniques for high-impact leveraging of your references:
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Recently I was interviewed by Paul Diamond from the Vistage organization. We discussed the vast array of social media sites for salespeople and the fact that there are a lot of these sites out there, but not all of them are good. I think that Paul’s take on the topic and what he uncovered in his research is helpful. Check out his blog post on the topic on Bizmore.com.

Recently a client decided to say ‘no’ to an RFP opportunity. It was tough. It was a big company, a huge opportunity and a great chance to get a foot in the door. They said no because of their Red Flag Dozen (see RFPs Suck!). The Red Flag Dozen is a list of the must-haves in order for the company to invest in responding to the RFP. One of the red flags in this situation was that my client had to have an executive sponsor before they could answer an RFP. Another red flag was that my client would have needed to have done business with the company before. Finally, my client needed access to information during the RFP process, access that the company would not grant. Three strikes: no sponsor, no past history and no access.

Here is the letter that they sent to say no. I have made the letter more generic than what was sent, but this will give you a good template to follow.

“Dear Mr./Ms. RFP Sender,

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to your Request for Proposal for the XYZ project. That said, I would like to inform you of our intent to not participate in this process. This decision is not based on your process, which is fair and balanced, but rather on our own internal opportunity review process.

Specifically, we require client executive sponsorship and a thorough understanding of the guiding business initiative. This requirement is based on exhaustive experience that indicates that the success of complex projects hinges on executive sponsorship, relentless focus on the underlying business value and trusted partnership between the business and the solution provider. While I’m certain that you fully understand this reality and would never proceed on an important project without such assurances, I am not confident that we currently enjoy this level relationship with you.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to submit. Please direct questions or comments to my attention.

Executive in Charge
Non-Responding Company”

This response stands on its own. It is not a move.

That said, the letter does create the opportunity for the RFP company to come back and make a strong request for your to participate. What should you do?

1. Make a simple request. “Who will be my executive sponsor?” (see “Executive Sponsorship Agreement” blog)
2. Make a second simple request. “I would like a phone call review of the RFP document for the sake of more complete context on some of the items.”
3. Do one more thing. Go back through your Target Filter and your Red Flag Dozen before you decide to respond.

One of the keys to winning in the RFP game is to say “no” early and often. Establish your best practices and stick to them.

I have been living in the world of sales training, writing, hiring and strategy for quite some time now. I have had a chance to look behind the curtain to see what is back there. Here’s what I have found: a lot of misspent money.

The consultants and trainers working in the field are well intentioned, and many are very talented and effective. There is among all of us, however, a myopic view of solutions and consulting. For example, if I sell selection testing, then I see testing as the solution to everything. If I am a trainer, guess what, training is the answer. Process guys love process, of course the CRM people believe activity tracking is the panacea and so on. The fact is that there is not a universal solution to a multi-faceted problem and as a result, your risk in buying into one solution to solve your problems is that you are bound to overspend on one part and get poor results on another.

The Big Picture

Companies hire my company when they are ready to double the speed with which they are going to double their company. We help them develop the strategy, process and techniques for big sales. But such exponential growth is not everyone’s goal. Some companies just want to grow at a more manageable rate. This means that some times—actually a lot of times—I’m the wrong consultant for the job.

Look at it this way:

• If you want to grow 5-10% per year, then skills training with your current sales staff can help you make that improvement. It is a smaller investment and requires the least amount of organizational change to accomplish it.
• If you want to grow 10-20% per year, then you will need to change personnel and the way that you attract and select them. It is a bigger investment in dollars and culture change. If you want to get bigger in this range, you have to bite the bullet and make the choice.
• If you want to grow 20%+ per year, then you can’t just use the same people with some better techniques to get there. You can’t just use new people to sell into your current market. You are going to need a few new players and a much better market/message/sales process strategy to land your transformational accounts.

In the ideal world, you do all three because no single approach will give you the sustainable growth and solid sales organization necessary. But because most organizations have a finite amount of resources, sales consultants wind up selling you their solutions as the complete answer. It’s not accurate and that is where consultants get a bad name.

The Quartiles

If no one solution is the best for everything, then how do you figure out what is best for you? I believe you should use the Quartiles method- Break down your sales staff in blocks of 25% performers, based upon raw gross sales. Be careful, you can over analyze this. Just force-rank them by sales and you can evaluate for exceptions later.

When you break down that group, the general guidelines look like this:

What you apply universally will kill the productivity of half of your team. Let me say it again. Whatever you apply to everyone reduces productivity in half of your sales staff. You are going to need to apply a blended approach if you want to dramatically change your sales results as it relates to your team.

EXAMPLES

• CRM. If you start using CRM as an activity measurement tool, then your top 2 quartiles are over-managed and annoyed. You are wasting their time by managing them like your lower 50%. The unintended outcome is that the best performers get marginalized
• Selection Testing. You are not going to hire your next rockstar through testing alone. Testing is great for identifying potential. It keeps you away from hiring those who do not fit the job and dramatically increases the possibility of high potential candidates who will develop into top quartile producers. This process doesn’t guarantee all top quartile hires, but it does avoid almost all bottom quartile performers.
• Strategy. Half of your team is not prepared to learn the strategic and nuanced call-coaching information that you are providing. They will take misunderstood ideas to their customers and confuse them. Strategy is lost on people who need tactics and those people who want strategy are bored by tactical training that they learned a long time ago.

THE TRUMPS

Here is my rule of thumb if you have to make tradeoff choices rather than implementing all of these investments at once:

• Strategy trumps talent
• Talent trumps skills
• Skills trump activity
• Activity trumps inactivity

In best-in-class companies, there is an attention and investment in all four. Picking consultants has to be an outcomes first consideration. Decide what you want, then look at the changes in which to invest. As always, buyer beware. If anyone promises a fast and effective answer, it is probably neither. And if anyone promises a universal answer, they probably don’t understand the problem in the first place.

I recently sent this email to the head of sales for a company with whom we did our Accelerator 1.0 program. He is a new “Shaman,” (a little whale hunting speak from my book “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company” with Barbara Weaver Smith), and he has decided to change the roles of one of his people to that of a “scout.” A scout gathers information and is the first contact lead qualification and interest generation.

Here’s what I sent:

“As you get started in your first Shaman role over your scout, consider the following:

1. Keep him on a short leash. He needs you to set daily goals on information (dossiers), and eventually people and calls. This isn’t over-management, it is just holding onto the bike while the kid gets used to riding without training wheels.
2. Feed him. You need to be in the media information flow around your key markets. Do a quick Google search every day, and send him an article or a new key word to add. Do something that keeps you connected to leading him in the work he is doing in the market.
3. Take the first hits. If he is going to make his first calls to prospects, make them with him on a conference call. Let him listen to you. He needs to get confidence in this new space.
4. Keep your foot on the gas. At this point, you need to change planning into action, so keep the intensity up of your expectations.
5. Read and react, Manning style. Look at the information you are getting from the process and make the recalibrations to what the market is telling you. Reset the dossier, the script, the benefit language and so on, but wait until after the first quarter to do it. You can’t run one series of plays and think you have it all figured out and blow up the gameplan. Get the data, then recalibrate.

Finally, I’m on your team. All of this is new or newer. Let’s stay connected, especially on the ‘what ifs?’ that invariably come up when implementing new approaches.”

I often see the sales process get stalled out in the scouting process. We build a fantastic sales process, great market message and approach but then no one makes contacts into the market. It’s like leaving a Ferrari in the garage and wondering why you are not enjoying it. (I have a couple of clients who are probably reading this right now and cringing. And yes, I am talking to you. Out of consideration, I won’t name names, but the states are Ohio, DC and California). The easy fall-guy for this situation is the sales person, but the real accountability goes back to leadership and management one-layer up. It is our responsibility to drive the planning into action.

“We’re getting commitments, but we’re not getting orders…”

“Some of the biggest companies out there are our customers, we just aren’t getting the volume…”

“The decision-maker is saying we’re going to get the business, but then her people order from their old suppliers…”

One of the most common problems I hear from clients is the problem of traction. They can get into the big companies, but they can’t get that “yes” to turn into dollars. I have touched upon this in the past in “Unsticking Stuck Deals (parts one & two) and “The Executive Sponsorship Agreement.”

I believe that sales people are pathologically optimistic, and it’s a good thing that they are. If they weren’t, how could they get out and face the rejection and frustration that accompanies the sales process? But that optimism carries with it some inherent dangers for their companies.

False positives, missed signals and ‘hope’ acting like ‘commitment’

Sales people are given a variety of “yes” answers over the course of a sales process that create the sense that a deal has occurred. In reality, though, there is at least one unseen step in the decision spectrum where the ‘maybe’ masquerades as ‘yes.’ You can probably spot it.
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“If we get Microsoft, (replace Microsoft with your favorite iconic brand name), then it is going to be a lot easier to get other big guys. So what if you take a little bit of a haircut on that deal? It’s what we are going to have to do to get our name out there.”

When I work with small and mid-size companies, I often hear the siren song of the logo deal.

This is not a discussion I hear on occasion. In one flavor or another I hear this conversation in almost every company I meet. The promise of affiliated greatness for your brand because of someone else’s strong brand is very hard to pass-up, I know.

I’ve written and spoken against this practice at length. For the sake of context, I’ll just give a quick summary of why this is a dangerous temptation. Then I will outline the Trigger-Map Strategy we teach for companies that want to boost their brand through key brand affiliation.
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Yes, it’s January, but the PowerPoints I’ve been going through in the last eight weeks have me flashing back to the Christmas letters I was reading just a few weeks ago. You know the ones. Each letter is filled with an update from the family that sent it. The letters typically fall into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s take a look:

• The Good. Lots of photos, little text, only high points. Leave you feeling like you miss the people and you want to re-connect. The feeling reminds you why you like them.
• The Bad. One photo. No text. Standard “Happy Holidays” with ink-jetted signature. Gives you the feeling of a bad stand-up brochure for plumbing or painting services.
• The Ugly. Two pages of 6 pt font text, outlining every event of the year including the dog’s de-worming. Possibly a photo thrown in for good measure, but it is posed in front of the obligatory fireplace with the Mr. Potatohead smiles in place.

The parallel to PowerPoint presentations is hard to miss. The best ones have the following characteristics:

• Short and sweet. I mean less than 15 slides total. Trust your audience and trust your presenter. Your audience will fill in with questions and its own understanding some of the gaps. Your presenter is there to tell a story that brings your slides to life.
• Low text. Why did you send a presenter if people are supposed to read the text? If you don’t trust your presenter to get it right, I suggest you train him or her better or send in a different presenter. A dense and long presentation will not make up for a bad presenter.
• Focus on the audience. When you read the Christmas letters, what is interesting to you? The key events, the photos that show those events, possibly an insider comment that connects us with those events. That’s it.

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Hi All,

Just a quick housekeeping item for you: I’ve introduced the “My Best Blogs” archive. Reason being, I constantly find myself having to dig for oldies-but-goodies that I think would be great for driving home various point to sales teams. But digging these things out all the time is a waste of time, so I’ve decided to get organized. My Best Blogs contains an easy-to-navigate list of some of my favorite and most frequently-requested blog posts and guest posts, organized loosely by topic category.

If you notice any glaring ommissions, please let me know. Otherwise, enjoy!

- Tom

For years, I have used a technique of securing an “Executive Sponsor” early in a sales process as a way to gauge true interest as well as to set expectations for a buyer in a large and complex sale. There have been occasions in which I have asked more than one person in a prospect company to serve this role.

Even though I asked for Executive Sponsorship in these sales processes, it wasn’t until the past few years that I have had clients write down what it means in a 1-page document and give it the candidate in a meeting. The previous approach had been effective but the use of the 1-page has been amazing.

Here is what it looks like, on your letterhead with the title at the top “Executive Sponsorship”.

“We know that moving forward with a partner requires the work of a number of people. We also know that without senior executive sponsorship, the work of the day and competing priorities keep organizations from moving initiatives like this along.

We are not asking you to agree to doing business with us at this point. It’s too early. We are asking for you to be our executive sponsor through the process.

For us this simply means:

• Access. Your assistance on connecting to the right people is very important.
• Priority. Setting the appropriate level of attention for your organization so that the process is supported.
• Interest. We will be communicating with you throughout the process what is happening. Let’s stay connected back and forth on the progress.
• Logjams. If the process bogs down, we need to be able to come to you and be able to count on your assistance.
• Clarity. There are times when we will need to better understand your company and its unique culture. If we are confused, we ask you to provide clarity.

That’s it. In being our Executive Sponsor you are only ensuring that the process of determining our best fit with your company is fully executed.”

When to use it. Once you have identified the key decision-maker in the process and have secured his or her interest, then you ask for Executive Sponsorship. It is absolutely paramount that the person understands you are not asking them to agree to doing business with you. You are ensuring that he or she is engaged in the process, will provide you the resources necessary to do a good job for them in the process and that this isn’t some lukewarm interest.

What if they say ‘no’? That is great! It tells you that you either do not have enough interest generated for them to provide the basic professional courtesies outlined in your agreement, or they were just looking for free consulting. Go back and generate more interest, or leave happily knowing that you were not going to get the deal anyway.

Does it have to be in writing? – Yes. Tepid attempts to secure a verbal commitment without clearly stated expectations do not give you real traction. I know because that was the way I started out doing this. Then I tried it with the 1-page document and the results were much, much better.
I challenge you to try the Executive Sponsor document in your next big sale process. Let me know what happens.

Full disclosure: I have 6 clients using this approach right now with fantastic success so I know not only that it can work, but that it is working right now.