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.

First, let me apologize for the big gap in my blogging. I have been all over the country in the last 6 weeks with the Inc. Magazine presentation tour. We made stops in New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was a fantastic experience and I met some remarkable new entrepreneurs (those “newpreneurs” I’ve been talking about). Between those travels and my client work I have not had a moment to write to you. But, I’M BACK!

Follow this link below to a video of a the presentation I gave in Seattle. I covered the 5 Best Practices of Explosive Growth Companies.

Scroll down the landing page and click on the video box at the bottom.

The presentations went very well and we had a great exchange of ideas. The Q & A is worth watching as well because I respond to some of the questions typically asked by people who want to hunt big, but are not yet sure how.

It’s good to be back. Enjoy the video.

I recently went on a pitch with a client’s hunt team. We were supposed to be pitching to the first in command, but he was pulled away to a funeral at the last minute. He left a message for us while we were on the plane, so we didn’t listen to it until much too late.

We arrived at the prospect’s offices to present the results of a preliminary analysis of their operations and to detail my client’s company plan to help them. We were told that since the first in command was out, we would be meeting with the second in command.

Sales Challenge: The second in command is the eel in the deal.

We sat down in the board room and prepped for the meeting. What would you do?

Some options:

• Pitch
• Leave
• Improvise
• Other

What would you do in this situation? I want to hear your thoughts because I think that this type of scenario happens more often than we would like. Let me know what you think!

By Tim Searcy

I have referenced before that the CIO for Nortel made a keen observation that “companies no longer buy from companies, they buy from supply chains.”  Supply chain management is a buzz word concept that has actually had some staying power.  More of our clients are finding themselves in presentations in which they have brought in “partners” to assist in selling to a whale. Multiple- team selling can be a way in which your company can combat the “whale’s” natural fear that your organization is too small.  As in all things, the devil is in the details.

There are some good reasons to sell with partners.  There may be a set of capabilities that required by the buyer that you are not able to deliver.  Additionally, sometimes a key relationship may exist between a potential partner of yours and the polar bear (economic buyer) inside the whale.  It could be that the partner you are working with brings the necessary local office and physical proximity that the whale demands.  Finally, whales will occasionally tell you that a specific partner would make your offering more appealing to the firm.  Regardless of the reason, if you have decided that you will take on partners to sell the whale-sized deal, you need to keep some things in mind:

1. Who owns the chain? A supply chain or a multiple partner solutions needs to have someone in charge.  If it is you, the strength of the chain link and your ability to manage the chain are paramount.  You do not want to be in a position that a partner can somehow go around the relationship that you have and secure the business without you.  Contracts must be in place to clearly specify that for this particular pitch, your partners cannot compete separately or with a competitive solution.  If you are the subordinate in the relationship, it is important that you only select the very best partner to hunt with.

2.    How do we control the pitch? Often times, powerful salespeople or forceful personalities can take over the strategy and pitch approach of a supply chain seeking big business.  If you are in the lead, control needs to be set for items like venue, agenda, speaking times, message that will be conveyed and stories that will be told.  You will also want twice the number of rehearsals that you would normally use because the players have not worked together, and a seamless presentation will be a key way to alleviate the whale’s fears.

3.    What is the brand we are pitching? When you are selling as a supply chain, figuring out your brand can be complicated.  Will the lead firm own the contract?  Who will handle collections?  For the prospect, the question becomes “who are all of you people anyway?”  For the very biggest deals, I recommend having business cards printed that have the prospect’s logo on the card along with the lead firm and a clear title for everyone as the client’s team member.   Remove the confusion about who you are collectively by focusing on the prospect as the point of connection.

If we have concerns about trying to sell into a whale as a team of teams, imagine how the prospect feels.  One of the important points we make at HBS is to never scare the whale.  When you come at the whale with multiple players representing multiple firms, you could easily scare the whale.  Here are the come things that may be on the whale’s mind that you need to address:

• “Why is there a chain to begin with?” It is very likely that the whale starts with a one stop shopping approach to establishing a new business relationship.  The natural bias may start with opposition to a collective of providers.  Reasons that may offset that concerns include that you have selected the best of breed in individual component provision, or that single sourcing does not make sense in this particular case or that specialty requirements that move the work from the mainstream demand a unique solution.
• “Am I paying for redundant overhead?” It will be no surprise that multiple firms implies multiple hand offs and higher costs.  It will be your responsibility to clearly lay out the economics of the multiple team approach and explain the financial advantage.
• “What if this all goes bad, but I like some of the links?” Although prospects don’t always communicate their interest in some of the individual partners, it happens frequently.  In very clear terms, you need to let the prospect know that you have come together as a team and will stay together as a team because that is what is in the client’s best interest.
• “Do these people know how to work together?” Or “Am I going to be first?” Few things scare whales more than transition costs related to communication or ignorance of the new provider of business practices, business needs, market conditions etc.  We scare whales when we give the impression that the necessary training to get up to speed will have to cross multiple companies and multiple cultures.  It is important to emphasize any historical pairings that have been successful with the teams you choose.  If this is not possible, the process of making the delivery painless to the customer and with single contact point account management should be used to convey simplicity and service delivery.

Supply chains are an effective way to deliver service.  Whales can appreciate the value of multiple smaller firms positioning themselves as a superior combined solution.  The key is to make the actual work look like one firm is performing it instead of a jigsaw puzzle of individual pieces.

Old men aren’t the first to die in shipwrecks.

You would think they would be since they do not have the strength or endurance of young men, but in maritime records, young men die first. Why?  Because they flail about and waste precious energy while old men grab onto drifting debris, conserve their energy and wait for daylight to determine what to do.

Right now, one of my client’s business unit leaders is acting just like a young sailor during his first shipwreck.  His biggest deals are finishing up with little backlog to absorb the headcount and he’s flailing, yelling into the darkness and panicking.  He’s frightened and he has the right to be.

So what can he do?

1)    Shut up. Quit talking to everyone about how frightened you are, how quickly the sky is falling and how new and different strategies need to be implemented.  For the most part, this is not new news and does not serve a proactive purpose. Start talking when you have a consistent strategy and when you can articulate it clearly, often and with conviction.

2)    Grab onto some driftwood. Just because you are frightened, it doesn’t mean that everything is not working. You have to define the core pieces that are working and start building a boat (your strategy) based on them.  At the very least, you need to cling to what is working until daylight comes.

3)    Quit kicking until you spot land. There are no silver bullet solutions. Changing the offering to the market on a 72-hour cycle confuses your people and your prospects. Follow a strategy with 10 prospects and determine the outcomes.  Don’t just take a sample size of one conversation with one prospect and decide that you “have the answer.”  Calm down. Follow the plan through 10 conversations with 10 prospects and then decide if a complete change in strategy is necessary.

4)    Conserve energy. Make choices. More of more is not necessarily going to yield more.  Focus on the opportunities that you are hunting one at a time and with rigor.  It is the opposite of the shotgun approach—a flurry of activity in many directions—but it is more effective in the long run.  It’s better to pick out strategic targets and drive hard at those opportunities.
5)    Give encouragement. Chances are that other people on the team are frightened.  Use your experience and judgment to show them that your team will get through this tough time.

As in life, the people who need the most help are usually the least likely to take it.  If you are the drowning man, follow this list. If you know a drowning man, give him this list. If you are doing just fine, keep this list.  You may need it the next time there is a sales shipwreck.

My last post dealt with the “Problem” problems that cause deals to get stuck. There were quite a few.

As I promised in that post, there are other reasons that deals get stuck besides “Problem” problems. I call them “Us” problems.

These “Us” problems include:

1. No Solution. There are times when we believe that a prospect’s aggravation with the current provider is so acute that they will switch to us at almost any price. But their frustration is really only enough to get us in the door and in contention for consideration. Research has shown that the usual threshold for changing out a major supplier, vendor, or partner is the potential for an 8-14% improvement, or there will not be a deal. This improvement is the aggregate of improvements in price, cost, friction and value.
2. No Credibility. There is another side to the world of big claims: the TOO BIG CLAIM. When we claim that our solutions offer more than a 14% improvement, our credibility goes through the floor. The expectation of an 8-14% improvement comes from a Harvard Business School study, and I have found it to be in line with real world expectations. Though there are differences between industries, anything too far beyond a promise of a 14% improvement is likely to be seen by prospects as BS.
3. No Chemistry. The prospect has to be able to see their people company working with your people. When they can’t, or worse, when they can but they hate the idea, you have a chemistry problem. I have been on the inside of buying groups. Time and again personalities and chemistry have been major factors when value propositions are similar. It has even been the driving decision factor in multi-million dollar deals.
4. No Precision. Using generic answers that focus on what we can do, instead of on tailored, real-world solutions to their problems, issues and time frames create the sense of risk. Our one-size-fits-all approach creates the risk that we will miss something that will limit or eliminate the benefits that they prospect was seeking.
5. Solution Creates More Problems. Every solution holds the potential for greater damage during implementation. For some companies, the problems may be more political than they are financial or operational, but they hold a sense of great risk nonetheless.

With these “Us” problems, we are overwhelmingly dealing with what our solution means to our prospect…
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I’m working on some big sales right now with my clients. I act as either a member of their team or as a key advisor. We’re aiming at accounts ranging from $500,000 to $100,000,000. This is a great part of my professional life. People hire me typically for one or more of three reasons:

1. They’re looking to “double their double.” They want to double the speed with which they can double the size of their company and they believe that landing large accounts is the way to do it.
2. They want a manageable and scalable approach to running their sales process, measuring it and improving their success rates.
3. They have a mega-sale that they want to land and they want me to be their adviser and coach. I play the role of “deal-doctor” for lack of a better description.

I’m doing all of this work right now for a variety of clients, but it just so happens that in the area of mega-hunts, we’re in a very busy hunting season.

Every one of these deals is different – different size, industry, competitive landscape, personality mix… You get the idea.

But there are a few things that each of these mega-hunts has in common…

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Blog readers and enthusiasts,

I am going to give a Kindle 2.0 to the winner of the following contest:

I’m publishing three books (three!) between now and the end of summer. One of these books is on how to be more effective using all of the tools out there for prospecting large accounts. It is the much-expanded version of my most recent e-book, How to Get Into Bigger Companies for Bigger Sales.

My publisher and I agree that this particular title stinks. Not only is it tepid, but if you’ve read the e-book, you know that there’s a lot more to it, including an entire how-to on using specific social media platforms for prospecting and “listening.” That said, I’m looking for a more provocative and accurate title that elicits the reaction: “I want to buy this book for every single person in my company!”

So, you have one week. If your suggested title is the one I choose for the book, you win the Kindle 2.0. I have one, and it is flippin’ phenomenal.

Post your entries as comments to this post and, who knows, a week from now I might have a new title and you might have a new Kindle 2.0!

All the best,
Tom

Hi All,

It occurred to me recently that we have a TON of free sales resources scattered throughout our site. From e-books to podcasts, and webinars to essays, we’ve definitely taken this thought leadership stuff to heart. And now we’ve gone one step further and wrapped it all up nicely into one lovely package we’ve aptly named our “Resource Center.”

So now, instead of registering for every e-book or download, you will simply register once for the Resource Center (it’s still free, of course), and you’ll never have to fill out another form again. (Registration is only required for e-books, webinars and podcasts.) Your email address will become your login, although our center should recognize you if you enter from a computer that you’ve previously used to login. I’m not one to brag (which is a trait that my marketing agency cites as a fatal weakness), but it is pretty snazzy…

In all seriousness, though, I invite you to check it out and take advantage of all of our free tools, including a brand NEW e-book that we just introduced today. (I’ll write about that separately later.) “How to Get into Big Companies for Big Sales… and What to Do Once You Get There” details a variety of new challenges that big sale hunters face and then provides extensive pointers, tips and insight that will allow them to greet those challenges head on.

I would love your feedback on the new resource center and e-book, so please feel free to email me or leave a comment if you have a chance.

Now, let’s hunt!
Tom

I’ve been working with a number of companies lately on big deals - deals up to $100M. The companies are on both coasts, in the midwest and in the southeast. They’re in very different industries and their customers are government, private, public and education groups. Diverse enough?

However, every one of these deals has had the following in common: they all required some sort of RFP response as a part of the process. In each case I served as strategist, RFP response coach and pitch doctor. There are bunch of great things to share with you out of these and I will over time, but today, I just want to talk about the RFP Frame. How do you frame your response? I use the 4 Cs of the RFP Frame.

Candidly, most people start with responses they used for past RFPs. Then they cut and paste and massage what they come up with and call it good. The problem is that they are thinking about the process of writing the response and what they want it to say, not the process of reading the RFP and what the readers are looking for. The 4 C’s focuses on building the guidelines for the response in the terms of the reader. Here goes…
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