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Free Consultancy to answer the question: Will they buy from you in 2010 (or ever)?


It's the end of a long sales cycle, and you have been told by the salesperson that this "must win" is nearing decision time, and will close, say, before the end of the month. But how many times in the past has the salesperson's "opinion" of when it will close been accurate?

A reason for this is the mis-alignment between the Selling Cycle (the opinion of the seller) and the Buying Cycle (the opinion of the Power Sponsor in the prospect organisation).

Your prospect's Executives, in the light of the current economic outlook, are a lot more diligent in scrutinising projects. There may be things they would like to do, or even planned to do when times were better, but now they are looking only for must-do's.

Therefore, the only justifiable reason for them spending shareholders' money is to achieve a better business result to solve a critical business problem.

So to get your prospect to want to buy from you, your sales teams must:

  • have understood the critical business issue the prospect is trying to solve
  • make sure they are working at a Power level
  • build a picture of how your offerings will solve the problem
  • and establish the true value to be owned by the prospect's Executive
  • be in alignment with the Buying Cycle.

Thus, the seller's job is to help all of the relevant Executives to articulate, clarify, measure and maximise these issue. That task is a journey and, left uncontrolled, it could be a journey of indeterminate length and effort. So the seller must also have the skill to lead them through a process that readies them for the decision and allows both parties to limit their exposure.

If this was in place, do you think the confidence of predicting when this prospect would make a decision and who they would make it for might improve? But are your sales teams up to these tasks?

Try us out?

We are offering a unique opportunity to review your 2010 "must wins". We are offering a couple of hours of free consultancy (subject to availability) at your premises to review key opportunities, agree on the objective chances of winning, and produce a road map of next steps. If you'd like to know more, contact us on +44 (0)1491 614962. Please see the rest of our web site more information about us.