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Knowing When to Switch Gears      We all know about the feeling of an exciting "red hot" deal. The hardest part, which is the part that requires the most discipline, is knowing when you are getting taken for a ride. There are many signs, but only experience and a keen ear will enable you to know if you are winning or if you are the safety net. In this column we will go over some of the telltale signs and help you to know when to switch gears or even stop.      In reality, the person who gets lied to the most, is often the salesperson, or sometimes the information they receive ends up not being the truth, which can be different, but just as disastrous. The reason is that it is to the customers’ advantage to keep you in the dark. As long as they can do that, they are in control and if you really know where you stand with this type of sales, you might go away, and they don’t want that to happen, yet!      A client or vendor will rarely tell you that you do not have a chance of winning their business and that you should give up. It is in their best interest to have several vendors in the hunt in order to satisfy a few reasons, such as: Due Diligence: They have to prove that they have investigated the leading vendors in the marketplace. This way if the project fails they cannot be accused of making a poor decision without a full study. As it used to be said, "no one got fired for recommending IBM". Price Leverage: The process is called "commodification" where they will use multiple vendors to drive the price point down. This happens in the acquisition phase after the key vendor has been selected. Safety Net: If they cannot come to an agreement with the selected vendor, either because of price or legal issues, they will need a backup. Lack of Knowledge: Although it might not be an intentional lie, many clients will tell you what they think is true, not realizing that they were fooled. Many of these clients have not been involved in situations where a political angle is involved in the decision making process. Lack of Courage to Tell You You’re Losing: Maybe you have won them over on a personal level, but your solution is not what they are looking for. In this case they may not have the heart to tell you the bad news.      The average competitive salesperson gets a great deal of misinformation or, in some cases, no information at all. Information is the radar of strategy. Without it, many salespeople are flying blind through a cloudbank. Because misinformation is such a critical part of the complex sale, anyone who takes only one person’s opinion on anything will be a perpetual victim. Information must be constantly cross-checked and triangulated by multiple sources to get to the real truth and to find out who consistently has it and who doesn’t.      Things that have to be remembered when you are considering why a deal is out of control are, was our point of entry high or low? Did we remember to trap this competitor’s weakness with our friends? You know if they called first they’re hard to beat, but a few well-placed questions can cause their presentation to come apart. Did we raise the reference question? There are many forces in today’s phone sale to cause a sales effort to go off-course, because there is a sea change in progress in complexity for sales people as a result of changes in the ways customers buy. << PreviousNext >>

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