We have all done it. It's actually a very common problem and can easily be corrected. When we are prospecting for new business or serving existing clients, there is one small bad habit that many of us have developed which is costing us a fortune. In this short article I share that problem and a powerful yet simple action which has saved my clients a ton of business. I'm not going to try to teach you how to sell or preach about how to run your business, but this one little tweak will be very valuable over time.
We all know that obtaining first appointments with potential clients or new projects is what drives growth. In complex sales we may need multiple appointments and gather a tremendous amount of information. We seek to understand our customers' challenges, business objectives, what they do, how they do it and how we can help them do it better. We practise active listening, we try to determine their budget, their performance requirements, their desires and how we can best be of service. We also seek to identify who can say "no" to our offering. This often takes considerable time and effort, and that's okay. But when we don't win the business, it can be quite disappointing.
A few years back, in my role as a sales trainer in Asia Pacific, I met a sales director who had recently sold a billion dollars' worth of IT hardware to the government. It was a very long sales cycle, and they held over 50 meetings with their customer to win the business. Getting a next step, over and over, was essential to his success.
Why so many sales are lost at the proposal stage
Too often, sales professionals work extremely hard to reach the halfway point in the sales process, the proposal stage, and then they lose the business. Why does this happen?
One reason is that they didn't gather enough information. But another problem often slips through the cracks: before sending the proposal, the salesperson didn't schedule a conversation with the potential customer to review it.
The proposal was sent by email without a scheduled next step. The prospect's attention was lost amid the 100 to 200 emails they receive in a single day. Sales then chase them by email or phone for days, even weeks, to ask "Did you receive our proposal? Did you have time to review it? Do you have any questions? When can we go ahead?"
Technology has helped us increase our productivity, but sometimes it hurts us. Simply sending a proposal and then chasing the client for their business can be very costly and painful. We must book a next conversation, a next step, throughout the entire sales process. Whatever sales methodology you use, you need to earn and request that next step. Otherwise you risk losing the opportunity altogether.
My best advice
If you are in B2B sales or you lead a sales team, make sure there is a meeting with your qualified prospect to review the proposal together, and then ask for the business.
If they don't want to plan a meeting to go over your solution with you, they are telling you "no," nicely. I never send a proposal if they won't accept a next meeting to review it together. If they aren't interested, I certainly won't invest a lot of effort designing a proposal. Why should I? Is it the best use of my time?
Set yourself apart from the competition. Plan the meeting, and stop sending proposals by email without a next conversation. With this approach you'll be in more control of the process and you'll get better results. You can bank on it.
Originally published on LinkedIn on December 15, 2018.