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hi my name is couch Wanda and welcome to selling poet TV today with the pleasure of meeting with bill Wallace he is vice president with revenue Sturm welcome bill hey thanks Garrett very nice to be here revenue storm is known for the sales process and also you have something that really intrigues me is how to evaluate an opportunity can you walk me through that okay so that's a really good topic right because most people when they look at a deal they're very subjective about it they look at a forecast that they've either created because of their art or they look at CRM systems that kind of give them gates what we've developed is a science that looks at an opportunity along six different vulnerabilities and to be honest with you we dealt very deeply into the deal to show you strengths weaknesses in a very accurate probability of winning it so those six are do you have the appropriate strategy and most people develop a strategy or an approach which is just dead on I'm going to go right to the decision-maker they fail to realize that they've got to have a strategy that plays off against a competitor so that's number one we look at the competitive strategy the second piece is the decision process can you nail every single one of the milestones the buying criteria and the people that are involved in a decision process this is the next one which is really big relationships do you have the right relationships with the right people and are you aligned with power so that denotes politics so you've got you've got the competitive strategy you've got the decision process relationships politics and then the value proposition what's your story and then lastly how are you creating momentum in the deal and we asked a number of questions and we coach very very large complex opportunities around those six vulnerabilities and what we found is that there are three in particular that stick out one is most people don't have the right relationships and no way to measure them or a political ignorance right that goes hand in hand if I don't have the right relationships I can't understand the politics and the value propositions especially in technology as an example right tend to be very technical very mechanical very transactional and what you're trying to do is take a one-size-fits-all value proposition through multiple levels it doesn't work I'm convinced that probably seventy or eighty percent of the time that we lose an opportunity it's because we lost politically on the deal not because of solution or price the question is how do you make sales people politically more savvy yeah an experience and how do you measure whatever you're doing is really working we don't go off of subjective opinion we ask for evidence if you tell me you've got a great relationship I'm going to ask you why do you have it tell me what you've seen what you've observed give me hard evidence so i can say yeah that makes a lot of sense so when we evaluate it we're going to look at what's strong what's week it will give you the probability the good news is it's a snapshot so once we've taken the snapshot now we dive deep into those areas and there's tons of action items what kills us is what we don't know why is this so difficult because everybody is talking about we need to translate insight into value for the customer so it seems logically easy but why is it so complex or so so touchy it's hard it requires work it requires research give me an example I'll give you a great example so let's say I'm looking at a technology company and I want to make an inroad with somebody I don't know or create a story that can create some interest in momentum the first thing I want to do is not only look at the company but I want to look at the trends the things that are outside of the organization in the industry that are creating pressure on that company that's going to demand some form of response once I create some trends I literally fall it through implications what effect might it have that's when your solution comes in we're going to map a solution to a trend and there's a an iteration right that we take you through a process methodology works really really well got countless case studies about it but that is pure consulting that's a consultative sales process brought to life a lot of people talk about it very few people actually do it you know you do it first it takes you a couple hours you do it a second time it's quicker by the third time you do it and you might know why this is three is the magic sir by the third time you do it becomes a way of thinking right and here's a really cool thing once you do that and you've really got that nailed down you look at the old way you used to sell and you're like wow I can't believe that it used to sell like that last question you talked about deal momentum what are the three things sales people need to be a wealth when I think about whether the deal has traction and is moving forward at the right speed this is where politics comes in play people are getting out sold and it's the difference between playing checkers and chess so I need to link my value proposition to somebody's personal agenda I need somebody to back it politically that's the missing link that most people don't get and if I can't link it to a person at least link it to a key initiative right a really big initiative within the corporation some type of corporate program or somebody's personal agenda as an example without the right traction you're not going to have the right action no yeah so no traction no action right I'm stealing that by the way please keep it was a pleasure yeah thank you thank you Bill for anybody would like to get more information go to revenue storm calm