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[Music] thank you hi I'm Susan Hall and I'm vice president of Business Development and performance improvement with strategic enhancement group and today I'm with two of my dear friends and colleagues Bob Parks who is senior partner at strategic enhancement group and also Jeff philipski who is senior performance Improvement consultant and gentlemen you represent about 90 years of experience in sales sales management senior and executive management coaching and Consulting so you've seen a lot and here's my question selling today is more complex more detailed and more competitive than ever before success requires a new generation of tools to manage complex selling so in your opinion what is the best way to handle this new reality well basically I think Susan the answer is to manage your opportunities have a process for planning and winning strategic sales opportunities usually the larger strategic opportunities have a longer sales cycle they have tough competition and they have multiple people making the buying decision so tell me a little bit about what this process you describe actually could look like well first you need to systematically evaluate each sales opportunity we here we use a opportunity evaluation worksheet and it helps us answer nine critical questions uh in three very important areas so first we ask the question should we even pursue this opportunity right um and given the time and money that each opportunity uses we need to know what's the client's business initiative do they have the budget to do this project um what is the compelling reason for doing this project or buying our product second we need to know can we efficiently and effectively compete for this opportunity does the client see us as a viable supplier for this product or service do we have the sales and implementation resources required and what's the specific business value that are of our solution and then thirdly can we reasonably expect to win this opportunity what is our ability to impact the client's decision process um are we credible with the client's Executives and do we have their support and then finally are we aligned with a relev the relevant Executives in the organization so then based on these answers um we can determine if we should proceed with sales planning and begin spending time and money on this opportunity or not those are amazing questions so Jeff I'm curious from your perspective what are some of the considerations in understanding how a decision is actually going to be made well traditionally typical questions that are asked are who else is involved making the decision what people will be involved in the evaluation who has the budget control for the decision what will be the most important criteria and who else are you evaluating what are the pros and cons you know what's interesting is that many of the questions are usually discovered through the discovery process is you're again familiar with the needs and the wants of the customer what can cause issues in many sales processes is that missing information is usually a little bit more difficult to get because sales people don't adequately plan their calls strategically so my experience is that in all companies there's there's also there's that formal decision-making process but then there's that informal decision-making process and there are always multiple stakeholders involved I know that many salespeople get blindsided because they make assumptions about who the decision makers are so can you talk a little bit about the different roles that sales people should be on the lookout for a lot of sales people trip up on this a typical formal process usually involves the following people approver or or those who have a financial or budget power to purchase the solution the decision maker or the person that has the formal responsibility for the implementation of the new product or system and that could be delegated to evaluators are the people that look at the specifications of the solution and how it may be implemented they can also be implementers and then the owners the people who ultimately roll it out maintain it problem solve it and use it they may not always be on the evaluation team but their opinions count these people can come from different departments and some people may have multiple roles many sales people cover these areas fairly well as they are usually well defined by the level of authority that follow an organizational chart to some degree that's a lot to know about isn't it what about the informal decision-making process well you know one area that is not usually covered or discovered in questioning is unless planned for is that the informal decision criteria and who has the influence inside the account these influencers are not readily obvious it can be at various levels in the organization and carry different levels of influence on the decision maker regardless of what level they are at in the organization understanding that level of influence is important and whether they are lied politically with the approver decision maker or evaluator many times owners can be influencers in the informal decision-making process four categories for influencers are sponsor someone who totally supports the solution you're proposing they typically endorse behind closed doors we sometimes call them our coach supporter is someone who's favorable towards the solution compared to others they may or may not support the solution in private they may be swayed from their position and neutral they do not have an opinion when comparing the competition they may support the status quo or go with the majority and lastly is that competitive sponsor someone who supports a competitor solution and is vocal in their support it is critical to find these informal roles and not only understand the influence that these informal roles have but what level of influence that each person has inside the account the level of influence can be determined by the capabilities of the individual their value to the organization in their role who they're connected to outside of work and lastly do they contribute to the direction of the organization within their side area responsibility all of these things should be considered so you can fully ascertain the sales situation and markedly increase your chances of success on your next sales opportunity purposeful planning prevents surprises As you move the process forward so we've talked about the importance of understanding both the formal and the informal decision-making process and we've also discussed the different types of influencers and roles that clients have in this decision-making process in our next video we'll take a deeper dive into how to develop your sales strategy and also your value proposition to put you in a more favorable position to differentiate and when business that's good for both you and your client if you're interested in helping your sales team close a higher percentage of proposals reach out to us at strategic enhancementgroup.com