You really like Greg, the IT Manager of one of your favourite clients. He always orders 6 widgets a month, attends your beer and pizza product demos and he is always happy for a flat white (two sugars) to chat about how things are going.
He likes you too. He sponsored your 10K Run for the Kids Charity, tells you he values the relationship, only screws you on price when he ‘really has to, just this quarter’ and has told your boss that he only wants to deal with you.
So, what’s the problem?
Here are three things potentially going on that are costing you sales”
- Greg has a limited budget. It’s actually true. His boss has said that when the $2.4M is spent, that’s it. Greg doesn’t want to look incompetent, so he won’t challenge that budget unless the place is on fire or Nigerian hackers have infiltrated the CRM. You are now limited in offering new solutions that would benefit Greg’s company because they exceed page 2 on his spreadsheet.
- Greg is comfortable buying 6 widgets a month and he jokes about the fact that one day he’ll buy Widget-In –The - Cloud. But it never seems to happen. Greg is wary, anxious, risk averse and unsure so he’ll keep coming to the brekky seminars, but won’t actually roll over to the 3 year managed contract you want. Stuck again.
- Greg deployed some new software two years ago and it nearly drove his managers to distraction. He was told never to do that again without executive sponsorship. So, when you have new Software Widgets to offer in addition to the 6 widgets a month , he thinks back to the time he nearly had to go home to his wife and ask her to go back to work full time. No Software Widgets then.
So, what can you do?
- Wean your company off its reliance on Greg and all the other Gregs in your account list.
- Get more people involved in the account –your sales director should be talking to Greg’s boss; your CFO could talk to Greg’s CFO about a new way of reducing Opex etc.
- Get trusted vendors involved inviting Greg’s boss to events.
- Restructure your 6 widgets into something closer to what you want. Over a flat white, tell him in 3 months he can’t buy that way anymore without the Software Widgets. If your relationship is that good, he won’t want a new supplier and a new account manager and different widgets.
The key point here is that whist you stay close and protect your relationship with Greg, fresh ideas and thinking need to be deployed to create movement, action and results.
Without this strategy, Greg may very well join your footy tipping competition, but your sales figures from that account will be as flat as his coffee.
As CEO of Salient Communication, Elliot is a sought after keynote speaker and corporate trainer who has coached and trained over 4000 people including CEOs, senior management and successful sales teams throughout Australasia and Asia including Hong Kong and Singapore.
Elliot is a specialist technology sales speaker and trainer for companies of all sizes having spoken at over 1500 conferences, workshops and break-out sessions on presenting, selling, negotiating and pitching for leading companies such as HP, Avaya, Alcatel – Lucent, Hitachi, Computershare and Motorola. He is renowned for ensuring training and presentations are engaging, interactive and relevant to winning business in competitive markets.
He is also an advisory Board Member of Generation–e, one of Australia’s fastest growing IT companies.
Elliot is based in Melbourne where he lives with his wife and two expensive children
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Salient Communication Category: Sales Profile: As an authority in coaching sales people and leaders, we apply over 25 years of experience in business, sales and corporate consulting to over 4000 CEO’s, senior executives and sales teams throughout Australasia and Asia. Clients include Forbes 100, ASX 100 companies, BRW Fast 100 companies and award winning SME’s, all who use Elliot’s Salient Approach to get real world results and immediate ROI. Challenging the ‘cruise control’ thinking and old fashioned prescriptive methodologies of sales exec ...
