In the past two columns, we’ve talked about six stories salespeople tell themselves that hold them back. Here are three more.
By Phil Krone, President
We’ll start this column with another quote from my college friend and long-time professor, Joe Hoyle. His writing motivated this three-part series about the stories salespeople tell themselves that hold back growth:
“As far as I’m concerned,” Joe wrote, “the only story that is relevant is that you want to do better and you are willing to do the work to make that happen.”
Stories 7, 8 and 9:
7. “The prospect has an in-house captive operation, so they will never buy from us.”
When I was in manufacturing, I once asked one of my sales reps whether they ever called on a particular large original equipment manufacturer. This company made its own parts and did not outsource. The rep said, “No, never. It wouldn’t be worth the time to try to convince them to outsource. We drive right by.”
One reason companies produce parts themselves is they believe it’s less expensive—and sometimes it is. After all, they have the space and (probably) the know-how. But sometimes it’s not. In spite of my reps’ caution, I called on this prospect to help them understand that they might not know their own true costs. (We teach this highly effective approach in our FOCIS® consultative selling course.)
What about energy costs, for example? How were they allocated? Not surprisingly, their method was to divide energy expenses by the square feet of the plant. “So that means the area melting aluminum at 1,100 degrees is being charged the same amount per square foot as that operator over there screwing two parts together?” I asked. A few more of these types of questions and they realized outsourcing would be better because then they would know their costs exactly. If you would like to know more of the questions I asked them, call me. I’m happy to share.
8. “As a boutique law firm, we can never win the really large projects when competing with big national and international law firms.”
Over the years I’ve been in a lot of David and Goliath situations in which my client is the little boutique firm that is so well-respected that they often get invited to the big dances and put on their best foot forward at the presentation. The problem is that they’re overshadowed by the big-name veneer and never emerge from the sidelines to win the big ones. My approach here is to ask my client to list all the reasons they believe they do a better job than their competition does. They usually have no trouble doing that. What they do have trouble with is working those reasons into a sales process that educates and persuades. Simply telling buyers why you think you are different and better doesn’t work with business-to-business prospects. They just see too many salespeople telling them the same thing.
Before we helped one of our clients change the story they were telling themselves, they had lost opportunities with five Fortune 500 companies in a row. Afterward, they won five—also in a row. We once helped a pharmacy benefit management firm win a five-year contract for a billion dollars a year. Their challenge was that even though they did make smaller sales, they couldn’t win larger ones. Now they can. They made a second billion-dollar sale 90 days after making the first one.
9. “They have always used our competitor for all of their interior construction work and are happy, so they will never buy from us. They are just using our price to gain leverage with their approved source.”
This is one of my favorites. My client was asked to quote an office remodeling construction project with a well-respected consumer goods company. The company used our client’s competitor for their Chicago-area office construction over many years. The story our client told itself was that the competitor must be doing a great job, and that was why the prospect always used them. I said let’s find out if that’s really true.
We made a list of all the things we felt we might be better at and prepared discovery questions to determine if there were any chinks in the competitor’s armor. There were. One question in particular led to a discussion that helped our client win the business.
We asked the buyer if our competitors had explained the risks inherent in the project, ones that could lead to change orders and cost overruns. As we suspected, they hadn’t and were competing mainly on price, not the potential true cost of the job. We then outlined all the risks that could change the pricing mid-stream. We went on to inform the buyer we had researched each risk and mitigated it or included its cost impact into our pricing. There would be no price increases due to change orders. Our client won the “impossible” job!
Are you or your prospects telling yourselves negative stories that hold back growth? We can help you find out if you are and then help change those stories. Just get in touch. We’d love to talk with you: 847.446.0008 Ext 1 or pkrone@productivestrategies.com.