A mate came ’round last night to sample some cheeky Islay malt. We were due to pop out to a nearby juicer, but I’m not ashamed to say I’m a little smitten with Mary Portas (no, not in that way, I’m not her ‘type’!), so insisted we watch the start of her new show
Her latest series gives her five months to turn a dilapidated charity shop (I think the Yanks call them thrift shops) from making barely £12.50 per shop assistant a week into a sort-out money-raising local gem.
Regional Manager Nick (half the age of even the youngest volunteer and overseeing 13 such outlets) unwittingly provided the episode’s killer moment. Given his apparent real-world retail experience, our Mary enquired of him as to what changes he’d brought in since his arrival.
The rabbit stuttered in Mary’s headlights. Here he was, giving the chat about how he was changing things, yet when challenged, couldn’t name any single initiative. Eventually he muttered something about “stabilised pricing”. Whatever that means who knows, it sounded like Nick didn’t either and Mary soon shot it down in flames as a non-existent policy.
In solution selling we are nearly always dealing with how to assess and manage individual perceptions surrounding the fall-out from the inevitable change that our proposal will bring.
It instantly struck me as a wonderful political mapping exercise to informally establish what each buying personality involved reckons they themselves have ‘changed’ in the past during their time inside your prospect organisation.
I’m sure that many of us regularly utilise someone’s positive attitude towards and overall propensity to change, so it seems well worthwhile making uncovering such stance a key part of your formalised sales process.
Last night I shared a thoroughly enjoyable evening with a friend involved in a project to train up 15,000 buyers in the National Health Service in the dark arts of negotiation.
When I asked him what his favourite techniques were, I’m sorry to report that he had a couple of stinkers up his sleeve.
One that particularly made him chuckle, was reserved for when the rep the other side of the table thought everything was finally in the bag. He advocates sliding the paperwork nearer to the buyers, taking a pen and removing the top. You pause for a while, in silence, pen hovering tantalisingly over the contract. Then you pop the top back on the pen, slip it in your pocket, and start to talk about something troubling you.
It apparently causes consternation with the vendors, who rush to give one last concession. You have been warned…
I’ve been forever refining my standard initial proposal format. Over the years it’s become shorter, punchier, ever-more written from the client perspective and, well, downright sexier.
There’s always been a section entitled Return On Investment, or something similarly professional sounding.
Then a delightful thing happened the other day. One of my prospects was suitably impressed with my initial draft proposal. I’d provided it for possible enhancement before distribution to his team. A typical (and proven) ‘pre-proposal review’ process.
His enthusiasm was such, that he felt able to suggest an extra section devoted to “measuring success”. What intrigued me, is that although he’d understood and accepted my RoI calcs, opportunity cost comparisons and payback scenarios, he plainly felt that the rest of his team (not budget signatories themselves) would be more interested in being able to visualise what success would look like in reality.
So there I was, pleased to have picked up a useful addition to my existing RoI documenting; a half-section within it explaining how success would be felt in terms of impact on the daily routine.
And on this specific addendum, my three sub-headings were; RoI, Opportunity Costs, Visualising Success.
