"On the very biggest deals, it's not about who wins, it's about who doesn't lose." - Tom Searcy How do you change all of the names, details and relevant parts of a story when you tell about leading a dark-horse team selling against 20 other competitors to win a $2 Billion deal? I don't know. It's like buying one of those cardboard-tasting cheap pizzas you had to in college. You did it because you were broke, late night drunk or both. You were never confused that it was good, it was just the best you could do. <SIGH> In my case, I'll do my best to make some alterations, keep it tasty and hope I don't get sued. How did I get hired? "I know somebody." People with problems talk to people who know people who know people. That person says, "I know somebody." That person gets a call. In this case, I was the person that got the call. This isn't a Private Investigator or Bounty Hunter kind of chain. I am the foremost expert in large account sales. For that brag, it's odd that I don't get more of these types of calls. Anyway, the caller had a problem. He had been invited, at the last minute, to participate in a $2 Billion sales opportunity. Even though he was the senior most executive of his company, no one on his team nor himself had ever tried to sell anything this big. I was recommended to help them and they were very much behind the cycle, six months behind the sales cycle to be exact, on participating in this opportunity. There were 20 other competitors already in the hunt for this deal. From my first phone call I could tell that on paper, they were out of their league for what the prospect declared they wanted. Perfect! I took a first-look agreement with the company and agreed to be there the beginning of the next week. My Client Meeting #1 - Define the Lens and Plant the Weeds Engineers. Quality Control, Compliance, Lawyer, Distribution, Manufacturing, Specialists. This was a room of at least 15 of my new clients’ people, none of them with less than a post-grad degree or two and then there was me. Notably missing was anyone who understood selling, marketing, presenting or packaging a message. Bad news- these folks are hopelessly without tools. Good news - I have tools that I charge a lot of money to have and use. Always look on the bright side. Working with the listed types of people provides some specific challenges: 1. They demonstrate intelligence through articulating why things won't work or cannot be done.
2. They are very, very smart so their arguments appear unassailable.
3. When gathered together, they pile-on to the point of showing off their negativity. To break this set of behaviors, it requires strong leadership. Fortunately, their senior executive said, "We are going to fight for this business, we are the best company for this business, we are going to win this business and if you are not on board with figuring it out, turn in your resignation and security badge right f*cking now!" Everyone in the group began looking around at the other people as if the other ones were negative assholes and they themselves had been in favor of this piece of business from the start. Delusions over, we went to work. (Ok, if you are not in business, sales or marketing, just skip this chapter. It won’t interest you and it is a “how to” for something you don’t care about. If you are in business, sales and the rest- read close. This all really happened and it worked) There were a lot of exercises, discussions, yelling and all of the things that go into learning and brainstorming. Two specifically that are important: The Box: Start with a box on a white board. Draw it big. Inside, down in the lower left corner, draw a box a little less than the size of the quarter of the big box. Now start. Have the group give you something that all of the competitors do at a minimum threshold of competency to meet the prospect's requirements. Push hard. Write each of these in one or two words in the big box and leave the small box empty. There should be fights and disagreements. People will argue about key points that are unique to their company over other competitors. Write those capabilities on a separate list. Keep at it until the room has exhausted the "same amongst us all" list. Now, go back to the list that the group argued about and dig. Push hard to find out whether the items should be in the big box, or in the little box. The little box is the list of those items that are unique to our company. You are not trying to get a specific number, high or low, just some items. Work through the argued list. Finish with a request of any other unique items that are offered by your company. The little box is now the company's lens. Everything in the big box is now a minimum price to play. It is no longer the measure of what is better because it is what is the defined threshold that the prospect needs to make a decision of a provider. If all 20 can do the minimum threshold necessary to win the contract, then how should the prospect make the decision? On something NOT in the big box. I call this "Bending the Lens." The goal is to significantly change the way a prospect looks at the problem that it is trying to solve. Define the Seeds My client determined that production was not the floor that all players had to jump from to determine which one could jump the highest. This would be a competition that my client could not win. By making it an assumed "table stakes" quality, if any of the competitors could only offer production as their capability, then they should be taken off of the qualified list. If the prospect could be convinced that their view should not be quality of production, but that production was a minimum and that the evaluation should be production plus, the list of competitors could be reduced. The first step was to meet with the prospects and discuss these ideas; minimum threshold as how the participant list was assembled, downstream needs if everyone could produce, changing world requirements and the issues of flexibility combined with immediate and unseen valuable capabilities that the prospect may want to include in their pre-RFP, or RFP addendum requirements. My Client Meeting #2 - Plant the Seeds During the next meeting, we reviewed the results that had been gained by the various members of our time with the various members of the prospect's team. We tried to determine who our favorable friends on the buyers team had emerged. Favorable contacts show themselves through contacts’ information and questions. One of my consultants has said, "Never confuse courtesy with commitment." Often times, people in a sales process believe that they are making some connection and receiving support from a member of the prospect team just because of courtesy. The real demonstration comes from unique information and unique response. In the conversations from the last meeting, the assignment was to plant the idea that production was a minimum standard and to seek agreement. The second assignment was to offer suggestions of the kinds of things that would matter beyond production. Those capabilities would be items from the small box of our unique qualities. Under no circumstances was the fact that we had those capabilities to be revealed. My Client Meeting #3 - Flatten the Floor and Water the Seeds The prospect will have killed off many of the competitors for a clear lack of capacity to meet the qualities of the newly revised requirements. In this case, from the original 20, there were only 4 competitors left, of which we were one of those four. My client had gone from dark horse to finalist. The prospect was now heavily focused on the issues that my client had bent the lens for the prospect to see. The prospect was not ignoring the other criteria. The competitors were pounding loudly on their drums of excellence on the original production priority and members of the prospect were strongly holding onto this core criteria. Two strategies were now required; flatten the floor and water the seeds. To flatten the floor means to concede the competency of competitors in a set of areas that become so many in number that they do not seem to matter. You to this by enumerating between 5 and 10 different elements of the quality that is being evaluated and then force rank on a side by side bar graph who is best in each. Now you have mud. You will be best in one or two, another company in several and so on. This document you will submit as a supplemental analysis of operational capability, conceding areas of weakness and strength and doing the same for other competitors. It diminishes value and re-establishes the idea that the capability, in this case production, is a threshold issue rather than a key component. Water the seeds is the opportunity to increase the conversational damage that not resolving the capabilities you provide outside of production might mean. A reminder for everyone; Sales is the promise of providing a better future. In this case, to create a better future, you are creating a picture of a worse future without you. For reasons of confidentiality, I really cannot say much about what happened in the future meeting except to say that I drove those meetings, attended and led them and we won. Ta-Da! I am proud of that fact. Here are some key things for you to know for managing the big deals that change your life: 1. Information is everything - You have to get as much information from as many sources as possible. We contacted and worked people in all competitors, the prospect, their competitors, writers in the industry, analysts and former employees. It is simple, in a deal like this the company with the most information wins.
2. Spies - Find spies or friendly informants in the prospect side as soon as possible. Make friends, talk about what they like to talk about. Exchange emails, friend them on social media. Ask questions about topics regarding hobbies unrelated to the opportunity. Over time, ask innocuous questions about the opportunity mixed in with the others and so on. In this opportunity, there were many women on the buyer's side. As men do at social situations, like some of the hosted events that we had in the sales process, our men were talking to each other. I had to kick them to go and talk to the other group. Find and leverage spies.
3. Presentations - Ratios are important. Too many of your people and the prospect closes down. Too few and there is a feeling that they are not valued. The rule of thumb is two of your people for every three of theirs. This is a guideline, not a law. In the presentations for this opportunity, my client had so many technical people for the presentation, that we kept ours outside of the room and then rotated them into the room as their part of the presentation was happening.
4. Rehearse - Never wing it. Never assume experienced people will do well. Never expect that experienced teams will do well. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. The materials, examples, stories, questions- everything needs multiple rehearsals. During this final presentation, I was told one of the key people would not be able to arrive until the morning of the presentation. I said quite simply; "Tell him he gets his ass here the morning before to rehearse all day or he is not in the session for one second, period." He got there for rehearsal. Winning is what matters, not making friends.
5. Materials - I do not like to give any materials to the client before if there is going to be a presentation. The materials are provided afterwards.
6. Projected Presentations - I hate them. We are having a dynamic presentation and interaction not watching a movie. However, there are many reasons when a projected presentation is necessary. Simple rules; No more than 20 words on a slide. The presenter always looks at the audience except to point to a process diagram so the audience can observe a process flow. No more than 10 slides per 20 minutes. People sel