Win After the Deal HBR Change Management

Chapter 1

traditional sales tactics like opening the call with personal interests/benefit statements, focusing on open/close questions, giving enefits, objection handling, don’t work on larger sales larger sales have longer sales cycles where pitch gets forgotten and pushiness hurts in a multi-call sale, building value is key for larger sales due to size of commit, larger commit means buyer can’t separate person from product - buying an ongogin relationship risk and publicity of mistakes is greater structure of a sales call: prelims (intro + how you begin) actually not all that important, investigating, demonstrate capability, get commit (in stages). the more questions, the more successful the interaction will be open questions - could you tell, why is… closed - Do you, Is your.. key finding: question type doesnt matter SPIN (successfull sellers ask more frequently as you go down this list) Situation - get facts and background...how long with current product, what’s your company’s growth plans...dont overuse them or bore the buyer Problem - explore difficulties, dissatisfactions where product can help Implication questions - what effect this problem has on customer satisfaction, profitabllity. Get the customer to understand urgency/seriousness Need/payoff - customer tells you benefits that your solution could offer. If we could improve the quality of this operation how would that help you? If we could speed this up by 10%, would that be useful? Follow in rough order

Ch 2.

Key finding: investigative stage most important types of closes: assumptive, alternative, standing room only, last chance (price goes up tomorrow) , order blank (fill out the contract for them) Closing: what a seller does to put a customer in a position to give a commit. Key finding: closing techniques speed the sales transaction and reduce the chances of making a sale with a larger transaction/sophisticated buyer/post sale relationship exists Success of a call: order or advance (move forward to a decision) Failure - continuation (buyer doenst agree to something specific) You need to know what advance you want from the call. Set the objectives and be specific actions for getting commit: Spend most of your time uncovering and developing needs Verify all key concerns are met Summarize key points and benefits Suggest a next step that is achievable

Ch 3. Customer needs in a big sale

take longer to develop, involve more people, expressed rationally even if emotional component is there, have consequences Implied vs explicit needs - implied = customer says something about their dissatisfaction/problem - explicit = specific statements of what they - implied needs dont predict success - needs must be developed so that it justified the additional cost of the solution - probing must convert implied needs to explicit needs explicit needs are buying signals in larger sales; they show some sign of action is coming (I’m replacing the system by year end)#

Ch 4 -

Situation questions have a focus. Don’t ask what you already know/could know. Problem Questions- are you satisfied with, what are the disadvantages of the way you’re doing this now, isnt it difficult to, does this X give you reliability problems? Use problem questions to uncover implied needs

Implication questions - Effects, consequences or implications of the customers problems. Works better on decision makers than problem questions but watchout it can be depressing for buyer. Tend to be ‘sad’ questions.

What effect does that have on...output Will it slow down your…. Could that lead to increased costs...

Improv Implication question - listen to response and ask about an obvious problem that leads from their answer. Quickly quantify cost

Check out a Platonic dialogue by Socrates

Imagine client says so what? Figure out the counter argument and turn argument to question.

Need pay off questions - ask about the value or usefulness of solving a problem -cures the negative from implication questions

Need payoff questions - get client to tell you benefits Is it important to you to solve this problem? Why would you find this solution so useful? Is there any other way this could help you? What benefits do you see? How would that help? Suppose you had a… Would you explain how having a ...would help you ? And that would be worth doing? What benefits would you get from… Would X be the most important benefit for X person? And this would save you money/time? Would it be useful if?

-Need payoff questions reduce objections since client is telling you how your solution could help -Need payoff questions are like a rehearsal for others to do the internal selling -Need payoff questions invite the buyer to come up with ideas so they think its their own -Most selling is done internally so you’re not in it

Call Prep

-write down 3 potential problems which my product can solve -implication questions - write down related difficulties frrom problem and anything that raises the severity

-for each difficulty write down the questions it suggests

-write down some actual problem questions that you could ask to uncover each of the potential problems identified

Chp. 5 Demonstrating benefits

-features are not as good as benefits -solutions engineers are more useful towards middle of sale where feature appetite grows

-benefits show how product meets explicit need expressed by customer -advantages - who how product and features can be used or help customer -benefits have impact between calls -advantages get forgotten

-new product launches - focus on problems solved and how to develop questions to unearth them

-when customer requests an educational/features/advantages presentation get a minimum of ONE premeet with a key person so you can show benefits -uncover explicit needs or else you’re showing advantages

Chp 6 Preventing objections

-objections are created by the seller a lot of times -discussing features leads to price concerns, advantages to obkctions, benefits to support or approval -need to build value before offering a solution -build value by repeating/summarizing the new problems you find

-in small sales you create the objections and then handle them -put more effort in to needs development using implication and need payoff questions -objections early in the call = you’re presenting solutions too early before enough questions have developed strong needs -objections about value = not developing needs strong enough

Ch 7 Prelims opening the call

-take control of the convo with questions about needs and avoid product

State the objective of the call and get the client to agree that moving to investigative stage is the right stage -who you are, why you’re there, and your right to ask questions -get down to business quick -don’t talk solutions in first half of call -concentrate on questions

Ch 8 - turning theory into practice

-concentrated, tedious, frustrating practice -4 rules -pick one behavior to work on and get it right -try the new behavior several times -focus on quantity -try out new skills in safe areas, small accounts ,etc… Focus on the investigating stage -plan your calls! Focus on what you will ask NOT tell the customer -develop SPIN questions - start with problem questions,etc... Analyze your product by listing the problems they are designed to solve - then plan question you can use in calls

You must review the calls you make:

Did I achieve objective? What would I do differenthly? What have I learned that will change future calls on the account? What can I use elsewhere?

Be detailed about parts of the call, specific questions, needs, behaviours and their impact, needs that changed...