What we do | Sales Offerings View | Qualify Better
Qualify Better
If there is one skill that can help sales professionals over- achieve on their quota, it is the art and science of deal qualification. The science of qualification is very mature - however the art and discipline of deal qualification leaves much to be desired.
Our set of offerings are field tested, and customer validated, with the potential to maximize your win rate within your pipeline.
Better Deal Qualification, Acceleration, and Execution
1
Of the many challenges facing sales organizations, the one of hope-casting is perhaps the most frustrating. Sellers are not the only one to be blamed. Over estimation and misplaced optimism is an inherent human characteristic. When sales leaders understand this nuance of psychology, they can then look out for ways to remove the dysfunction of hope-casting.
It is our belief that deal qualification is the core of selling. Just as the strength of the core defines the strength of the human being, the strength of deal qualification defines the strength of a sales organization.
Our Approach
- The measure of qualification is not in what the seller does, but what the customer does.
- Qualification without customer validation and triangulation is hallucination.
- For the multiple different criteria for qualification, sales professionals should focus on thinking deeper, broader, and further, so that they can discover the details that define the quality of qualification.
- The depth of qualification should be commensurate with the complexity of the deal, and appreciative of the volatility and uncertainty in the customer’s environment.
- Deal Qualification is not a one-off exercise. It is done at least thrice before the deal fructifies.
- The measure of a good deal qualification discipline lies in the improvement of qualification rate and win rate in the pipeline.
- Sales is the systematic elimination of risk.
Most of our “Qualify Better” engagements stem after our customers have missed their forecast either for the quarter or the half. Sometimes, they observe a consistent decline in the quality and accuracy of their forecast, which motivates them to reach out to us.
As part of our engagement, we subject the top 10 deals for the next quarter to flow through our deal coaching sessions, so that the opportunity pursuit teams are able to assess the quality of their qualification, identify risks associated with the deal, and develop powerful actions to mitigate those risks.
In addition to these powerful outcomes, sales teams also realize the extent of their integration and the split of responsibilities required to secure their top deals.
Customer Results - Case Study
Traversing the journey from “hopecasting” to forecasting for one the largest software companies in the world
When the deals start slipping, the quantum of reviews only go up. With multiple quarter commitments getting missed, our customer realized that turning the dial on reviews was becoming counter – productive. They decided to use our expertise as a third-party verification and validation mechanism to help their sales teams confront reality and improve the quality of their deal qualification.
Along with the customer, we identified the top 10 deals for the fiscal that are crucial for success. Deal coaching calls were structured with the entire opportunity team in attendance. After establishing a container of safety, we leveraged the art of powerful questioning to help the opportunity teams think deeper and smarter about their value and differentiation. Combined with coaching around stakeholder management, competitive strategy, partner eco-system linkage and customer consensus, the opportunity teams were able to identify the top risks that confronted them and then built a strategy to mitigate those risks.
Over 60% of the top 10 deals closed as forecasted. In addition to learning the finer nuances of deal management, sales managers and regional leaders understood the importance of taking a coaching approach to progressing top deals towards closure. Sustenance of these learnings and their application to other deals in the pipeline is another positive outcome of this engagement.Customer acknowledgement testimonial
Recommended Resources for Deal Qualification
Why is Qualification So Important to Your Sales Process?
Why is Qualification So Important to Your Sales Process?
Business Acumen, Financial Acumen and Differentiated Client Conversations
2
In physics, resonance is defined by the matching of frequencies that increases amplitude. In sales, the ability to resonate with customers is important for meaning and motivation to be established in the conversation. The lack of resonance is very easy to decipher – the lack of progress on deals is a surefire indicator of mismatch of frequencies in client conversations.
For sellers to make sense to customers they need to possess a foundation of three core capabilities:
- The ability to talk the language of business and industry, broadly called business acumen
- The ability to talk the language of money, specifically called financial acumen
- The ability to talk the language of senior executives, loosely called executive conversations
How do we engage?
When customers discover a fall in pipeline volume, a decrease in velocity and a deterioration of quality that is when they reach out to us. Rather than spending time on internal reports, we spend time observing the quality of customer conversations. The extent of customer acknowledgement of the value and learning within the call is a leading indicator of the need to invest in capability building in business acumen, financial acumen, and executive conversations.
Our engagements are designed both as workshops for knowledge assimilation and as “real plays” for field application.
Clients who have experienced these engagements talk about increased access to decision makers, increased deal sizes and faster deal closures. They also talk about the levels of peripheral intelligence displayed by their field and the quantum of insights they bring back from their client conversations.
Customer Results - Case Study
Accelerating Client Value through Business and Financial Acumen
The global business services arm of one of the Big 4 Consulting Companies was facing a strange issue. Even in an environment where they were a captive delivery arm, their penetration within their member firms worldwide was in the low double digits. This was despite the fact that a global mandate existed to leverage the business services arm. They turned to us to help them increase their levels of penetration.We realized quickly that the gap in penetration was really a gap in resonance and conversation. The business services arm was talking of more people and process whereas the member firms were expecting the language of business, money, measurements, and outcomes. We designed a series of workshops for various groups for them to appreciate the new normal for client expectations and how they could skill up to meet those expectations.
We then put this into action. We designed a series of coaching sessions with specific leaders so that they were able to lead by example on the skills that needed to be demonstrated, and also coach their teams to resonate better with their clients. The ability to build a set of proactive insights, engage customers through storytelling and control conversations to outcomes were all part of the engagement.
Feedback from the workshops was extremely positive with many attendees pointing to the value that they could apply every day. Because it was a workshop, every person brought in a crucial client relationship that they wanted to transform. All of the tools, methodologies, and frameworks that they learnt could be readily applied within their client context. Client penetration moved by several points. The workshop and coaching sessions started prior to Covid19 and continued virtually with no loss of fidelity, clarity, or value.Customer acknowledgement testimonial
Recommended Insights to Help You.
Three Tips for Sales Conversation Success
Three Tips for Sales Conversation Success
1 - Basket of insights
2 - Executive presence in customer conversations
3 - Leveraging contrast to drive differentiation.
Think about your next customer meeting coming up next week. Is your basket of shots ready to help your customer hit their target?
Negotiating for Business Value, Executive Access, and Better Price
3
Our Approach
- Never do something for nothing.
- No value no sale.
- Win win is a misnomer, sometimes called 50/50. A better approach is 150/150.
- Every negotiation is three parts preparation and one-part execution.
- The best framework to utilize throughout all negotiations is the iceberg principle.
- Intent trumps fluency as much as value trumps price.
- The art of negotiation is the ability to proactively address the unspoken.
How do we engage?
Typical client engagements start with their articulation of poor price realization in strategic deals. Clients see an increased usage of discounting, most often towards the end of the quarter, as a leading indicator of field incapacity to create and claim business value.
Our workshops keep active opportunities and negotiations at the center and then develop an approach to create business value in customer terms. This value is then leveraged to gain access to multiple stakeholders, so that a consensus on value is developed and the opportunity is morphed into an organizational business priority. The duopoly of value and access negate the need to negotiate for price. The ideal sales teams are those that make procurement a tick box exercise.
Knowledge without field application is sales hallucination.The ability to negotiate well, and throughout the sales cycle, is a fundamental skill that requires reiteration and reinforcement. We work through sales managers so that they can coach their teams on and off the field in their ability to apply the principles, practices, and disciplines of good negotiation.
Customer Results - Case Study
Building negotiation acumen for better value, access, and price
The Asia Leader of a large business applications multinational was worried about the quantum of discounts that were happily traded away at the end of every quarter. She wanted to stem the rot and also build capabilities and skills so that the field is not held hostage to the penuries of the quarter end. They turned to us to design an engagement that would solve for the present as well as inoculate for the future.In addition to recommending some changes to the compensation and rewards mechanisms for seasonality and discounting, we also designed a workshop that would get the sellers ahead of their buyers. The foundational disciplines of value creation, stakeholder management and negotiations were weaved in within the context of their own opportunities and aspirations. Managers had the explicit role for facilitating their team’s learning rather than leading with their expertise.
Coverage of the games people play in negotiations and role playing those situations had a deep impact on how sellers could build situational fluency to address games buyers play. This trio of psychology, principles and practices provided a rich tapestry of scenarios for the sales teams to build situational fluency and exercise control on deal negotiations and progress.
The customer was initially shocked at the number of deals that had no measurable customer value. Slowly their dismay turned to gratitude as they could now perceive the right set of deals that merited forecasting. This ability to face reality was perhaps the biggest takeaway. Their greater awareness of negotiation principles and practices allowed them to build a higher discipline around negotiations that helped them improve the velocity and quality of their best deals.Customer engagement scenario
Recommended Resources for Better Deal Qualification
