One of the sources of good sales research and blogs that I look at is the RAIN Group. In a recent post they highlighted the fact that 'it takes an average of 8 touches to get an initial meeting (or other conversion) with a new prospect'. But the initial meeting is just the beginning. It takes a lot more to make the sale.
This got me thinking about my own experiences in prospecting and building sales pipeline and also in the unrealistic expectations we often have in terms of either getting an initial sales meeting or achieving a sale. I think this is particularly true in early stage companies where the desire to get to success often clouds the need to plan and persist by going through the stages. The reality in business-to-business sales is that it takes time and takes many touch points (phone calls, emails, face to face meetings etc.) before we get the contract signed or the purchase order!
The three stages of Planning, Persistence and Resilience are important in my view.
Planning
It is stating the obvious but making a plan for a sales transaction is critical to success in business sales. Whether you choose to use some of the comprehensive account planning methodologies such as 'Altify' or want to take the simpler approach of doing your own plan the steps are the same. You need to do your research, set your objectives, put in your timelines and constantly review and refine your progress through the multiple stages.
Persistence
It can be very disheartening not to see visible progress early in a sales activity or not to get an early declaration of interest from a prospect. If we do get it we're lucky, but often it's unrealistic and takes multiple attempts to get to the next stage. So, having persistence and keeping to the plan is important. I don't mean that we make a nuisance of ourselves to a prospect or get branded a stalker! However, each interaction needs to be meaningful and add some value to the conversation. The RAIN Group have an excellent set of articles and associated book on the topic of 'INSIGHT' selling - their premise is that top sales performers -
1. Educate with new ideas and perspectives
2. Collaborate with the prospect
3. And Persuade the prospect we would achieve results.
What's important here is that each touch-point or interaction gives a value and moves the conversation forward.
Resilience
I'm probably mangling the English language here but I see 'resilience' more as the internal attributes we need whereas I use the term 'persistence' in terms of the external activities we need to continue to do during the sales cycle. I could probably have used the term 'resilience'. One of the biggest contributors to failure in selling, in my personal opinion, is lack of perseverance. We give up too easily, we don't stick to our plans once we've made them and we don't look for ways to add value to each interaction.
In summary selling to business is a 'long-game'. Depending on the complexity of our products or offerings we need to ensure we're saying the course, adding value along the way and sticking to our plans.
hot links to the relevant RAIN Group articles that I recommend are embedded in the text. Check out other blogs and related info at www.ithaca-consulting.eu
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