Hunting new sales opportunities is exciting, nerve racking, and at times can be highly complex given the types of services or products that you offer. So, how do you decide what opportunities to pursue and which ones do you pass on? The better question would be, what is your ‘go/no go’ strategy when looking at a new opportunity? With a complex product or solution it becomes critical that you have a ‘go/no go’ process when you are vetting opportunities, mainly to protect the organization from chasing an opportunity that does not make sense to even chase. The opportunity itself can become a drain on the company costing not only time and resources but money. Below are three areas that can assist you in creating your ‘go/no go’ strategy.
Just to simplify things, a ‘go’ means we are willing to invest our organizations time, money, and resources into an opportunity. A ‘no go’ means we go no further until conditions are right and that usually means we have more information gathering to do.
Prospect Issues
Within the Sandler philosophy is a core belief that if there is no pain there will be no change. Our first ‘go/no go’ strategy must center around the issues that the prospect is facing.
- Can we fix their issue?
- Does the client’s leadership team support the deal?
- How connected are we inside the organization?
- What is the expected timeline or schedule from the prospect and can we meet it?
- Does the prospect have doubts about our solution?
Selling Team Issues
Our second category that we need to inspect is Selling Team Issues. In complex deals we have a long list of people within our organization that will be involved in the opportunity and we need to review how well we can execute with our team.
- Can we realistically support this opportunity without crippling our company?
- What is our strategic advantage in this deal?
- Who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed on our team?
- We do not know the competition
- Our solution does not completely solve their problem
Financing/Contract Issues
Lastly, complex deals typically come with complex contracts, agreements, and financing terms and conditions.
- Funding has not been secured
- We can win the business, but we will sacrifice margin
- The prospect is demanding guarantees and warranties that are outside of the norm
- The prospects payment history and financial stability is questionable
- Outside of the finances we cannot state the value of the deal
Hunting new business is freaking hard. Approaching opportunities with a process that allows you to have a ‘go/no go’ strategy will save you time, save you money, and will ensure that you are working smarter rather than harder.
As always. Keep Growing……
Principle MP Solutions- For 25 years Rob has been driven by the passion he has to grow people and organizations. Rob has worked with hundreds of companies and is a sought-after speaker on sales, sales management, social media, strategy and goal setting. He brings his 18 years of Sandler Training experience to MP Solutions.
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