Astronomical Clock

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Time is money.

A sales reps job, as well as the organization that supports him, is to maximize their resources, of which the primary one is time.

Anyone can make their quota…if they have enough time.  And if the quarters were longer. :)

One of the biggest, yet unavoidable wasters, is spending time with people who don’t ultimately buy.

Sure, you can do all kinds of qualification…but even if the deal is qualified, do you win every single one of them?

Let’s try this: even if you won every single one of them, how is that deal going to make you more money moving forward?

Monetize the Loss

I’ve lost deals that were well-qualified in the sense of right leve, budget, pain.  We’d meet huge numbers of people on the implementation team, the decision-makers, and so forth.  But, at one point, a requirement would come up that we couldn’t sell around.  Who knows: it could be the competition got there first and set up a different vision.  In some cases, really, customers do absolutely need a feature that isn’t offered.  While you can continue to try to sell the “value” of not having the feature and some of the other capabilities…at some point, their need is not a fit with your capabilities, particularly in fast-moving technology.

Well, what happens then?

If I could take those contacts and, probably more valuable, the account information and translate that in a whole new at-bat, wouldn’t ‘that be worth it?  Maybe translate it across multiple sales allies and give me multiple at bats.

The nice benefit if you proactively do the introductions is that you get to stay in touch with that lost account, because you never know when things change.  More on that later.

Monetize your losses into new opportunities.

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