5 Critical Points to Consider Before Pursuing A Deal
by Ming
Salespeople face many different types of challenges in the sales cycle. If you are a sales professional focused on hunting new business or your key responsibility is to acquire new incremental business, one of the major challenges faced besides finding the right contacts will be determining how to qualify a sales opportunity with the highest winning chance.
Imagine this...
After “cold calling” or “cold digital outreach” to many contacts, you finally get a prospect who responds to you and is keen to have a chat. The prospect agrees to meet up in person or virtually for a catch-up meeting. After a quick introduction and a brief get to know each other session, the prospect was friendly and sharing the challenges he is facing but yet to take any action. You asked questions to clarify further your understanding and to see whether you could help to provide solutions in meeting the challenges faced. Almost immediately the prospect agreed and asked you to provide a quick proposal along with pricing. Response is required rather urgently too.
What do you do…?
To do or not to do, that is the question.
In order to make that decision, you need to have a simple yet comprehensive and systematic approach to qualify the sales opportunity. In order to have a holistic process that covers all grounds, you need to qualify every sales opportunity from the customer’s perspective as well as from the company’s perspective.
There are 2 sides to every coin.
RevUpZone sales opportunity qualification methodology is simple and easy to remember. To keep things simple, direct and easy to execute, we break it down to 2 phased approaches. There are 5 steps to qualify a sales opportunity from a customer's perspective and 5 steps to qualify a sales opportunity from the company’s perspective.
In the 1st phase, you need to focus on qualifying the customer using RevUp Zone’s COTAM sales qualification technique (customer’s challenges, objectives, timeline, authority and money).
COTAM sales opportunity qualification technique alone will not be sufficient and is not a comprehensive analysis of the opportunity in the sales opportunity qualification process. Sales opportunity qualification methodology will not be complete without qualifying from the company’s perspective.
In the 2nd phase of the sales opportunity qualification process, you need to evaluate the sales opportunity from your company’s perspective. Everything in this process is focused on the company, how the company stands versus their competition, the company's target customers, how their products and services can meet their customers’ needs and whether the company and their products and services have any value and unique selling points.
In short, at RevUpZone this process is known as 3CPU.
RevUpZone's 3CPU Technique
Step 1 : C = Company
The company you represent has a certain reputation in the market and serves a certain segment of the market. It is important for you to understand your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the market they are operating in.
You can start by conducting SWOT analysis of your company versus your competition.
What are your company’s Strengths?
What are your company’s Weaknesses?
What are your company’s Opportunities?
What are your company’s Treats?
Be honest about it. Conduct a whiteboard session and a brainstorming session with your team and have a good discussion and debate about it. Document the final SWOT analysis output that you and your team agreed upon.
Company SWOT Analysis Template
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Your company’s SWOT analysis will be your guiding principal and your compass that will guide you and help you navigate through the sales opportunity qualification process.
You need to decide whether your company is the right fit for the customer based on their needs, challenges faced, budget, timeline, business requirements, etc.
No matter what product or service your business offers, you will always face competition. Understanding your competitors and their business practices is one of the keys to success.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In order to have a deeper understanding of your competitors, you need to conduct a competitors SWOT analysis. As all competitors are unique, you need to focus on the competition that you come across most frequently in sales opportunities pursued or ideally you know directly from the customer who you are competing against in the bid.
You can start by conducting SWOT analysis of your competitor.
What are your competitor’s Strengths?
What are your competitor’s Weaknesses?
What are your competitor’s Opportunities?
What are your competitor’s Treats?
Competitors come in many forms. It is worth mentioning that there is direct and indirect competition. Direct competition are competitors offering the exact same products or services. Indirect competition is more difficult to identify as they are competing in the same market but may not be directly competing in the same product or services category.
Are you winning or losing in the competitive business battle? Understanding your competitors is vital in winning the business battle.
Step 3 : C = Customers
You need to understand your target market. You need to understand your target audience. You need to create a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience. Buyer persona is not a real person but a fictional persona based on deep research of your existing and desired target audience. Buyer persona is also known as customer persona, audience persona, or marketing persona. Buyer personas keep you focused on addressing your customers’ priorities instead of your own.
In business to business (B2B), you will need to have different buyer personas. Different buyer persona plays different roles in the decision making process.
The more you understand your buyer personas and their personal and professional motivation, you will obtain a deeper understanding of your customers, their challenges and objectives so that you will be able to focus on addressing their needs and helping them solve their problems.
During the sales opportunity qualification process, you need to ask yourself whether the customer is the right fit for your company and whether your products or services are able to help them solve their problems. You need to also evaluate the longevity of the customer lifecycle with the company and whether there is room for upselling and cross selling of services in the near future.
Step 4 : P = Products
Your products and services are always up against your competition. Your customers will always compare your products and services against your competition in their evaluation process and in their decision making process. In order to stay ahead of the rest of the competition and be in the forefront of the competition, you need to truly understand how your own products and services are compared to your competitors in the market and the geography you operate in.
You will gain deep insights and understanding of the products or services by conducting SWOT analysis for each of your product or service that your company has to offer. Once you have a good in depth understanding of your own products and services against your competition, you have a good grip on how your products or services are differentiated and what are your unique selling points (USP) in the marketplace.
Step 5 : U = Unique Selling Point (USP)
A unique selling point (USP) defines your company’s unique position in the marketplace, getting at the heart of your business: the value you offer and the problem you solve. A strong USP clearly articulates a specific benefit – one that other competitors don’t offer – that makes you stand out.
Unique selling propositions: Defining your competitive edge
Are the products or services you offer unique in the marketplace? If yes, why are they unique? Is there anyone else out there offering the same products and services? If yes, how is yours different from your competitors’ offerings? What makes you stand out?
What makes you different from the competition?
During the sales qualification process, you need to ask yourself
“Do I have a USP?”
“Does my company have a USP in serving this customer’s requirement?”
“What value do I bring to the customer?”
“Am I adding value to the customer?”
“Will the proposed add value to the customer?”
“What are the benefits the customer will enjoy by purchasing the products from me?”
Your USP plays to your strengths and should be based on what makes your brand or product uniquely valuable to your customers that your competitors do not offer. A unique selling proposition is a statement you choose to embody that differentiates your products and your brand from your competitors.
In summary, the sales opportunity qualification process is a very important part of the sales process to any sales organizations thus must be conducted thoroughly and systematically. If done accurately, it will significantly increase the win ratio. A holistic sales opportunity qualification process that views and analyzes from customer’s perspective and company’s perspective allows sales to pursue the leads who are most likely to purchase the product or services in the shortest selling cycle, saving time, resources and money.
In order to qualify for opportunities with a high win rate, you need to understand the positioning of your company, your competition, problems that the products or services offered can solve, how customers will benefit and how you can add value to your customers.
Once you have understood and when you are able to apply both RevUpZone’s COTAM and 3CPU sales qualification techniques effectively for every sales opportunity qualification process, you will master the sales opportunity qualification skills and will be able to successfully close more deals in shorter selling cycles effortlessly.
Contact coach@revupzone.com for more info on RevUpZone sales training programs for you and your sales team or 121 coaching sessions to master sales hunting skills to win big and win fast!