Know the personal agenda of buyer

It is very important to know the personal agenda for the buyer. We have all read that in the sales books, but it is important to remember and use that during the sales process.

I just had a sales call last week where I was reminded of this fact again. My solution was not necessary the first choice of the customer, but by focusing on the personal agenda of the decision maker we might very good chance of winning.

The personal agenda of the buyer includes elements like:

• Personal success
• It might be very important for him to ensure personal success, and if you can describe how your solution can help him achieve that you stand a better chance
  
• Limit risk
• It might also be important to reduce the personal risk of the buyer. If so - explain how you can help him do that.
  
• Acceptance by manager, team and pears
• A variant of the personal risk and success is to achieve that acceptance by managers, teams and pears. Ensure that your solution does not go across the agenda of the people that the buyer needs personal acceptance from.
  
• External image
• If your solution can help improve the external image of your buyer it might be a very important factor. Can you tell him that other managers that he looks up to has also decided for your solution ?

I recommend that you try to map your buyers personal agenda to your solution, and identify how you can work with it achieve the best results.

Think about you buy e.g. cloth yourself ?

Getting Things Done in a sales environment

I have recently read the best selling book by David Allan - 'Getting Things Done' and it a really brilliant book.

I have learned a lot from the book, and it has made me much more productive. One of the key things that it has helped me with is dividing my activities by the type, e.g.:
- At computer
- At office
- Phone calls

That ensures that I can be very productive and cluster the tasks so then I am ready to call customers I can focus on calling from the top of the list. I have found that it is even more productive if I sub divide my phone calls into
- Call
- Call - cold calls
- Call - opportunities

That gives me an increased focus on the cold calls, that I find needs a separate mindset and energy. At the same time when I have started on the cold calling don't what to think about which customers to call next - I just want to do it.

I have also made a category for my key opportunities at the same level as my projects. That means that I can go through each of my key opportunities each week and identify what I need to do to win the opportunity.

Try saying no to an opportunity

Sometimes you have to say NO to an opportunity - but it hurts!

It is always difficult to say no to an opportunity where you can earn more money.
...Thanks Mike and Joe (SalesRoundup.com) for your comment by the way - money is important :-)

Some opportunities you have opportunities that does not fall within the strategy of the company or what you are trying to achieve, which means that in the long run the time could be spend better with other opportunities. Other times you have some opportunities where your chances of winning is just to low when you are looking at it realistically - and you got to be honest with your self.

That means that sometimes you need to say no to an opportunity. That can be a very hard choice to make. I don't mean latent opportunities where you are trying to build the need at the customer - I mean real opportunities where the customer has a project and they are asking you to bid on it.

But the results of a no to an opportunity can sometimes be really effective.

1. First of all you might free up your time to work on better cases with higher probability or work on finding new opportunities that fit with your strategy, which again means that you have a better chance with the next opportunity.

2. Secondly you customers will respect you for you decision. They respect the fact that you are honest with them about what you are trying to sell.

3. You might get the chance to change the customers evaluation criterion's. If the customer is truly interested in your solution to their pain, they might get back to you.

I had a customer recently where I was asked to submit an answer to an RFP. I have made a presentation of our solution before the RFP was send out and they liked our solution. When we got the RFP I could see that there was a lot of elements where we would not compete very well, so I told the customer that we would not participate in the bit.

The customer then came back to me and told me they where very impressed with the fact that I dared say no to the opportunity, and asked me to describe why I did not want to participate. It ended up with us going to the second round of the process without actually answering the RFP and having changed the parameters for the evaluation, and we ended up winning the business.


So my advice is to consider your opportunities and don't be afraid to say no to opportunities sometimes.