“PROTECT is a new deal management methodology that has every major building block of deals and it is where I normally find gaps in deals.” – David Weiss in today’s Tip 1825
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Transcript
David Weiss: What is up Sales Society? This is David Weiss coming at you with another tip of the day. And this isn’t so much of a tip as it is something new that I’m going to teach you. And it’s a new deal management methodology that I’ve come up with and it’s called Protect. And Protect has every major building block of deals and it is where I normally find gaps in deals. So I want you to think about a deal you are working and then let’s talk about protect.
So the first letter of protect P stands for problem. Have we fully implicated the problem that we’re solving across all key needed stakeholders to a point where we understand the emotional, functional and financial value that we are bringing to them? And I’ve quantified those things. Roles is the next letter in protect? Do we have all the needed roles inside the deal? Do we have the decision maker? Do we have an economic buyer if we need to create budget? Do we have end users that we’ve worked with to better define the problem and create a wave of change? Do we have functional users inside the deal related to deployment? Do we have technical buyers that have signed off on our solution? Are we missing any needed typical roles inside the deal Options? That’s the O in protect.
Do we know that we are the option that they are choosing? Oftentimes there’s multiple ways to solve problems and multiple competitors inside that. Do we know that they have chosen our category to solve the problem and do we know inside that category if we are the right vendor for them? The next one is T. Threats. Do we understand our threats in the deal? Threats can be, you know, priority, budget, other projects, timeline, external threats, internal threats. Do we currently know what is a threat to us from winning this deal? The next one is E. That’s executive case. Have we created a business case for change, again tied to the implication of the problem related to emotional, functional and financial value? And have we financially engineered the deal properly? That’s the executive case. C is commitment.
Have we built a good transition plan from sales to service and the proper levels of handoff? To ensure that the value that they bought on is fully transferred into value realization inside of the delivery team that will be implementing it. And have we done all the proper knowledge transfer and communication to make sure that handoff is smooth and we have the right plan in place early on to make sure they are getting the value that they bought for? Oftentimes deals end up not renewing because of this process early on that people don’t get early value realization and the handoffs aren’t smooth and it creates a bad taste from the very beginning. So if we created the right plan there, so that’s Protect Problem roles, options, threats, executive case commitment and Transition. I challenge you to think about a deal you’re working. Categorize it into those buckets. Color code it Red Yellow Green red Don’t know, not enough information.
Huge gap in this specific area. Yellow. Some needed information but it’s missing Green. We are good in this area and I bet you you will find areas of risk that you need to spend more time on. PS Protect is only found at thesalescollective.com