“I made a decision early in my sales career that I wanted to be all things to the prospect.” – Mary Grothe in today’s Tip 689
How many steps do you have in your sales process?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Mary Grothe. After a very successful sales career, selling millions in revenue, Mary formed Sales BQ, a firm of fractional Revenue Leaders who serve companies by profitably rebuilding their marketing, sales, and customer success departments and helping them holistically scale their revenue. Here she is:
Mary Grothe: How many steps do you have in your sales process? How many hours do those steps take? How long does it take to sell a new client? If you’re looking to achieve top sales performance, would you not achieve more if you shorten your sales cycle? Well, the answer is yes, and that’s exactly what I did. One of the key reasons why I was a top performer and able to reach number one status, I took what was historically known as a five to six-step process. And I created the one call close methodology, which was unheard of at my company. We sold in the mid-market. We had multiple buyers on the buying team at the prospect company. We had a demo step, a very complex technology, and a kind of convoluted proposal process. We also had partners within the organization that we were supposed to bring in and team sell.
All of those things elongated the sales process. I made a decision early in my sales career that I wanted to be all things to the prospect. I was the first person in this company, 3000 salespeople to get my own WebEx demo account. I learned and mastered it on my own time. The technology that I sold. In fact, I knew it better than the sales engineers and my operational counterparts, and I was able to demo it.
Secondly, I took the time to learn all the products and services of the neighboring divisions that I sold at the company, instead of having to rely on my partner’s schedule and bring it in. I just learned how to sell their neighboring service. And if I felt like I had a prospect that could benefit from it, I just sold it on their behalf and they ended up getting a closed deal that we split.
It helped me, even though I did all the work because it didn’t slow me down, I still got a commission on it. I still got a split and it really strengthened my partnership as I’m sure you could imagine because I’m just handing my partners closed deals, but I also became very smart and how to drive the sales process. I did more research and due diligence on the front end ahead of a discovery meeting. I profiled the account and identified all the key players, end-users, department heads, executives. I use LinkedIn, their company website, and other tools. So I could identify who everyone most likely was. That needed to be a part of the conversation. And I was proactive in communicating with all of ahead of a discovery meeting, inviting them to the meeting. I also did not book a one-hour discovery meeting because I could demo my own technology. I decided to book 60 to 90, to 120 minutes in those meetings and give myself some buffer room that way as the conversation unfolded during discovery, I was also able to demo the key points that they cared about not some dog and pony show can demo.
I had a customized demo for every client. I also prepared multiple scenarios of pricing and brought those proposals with me. It could be a half-hour to an hour of pre-work and making sure that I had a printer. I also printed off the paperwork. I needed my client to sign. This was pre-DocuSign days and I had it all with me. They started to call me one call closed Mary.
I was consistent in selling what normally took the average salesperson over a month to sell. I was able to do it in a single meeting. I call that the 10-hour sales meeting between the preparation before the execution and staying there until I got the ink. What are you doing to shorten your sales cycle so that you can be a number one rep?
Scott Ingram: For more about Mary and Sales BQ, including your opportunity to take the Sales BQ Quiz, just click over to DailySales.Tips/689 and we’ll have everything for you there.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!