You already know about the ‘Sales Cycle’. It’s the seven step process where you learn the framework to build a sale. There is also something called the ‘Sales Ladder’ which is not too different from the ‘Sales Cycle’. Almost every company has such charts hung up somewhere in their premises or have training sessions to their sales staff which indicate the steps the prospect has to take in order to get you that sale.
The idea is straightforward. The prospect starts at the lowest step, and makes his/her way to the top of the ladder, at which instance you have the sale.
But guess what? It doesn’t always work out the way it’s depicted in the chart. That’s because the steps are made for salespeople to follow a process. Your prospect doesn’t care about the chart or following the steps that are on it. So, the question remains, what do you do?
As with all the problems you have to solve in life, it helps by getting to the root of the problem. The reason’s can be one of the following:
1. Customer’s requirements have changed: As with life, things happen, and they happen a lot in the Information Technology industry. Plans change all the time. As you can imagine, technology changes quite often, which means that plans that were good a few months ago can become irrelevant soon. That in turn makes the management decision quite fluid. The issue is that, since the IT projects are also pricey, there is a lot of due diligence that goes behind every sale. What all this means is that while you are on the ‘Sales Ladder’, the customer requirement could have changed or just plain vanished. In such a case, the prospect won’t be taking any more steps, as that’s not a priority anymore.
In such a situation, it’s best to have an honest conversation with your prospect. Let them know that you are on their side, either way (one closed opportunity doesn’t mean the end of the road or that this prospect will never work with you again). If there has been a direction change at the company, then you’d be there to support them in the new objective. This conversation is always better than to leave the opportunity open-ended, and as you can see it makes the prospect comfortable using you for something that might come up in the future.
2. They’ve moved forward with your competitor: That’s the possibility that you need to be wary of always. While the ‘Sales Cycle’ and ‘Sales Ladder’ will give you a good idea of the steps to be followed in sales, they necessarily do not tell you the time you should spend in each step. Rightly so, because each situation has its own intricacies, and that’s what differentiates a good sales professional from an average one. If all the steps could just follow a certain time and duration, the skill of a salesperson wouldn’t be required.
Again, this would entail a conversation too, but this one is going to be tougher compared to the one above. Because, you have a chance to salvage the deal by asking you to be given a chance compared to the competitor or to walk away from the deal.
Here’s what a good salesperson should do. Their intention is not to be the nagging salesperson, as that’s someone everyone wants to run away from. Even if you with all the required convincing, get them to say yes, be prepared for a no coming soon after. The yes probably was to just get you off their back. That also means that you are not being called again for future opportunities. Instead gauge how far is the prospect in the journey with your competitor. Remember that you got a meeting, because they want to see if you are still a good fit or they want to let you go on a good note. Based on how the first scenario turns up, there is a point that you have to let go. At that point, you can let them know that you are there for them in case something goes south of if they need anything beyond this current opportunity that they have already decided on.
3. They are finding it hard to move to the next step: All the steps in the ‘Sales Cycle’/’Sales Ladder’ are large steps for a prospect to take. Moving from your first meeting to the order isn’t going to happen immediately.
Consider it this way: You are walking on a staircase and keep moving from one step to the other, and then you reach a spot which requires you to make a long jump. If you miss, you could fall off the staircase. How comfortable would you be making that jump? If you are like most people, who love their life, the answer shall be “Not too comfortable”. That’s exactly how your prospect is feeling in a situation where the next step for them is too far away to make that jump.
In order to solve this situation, take yourself back on the ladder. To take the next step, you’d need a one which is much closer to the one you had before. And that’s what you need to do for your prospect as well. Microsteps is the answer to getting your deal unstuck. These microsteps can be small commitments, as small as getting the next meeting, doing a small proof of concept which can demonstrate to your prospect an immediate value in your proposition.
CONCLUSION
Getting stuck on a deal can be quite frustrating apart from the time and bandwidth it consumes. But a skillful (or experienced) sales professional can navigate around the situation by understanding the reason behind the stalemate that the prospect is facing. Conversations with your prospect can most certainly get you the insight you need, and if the prospect is unsure of a major decision, falling back to microsteps or micro commitments can help your deal move along.
