- September 4, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve provided examples before of bringing seemingly lost opportunities back from the dead. That may be the reason a client asked me to help bring one of his company’s deals back from what might be a near death experience.
I’m not going to reveal the details of this opportunity (yet) but opportunities like this usually have some common themes.
- it wasn’t sold the right way
- incumbent involved
- much competition
- purchasing driving the process
- not the leading choice
- may have failed to reach the decision maker
- compelling reasons not uncovered
- process based on price
- higher priced product
If the deal was a man, he would have already coded out and the team of specialists would be on the way to the hospital room right now in an attempt to resuscitate the patient. They would try everything, including paddles, to bring him back. The patient, half-way to the other side, might just like it over there, where heaven is just a stone’s throw away. The doctors experience a whole lot of resistance from dying patients who lack the desire to return to earth. On the other hand, if the patient is a fighter and wants to come back, the doctors have a chance of creating a miracle, courtesy of the array of tools they have at their disposal.
Get the picture? The deal is a dying patient with no will to live. Unless you approach it that way, you’ll fall in love with your strategy, use the wrong tactics and waste your time trying to save a deal with a do not resuscitate order. Instead, acknowledge the odds, find out whether the deal can even be resuscitated, and if there’s any chance at all of bringing it back, have every possible tool available at your disposal.
The doctors have a litany of things that can go wrong and they know, without hesitation, what to do if any of those things actually occur. You must anticipate every possible objection and have every possible question ready to lure those objections out so they can be questioned, addressed, challenged and overcome.
Let’s play doctor.