Getting in the door is getting harder and harder, so making the most of every time you do get through the door is becoming more and more important.
Over the years, I have seen many salespeople and business owners taking big risks with important deals by talking to only one person in the prospect company. A common outcome of this kind of “single threading” is “radio silence” after a proposal is submitted—no returned calls or emails, and ultimately no deal.
It does not have to be this way. Once we realize that all sizable B2B deals have multiple people involved in the buying process (research from companies like Gartner put the average number of people in a complex purchase at 6.8), we can change our sales approach to one that maximizes our chances of winning.
One framework for progressing sales opportunities that I have had a lot of success with is described in Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman’s book “Strategic Selling” (now called New Strategic Selling.) In this framework there are four types of people involved in a complex sale.
- The economic buyer
- The users
- The gatekeepers
- The coach
In the last email I described the first 3 types of people. In the email I want to tell you more about the “coach”—the big difference-maker in landing any sizable deal.
Not for free–the coach
The coach is the one type of person that does not automatically exist with any deal.
A coach is someone that is willing to tell you what is going on. They can do this as they are included in the information flow within the target company. The “coach” is the conduit to you knowing what is really happening with your opportunity vs. guessing.
Having a coach in a deal, greatly increases your chance of winning. With a coach in place, you can find out about problems from any of the players before it’s too late. The coach knows what’s going on and can tell you what you need to do to keep your deal alive. Without the coach you are in the dark. You may find out about a problem too late, and you may have already been excluded from further consideration.
How to get a coach
If a coach is so important, how do you get one? Sometimes you will connect with a prospect and that person will be willing to be open with you and share information. Sometimes if you are open and human with a new contact, they will start in a “closed” manner and over time they will see that you can be trusted, and they will be converted into a coach.
The quickest and easiest way to get a coach is to sell to a company where you have a contact, or where a contact of your friends works. When you sell to a company where one of your friends works the trust that is already in place. This person already trusts you. They will tell you what is going on. When the contact is a friend of a friend some trust immediately exists because you have a mutual friend. If you fulfill this expectation of trust from the beginning (and act human and open) this person will likely quickly develop into a coach.
Summary
- Getting in the door is getting harder and harder, so making the most of every time you do get through the door is becoming more and more important.
- Having a coach is the biggest determinant of whether you will win a large deal.
- Sometimes all you need to do is act human and open and your first contact will develop into a coach.
- You can “cheat” by networking your way into companies and starting off with a friend or a friend of a friend that will usually develop into a coach.