The Grid…

Recently, I was pontificating about selling to goals (Link).  I summarized it this way: 

Goals are the dog; Pain is the tail.  Sell to the dog, the tail comes with. 

Of course, I broke one of my cardinal rules by emphasizing “what” to do vs. elaborating on “how” to do it.  OK, today permit me to elaborate on the “how”. 

First… and here it comes again… let me establish a little context.  (Because in today’s modern marketplace context is… well … you already know that from my previous post LOL!) 

The marketplace is disproportionately weighted towards small and medium sized businesses.  The vast majority of companies in North America are privately owned vs. publicly traded.  Therefore, at the top of every organization is one individual, or a group of partners, or perhaps a family that are personally vested in the success (or failure) of their company.  Frequently the value of the company is the owner’s single, largest, personal asset.  So when we’re selling to goals it’s not just business – it’s personal.  It’s the “dog”. 

Let’s move on to how business owners prioritize their time.  After all, they can’t be involved in every single decision that goes on at their company.  That is the road to burnout, or worse! 

Make sure you don’t wind up the richest person in the cemetery.  You can’t do business from there. 

Colonel Harlan Sanders 

Successful business owners and executive teams are delegators.  But how do they decide what to delegate?  Well, I believe in sales situations prospective clients are a lot like horses.  I know … I know … WHAT???  Tell you what; I’ll blog about that in a few. 

Suffice it to say for today that we can observe the behavior of business executives, in this case what they delegate, and anticipate their behaviors.  I’ve done just that over the course of my sales career and created the Executive Attention Grid.  When interacting with a prospect the way to sell to their goals is shown on the Grid:

The bottom-left box is the tactical side of our deals.  Now, we need to win this tactical side, too.  It’s just that the Owner/Executives don’t play much of an active role here – they delegate these meetings/presentations to their managers and end users.  That’s why CEOs rarely sit through product demos.  Do you see any of your selling phrases in this box?

Worse - this bottom-left box is problematic because we get delegated to people who have the ability to say, “NO” but don’t have the authority to say, “Yes”.  This box is where our single, biggest competitor lurks.  We know it as NO DECISION! 

The top-right box is the strategic side of our deals.  We need to win this side; otherwise: 

Not to decide is to decide. 

Harvey Cox 

Strategic meetings are when the Owner/Executives not only attend, but actively participate in dissecting the validity of the business case behind our deals.  It’s been my observation (and personal experience) that the sales rep who “connects” their sales proposal to the top-right box wins their deals more times than not. 

Finally, the topics within the top-right box are not all equal.  If we can possibly connect the value of our offering to “Shareholder Value” or “Business Threats” (to shareholder value) we are selling to the shareholder, aka the Owner, on a very personal level.  We are selling directly to the value of their single, largest, personal asset. 

And THAT’s the dog! 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.