May 27, 2009
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The Complex Sale – A New Landscape
Howard Goldstein, Sandler Home Office
The days of simply providing a product or service to satisfy the needs and wants of the prospect are fading. Many sales organizations find themselves operating on a whole new landscape of fierce competition, escalating customer demands, and a longer and more complex process of moving a selling opportunity to completion. In order to succeed on this new landscape, sales managers must help their sales teams adapt — and, perhaps, radically change — the way they approach selling opportunities.
Conventional selling opportunities have typically revolved around a solution-based approach: providing the prospect with a best-fit solution to a problem or the best path for achievement of a goal. Often, the prospect had a good idea of what he wanted, and the sales team’s objective was to guide the prospect through a process that enabled him to discover the goodness of fit of the product or service near the end of the selling cycle — when it was time to make a buying decision.
The sales team leader’s job is to manage a process that can be characterized as a set of multiple decisions from multiple people — from both the buyer and seller groups — that keeps the opportunity moving forward along the development path.
On the new landscape, the problems to be solved or goals to be achieved are of a greater magnitude, often less well-defined, and typically without a clear-cut path of accomplishment. This presents the sales team with the challenge of helping shape the prospect’s expectations about what can be accomplished and the course of action necessary to achieve the desired result. The approach for developing these opportunities must first be diagnostic-based: working with the prospect to mutually discover the full scope of the situation — functionally and financially — and create a desired solution.
It has been in vogue for a few years to talk about partnering, being a trusted advisor, and taking a consultative selling approach. On today’s selling landscape, it’s time to stop talking and start acting. Sales teams must bring value to the relationship, or the prospect has no need for them. They must be thoroughly knowledgeable not only about their products and services, but also about the needs, challenges, problems, and goals of the prospect base they target. And, they must be acutely aware of market conditions and the competition. In other words, they must bring knowledge, expertise, and credibility to the relationship.
The sales team leader plays a critical role navigating the new landscape. He must possess a strong degree of leadership as well as excellent communication and organizational skills. His job is to manage a process that can be characterized as a set of multiple decisions from multiple people — from both the buyer and seller groups — that keeps the opportunity moving forward along the development path. To keep the process moving, he must be able to effectively orchestrate communications with his sales team, with the buying team, and between the two teams. He must know when to speak and when to listen as well as when to ask for information and when to provide information.
On the old landscape, the sales team was responsible for managing the selling process — step by step — from identifying and qualify the opportunity to closing the sale. On the new landscape, the sales team is responsible for managing relationships between the buyer team and the seller team — facilitating appropriate communications to diagnose the problem, identify new perspectives, set expectations, and ultimately implement the defined solution.
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