Have you ever noticed that bad things come at you like a freight train on a straight track and good things seem to take forever to come?
Today I was talking with a friend of mine and he was venting about this very subject. It seems he is expecting a very big deal to come together, a deal he has been working on for well over a year. He was telling me that for the past 90 days it seems that every time things looked good something would throw the deal off track for closing. He said that almost everything that has been a problem has come out of nowhere and presented itself overnight. He was frustrated and he was starting to lose perspective about the deal.
I could see it in his eyes that he was starting to doubt the deal would ever close and he was starting to feel that all the time he has put into this sale was looking like it would be fruitless. He needed someone to give him hope and to give him perspective. I looked over my right shoulder and didn’t see anyone, I looked over my left shoulder and didn’t see anyone there either. I guess it was going to be me!
I started by asking him how he came across this prospect in the first place. He explained the lead generation process in his office and told me that the prospect came to him through his phone sales staff. I then asked what he has covered over the past 12 months and how tried to get some sort of timeline of the sale.
He told me about the initial calls and how he worked his way up the food chain in the customers business until he was presenting to the management team. He told me about his days working with the team to better understand what they needed and how he could help. I heard about presentations and demonstrations, about his travel to other locations and how he now knows as much about the customers business as most of his employees do.
He interjected several times that he did all this on his own dime his company nor the customer has helped with any expenses. I asked if that was normal for his company, he told me yes. I then told him I wouldn’t expect the prospect to pay unless they had asked for him to do the traveling. He told me they didn’t, it was all his idea.
I then asked him when he first thought he would close the deal. He said that he went to a meeting back in October and that was supposed it. He said that was the first time that things went wrong quickly. I asked what happened. He told me about the contract that he brought with him. It seems that the customer didn’t want to sign a multi-million dollar contract without his legal department looking at it first.
I stood there stunned. I asked him if he really thought that anyone in their right mind would sign a contract that they hadn’t had time to have a lawyer look at. He said it was a standard contract that he has used a hundred times before. I asked were there any times the sale was as large as this one, he said no.
Now I needed to start looking deeper into the sale. I asked him a series of questions;
1) What is the average size of an order for the company
2) What is his average order size
3) What is the usual sales cycle time
He was hesitant to answer because I feel he saw immediately where I was heading. He told me the average order size in the company was about 250K. His average order size was about 195K. The average sale took 7 weeks to close.
I then asked how large this sale was, he told me 1.5MM. He said it will be a company record.
All I did was stare at him. He was finding it hard to look me in the eye. He knew what I was going to say next. He knew that he was just blowing off steam, he knew that I knew that he was being ridiculous.
I told him I thought a few factors were working here. First I told him it was his pride. I asked how many people in the office knew about the potential sale and its size. He said everyone knew. With that I asked if he felt a little silly every time he had a delay and had to explain it to the office. He said yes to that.
I then asked if he had tried to cut any extra deals with his bosses on this sale. He again said yes. He had negotiated an extra 1.75% commission deal.
I then asked if he felt lost working such a large deal with no road map to follow. To this he almost sighed, yes. He said that everything he had done has been trial and error and that no one could give him any guidance.
In the end I told him that because there was no history to look back on and that he was writing history as he went, he couldn’t feel the deal was taking too long. I told him that the first delay with the lawyers should have been expected and would be the next time. I told him that he needed to document every step and every action. He needed to do this for the company and for himself.
I had asked a ton of questions but I had one more, possibly the most important one of all. I asked him what have you been doing while you were working on this sale. I knew I didn’t want to hear the answer, and I was right. He said that he has let his entire pipeline empty and had really not done much over the last 3 months. He said that he was putting so much time into this sale that he couldn’t handle anything else.
He then looked at me and said, “I am a fool”. I told him that he made a big mistake and had put all his eggs into one GIANT basket. I recommended he get back to work and start to get the basics back to his business. I told him to plan on taking his week and splitting it between “THE BIG ONE” and all the rest so he could take some of the pressure off himself.
This is a problem with big sales that we as sales reps often find ourselves in, we stop doing what we know should be done and become a slave to “THE BIG ONE”. This is fine IF we close the big one, if not we are left with nothing.
Never stop doing what you know is right for you and your core business. Never stop doing the things that got you to the opportunity to chase “THE BIG ONE”.
The old saying, “Good things are worth waiting for” is true. Bad things seem to happen quickly, but good things do to if you keep doing what you need to so you can succeed.
Lorin
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