2nd Place is the WORST Place to be!

Steve W. Martin was the top-selling salesperson for Informix, the Silicon Valley software giant that crashed and burned due to scandal in 1997. He is also the author of, "Heavy Hitter Selling", published this last November.Given his background, selling big-ticket, software contracts to Fortune 500 companies, his selling perspective is not always applicable to financial advisors who sell to individuals. However, I am a big believer in harvesting sales nuggets from diverse selling realities, and applying the more relevant approaches to the world of the financial advisor...and I wanted to share his thoughts with you.

He maintains that Heavy Hitters (i.e. the extremely successful salesperson), understand that they can only work a finite number of deals at one time, therefore they must pursue only well-qualified accounts. Moreover, truly successful salespeople know that finishing first (winning), or finishing "last" (the first to exit) are the best outcomes of a competitive sales process.

The worst place to be is second. By continuing to jump through a prospect's hoops and waste valuable time on un-winnable deals, the salesperson continues to pour good resources on top of  bad...compounding the mistake and increasing the sunk costs in the deal.

Avoiding second place means that the salesperson should find a "coach", who can provide privileged information about the position in the deal  that the salesperson is working on. This "champion" or "internal advocate" is a person on the inside who has the information, history, perspective, and relationships necessary to guide the salesperson through the deal.

Martin believes that sales prospects, whether inadvertently or on purpose, do not always tell the truth. If a prospect is not interested in your product, the natural human instinct is to avoid confrontation and delay telling the salesperson...or do nothing. In the absence of this information, the salesperson continues to spend time and effort to win the business...even though the prospect has made a decision in their head early on in the sales cycle.

Heavy Hitters counteract this absence of objective truth by identifying and establishing multiple relationships within the prospect organization...and by verifying all information about the prospect through the process of  "triangulation." Sailors use "triangulation" by calculating the latitude and longitude of their position by forming an imaginary triangle with the stars. Heavy Hitters use "triangulation" by talking about the deal with not just the obvious decision makers, but a broader list of influencers, employees, managers, team members, etc.

The goal of "triangulation" is to find out the truth about winning an account as early as possible. The sales cycle is a process that occurs over time, and Heavy Hitters are constantly reconfirming information they have received earlier to ensure that it is still correct.

The sales process begins with the creation of a relationship between people who understand each other's needs. Heavy Hitters are always trying to determine what a prospect wants, and to create the environment that is most receptive to their message. They are continually evaluating where they should spend their time and where they shouldn't waste resources. Most importantly, Heavy Hitters are able to convert the relationships they establish into revenue.

Comments

[Hector Cadena]

It's funny, but as I was reading your post about Heavy Hitters, a lot of what you attributed to Steve Martin sounded familiar, although I had never read any of his books. In fact, it sounded so familiar, that I was sure I had read some of the same sales philosophies elsewhere. So I went back through some of the sales books in my library and sure enough, I came across some very similar writings. There were so many similarities that in fact, I found it hard to believe that it could have been a mere coincidnece. So I decided to let you know what I found.

Your post stated, "He maintains that Heavy Hitters (i.e. the extremely successful salesperson), understand that they can only work a finite number of deals at one time, therefore they must pursue only well-qualified accounts. In the book, "Hope is not a Strategy" by Rick Page, on page 7 there is a paragraph with the sub-title of Selling to unqualified prospects. "Picking the right battles is the key to resource allocation. Most salespeople in the complex sale, work ten to twenty oppportunities in a year, sometimes as few as one. Picking an unqualified prospect can be a tremendous drain of resources."

Rick Page list six Keys to Selling, and devotes an entire chapter to Key no. 2, Qualify the Prospect.

You also paraphrase multiple occasions where Steve Martin's book addresses the point that the worst place to be is second. On page 74 of Hope is not a Strategy, a direct quote from the chapter on Key no. 2 is "The worst-case scenario is to commit significant resources and finish second.

You state that "Martin believes that the customer doesn't always tell the truth." On page 8 of Hope is not a Strategy, Rick Page says that "the person who gets lied to the most, is often the salesperson." He states that it's to the buyers advantage to keep the salesperson in the dark, otherwise, if you know the truth, you might go away. He further states that "the average competitive salesperson gets a great deal of misinformation..."

You post states that "Heavy Hitters counteract this absence of objective truth by identifying and establishing multiple relationships within the prospect organization...and by verifying all information about the prospect through the process of "triangulation." On page 8, Rick Page states that "information must be cross-checked and triangulated by multiple sources to get the real truth..."

Most of the sales books that I have read will "borrow" from other authors from time to time, but I believe that when they do so, they are always sure to attribute the material to the proper source. Hope is not a Strategy is a great book as I'm sure Heavy Hitters is as well. But I checked the copywrite on both books and Hope is not a Strategy was copywritten in 2002. Heavy Hitters was copywritten in 2004.

Hector Cadena
www.hectorcadena.com
Free Professional Sales Advice

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Such a nice post this is! Thanks for your sharing with us~!

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mean I just read through the entire article of yours and it was quite good but since I'm more of a visual learner,I found that to be more helpful.