The Toa – Using its wisdom to help you successfully sell or manage client relationships.

What is the Toa (or Tao Te Ching) – 500 years before Christ 'Lao Tzu' authored the 81 verses of the Tao which provides advice and guidance that is balanced and spiritual.  These 81 verses can (and many times are) compared to today’s life.  These teachings are embedded in so many things we hear and read today without knowing it.

I will go through the verses I find most relevant to a sales person’s struggles in today’s society.  Lets start with Verse 01:

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders

You are probably ready to stop reading now, and I would not blame you.  However there are jewels in the words of the Tao.  The main thing I walk away from with this is that there is a big difference in trying to sell and selling.  If you are trying to sell you desire a sale.  If you are selling you are without desire, which will manifest itself in sales.

OK so you think I have gone over the deep end, but thing of this.  If you approach selling as helping a prospect solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity they what you are doing is HELPING.  In this helping you will sell more than if you were trying to sell.

Let’s look at an example:  You have a software package that is the best in class product and feature by feature you can go up against any other product in the market.  However, your prospect is looking for a solution to a problem and does not care about features he will not use.  The sales person that focuses on helping him solve the problem will win…..

OK so here is what I will ask you to do.  For the next week focus all of your prospect conversations on helping the prospect with whatever problem they are trying to solve, even if it does not relate to your product or service.  Here are some questions I use to get the conversation started:

•        What from a business perspective keeps you up at night?
•        What have you carved out as your major business and technology objectives for the year?
•       If you have a personal relationship with the prospect, what are your MBOs for the year?

What do you think, how did you do?

The Tipping Point…..

I recently read The Tipping Point by Malcome Gladwell and as many of you might be able to relate it explains how at some point in marketing a product you get enough traction to push you over the top, demand higher prices, and rapidly grow your business.

An example in that comes to mind in my past was a SaaS company that was struggling to get new clients. Their focus was an underserved group in large financial service companies – Fund Administration. Once the company was able to sign 2 of the top 5 companies in the space and additional 10 companies came on board very quickly (actually to quickly). The stress on the organization in brining on so many large clients almost broke the company.

How do we identify the signs of a tipping point so we can be prepared?

How do we get to the tipping point in the first point…..

Let me know about your experiences…

Paulie…

Good Revenue and Bad Revenue!

The pressure of financial markets and private investor groups create an atmosphere of revenue at all costs in a lot of firms.  Whether it is making a monthly or quarterly sales goal or a sales rep making his number many times outweighs the rational thinking when choosing to signing new clients. 

I have been around long enough to know a good contract (good revenue) from a bad contract (bad revenue).   When I say bad contract, it does not mean the company will lose money on the contract; to the contrary some of the worst contracts can actually make the company money (in the short term). 

Here are some examples…

The first client was a great fit for the company’s product and implementation was complete in just 4 months.  The client paid several hundred thousand dollars a year for the platform and $150,000 for the installation and configuration.  Following the successful install the client recommended the product to 3 other business units.  Within 2 year the client was paying over a million dollars a year for use of the platform across 4 business units.

The second client was not as perfect fit for the platform but with some additional development would be satisfied with the proposed solution.    Signing the client allowed the firm to meet its numbers for the quarter and got the Private Equity firms off their backs.   In this case the client agreed to pay several hundred thousand dollars a year for the use of the platform and expected the implementation to cost about $250K.  Needless to say the development was more complicated than first thought and the implementation took five (5) times as long as expected and at a cost well over $1M to implement.  While the economics/margin of the client was in line with company’s goals the client was not happy and made that known throughout their firm.  The un-expected negative effects of the deal were as follows:

-          Development resources typically doing product development were used to implement this one-off solution and affected the product schedules as well as commitments to other clients (more unhappy clients).

-          Two additional implementations in the second client were canceled due to delays and loss of confidence in the platform.

-          Project teams could not move on to other implementations…. The calculated opportunity loss was over $1M a year in recurring revenue

-          At the end of the contract term the client canceled their agreement (most clients of this company would stay for 6-8 years)

You can see this company would have been better off not signing the second contract.  I did not even go into the client satisfaction effects of other clients on the overall growth of the firm.  If you are interested in learning more about the effects of customer loyalty on a firm’s growth Fred Reichheld has written a number of books on the subject, all good reads.

Why another Blog?

I have been thinking about this blog for some time.  I see a lot of problems with current sales approaches and believe a more fundamental approach is needed.  After reading a book by Dr. Wayne Dyer  I was inspire me to get started.  The book was his interpolation of the  Tao Te Ching by Laozi.

Laozi  (or Lao-tzu) was a philosopher of ancient China during the 6^th century BCE and is quoted in many modern works.  His simple back to earth/down to earth philosophy is something everyone should review. 

How does this relate to Sales in the modern world, in many ways which I will cover of the following months maybe years.  I will also identify problems with the current philosophy at most firms today.

I hope you enjoy and visit often,

Paulie……