Sales Hacks - “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”

 

Sales Hack – “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”

December 5^th, 2022

 

The phrase in the title – a children’s counting-out rhyme – has been around for a long, long time.  Counting-out rhymes are used to randomly select someone from a group.  They exist in different forms across many cultures and in many different languages (for example, Norway’s version goes “akka, bakka, bonka, rakka”, which would be quite fun to use at the office in selecting who has to run for coffee or change the toner in the copier).  The British Library has a sufficiently distracting article for a fascinating detour into this tradition.  Like flipping a coin or drawing straws, these counting-out rhymes are a way to make choices. 

 

Choosing fairly and correctly is a hard thing for children to do.  It is orders of magnitude more difficult for working adults trying to choose an option when thousands – or perhaps millions – of dollars are at stake.  What if something goes wrong?  What if the vendor does not come through?  And what if there are several options, but they all seem distressingly similar to one another, with competing advantages and disadvantages which also look similar?  Choosing poorly here is career-limiting.  It’s no small wonder that, according to Sirius Decisions, some 60% of deals that go into a CRM pipeline never come ou
t again.

 

Welcome to the dilemma of your Buyer in the Assess Options phase of the Buying Cycle®.  The 40% of Buyers who transition through this phase tend to follow a predictable path forward, with some general tasks that Sellers like you should note.

 

STEP 1)  Articulate what the Brave New World will look like when they have completed their purchase decision and fully implemented the solution.  Forrester Research calls this a Buying Vision.  And according to Forrester, 75% of executive decision-makers prefer to buy from a Seller who helps them establish a Buying Vision.

STEP 2)  Establish Decision Guidelines (DGs), which are the criteria by which the Buyer will choose the winning Option.

STEP 3)  Prioritize the DGs: which ones are “must have” and which ones are “nice to have”. 

STEP 5)  How do the various Options compare with one another, relative to the list of DGs? 

STEP 6)  Choose a short list of Options to consider and to negotiate with.  Buyers in this phase will either select one preferred Option to do final negotiations or negotiate with their shortlist along parallel negotiation paths.

 

These six steps are completed informally for some purchase decisions, with a series of conversations among influential stakeholders and invited Sellers.  For other decisions, these six steps follow a more formal and deliberate pattern, such as a Request for Proposal.  But whether the process is informal or formal, you need to be mindful of what’s behind the process: how does the Buyer make the best (and least risky) decision.

 

What is your role?  According to the best evidence-based practice, your first task is understanding.  You need to identify and define the Buyer’s Decision Guidelines, from the Buyer’s point of view.  Then, you should try to understand the Buyer’s priorities (that is, which Guidelines are more important, and which are least important).  Next, you should attempt to understand how they assess your solution relative to your competition.  Are you strong or weak?  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you should influence how your Buyer sees this picture.

 

There is a lot more to say about Assess Options.  In fact, it’s probably worth an entire workshop to not only present the evidence-based methods to manage Buyers in this phase, but to also put those methods into practice.  We will take up this topic in more detail later.