Prosultative Selling

ProSultative Selling
Making business sales Ultra-competitive
Mike Pilcher
Copyright © 2008 by Mike Pilcher
Cover design by Ti Jedlinski

Book design by Paul Melody
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in
writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short
excerpts in a review.
Mike Pilcher
First Printing: July 2008
ISBN-13 978-0-9798377-0-8
Thanks
I would like to thank the following people who helped in the writing of this book, Brian
Schwartz, Graham Cooper and Mike Greenzeig, all of whom acted as ersatz editors and
without whose help this would still be a radioactive stream of consciousness. I would
like to thank the following people all of whom have at some point given their time to
teach me much of the lessons you will find in this book. Zoran Almuli, Lindsey
Armstrong, Adrian Ashley, Michael Bealmear, Marc Bennioff, Nick Boland, Ian Bowles,
Scott Calder, Alex Chalmers, Chris Ciauri, Bill Conroy, Yvonne Cook, Tim Crossley,
Chris Gomersal, Paul Gould, Chris Grant, Dave Hadden, Phil Holt, Tim House,
Rowland Huelin, Richard Irwin, Mike John-Baptiste, Mike Jones, Scott Jones, Daniel
Keating, Stephen Kelly, Gary Kennedy, Dom Lindars; Russell Loarridge, Gary Melia,
Don Morrison, Graham Napier, Jeffrey Pugh, Jeff Pulver, Carl Ricketts, Roland Slee,
Pete Smith, Garen Staglin, Allen Swann, Colin Tenwick, Danny Turano, David Tymm,
Ryan Ward.
I want to thank Craig Probert who took a major risk giving me my first sales role at
Oracle. His support means a lot, giving of his time and effort to both train me and help
me through the many years we have been friends. Finally, my thanks to my children,
Christienne, Josh and Camilla, who had to put up with the long hours I put in at the
workplace and have grown up to be wonderful people who I am very proud to know.
CONTENTS
The changing business landscape
1. Introduction
2. A ProSultative business
3. Benefits
4. Catalysts of change
5. Enablers of change
6. Results of change
ProSultative Sales Process
7. The product is the process
8. Which business buys?
9. Why are they buying?
10. Why are they buying from you?
11. Sales people = Dodo?
Contact
12. Contact – Passive Contact
13. Contact – Active Contact
14. Contact – Product Marketing
15. Contact – Field Marketing
16. Contact – Contact marketing
17. Contact – Website
Interact
18. Interact – Structuring sales
19. Interact - Land and expand
20. Interact – Internal Sales
21. Interact – External Sales
22. Interact – Being proactive at all times
23. Interact - Quantifying the value
24. Interact - Competing to succeed
Transact
25. Transact – Customer Portal
26. Transact – Contracts
27. Transact – Closing the sale
28. Transact - Customer support
29. Transact – Payment
Operations
30. Process, metrics, process, and metrics
31. Pricing
32. Planning and Forecasting
33. There’s no “I” in revenue stupid
The changing business landscape
1. Introduction
There is a significant change taking shape in business-to-business selling. As we see a

fundamental shift to China becoming the World’s dominant economic power supplanting
the USA, so we are seeing in business the rise of Marketing to supplant Sales’ dominance.
It is a dramatic and rapid evolution changing the way suppliers and buyers initially
contact, interact and then transact business. Business sales are becoming simpler, easier to
conduct, cheaper to manage, and more agile.
Customers are demanding more of suppliers including giving less of their time to evaluate
products before the sale and expecting the supplier to prove the value of the investment
before closing a sale. This results in leaving suppliers with less money and higher costs at
the start of any relationship. The utopian sale one in which the customer fully self-serves
and self-sells. Most organizations recognize this utopia is unattainable, but strive to
achieve the vision of a zero friction sale with no impediments in order to reduce time and
increase the value of sales.
A business buys products with a belief those investments will propel its own business. As
each business strives to differentiate itself in the market, it acquires materials to help make
its own products, and make them unique. This requires when selling it is necessary to
prove the product helps the unique requirements of the buyer’s business. Proving an
understanding of customer needs, mapping these needs to the product, and explaining
how the product performs better than the competition. This process requires some level of
interaction, consultative needs matching, and the use of consultative sales processes.
There is a lot of discussion in the business-to- business sales arena of a dream of frictionless
selling. This book identifies how to move toward that goal and not merely have it as a
inert pipedream. To reduce friction we must take the best of the low-friction techniques
from the business-to-consumer market where the selling is a one-to-many relationship, and
applying them in the business-to-business market of selling one-to-one. In business-to-
consumer selling the one-to-many approach demands proactive articulation of a product’s
benefits to as many people as possible. Actively reaching out to a buyer and providing
information required to make a buying decision. Driving this proactive approach into
business-to-business sales, delivers dramatic and positive results.
Proactive + Consultative = ProSultative
The objective of a ProSultative Business is to minimize the consultative elements of the

sale, accelerating the sale and reducing costs. Minimizing friction through constant
monitoring of the sales process, identifying prospect requirements, and at the appropriate
time, proactively providing the information the prospect needs to understand if the
product is the best product to meet their needs. All the time it is essential to gather data to
understand exactly where the process can be proactive and identify wherever it is possible
to automate a process.
The process of sales is rapidly evolving. Gone are the days in which businesses simply sell
to their customers. Selling business-to-business today requires supporting a prospect in
their decision to become a customer. A ProSultative Business process requires an
interactive dialogue and interaction between buyer and supplier across all channels of
communication. Website, blogs, trade shows, sales team, support, customer counsels and
touch points which have yet to be conceived, every touch point must be integrated,
consistent and proactive.
This is not the first dramatic shift in business-to-business sales and will not be the last.
There are many similarities in today’s business environment with the shift in the
Information Technology industry of the 1970’s. A few proprietary vendors providing all
the computing products a customer required, from hardware to software to the services to
make them work, had created a sales structure and sales process based on business
conditions that were about to radically change. The disruption occurred with the entry of
the open systems vendors.
The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know – Harry Truman
The sales techniques used to sell these new technologies also evolved. I will refer to these
legacy sales techniques “Sales 101”. Sales 101 was typified by high levels of contact, high
costs, many face-to-face-meetings, lots of travel, and a consultative sales approach that was
reactive.
In the following chapters, we describe the detailed process to achieve a ProSultative
environment and the benefits. Demonstrating how to speed the sales process, reduce costs,
and creating a metrics-driven business with more process, and less art in the sale.
A ProSultative Business sells as proactively as possible while proving to the

prospect their needs are being listened to and understood.
The ProSultative approach benefits both parties in a sale by minimizing the interactions
required to make a buying decision. The lines between sales, marketing and product blur.
The role of sales management shifts further toward process management and constant
improvement. The role of marketing evolves to managing the messaging in a constant,
iterative, consistent dialogue. Even the make-up of the sales team is changing with less
focus on the road warrior and more on office-based teams. As with any change, some will
feel threatened by these changes, others will embrace them. There are significant gains
waiting on the early adopters.
ProSultative Business is more than a sales process, it is a change in the way a business
thinks, acts, makes and sells its products to its customers. In this new commercial model,
the entire business orients around one common idea; that of every employee striving to
make the business easy to do business with, and removing friction at every step in the
relationship.
In a new business, this is an action taken at the start and constantly monitored for
improvement. In an existing business, this is an iterative process. In an existing business
there are a number of small problems that have formed together that are now a boulder
you need to break into small and manageable pebbles before you can get the business
sufficiently agile. For those that do not embrace the change the result will be swift and
unpleasant. For those businesses that fully embrace this change, the rewards are great and
immediate.
2. ProSultative business
A ProSultative Business:
Is easy business to do business with; from a prospect finding a product meeting their
requirements, to a customer buying more products.
Whenever possible, automates any interaction with a prospect, or customer.
Whenever possible, makes any interaction with a prospect, or customer, proactive.
Focuses on the minimum information and actions a prospect needs to become a
customer.
Creates an end-to-end dialog of all the interactions the prospect requires to make them
a customer.
Understands what it is about your product that is unique.
Acts with an insatiable urgency.
Iterates incessantly.
Makes everyone in the business aware of their role and how it relates to selling more
product.
De-risks the possibility of losing a qualified prospect.
Understands when people buy new products they are taking a risk, and a ProSultative
business mitigates this risk.
ProSultative Selling is not:

A sales methodology for the sales team.
3. Benefits
Information-centric
By automating as much as possible, the capture of data on the customer and prospect
interactions increases dramatically. This data delivers the information to constantly
improve and iterate toward a fully frictionless business.
Minimizes customer interactions

Focus on the minimum number of steps to close a customer and maximize the value;
reducing costs and accelerating the velocity of sales through the pipeline.
Implements best practices

Re-use the best practices of others in the business and replicate across the business;
increasing the probability of converting a prospect to a customer by learning from the
success of others.
Accelerates the sales pipeline

Accelerate pipeline velocity by guiding a prospect through the process of becoming a
customer as quickly as possible, through the proactive delivery of information. Resulting in
faster sales cycles, and closing more business.
Scalable
Increases the number of customer opportunities each individual, and in turn, the business
can manage; thereby increasing the rate and total volume of new customer acquisition.
Landing more often

By increasing the volume of new customer acquisition, the ability to land and then expand
increases as more customers are closed. To expand, landing is a pre-requisite, sales to
existing customers grows with the increase in total customers.
Reduces Risk
By taking greater control of the delivery of information, the management of resources is
more predictable, delivering more accurate forecasting on which to build plans.
4. Catalysts of change
Summary
This chapter will detail the differing pressures forcing businesses to adopt a
ProSultative model.
Next chapter reviews the technological, economic and social changes greasing the rails
and accelerating change.
Catalysts of change
A number of factors are creating immense pressures on businesses today and driving
evolution. The following are the key drivers:
Time pressures
Every business is striving to improve efficiency and output per employee. Productivity is
one of the key measures with which we gauge economic and business success. The most
seemingly fungible of the resources we have to impact this productivity is time. The
easiest way to free up time is to focus on the tasks immediately at hand and defer activities
delivering future benefits. Before a buyer of a product receives a dollar of return from a
purchase, they have to go through a long process of evaluation, choosing a product,
negotiating, purchasing, and use. Therefore, evaluation of new products and the time spent
to do so is under constant and intense pressure. Suppliers have less time to persuade
buyers of the value of their products.
Cost pressures
Wal-Mart is an example of a business famous for changing the way their suppliers make
and distribute their products, constantly pushing them to reduce costs and increase
efficiencies. As buyers push suppliers for greater efficiencies, reduced cost and efficient
use of capital is pushing suppliers to work harder to close business. There is cost in the
evaluation and acquisition of any product, and we are constantly required to do more with
less. This pressure hits every aspect of the product lifecycle; it starts with reducing the
raw materials costs and moves onto improving the cost of sales wherever possible.
Finance pressures
One of the attractions for customers in the move to Software-as-a-Service is the
subscription-based pricing model associated with this technology. There are many other
businesses we see adopting this subscription-based pricing model. There is nothing to
directly tie the technology and pricing by annual subscription other than the ease of
acquisition of reduced up-front costs, and the access to operating expenditures rather than
capital expenditures. The attraction of subscription-based pricing is spreading the
financial return for the supplier over time compared to a one-time sale, sometimes into
years three or four. After this initial period the revenues are greater than with a capital
purchase, however this moves the risk and investment in the relationship from the buyer
to the supplier. Other examples where this risk transference is evident are Freemium,
Open Source and lower price points in any business that is experiencing lower initial sales
prices.
Travel
Remote communication with prospects and customers accelerated following the tragedy
on 9/11. Sales teams who up to this time were typically willing fliers, happy to get face to
face with clients, suddenly stopped this behavior. Initially driving this was discomfort
about the tragedy, and then this continued driven by the delays created by the new
security measures. At the same time, prospects were proactive in slowing salespeople from
jumping on planes. These converging forces accelerated the acceptance of remote meetings,
conference calls, web conferencing, ultimately resulting in less face-to-face meetings.
Transparency
The required propriety in a post Sarbanes-Oxley world has brought the heavy-relationship
sale under scrutiny. The days of three martini lunches, games of golf, and any interaction
that has the potential to be misconstrued and to influence a sale have gone the way of
overhead foils. A process based on transparency and impartiality, especially during the
pre-order process, has replaced a processed based in interpersonal pre-sale interaction.
I have personally experienced the long expensive supplier-funded lunches, typifying

selling into the booming financial markets of the 1990’s. Today, if a prospect agrees to join
a supplier for dinner, it is common for the prospect to suggest covering their portion of the
meal.
Globalization
With the barriers to global trade dropping every day, companies are perpetually looking to
see if a new supplier is around the corner with a better, faster, cheaper, and lower-risk
product. This threat is accelerating, it requires business to be increasingly competitive, and
it requires them to become ultra-competitive.
5. Enablers of change
Summary
This chapter highlights a number of technological, economic and social changes that are
accelerating and helping support the move to ProSultative business.
Next chapter the combination of these forces combines to force change on the business.
Enablers of change
It is not enough there are pressures on business, there must also be a supportive
environment in which react to these pressures, otherwise the result is akin to having a
sports car and only a field in which to drive. There are a number of factors enabling and
accelerating these changes including technology, legislation, even as far-reaching as social
changes reflecting the ever blurring lines between work and personal time.
Websites
The capability of websites in providing information, previously requiring multiple
interpersonal interactions to deliver, has grown exponentially over the last decade.
Websites originally were little more than static text pages or on-line brochures. As
bandwidth, website technology and the understanding of how to leverage this medium has
evolved, the delivery of information encourages online dialogue with the prospect. Virtual
product tours, access to applications, online pricing and video presentations, all create a
much faster and efficient method of delivering information to a prospect. All go to support
the prospects qualifying themselves into or out of your product.
Web conferencing
When I first started out as a bag carrying salesperson, I used overheard foils when I
wanted to make a presentation to a prospect. I remember the first innovation of my sales
career being able to present in color when we purchased a very expensive color printer that
printed on overhead foils. Now with fully interactive presentations with on-line chat,
polling, remote white boarding, and instant messaging, there is a plethora of features
delivering greater streams of interaction remotely than is possible when standing in the
same room with a prospect.
Email
The seemingly endless of email contributes to a reduction in the use of telephone
conversations and face-to-face interactions. Prospects and customers every day are more
prepared to conduct conversations and interactions over email. We have passed the
tipping point, where when requiring a fast response from a prospect, an email is a faster
way to get a response than using the phone. The ubiquity of mobile email devices has
pushed this adoption, with smart phones resulting in people being prepared to respond to
an email at times when they are not prepared to accept a phone call, much less a meeting.
Social networking
The ability to instigate new relationships, maintain existing relationships, and gain
information on people; is creating a flow of inter-personal interactions that are only
starting to impact supplier to buyer relationships. The ability to find other people with
similar backgrounds, proactively check references, find prospects that are similar to others
affects both supplier and buyer. The shape of these changes is evolving and still in the
process of definition; without doubt, they will have a significant impact. A number of tools
support this, virtual environments and meeting places, social networks, wikis, instant
messaging, all of these technologies support this interaction.
Prospect and Customer tools

My first day at Oracle I was given a phone book, a list of the Insurance companies in the
UK, a phone and a desk. We have come a long way in the tools we can put in the hands of
sales people to make them more effective and increase the propensity of a prospect to want
to buy. These tools span from providing better information on businesses, on the people
in those businesses, the ways to contact them, the way to manage these interactions; and
the data this delivers on the interactions supports constant refinement and improvement.
6. Results of change
Summary
This chapter details key ways in which a business must change if it is to respond to an
ultra-competitive business environment.
Next chapter explains the need to take these changes and embed them in the sales
process and in the product.
Results of change
The catalysts for change are meeting with the enablers of change and resulting in a number
of fundamental ways businesses must evolve. If they do not evolve, in this competitive
business cycle any business that does not change will cease to exist in its current form.
Easier to use products

Products have to be easier to evaluate, easier to use, and easier to replace as requirements
change. This drives pressure onto the product management teams to produce business-to-
business products where the onus is on the supplier to take on much of the work that used
to be incumbent on customers. The days of expecting the customer to know more about
the supplier’s business and products than they wanted to, sometimes expecting them to
become experts in the products are luxuries of the past. Now suppliers must become
experts in their products and experts in the customer’s use of the products. In the process,
understanding what is the minimum required to satisfy customer needs. The legacy
process of building ever more features into a product regardless of customer requirement,
then charging the customer for these features by bundling them with other features, is no
longer acceptable to customers.
Faster time to value

With reduced initial financial commitments, and greater pressure on costs, in order to
maintain growth. Sales pipelines must fill more quickly, prospects must move through the
pipeline faster, and it is essential to increase the number of prospects who convert to
customers. Making the product easier to use speeds the time the customer gains return on
a purchase. This is necessary however, it is insufficient, and the entire business must
become easier to buy from at every step in the process.
Diagram 1 – Trend toward Zero friction sales
Reduced cost of sales

Maintain profitability, the reduction in initial sale value drives down costs including the
initial cost of sale. Reducing the number of customer interactions is a way of increasing
sales productivity and reducing associated costs. Continuing to simplify sales processes
and fully leveraging the myriad tools available to us is essential. It is tempting merely to
drive down the direct cost of sales by recruiting lower-skilled people. While this is part of
the solution, it is not all of the solution. With an expectation of increasing volume, while
accelerating the process, using people who have the experience and skills to understand
when and how to apply resource in a specific situation is essential.
Transfer of risk
The ideal situation for any customer is to have zero risk in the acquisition of a new
product. One of the ways business-to-business sales differ from business-to-consumer, is a
business generally takes greater care to manage their resources than a consumer does. In
the consumer market, a money-back guarantee is the lowest-risk purchase generally
available. Businesses desire more than a money-back guarantee, as they are more likely to
understand the time value of money, the money value of time of employees, and lost
opportunity cost. The result is transference of risk from buyer to supplier.
Diagram 3 – Transference of risk
The ideal situation for a buyer is repayment of all the monies for the purchase, repayment
of the cost for the time spent on the product in the event of the product failing to deliver as
promised, and ideally recompense for any lost opportunity cost. This outcome is
unbalanced in favor of the buyer. A solution to find a balance for the supplier, rather than a
penalty contract is to provide the product to the customer in advance of the purchase. To
provide the prospect with the product, test it, ensure it works, and reduce the risk through
internal proof. This in turn transfers risk and cost onto the supplier.
ProSultative Sales Process
7. The product is the process
Summary
This chapter simplifies the process of interacting with customers into three stages,
initial Contact, agreed Interaction, and the final stage where a Transaction is completed.
Learning how to get the employees to understand how they individually affect the
product, and how to measure this.
Next chapter; we investigate how this process maps to the drivers that makes a buyer
buy.
The product is the process

One of the most common sales mistakes is a belief every stage in the sales process is
discrete. Do this step, then do that steps, then we do the next. Selling in a ProSultative
environment, steps are not discrete; they are part of a constant and proactive dialogue. As
an example, the most common is the belief that closing a sale is a discrete stand-alone step
at the end of the sales process requiring management intervention.
There are only three stages in any sales process. The first the Contact stage is establishing
contact with prospects. The second, the Interact stage, spending time with the customer
working with them establishing the fit for their requirements expressing the value of the
product to that prospect and constantly agreeing next steps. The final stage is the Transact
stage; closing the contract, delivering the product, and servicing the customer. There are
more steps in each sales stage and each sales process is unique to a business as it seeks to
articulate the unique advantages each business brings to its prospects and customers.
However, there are only three stages.
A key element in reducing friction in the sales process is forming a dialog starting with
prospect contact and finishing with a referencable customer. When adopting a
ProSultative sales culture, it is insufficient just to make the sales process contiguous.
Working toward a zero-friction sale means intertwining sales process and product; the
product is the process. In a ProSultative sales process, the goal is simplifying a product’s
acquisition and use. Look at every step; understand and see where and when it is possible
to be proactive and own a process. It is insufficient to wait for permission from the
prospect to move to the next step. By taking ownership and being proactive, the objective
is making the prospect’s experience as easy as possible to do business with your business.
This requires building the product and the process as one entity.
What was the genius of Google? We often hear the story of how Sergey Brin and Larry
Page while at Stanford changed the way we use the internet by taking a new approach to
search by writing incredibly sophisticated algorithms. Was it how to sell search when
everyone else said search was not something people would buy? Was the genius in
writing the algorithms or in inventing the way to monetize them? I believe it was both, the
combination of a sophisticated approach to search and an integrated method of serving
advertising. Google simplified the process of advertisers targeting consumers.
Seems obvious? The drive to find something people will pay for is why Google is Google
and why other search engines fell by the wayside; it was not merely the innovation and a
better product. It was the innovation and the skills in how to package the product in a
way that people would pay for it.
Given the intensity of focus seen in young businesses, coupled with creative, intelligent
people with large personal equity stakes providing both professional and financial
motivations, it is a fair assumption that no one in a start-up would be confused about the
importance of everybody selling. Venture capital investing does not produce a return in
the majority of individual cases, quite the reverse. In aggregate, more businesses fail to
produce sustainable businesses than succeed, however when they spawn financial success,
this success more than offsets the cost of the failures. The financial returns come from
factorial increases in a small number of the investments, paying for both the original
investment in the successful business and a return across the entire portfolio including the
ones that fail.
This seems at first pass counter-intuitive, with the cash, creativity, drive and focus, why do
so many fail? In every start-up I have been involved with, the answer is simple. They fail
when teams work in silos, focused on individual tasks and not understanding the goal of
making the experience of buying a positive one. How can this possibly be the case? How
can a company so close to its prospects and customers as a start-up still fail to hear them,
give them what they want and ultimately succeed?
The symptoms are easy to identify. They include; ineffective sales people who do not
understand how to position their products to meet customer needs, technical founders
with a vision for making something that customers do not want to pay for. Others include
personality tension between people with different visions for the company, ineffective
product marketing positioning the product in the wrong market at wrong time. Any
number of pressures can pull a company away from the goal of everybody selling.
Everyone, every day, needs to ask; “Did I move the business forward by “X”
today?”
To get the team making the product to focus on simplifying the product making it easier to
use, and ultimately easier to buy, the most effective method of resolving this challenge is
by first articulating strategic goals at a tactical level. Making the objective meaningful to
every employee by quantifying precisely what it means to each person. Perform some very
simple mathematics and calculate the financial impact of their efforts. Take the revenue
target for the company, divide it by the employees, then divide it by 220 (which is an
average number of productive working days in a year per employee, taking into account
vacations, training, etc). This is a simple ratio, giving the revenue per employee ratio. It
helps provide people a way to quantify and measure their value to the company. When
people understand this goal at a granular level it quantifies in their mind what they are
doing, and how much impact it delivers.
Everybody sells – Especially salespeople
With sales people, this process is even simpler, take their Quota and divide it by 220.
Constructing a salesperson’s quota must be a deliberate effort and reflect the revenue they
need to deliver based on territory, turnover, goals, coverage, etc.
Employees need to understand it is their goal to make the business an easy one to buy
from, delivering a product that is easy to use, easy to support, one that meets minimum
customer requirements, and is easy to buy. It is natural for customers to ask for as many
features as possible in a product. A ProSultative business builds the minimum required to
service the largest number of customers.
Seems obvious? Go check this out:
□ How many stages are there in your sales process?

□ Do your sales team and product teams collaborate with sales to make the product
easier to use and buy and merge these with customer requirements, or do they just focus
on what customers ask for?
□ Can the people leading your product organization articulate the reasons your
customers buy from you?
□ What answer do you get if you ask the next sales person you meet, how much do they
have to do in order to achieve the businesses’ goals this year?
8. Which business buys?
Summary
There are five times a business touches a prospect or a customer. Understanding these
interactions, how they are streamlined, defines the interactions.
Next chapter demonstrates how to express the unique benefits of a product.
Who is buying?
It is possible to simplify the different types of customer interaction and the potential
buying behaviors they create. It is a very simple process to define the various interactions.
• Sell new things to new customers.

• Sell new things to existing customers.
• Sell more of what has already sold to existing customers.
It is not possible to sell more of what has already sold to a customer who is not a customer.
This may lead to the conclusion there are only three types of customer interactions. There
are two additional important customer interactions; the first is customer care where there is
no selling anything new or more to a customer. The objective is to maintain existing
revenues and ensuring the customer remains satisfied with the service.
The fifth is an indirect interaction when working with a third party who has influence over
the customer; this can be a business partner, an independent analyst, a contractor who has
influence on how the customer perceives the products.
This leads to the following summary, the Customer Interaction Definition:-
New products to new customers

New products to existing customers
More products to existing customers
Customer service interactions maintaining revenues
Partnership interactions resulting in indirect customer influence
This breakdown of interactions is critical in the understanding of when and how to be

proactive in a relationship. In an effort to simplify, combine new products to new
customers, and new products to existing customers. The decision process is the same,
someone is going to buy something they do not know works and has personal career risk
for them. These people are risk-takers and looking to trade this personal risk in return for
personal reward.
It is also important to understand when constructing the messaging. Prove to the prospect
the product enhances their job, while also minimizing the risk of taking the decision in
choosing the product.
In a ProSultative sales environment the interconnectivity of the multiple interactions

demands more complex qualification than seen in previous sales models, basing these
qualification criteria on a greater quantity of prospect attributes. Legacy qualification
typically started with the prospect’s business, be it size, vertical, geography or combination
of these traits. Then qualification moves to job function, environment, ecosystem of the
prospect, then the obvious criteria of decision-making ability, budget, and timing. These
instruments are inappropriate for the interdependencies in a ProSultative sales process.
More data must be acquired, qualification criteria such as the speed at which a prospect
accepts information, the quantity of information they accept, who they pass this
information to, all become part of the qualification and ranking of a prospect.
The decision of who to provide what information to, when, in what medium, following
what interaction becomes simpler once the prospect moves into an interactive dialogue,
with constant monitoring of the process for speed and value. In the earlier phases there
are many touches made to a prospect to get them engaged. The qualification of these
touches, when to spend money on them, who to call, who to spend money advertising on,
who to email, can no longer be left to guessing, spending and hoping. The gathering of
data from every action, reaction and interaction, leads to intelligent qualification and
scoring, of which marketing resources are spent contacting which prospect, are made part
of the prospect dialogue.
Due to the added volume and velocity of prospects in the pipeline, it is important to know
when to qualify out, and drop prospects, or more probably move them back into low-cost
Passive Contact activities, where there are no agreed next steps, a one-way activity. What
cannot occur in a ProSultative model is prospects continue to appear repeatedly on sales
forecasts and never close. It is essential to use qualification criteria that keep the right
prospects in Active Contact, where there is an agreed next step, pass others to Passive
Contact, or to remove any form of contact completely.
□ Do you alter your message dependant on whether you are delivering messaging to a
customer or a prospect?
□ Do you alter your message dependant on whether the messaging you are delivering to
a customer or prospect?
□ Have you reviewed the lifecycle of a prospect and what information they require at
each stage to move them along the process?
□ Do you qualify in as well as qualifying out?

□ Do have prospects in your pipeline that are the prospect that “will never die”, have
you moved them to a lower-cost Passive Contact?
9. Why are they buying?
Summary
This chapter explains what causes people who make decisions to buy, why they choose
to move from inaction to action and take the risk associated with buying a new product.
A business does not buy; it is people that buy, understanding their personal motivation
is critical.
Next chapter details the different types of interactions of the people who buy from us.
Why are they buying?

In business-to-business, the purchase is not fully automated on the buy side there are
people who manage the purchase. The next step is to understand what causes these people
to buy and move from inaction to action. This is another topic often over-complicated as
we strive to understand how to deliver unique value to our customers. It is easy to lose
sight the problem of selling is far simpler than that.
A prospect makes the choice to become a customer by one of these personally motivating
factors.
Pain - something they feel and don’t want to

Fear - something they don’t want to feel
Gain - something they want, they do not have
Having stated these are the reasons people buy, I am going to suggest we use other words
to describe them. When making a radical shift in the way we sell, it is important to think
differently and using new terminology ensures people take notice of the changes. There is
a natural propensity for people to see something new and try to make sense of it in terms
of how it relates to something else they have seen. In this case, the change is so radical, it is
important to do everything possible to get the people being ProSultative to think
differently.
The reasons these terminologies are unsuitable for definition of business-to-business sales
are as follows.
Pain - people seldom feel pain at work and when they do, they are not calling a salesperson
to fix it; they call a medical professional.
Fear - people feel fear when it comes to public speaking, death, heights, and critical illness.
If you are selling insurance, people are buying fear, if not, then thinking you are selling
pain medication confuses your message.
Gain – personal gain is the critical reason why people buy in a business-to-business
environment. They want to enhance their careers or the ease with which they perform
their role.
Understanding people predominantly buy for personal gain; map this knowledge onto the
five customer interactions. First, the focusing is on the three interactions directly
generating new revenues for the business. There are differences in how to sell in each of
these instances, in this book the focus is on the first, selling new to new. First because
without this, new to customer, and more to customer, cannot occur. Secondly, the
differences between the approaches are subtle. Finally, any business that is taking on this
radical change needs to iterate their way to success and this is the logical place to start.
The supplier’s product is not in use by anyone in their organization, in their function, and
therefore the buyer is taking a personal risk. These risk-taking people at the buyer are
changing the status quo by making a new purchase of a new product. They are not taking
this risk for the supplier’s sake or for the salesperson at the supplier; they are taking this
risk for their own purpose. Selling to these people requires supporting their vision of what
problem the product solves them and for their business, and ensuring they do not feel they
are engaging in a high-risk decision.
These risk-takers typically are going to influence the purchase and then the project to
enhance their career. If this person is involved with the product in the future, often it will
be other people responsible for using or delivering the product.
Your business must provide your prospective customer with confidence your
product is going to do what it says it will do, when you say it will do it and at the
price you say and do so with ease.
The decision to buy more products someone has already purchased is similar to the
continued maintenance of the relationship; both are significantly lower risk for the
customer. These customers are looking to prior history at delivering against sales
promise, their current and future requirements, and how the supplier behaves when things
go wrong.
Identifying these risk-takers and targeting the messaging to them to find your product, is
critical in the success of expanding the number of new customers you can acquire. Once
these risk-takers are engaged in a dialogue, they want their personal risk minimized as
much as possible. This is where people must step into the process and ensure the buyer
knows their risks are being heard, and your business responds to minimize these perceived
risks as much as is possible. Until this is fully automated people will be required to help
the sale.
□ Do you ever define selling to your customers in terms of pain you are removing?
□ What proactive steps are you taking to help the prospective buyers manage their risk?
10. Why are they buying from you?
Summary
A prospect becomes a customer when they believe a product solves their problem better
than any alternative. This chapter details the method for defining how to position what
makes a product unique.
Next chapter understand if we need people to help in prospect positioning.
Why are they buying from you?

The first task is to highlight a key initial premise that underpins business-to-business
selling. A supplier sells a product to support the customer’s ability to differentiate their
business from their competition. Every business is competing with other businesses and
striving to be different. Each customer wants to acquire products that support this
differentiation.
When a product is a pure commodity, differentiation is determined predominantly on

price and perceived intangibles such as brand. When competing on price, the ProSultative
sales process tilts far more to a fully proactive process. The first task is putting the
information in the hands of the prospects that there is a product, secondly detailing its
specifications, finally stating the sales price.
On the basis a product is not a commodity, any competing product has a number of base
features common to another, otherwise it would not be competitive. Using the following
as an example, the selling of publishing services to a prospect, first requirement is for the
ability to take content and convert it into a format understood by our customer’s prospects.
If the product a business is selling is sign writing, it is not competitive and the customer
will not consider the product. The prospect will reduce the field of competitors to those
that can meet at least the base requirements.
Using the above example a prospect may have a list of requirements including:
Zero-error rate
Rapid time to delivery
Quality of bindings
Cost
Proof of customers who have published similar items
Quality of paper used for printed materials
Ability to deliver interactive electronic content
Ability to publish in multiple languages
Ability to ship to multiple countries
Financial stability
Of the requirements above, two competing suppliers both deliver similar products, though
each can deliver only eight of the ten requirements. For each vendor to be competitive
assume the base line both products have six identical features. The remaining features are
different; these are the Unique Selling Points, or USP’s. No vendor can deliver everything
the customer wants.
Diagram 5 – USP Definition model
The prospect will get the base sixty percent plus the variable twenty percent Vendor 1 has,
or the base features with the variable twenty percent the competitor, Vendor 2 has. What
resides in this variable twenty percent is what makes a product unique. In the
ProSultative process, the tool to create this is the USP Definition model. It forms the basis
for understanding how to position a product for a specific prospect, quickly, efficiently and
with scale. Product Marketing use the same model to position a product at a corporate
level, ensuring consistency of process and by using the output from Product Marketing,
consistency in messaging.
The process of identifying unique selling points is different at the strategic level and the
tactical level. It is the role of the Product Marketing team to identify the unique points of
the product to meet market needs. Tactically identifying the elements that matter to the
specific prospect is the role of the people interacting with the prospect. In the future, the
automating of this process will occur through use of the right algorithms. Identifying a
prospect’s requirements through online and automated qualification, until then, it is the
role of sales. It must be a fully coordinated effort across all departments.
Successfully closing sales is the result of managing a series of individual risks that may
stop a business buying from a supplier. Once established there is a requirement and a
potential fit for these requirements, someone is going to earn the prospect’s business.
These risks can be many and varied, they are however all manageable, and it is the role of
the business to manage them better than the competition.
Tactically when selling, it is the role of the sales team to discover what elements are most
important to the prospect, map the unique selling points onto these prospect needs, and
persuade the prospect these attributes better meet their specific needs.
□ Do you consider your product a commodity?

□ What do you consider is unique in your product?
□ How do explain these unique features?
□ Who articulates these features individually to each prospect’s unique requirements?
11. Sales people = Dodo?
Summary
This chapter explores if there is a requirement for sales people at all in a ProSultative
business.
Next chapter focuses on management through pure metrics to drive the behavior of the
salespeople.
Salespeople = Dodo?
Early in my career, I was sitting on an airplane and reading an interview with my CEO. In
the article was a quote he had fired all his sales people; the product was so good it sold
itself. If I had taken this at face value, when I landed, I needed to turn around, go home
and find a new job. It was daydreaming on behalf of a technology-oriented CEO.
Certainly, a desire to reduce the number of people seen to be highly paid, risk-taking,
opinionated, and often out of sight of direct management, has an obvious appeal.
However, even with this move from Sales 101 to a ProSultative sale, the time is not yet
right to abandon the sales person. Therefore, we should look at what is the correct
expectation of the new breed of sales people.
Creating a ProSultative sales approach requires an understanding of which features the

majority of prospects need to acquire to become a customer. Determining when to serve
this information to the customer and giving them the right information at the right pace.
Turning the consultative approach of waiting for the prospect to request information, into
one where the process does not stop to wait for the prospect. Understand what they will
require and put it in their hands, leading them through the sales process. During a
presentation, a good question is one you can answer, a great question is one you have a
slide ready for, and an excellent question is when the answer is on the next slide. When
this happens, the construction of the sales messaging is in a logical flow and the thought
process leads the prospect through the journey from prospect to customer. In an
automated, entirely frictionless sale with no sales interaction, the opportunity to sell the
unique selling points meeting the unique needs of that customer, understanding their
individual needs and not the aggregate market need is diminished. Further, there is a risk
of passing control of the pace of the sale to the prospect and worse to the competition.
An example of where it is possible to be proactive in the provision of information is in the

Transact phase of the ProSultative sales process follows. It is common to see deliberate
removal of terms the customer will want in the contract in order to create bargaining tools
during negotiations. The prospect sees a standard term is not in the contract, the prospect
asks for it, and in return for acquiescing to its inclusion, the vendor asks for something in
return. This wastes time, increases friction and can easily be resolved proactively.
When there is sufficient value and competitive differentiation in the product, it is possible
to earn the right to say “No”. It is essential to introduce proactively the elements the
customer wants, and for elements they ask for are outside of the business model, just say
“No”. This saves time on behalf of both parties and is the efficient and reasonable way to
behave. This may sound brave, depending on where the business is in relative to the
financial year, and where the business is against targets. With a continuous ProSultative
sales process, starting in the contact phase, it is possible to proactively pre-handle
objections and set expectations accordingly. The result is less time spent negotiating
contracts, acceleration of the sales process and a positive result for both supplier and
buyer.
The following is an example where just saying “No”, delivered a positive outcome. In the
early days of the enterprise software industry, the revenues associated with the support
and maintenance for the software was fungible. Customers cared about total cost of
ownership, as they did not want to spend next year’s budget this year, but were often more
relaxed with this year’s budget. There was not the same pressure seen today for discounts
on the software purchase; there was pressure on the support fees. Inevitably, the sales
function negotiated these fees away quickly and at high discounts, sometimes as low as
seven percent of net license fees. Taking the decision, we were unnecessarily mortgaging
our future, the rules changed and there was an imposition of a mandated fifteen percent of
net fees as a minimum. Due to the focus on immediate revenues to drive growth,
salespeople did not receive compensation on support and maintenance as this was future
guaranteed revenues. Approval for any contract exceeding a fifteen percent discount was
at Executive level, and if approved, the differential taken from the net license fees, which
was in the salespeople’s commissionable pay. There was widespread discontent and
concern in the sales team, a lot of shouting about how this was going to cause lost deals to
competition and make us seem a difficult vendor to work with. I can state I never saw a
deal from that date sold for less than fifteen percent net, and I did not see any lost deals.
When encountering customers who had been educated with higher discounts on prior
deals and they requested these rates again, we just said “No.” Subsequently honing the
messaging and selling the customer on the benefits our support and maintenance services
delivered, and why this was in the interests of the customer.
Timing is critical; we had reached a stage of confidence in the market in our product and a
tipping point in market share. However, removing this negotiation tool, the customer
moved onto other topics. The result was a simpler sales process and greater, more
predictable future revenue streams. I do not know a sales person who would have
predicted how easy this was to sell prior to its mandate.
Salesforce.com is an example of a company where the initial premise was to make it easy
for their prospects to become customers. Marc Bennioff, Salesforce.com’s CEO has stated
one of the core tenets of Salesforce.com was creating a business that did not simply have an
easy-to-use product. It was about building a business that it is easy to do business with,
from the contractual agreement, to the method of payment, all the way to offering a free
trial so the prospect can see the value they will derive once they are a customer and before
making a payment. All aspects of the company designed to make the acquisition of the
product easy and simple for the customer. At this point in the technology supporting
frictionless selling, sales people are a necessity. They are required to make decisions about
timing and content in the interactions.
When moving to the elements of a ProSultative sales model, and driving proactive
behavior, ease of purchase does not mean flexibility in pricing and discounts. It means
proactively handling objections and selling the benefits of our approach.
The goal of ProSultative sales is to develop a sales process proactively leading the prospect
through the sales process, selling the prospect successful customers like them have
followed this process and it is in our mutual best interest. The next step is to proceed to
the first phase of the ProSultative sales process, the Contact stage.
□ Do you even need sales people?

□ If so, what behavior do you think is appropriate from the team?
□ Do you have any unnecessary stages in your prospect interactions?
□ Who makes the final decisions about what to deliver to a prospect and when?
Contact
12. Contact – Passive Contact
Summary
In this chapter, we understand there are two types of ways to deliver messaging to the
customer. One is a more traditionally business-to-consumer message, Passive Contact;
and the other a more traditional business-to-business, Active Contact.
Next chapter; we learn the importance of an Active Contact in business-to-business sales

and the expectation of agreeing next steps.
Passive Contact
In the drive keep simplify the sales process we can reduce the types of contact with a
prospect and distill the messaging into only two differing types:
1. There is not an agreed next step

2. There is an agreed next step
Without an agreed next step, this contact is a Passive Contact , and with agreed next steps,
an Active Contact .
Diagram 6 – Passive Contact / Active Contact transition
Passive Contact is a technique honed in the business-to-consumer market and comes in

many forms, web hits, trade shows, promotions, press releases, blogs, email campaigns,
viral marketing, partners, outbound telesales, search engine marketing. We are touching
the prospect with an objective of moving them toward an Active Contact where we have
an interactive ongoing dialogue with the prospect and guide them toward becoming a
customer.
We progress the messaging across the three phases of prospect dialogue. Initially selling
the benefits of our product to the buyer; selling value to the customer’s business, providing
the knowledge we have a product that fills a void and need of the prospect, and the
personal gain of the individual.
Diagram 7 – Risk transference
There are multiple touch points that can guide the prospect to an interactive dialogue.
These include articles and press releases, advertising, trade shows, industry analysts,
contact marketing, outbound email and direct mail, webinars, on-line demonstrations,
search engine marketing and the website. Of these the one area that all point toward is the
website and this will be discussed in more detail in later chapters.
The key in Passive Contact for business-to-business sales is to guide the prospect toward
the website and engage them in an interactive dialog with agreed next steps. To get the
prospect there, look to the steps that guides them to the website. These are organic search,
paid search and social media marketing.
Organic search
Of the three options, organic search drives the majority of the traffic to a business-to-
business site. The challenge is to for marketing to stay current with of the ever-changing
landscape in organic search. It is reminiscent of the security changes that constantly occur
with computer viruses. There are always people trying to break the system, and without
regular updates, it would be impossible to stay out in front. Search engine optimization
suffers from the same rapid change. Staying on top of the spamdexing, keyword stuffing,
doorway pages, scraper sites, link farms, content spam, wiki spam and cloaking, is a full
time job. Just like with security example, it is often preferable to use businesses that
specialize in keeping on top of these changes.
Whatever method is the method of choice to solve this problem good enough is not
enough, optimizing for your business is a requirement. Using the example of the website
taking the first meeting, guiding a prospect to the site is the equivalent of giving them the
meeting room number the meeting is in, anything less is the equivalent of giving them the
office address and expecting them to find their way to the meeting. It takes time and
effort to get results and to a point they are measurable, be patient for results and urgent for
action.
Paid advertising
Paid advertising is the quickest method of getting prospects to your site and learning about
your products. Like all aspects of the ProSultative sales process, it touches many parts of
the organization. It is possible to spend an annual advertising budget in a much shorter
space of time with uncontrolled paid advertising.
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you
do, it blows away your whole leg. - Bjarne Stroustrup
Paid advertising is a powerful tool needing tight controls, involving understanding the
target customer, identifying the USP’s using the USP Hierarchy model, forecasting and
budget management, and constant monitoring of the results to find constant and
immediate improvements.
Social media marketing

There is potential to use a new form of marketing, social media marketing, driven off the
rapid growth of social media. Businesses such as LinkedInto YouTube, from Blogger to
MySpace; Friends Reunited to Google Groups all creating social interactions of like-
minded people who may not be directly interested in your offering, however, they may be
adjacencies of interest that are exploitable.
Building brand and awareness into these networks requires pulling rather than pushing.
Approaching this requires an understanding of relationships and how to externally
influence them using “Soft Power”, a term first coined by Joseph Nye. These are skills
very similar to those found in the Sales 101 tool kit. It requires careful movement; it takes
time to build a brand within a trusted network in the same way it takes time to build a
trusted personal relationship. Similarly, when the trust is broken it is very hard to rebuild
it. Take time to understand these networks, understanding their purpose and goals, then
monitor them constantly. Social networks are an evolving medium and the only way to
get work from them is to work with them, like any relationship, they require constant
nurturing.
From the progression of the dialogue from Passive Contact to Active Contact , the
messaging evolves to meet the changing requirements of the prospect, ease of use, the
associated cost of use, and reduction of the personal risk for the person making the
recommendation. The objective is to gain the interest and subsequent enthusiasm of the
prospect and move them to become a customer.
□ Do you plan to have prospect touch points with an understanding there will be no
agreed next step, but that you are guiding the customer toward this goal?
□ Ask your marketing department what their plans are for each of the possible Passive
Contact points.
□ Ask your marketing department what metrics they used to choose each of these
methods of contacting the prospect.
13. Contact – Active Contact
Summary
This chapter describes the handover from a Passive Contact to an Active Contact and its
objectives.
Next chapter; details how these two types of contact are managed via the Product
Marketing team and the critical importance of this team.
During the Active Contact phase, we progress to interacting with the customer, listening,
understanding, seeking to be understood, confirming, qualifying and all the time looking
to learn, improve, and above all else, progress the sale.
The Active Contact phase is when we move the tipping point from qualifying prospects in,
to qualifying them out. During the Passive Contact phase, we are trying to get as many
potential prospects into the sales pipeline as possible. Once they cross over from Passive
Contact to Active Contact, we move from one-to-many to one-to-one selling. The cost of
sales increases once the dialogue starts and we must strive to ensure this is a prospect we
can convert, and want to convert into a customer. The cost of sale, and the cost of
supporting this customer, meets our objectives. We have finite resources and we must
determine if this is where we want to spend our time.
Every touch point must be ready to accept agreed next steps and start to move the prospect
to a customer. That touch point may be a sales person, a partner, someone in one of the
internally focused disciplines. The most common starting point for interactions is the
website. Using the website to draw a prospect into agreed next steps is a critical starting
point.
□ Do you qualify prospects in or simply hope your current messaging is sufficient to

excite a prospect?
□ Are you leading your prospect through your sales process, or are they leading you
through theirs?
14. Contact – Product Marketing
Summary
This chapter describes how Product Marketing creates the details of the content of the
Passive Contact and Active Contact phases.
Next chapter; details how Field Marketing takes the output from Product Marketing and
embeds it in the messaging.
Product Marketing is without a doubt one of the most under-valued skills in business
today. For this reason, we see people get into the role and very rapidly rise through the
ranks. The challenge is there are very few people that are excellent in this role, and so we
underpay for the role. Once someone who is very good at Product Marketing appears, the
person moves through the ranks very quickly chasing the money toward a new role.
The reason this role carries such weight is it monetizes at a corporate level what we have
already invested in our product. When striving to reduce the amount of interaction we
have with our prospects in the transition to making them customers, the output of the
Product Marketing team is the outward articulation of what we perceive to be our unique
selling points.
Referring back to the USP Definition model, Product Marketing need to look at what you
have created, how it fits best in the market, what the competition has, evaluate the deltas,
and then to position what is in the product to optimize the company objectives.
These objectives may be short-term revenue focused and driven on raising value of the
sale; they may be longer-term and focused on gaining market share and customers.
Knowing what positioning to place at each stage is a highly valuable skill and one not
easily found. As with all other aspects of the ProSultative process, there are steps we can
take to establish a repeatable process.
Understand what we have in the product now. Often we think we already know. We
designed a product, created it, and at any point in time, it is what it is. Often this is not as
simple as we may like. First we need to review what we thought we were building and
why.
Next, we look at what we actually built. Perform a gap analysis between what we
planned to build and what we actually built. Understand why and what it may mean to
the future direction of the product.
Then go to the customers who provided input as partners in the design process, customers
who did not, and lost prospects who taught lessons the hard way. When we talk to
customers we often find they see what we are selling very differently than we do. Often
seeing it with less hyperbole, less vision and more tactically, this information is valuable as
we can see learn what the customer sees as having value. Sometimes we are fortunate to
find we are solving a larger problem than we first thought.
There is a technique I have used when talking to customers and prospects to help ascertain
our value and finding where our perceived value is, compared to the competition. It is a
simple technique with a lot of power; it is the “One Dollar question.” Product Marketing
has to understand where the value in the product exists in the perception of the customer
and to understand what features to combine, which to separate, what the functions and
benefits of these features in order to understand which are appropriate, and the terms to
describe them, for insertion into the marketing messaging.
If the product were a dollar, would you buy it today?
I have seen others recommend similar ideas, however asking, “What is the product was
free?” Steve Blank in his book “Four steps to the Epiphany”, which is a very good book
about the customer development process. It is subtle difference, but I have tried both and
you get a different reaction. By asking for money, albeit a desultory amount, it forces the
person to change the way they answer
When asking if the product is free, if the response is negative; they would not use the
product even if free, the answer is typically about the features and people try to let you
down easily. The business equivalent of the break-up standard of; “It’s not you, it’s me.”
They will go on to list reasons why it does not fit their requirements at this time, but may
do so in future, “Don’t go changing to try to please me.” This then completely distracts
you as you do not truly find out what the real objections are, worse you believe it is a
timing issue and you have created the right feature set in your product to meet future
customer requirements.
When you ask a prospect to part with money, even such a small amount, you will hear
very different answers. They will reply with a list that may include reasons as wide-
ranging as “We don’t buy from small vendors” to “We don’t have budget at the moment.”
By opening this line of question, you can then uncover further. On the basis you have
correctly qualified with the person you are talking to, they could truly be a potential
prospect, you can then uncover further.
It is not that there is no budget it is that there is no budget for you
With this sales adage in hand you may uncover you have not proven sufficient value to
buy your product, or they are not a well-qualified prospect. If it is the former, now you
can truly dig in and find out what you need to do to get them to part with money for your
product. This results in a list of features that defines what the prospect would need to see
in order to do business with you.
This process is also effective in competitive situations; the prospect will give you a direct
and honest answer due to the specificity of the question. I was trying to find out where we
were in the sales process and had been getting many answers about features, functionality,
and the evaluation process the prospect was undertaking. Having asked many questions
about the process, the people involved, the various weighting methods used for
evaluation. When I asked the One Dollar question they replied, “No we wouldn’t, we have
a policy of only buying from the vendor with the largest market share as we always
assume whatever features they are lacking, they will catch up.” It allowed the follow-up of
being able to ask what, if any, features they would want to see in the product to do
business with us. When the answer is “None”, you establish you were only competitive
fodder and you should qualify out and spend your resources elsewhere.
We would not have got this information without the use of the One Dollar question. We
had been qualifying them throughout the process, if we were a viable candidate, did they
have budget, and what criteria did they want. What we had not asked was, if we won in
every category would they buy from us?
Seems obvious? Review a sample of failed sales cycles, ask if the lessons taken away were
the sales person was incompetent, or were lessons learned about the sales process, product
messaging, pricing, product features and company relationships? It is not always as simple
as the two questions outlined above and you will often need to dig further and uncover the
answers with more questions. The net focus is the same, “Under what circumstances
would your business buy from my business?”
This does not mean giving the customer everything they ask for. It does not always mean
there are any circumstances under which they will do business with you. However, you
will leave with a thorough understanding of what you could do to improve your product.
□ What techniques does your Product Marketing team use to identify and qualify the
messaging they use today?
□ Is there acknowledgement what was designed, may be what was built, and yet may be
more saleable than what was designed?
□ Do you allow Product Marketing to change the messaging or merely detail what was
built in the product?
15. Contact – Field Marketing
Summary
This chapter details how Field Marketing takes the output from Product Marketing and
embeds it in the messaging to be delivered to the prospect.
Next chapter; describes how the Field Marketing team hands over to the first direct
human interaction Contact Marketing.
Marketing spans the Contact, Interact and Transact phases of the customer lifecycle. In
each phase we will establish how much of the total business resource is applied and how
much ultimate value this deliver.
A product toward the commodity end of the scale, low-cost, simple to use will require
more effort early in the process and therefore will create more value earlier in the process.
A complex, high-value product, requiring configuration or customization will require
more effort later in the process and value definition and creation comes later in the process.
It is essential to ensure application of the effort in direct proportion to the value creation.
The value is only a part of the process, as proving you can do the following steps is
required in order to covert a prospect to a customer.
Prove you solve a need

Demonstrate you solve their specific need
Perform better than any alternative
Solve it at the right price
Contact 20% effort - delivering 10% of the ultimate value
I used to struggle to understand why so often marketers would focus on metrics that
simply did not matter to sales, e.g. quantity of leads rather than quality, brand focus rather
than product. Jeff Pulver, the then VP Marketing at Epiphany explained, often marketing
skills Universities include in their general degrees are business-to-consumer marketing;
this is understandable due to the broader applicability of business-to-consumer skills. The
challenge in a business-to-business environment is the application of these skills without
changing the target audience from a paradigm of one to many, to one to one. While we are
seeing a rapid convergence of business-to-business and business-to-consumer techniques,
there is a requirement to use the best practices within business-to-business marketing as
well.
The over-riding tenets of field marketing within a ProSultative sales process are to time
precisely the provision of the message, while communicating as concisely as is required to
close the customer and derive the greatest value. Understanding which elements to group
together and which to market discretely offers the ability not only to competitively position
the product, it offers the ability to unlock the value of each discrete element and maximize
its value.
As detailed previously, if we put everything we think is unique about our solution in the
public domain, unless we know our competition fundamentally cannot deliver, then we
should reserve our positioning of our unique features until we are in a one to one
interaction. In the rare event we have such a competitive advantage over the competition
they cannot react quickly enough then we should put our unique value proposition front
and center.
It is important to create a messaging program that is an end-to-end dialogue. As we

reduce friction we are constantly seeking the optimal number of touch points with the
maximum value, it is a delicate balance requiring constant refining.
Using boundary decision-making, if we the amount of touch was directly proportional to

the amount of money a customer spent with us, we would never want to close the order
that grew with each interaction. More interaction is not directly proportional to the value
a customer perceives, however when we take the other boundary condition where we want
maximum value and zero touch it becomes evident we are not going to close a high-value
sale with zero touch. Somewhere in the middle is the optimal balance of customer
interaction and revenue.
Marketing and sales must work in lock step to identify the sales stages, when and where to
provide the prospect with information and draw the customer to the close. Asking for the
order in a ProSultative sales environment, is more than advice for the sales team. With
everyone selling, marketing must be leading the prospect toward the order within the
dialogue. This is more subtle than a salesperson explicitly asking, “If I do X, then will you
do Y?” Marketing is required to draw the prospect through the sales process with each
delivery of information guiding the prospect to the next phase.
For example, if we are going to offer a customer free usage of our product either as a trial, a
demonstration, or a proof of concept; we should expect Marketing to engage in articulating
the rules of what are, and what are not reasonable next steps to expect.
As an example, when providing access to our product, in a reduced format, or temporarily
as in a trial; it is reasonable to expect the customer to provide us with information about
them. It is marketing’s role to capture this information and ensure we directly articulate an
expectation of the prospect ultimately buying our product. If we are selling something
requiring heavy customization, it is unlikely, and certainly unwise, to give the prospect all
the customization required without a commitment.
Once we understand the sales process we are striving for, we must look at what
information a customer is going to require from us. What are the aspects of our products
our prospects always ask us to explain? Some are self-evident:-
Features - What does our product do?

Functions - How does it do it?
Benefits - What value does it add?
There are some aspects of our solution that may not seem like features initially but despite
this are important to the prospect:-
How secure is the solution?

Which other users are customers?
How is their usage similar to my requirements?
How many customers do you have?
Are you financially stable?
What happens if your product does not deliver as promised?
What architectural principles have you used to create your solution?
The key is to understand why these questions arise, how common are they, then
understanding how to position them. This is why it is essential to involve marketing, both
because you want a consistent message delivered to prospects, and because you want to
create an on-going dialogue.
One entity must own all the documentation and messaging that we deliver to a prospect.
That means everything, including legal contracts, support agreements, any information
that will touch the customer during the process. Fragmentation of messaging is a common
problem, inconsistencies in messaging causes confusion with a prospect. Confused
prospects do not make great customers, having a single common repository and a single
owner for this repository helps to standardize the messaging.
With the collection of all documents and messaging we know the prospect requires, we can
determine when is the optimal time to provide each to the customer. Knowing we do not
present them with an order form first and a two-page product overview last we can
logically put these together in an order and determine which is the most effective way to
get them in the hands of the customer.
During a presentation, a good question is the one you have an answer for, a great question
is the one you answer with the next slide. The ProSultative sales process must follow the
same flow, proactively providing the prospect with the next piece of information they
require guiding, them toward placing the order. Making your prospects job of purchasing
as easy as possible and arming them with the information to make them prove they have
conducted thorough due diligence and help close the sale.
Create a frequently used terms document. This document acts as a reference for any term
that may be ambiguous; it also forces us to be careful about the terms used. Any terms we
use both in documents designed for external communication and terms we use for internal
communication should be capable of communication to the customer. The ProSultative
process requires everyone selling and de-risking every sales step. Never use terms
internally to describe products, customers, steps in the sales process that we are
unprepared to expose to the customer. There is no need to introduce risk into the process.
During the move in the late 1990’s to move away from selling to IT, believing selling to the
business would be simpler and drive greater value, I inherited a sales process with a step
that was “inoculate IT.” Using our internal process as a sales tool is a critical element of
the ProSultative selling process. In reducing the number of interactions, sell that the
process will increase the customer’s ultimate success of using our solution. There is no
need to add risk by potentially having internal documentation or terms exposed to the
prospect. All terminology and documentation must be suitable for presentation to
customers. It is preferable we sell proactively to IT if this department is engaged in the
sales process.
The next step is for marketing to determine which medium is optimal for delivery of the
information. The Passive Contact phase is delivered through articles and press releases,
advertising, trade shows, industry analysts, contact marketing, outbound email and direct
mail, webinars, on-line demonstrations, search engine marketing and the website; any
medium where there is no expectation of agreed next steps and interactions. Determine
which information you are going to deliver at which phase in the Passive Contact phase.
Be proactive give the prospect as much information as they need to move them to the next
step in the process. Metrics will help find the right mix, so will asking prospects,
customers and all team members who touch the prospects.
Once the Active Contact phase begins, it is expected, and potentially required there will
always be an agreed next step. Determining what the steps are, when to provide the
information and when to wait is one of the keys to success in ProSultative selling.
This is a proactive process and a consultative one, and there remains an element of
judgment in the hands of the people interacting with the customer. If the information the
customer required in making the purchasing decision were completely proscriptive and
process-oriented, there would be no consultative aspect to the ProSultative process.
Once it is determined when, and in what format, to deliver the information we can
determine who provides this information to the client.
□ Are you careful about which elements of your messaging are put in which channel?
□ Do you deliberately hold information back to ensure your competition is not ready for
your Unique Selling Points?
□ Do you have any product names, acronyms, or terminology that is not clear to
someone who does not know your product?
□ Do you train all employees on these terms?

□ If so, what is your process for explaining to prospects and customers?
□ If so, why do you use these terms at all??
16. Contact – Contact marketing
Summary
This chapter describes the initial person-to-person contact encouraging the prospect to
move through the next step of the Contact Phase. This is contact becomes an embrace
with the prospect’s interaction with the website.
Next chapter details the hand over and hand back from Contact Marketing to the
Website.
It is essential to distinguish between the different types of inter-personal contacts and

interactions as there are similar roles defined in Sales 101, and there is a risk of dragging
legacy perceptions into the new sales environment.
Contact marketing - direction/high-volume

Internal sales - simplicity/volume
External sales - complexity/value
Contact marketing is the phase involving a live a person and involves the act of continuing
to nurture a prospect. The Contact Marketing person is guiding the prospect toward
whatever the most probable contact point is that will move them to engage in an
interactive dialogue, this is represented by a high volume of contacts. This usually
requires multiple contacts in order to move the dialogue forward. Using the qualification
criteria to target a prospect, the contact marketing team’s role is to make outbound contact
to a prospect with no expectation of agreed next steps. When the prospect agrees to active
next steps and there is an expectation of the prospect expending resources at this step, the
interaction moves from Passive Contact to Active Contact .
Metrics must drive the process rules driving these contacts, constantly monitoring the best
blend of low-cost Passive Contacts as press and mail with higher-cost touches like
advertising and Contact marketing. Using the new tools to refine accurately the messaging
presented to these prospects enhances the results of this activity, e.g. LinkedIn, InsideView,
Jigsaw, etc. Ensuring the message is pertinent and as specific to the target prospect as is
possible.
I once asked a customer, the CIO at Barings, to monitor the number of in-bound calls a day
they received; they monitored their voice mail for a month and found he was receiving on
average unsolicited vendor calls eighteen times a day. With this level of incoming static,
the best way to gain sufficient interest is to make the message pertinent.
Intelligent contact targeted at the right prospect at the right time with the right message
increases the nurturing nature of the relationship. As with the consultative nature of the
sales process, it is important to demonstrate an understanding of the prospect even in the
Passive Contact phase. As there is no Active Contact interaction at this phase, the Contact
marketing function can offer an initial perception of listening to the prospect if they are
listening to information about the prospect’s business, the prospect’s individual needs and
the functionality of the product. Nurturing involves the feeding of a prospect with
information in order their awareness of the product begins, is enhanced to the point where
it meets a requirement. Once the prospect understands this match and is ready to engage,
they are ready to move to the Active Contact phase.
The Contact marketing team must be available to make initial contact, take in-bound
telephone contact, follow-up on contact made through other methods until the prospect
becomes a qualified lead and passes to Internal Sales.
For clarity, and to ensure gathering of clean metrics, it is essential to delineate between
Contact marketing’s Passive Contact and Internal Sales’ Active Contact. When the Contact
Marketing team starts to try to interact and close business the metrics will no longer be
clean data. Clean data is at the core of success or failure of ProSultative sales, it is essential
to connect the interactions and form patterns, understanding where proactive sales can
replace consultative sales, and where automation can replace manual intervention.
□ Do you collect clean data from each prospect contact?

□ Confirm the cleanliness of the data, by asking for hard ratios on the total number of
Passive Contacts it takes to get a prospect to become a customer.
□ Do you differing sales roles perform differing functions?

17. Contact – Website
Summary
This chapter details how the website has evolved to replace first sales call interactions.
It will detail why it is important to see the website as part of the overall interaction and
not a discrete location for brochures.
Next chapter takes over once the prospect has agreed to next steps and the Interact phase
has begun.
Websites are an optimal place to learn, test product positioning, test marketing; most
importantly, attract prospects engaging them in an interactive dialogue. It delivers a blend
of accessibility, low cost of contact and interaction, while produces metrics form which you
can learn and improve. Prospects prefer it to a face-to-face meeting while they understand
the suitability of your product. The website has replaced at least eighty percent of the
interaction that used to occur at the first meeting between sales person and prospect. Your
website is the first crucial building block in changing your current sales process to a
ProSultative dialogue.
Tenfold was a software and services company selling large-scale, vertical applications. I
was working for Tenfold at the time the internet was becoming a business tool. I had a
first meeting with Paul Bench of National Westminster Bank who was a Senior Manager in
the IT group. He walked in to the meeting, greeted me, and went straight into a detailed
discussion about our solution. I had noticed a similar trend in previous meetings and
using the technique I have found to be best at times like this, I asked the customer. I
described what I used to see at first meetings. Prospects would turn up ten minutes late
and leave then minutes early, giving you forty minutes. In those forty minutes, you would
spend five minutes on introductions and five minutes on wrapping up. You had thirty
minutes to pitch. The outcome of nearly every first meeting was re-direction to another
more junior person at the customer; the prospect would spend the meeting deciding who
you were going to work with after the meeting.
Now these meetings started on time, with minimal introductions, used the entire hour and
often more than one person would attend the first meeting. The people that previously
you would be meeting with at subsequent meetings were already there. Paul explained he
had visited the web site and now always did so. He had read about what we did, thought
it had use, and would not have given me the meeting if he did not think so. The due
diligence and deep questioning that occurred at second or a third meeting was happening
at this first meeting. From a sales process and productivity perspective, this was
tremendous.
Validating this is research from MarketingSherpa, stating 80% of decision makers found
suppliers rather than suppliers finding them. Conducting this research on-line, starting
with search, which in turn leads prospects them to the vendor website.
Diagram 7 – Customer knowledge acquisition
Seems obvious? Review your website and ask yourself if it delivers eighty percent of the
experience of a first meeting. Then ask what you need to do to make it deliver a hundred
percent.
This puts focus on the product marketing team to create a qualify-in message that needs to
be as broad-based as the potential target customer base of your business. When you see
businesses creating vertical pages for their web site, they usually begin with the ones that
their solution targets or the ones where they have accidentally acquired customers. This is
acceptable if your business is prepared to qualify away from prospects whose business you
have not described on the website. If a prospect is working for a major retailer and your
website talks about Banking, Insurance, Telecommunications and Government in detail,
they will reasonably assume your business will not meet their needs.
Use the website to expand the reach of your offering and you can then choose to qualify
the customer out. In the example of the vertical markets, if you have a fully horizontal
product, be aware that as you roll out vertical-specific messaging you will be encouraging
prospects to qualify in when they see details on their business. Also, be fully aware you
are causing others to qualify out if you do not talk about them.
Qualifying out means focusing your resources on the areas you want to spend money,
however ensure you are not qualifying prospects out by omission, Omission-based
qualification. Constant monitoring of web traffic downloads, page views, and all web
touches is critical data that can help provide what products, messages and positioning are
working for your business and which are not.
The following are questions we can ask to qualify how sales-oriented a website is:-
Ask someone who knows nothing about what you do to look at your website. What
do they say? Do they understand what you are selling?
Look to see how quickly you can get to every piece of information on the site. How
many clicks, how long does it take? How easy is it?
Is all the data on the site appropriate for customers and prospects? As all information
on your site is about your company, it is reasonable to consider when it is too much
information. I have found sites with user guides available to prospects and
unregistered customers. No customer wants a product to be difficult to use, they
may accept a learning curve if it delivers enough value. Thorough user guide running
to four hundred pages may reflect a thorough and well-written support document; it
may also scare the prospect into thinking your product is difficult to use.
Are you drawing the customer through the information to encourage them to contact
you? How easy have you made it for them to talk to someone? A test starting from
the home page and seeing how quickly you can get to talk to someone if you are a
prospect is a valuable test. What if a prospect wants to speak to a person? Have you
provided on-line chat or even a phone number? Is the only option a web form?
Use a slow connection to connect to the website. Many times prospects will visit your
site in their own time; you only have to review your weblogs to confirm this. If a
customer is accessing your site from home, they may not benefit from the same
internet access speeds they enjoy at the office. Reducing complexity, ensuring
bandwidth heavy animations and videos are opt-ins, simplifying downloads are all
good marketing principles.
Keep some information back. The web allows competition to review your products
and positioning and respond. If you have something new in your product, and
announce it on the web, your competition can react very quickly. Later we will
discuss how to define, refine and manage the Unique Selling Points. It is a delicate
balance to put enough information on your website to encourage the prospect to want
to do business with you, while keeping enough back to differentiate you when you
have a dialogue with the prospect.
More source data is better, when it comes to delivering information to a prospect

less is more
Imagine a first sales call where the salesperson wastes the prospects time, does not answer
a question quickly, answers inaccurately, refuses to answer a particular question, in any
way does not help the customer buy from you. Imagine the worst salesperson you have
ever met; think about how quickly you wanted to get away from them and go somewhere
else, how you would rather pay more somewhere else than do business with this person.
Consider the costs associated with this first meeting and the strain this cost that fails to
deliver revenue places on your business. Finally think about the opportunity costs of
losing that prospect. Then think about how many web sites you have walked away from,
consider shopping cart abandonment rates of anywhere from twenty to fifty per cent. You
could have been a customer of that business that you walked away from; instead, you took
your time, interest and potential business elsewhere. That is something we need to ensure
does not happen with our business.
Designing the user experience and content of your website is critical for your success and
the replacement of the first meeting. Monitoring the site, adjusting, analyzing, improving
and iterating constantly is the first step in helping understand what you are doing that is
working, and what you are doing that can be improved. This is early evidence of the
integrated nature of the ProSultative process as they deliver data to, and gain input from,
the product marketing team.
□ Imagine you are a prospect, visit your website. Ask yourself, does this replace a first
meeting?
□ How many clicks away is a prospect from getting to information?
□ Is there anything on the website that is not about selling the product?
□ Why is it there?
□ If your website is providing eighty percent of a first meeting’s information, what is
stopping provision of the last 20%?
□ If your website is providing any portion of the second meeting’s content?

□ If so, how much, and why is it not delivering more?
Interact
18. Interact – Structuring sales
Summary
This chapter explains what impact these changes make to the Quota carrying members
of the team. There is a new delineation of accountability and activity, Internal and
External Sales both performing the same function to differing degrees.
Next chapter describes the role and function of the Internal Sales team.
Structuring Sales
The majority of the value creation and definition occurs during the interaction phase.
Interact 70% of the effort delivering 85% of the ultimate value
With Sales 101, there was a standard model, a small inside sales team whose role was to
take in-bound calls, make out-bound calls, and often were there to take simple low-value
orders. This represented on average ten percent of the sales team.
Diagram 8 – Sales 101 mix
The remainder of the sales team was to meet directly with customers. Many face-to-face
meetings were expected, travel was the norm and multiple meetings driven by the
customer were accepted. This team represented on average ninety percent of the sales
team.
This team performs a different set of tasks than either of these roles has performed
previously. They need to have the basic technical skills to manage the new tools at their
disposal, more importantly they need to understand when to use them and when not to.
Establish sales process rules and gating points to determine when to deliver proactive
information to the prospect in what format to deliver it, and when to move from remote
interactions to face-to-face meetings. Even with strict process rules in place, a
salesperson’s judgment will be required.
This evolution requires managing more projects, more sales opportunities at multiple
stages than required previously. We expect personal productivity to improve, especially
with the introduction of new technology and its associated costs. We must expect to see
this improvement in productivity within the sales team.
Each business must decide how they choose to divide the sales team, a contact marketing
team, an internal sales team and an external sales team is an option. In a smaller team, it
may be a requirement for every person to manage every role, when roles blend processes
must not or it is impossible to collect clean data. The important elements are to accept
and acknowledge this change, embrace the tools and train the team on the usage of them.
This alone in insufficient, evolving the sales process to encompass the ProSultative
approach is the only route to success. Understanding when to provide the customer
proactively with information and wrapping this into every step in the sales process is the
key to the success use of these tools.
Diagram 9 – ProSultative Sales mix
At Oracle, like many technology companies, we hired people who were very well educated
and would be rising-stars in other organizations. We often had these people performing
tasks we would not expect of other people with their experience compensation. People
went out of their way to call themselves “Account Executives”, “Account Directors”,
“Global Account Managers”. I had some significant challenge with our marketing
department who administered the creation of our business cards. Wanting the words
“Salesman” on the cards was not in keeping with what others were doing, and diminish
what we were doing.
I pushed and got what I wanted, my case being no customer was confused about my role.
I found approximately the following reaction from prospects and customers.
Approximately half did not notice at all. Half did notice and would comment, my
response was always the same. “I don’t expect you are confused what I am here for (this
would usually raise a smile). If I am unable to demonstrate to you that we have the best
solution to meet your needs, at an acceptable rate of return to you, I do not expect you to
buy from me. If we can prove we can understand your needs, prove how we meet those
needs more effectively than anyone else, will you buy from us?”
I never failed to get a positive response to this. It is what I refer to as a “steak question”. It
is always going to get a positive response. How often have you been to a restaurant and
either personally, or been with someone who asks the waiter, “Are the steaks any good
here?” In all the years and all the meals I have eaten out, I have only once heard a “No”. It
was in a fish restaurant. By putting “salesperson” on my business card, I was able to
establish the premise of what we were both doing, openly and honestly and jumpstart the
dialogue as to what we had to do in order to earn the customer’s business. Words matter,
how you use them matters too.
Seems obvious? Look at what your sales team’s job titles are. Then ask sales management
how the team is structured and the roles of the team. Then ask a sample of team members,
who are you? What do you do? What value do you add? Do the answers all correlate? Are
they answers focused on the customer?
We successfully solved this challenge at Velosant. Velosant ran multiple product lines
ranging from data, to software, to enterprise sales, we had to find a model that leveraged
the sales team to meet the needs of an SMB to a Fortune 500 company. All were
subscription-based products, with most delivered as SaaS, while the content was
downloaded, the delivery mechanism was less relevant than the revenue model. We
segregated by product line, by geography and by prospect size. The key was to map the
volume to the value and target the right resource at the right time. The Contact marketing
team was clear it was their role to generate interest; the Internal sales team working
opportunities until closure, and for long complex sales cycles for the enterprise product the
External sales team engaged.

□ How are the responsibilities of your sales team split?
□ Is there ever confusion over which team member should contact a given prospect?
□ What job titles does your team use?
□ Can everyone in the sales team tell you what value they add?
□ Can other team members tell you what value they add?
19. Interact - Land and expand
Summary
This chapter, reviews legacy businesses to learn from historical land and expansion
techniques, then how to apply them today.
Next chapter the processes learned from legacy selling are embedded in the process to
make the final product.
Land and expand

Today, we are seeing a similar need for businesses to change again and alter how they sell
to their customers. During the last radical change in the 1980’s, sales processes became
more aggressive, moved faster, and a burden passed to the vendors for a “try before you
buy” approach. Prospects insisted on proof of the existence of the products before
purchasing them. Now prospects demand proof the product exists, works and proof of
value to the business before making a purchase decision.
Today the term “Land and Expand” is the mantra for many businesses and there are
discussions as if this is a new concept. In the spirit of learning from our experience, this
concept has been a traditional business-to-business approach for decades. Typically
seeing a prospect become a customer by buying a product for a departmental requirement,
after gaining confidence moving to a divisional acquisition and ultimately to an Enterprise-
wide deployment.
Diagram 4 – Land and expand

The timing depends upon various external influences, customer requirement, product
maturity, product breadth, economic conditions. While the timing may change, the
process of growing revenues by creating an initial sale and expanding from there is a
process from which we can learn.
Depending on the stage our business is in depends on the ratios we can expect to see from
Land deals and then subsequent Expand deals. The following ratios work as a starting
point, less mature industries generating a higher proportion from new business to new
customers, and more mature a higher percentage from existing customers. Please note the
basis of the following is on sales of an emerging product, this does not include historical
and trailing revenues, recurring revenues and previously committed revenues.
Sales to new customers = 60%

Sales to existing customers = 40%
In turn, this delineates into landing revenues and expansion revenues.
Example
Total Sales = $10,000,000
Land
Departmental = 600 at $10K = $6M = 60%
Expand
Divisional = 60 sales at $50K = $3M = 30%
Enterprise = 4 sales at $250K = $1M = 10%
One business’ department may be another business’ enterprise; in order to be successful

this approach must be decomposed yet further, dissecting the data into target markets, for
example, Enterprise, Medium and Small Business. This approach makes it simpler to
manage forecasting and planning, breaking each product into departmental, divisional,
enterprise; enterprise, medium, small business; then further into region, North America,
EMEA, APAC.
The result of this process is a plan to base sales team structure on, as it is identifies which
type of sales interaction is appropriate for which type of sale. This plan is sufficiently
granular to understand how much of which product targets which sized company, in
which vertical, in which country. This iterative breaking down of the sales planning
numbers is Sales Cubing and is referred to later in the Planning and Forecasting chapter.
What is clear is without landing there is no expanding.
Encouraging landing
I joined Sybase, a software vendor competing with Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, I inherited
an existing sales team selling into the Financial Services market. Sybase was the leader in
its segment at the time. As is often the case, as customers matured, sales people gravitated
toward existing customers and away from closing new business. Despite being the fifth
person to manage the team in five fiscal Quarters, it did not take long to realize the
problem. As the pressure was piling on the team to deliver, their focus was on the
occasional large “elephant” deals, and due to fiscal urgency, anything that was going to
close with in the next twelve weeks. It was evident a longer-term view needed to be taken
and new business landed that could be converted to expanded deals in the future. This
was one of the best sales teams I have had the pleasure to work with and they knew how to
do their jobs better than I did.
I helped them to solve the problem for themselves. First, I highlighted the problem to each
of them. Then asking them to sit down and decide how much they each wanted to earn
that year. Then asking them to calculate how much they needed to deliver in sales to make
this. I then broke this down into a daily number, something tangible to do today, and
tomorrow, while focusing on a longer-term goal that mattered to them personally. How
much they had to do personally to move their business forward every day they were at
work, what percentage of time needed to be spent cold calling, and what part working on
customer expansion. Once I had the personal numbers I asked for them retrospectively
each week and then published them to the entire sales team.
By year-end they all had made or exceeded Quota, we delivered greater revenues than the
team had delivered previously, and won a greater volume of new business sales at the
departmental level. Achieving this was through the simple act of decomposing their daily
goals into metrics they each understood and translating them into actions for every day.
Define granular land metrics. Calls per day, meetings per day, presentations per
day, information flow per day. Set at the minimum bar required for business
success then provide the support structure for the team to over-achieve.
In today’s ProSultative sales model, we can gather granular metrics; take the process
described above, and instead of working on numbers the team provides, focus on the
metrics the tools generate. Looking at call volume, meetings taken, information passed to
the prospect. Applying these granular, metrics-driven techniques quantifies each
employee’s contribution to the sales effort, their involvement in the acquisition of
customers, and their personal relationship to the revenue.
It is important to monitor the results at all times. TradeBeam solved the Holy Grail many
SaaS companies are searching for, the ability to sell to the SMB market in volume. Gaining
over 3,000 customers for one application alone, this was wildly successful and proved the
SMB model using a hub and spoke sales model, gaining key customers in the hub and then
selling to their partners around the spoke. The interesting challenge this presents is the
volume of customers needing billing, it requires a lot of effort to collect on small value
invoices. There are new companies like Zuora, who are striving to tackle this problem.
The solution for lower value sales with higher volume has risks that need managing
through diligent and thorough process.
□ Do existing customer relationships grow once we they are established?

□ In what ways have these relationships expanded?
□ Are you landing sufficient new accounts into which you can expand?
□ How to you reward sales people for landing deals relative to expanding them?
20. Interact – Internal Sales
Summary
This chapter explains the role of the Internal Sales team, focusing on simple messaging
and high volume of deals. The function performs similar tasks and delivers similar
revenues as the external sales team.
Next chapter describes the role and function of the External Sales team.
Internal Sales
Once the prospect accepts or initiates contact, and agrees to next steps where they must
invest resources, the process of the interactive dialogue begins. Dialogue without
interaction usually results in shouting and this must be a conversation. The dialogue
passes from a one-way contact to requiring a person to engage; the Internal Sales person is
responsible for moving the interaction forward and deciding the pace at which it moves.
Seems obvious? Check what data your sales team currently captures. Do you know what
Passive Contact leads to an Active Contact ? Do you know if it took multiple Passive
Contact es to become an Active Contact ? When you cannot answer these questions, you
cannot accurately determine when to be proactive. You are also spending your marketing
resources based on assumption and not on data.
Invert standard thinking. Aim for the prospects to qualify themselves into your
messaging, and then strive for your team to be looking to qualify the prospect out.
The more the interaction is scripted, the more you can analyze it. The downside of this is
the more you script it, the more generalized you are making the interaction and you are
increasing the chance you do not listen to your customers. The best method for solving
this is to create a framework of key answers to gather and provide the information to
construct these questions. Allow the sales team freedom to phrase the questions,
dependant on the interactions and nurture the prospect dependant on their specific
requirements, and propensity to progress through the process.
The quality of the question defines the quality of the answer.

In a successful business, lost opportunity cost can be difficult to track. Ensuring thorough
monitoring of all interactions is critical; every point in the process is a point for loss of a
qualified prospect.

Internal sales – simple messaging/volume
External sales – complex messaging/value
If Contact Marketing’s role is to direct the prospect to the information point that moves
them into interaction with agreed next steps, the role of Internal Sales is descriptive. The
role of Internal Sales is to fully engage with a prospect and sell the product. It requires all
the consultative skills evidenced in Sales 101, however there is now more proactive
information available to them. Rather than determining which information should take
off, it is better to think of the role guiding which information to bring into land. The
ProSultative process has determined which information is the minimum each prospect
needs to become a customer, and it is their role to manage the priority, tailoring where
required and provision of the information.
The principle of delineation of roles to gather clean data arises again. In order to ensure
thorough understanding of how proactive and automated the process can be, it is essential
to capture the cleanest data possible. If it is impossible to draw the line between Internal
and External Sales, then it is essential to ensure the process traces back to source to
measure, manage and improve the process wherever possible.
The role of the internal sales team is identical to that which the sales teams in Sales 101
delivered, timely delivery of information. The changes are in how proactive they deliver
this information, the quantity of opportunities they manage, the amount of data captured
and that they will not meet the customer face-to-face. The external sales team will handle
any external meeting.
The way to differentiate between the roles is simple; Internal Sales conducts a ProSultative
sales process moving a prospect from Contact through Interact to Transact, but doing so
from the office. The role of the External Salesperson is the same, except they are managing
a smaller volume of prospects, at a higher value and do so face to face.
These prospects may have originated on the web, via Contact Marketing or Internal Sales,
the delineation is on-site, or off-site meetings. To qualify the cost of off-site we must expect
greater value from the prospect, though this may be on a tactical deal basis or because they
are a strategic prospect with a greater lifetime value. It is right to expect similar
productivity, Internal Sales closing a higher-volume of lower-value transaction, and
External Sales driving a lower-volume of higher-value transactions.
□ How do you measure performance of the team that initially interacts with your
prospects?
□ How do you manage low contact/low cost opportunities versus high contact/high cost
opportunities?
□ What was the source of the prospects that were low contact?
21. Interact – External Sales
Summary
This chapter explains the role of the External Sales team, focusing on complex
messaging and lower volume of deals. The function performs similar tasks and delivers
similar revenues as the Internal sales team.
Next chapter defines how the Internal and External sales teams can minimize the time
spent with the prospect and maximize the value/
External Sales
Once determined by a blend of process rules and personal decision-making as to when to a
prospect will require face-to-face interactions, the transfer of the prospect’s from Internal
Sales to External Sales occurs. Building these qualification criteria on transaction value,
customer size, or any standard qualification metrics is appropriate. Most importantly is
this is tracked, measured, monitored and seamless.
Gathering the metrics is seemingly simpler than the handover. Issues of compensation
arise and sales people get territorial at the best of times, when there is an active prospect
they will get creative. When a deal value cut-off was put in place at Oracle the Inside Sales
teams took large deals and broke them down; in the process increasing risk, delaying
orders and most importantly going against customer requirements.
Reversing the situation, Enterprise Sales people ignore prospects waiting for them to grow
a deal until it falls into their qualification criteria. Managing this is through close scrutiny
of management and daily activity monitoring, this is hugely expensive. Cheaper and
simpler is managing this hand off through compensation. There are many methods, the
simplest and most effective being double compensation. In this circumstance the results is
everyone is passing deals to everyone else as they want the other people to do the work
while they get paid. The key element to manage is cost, and the most effective method to
manage this is to connect Internal and External people together, in the ratio appropriate for
the business, and raise Quotas for both teams to ensure the total compensation remains the
same.
I once had a lengthy debate with a CFO articulating the merit of double compensation,
highlighting the only risk was over-paying, and managing that through appropriate
Quotas. It was all upside with no downside. At the end of the conversation he listened,
told me he understood everything I had explained, and said, “But we don’t double
compensate.” I can state the company had the worst interactions between salespeople,
which ran into customer relations, and at the root of it was a lack of cooperation in the
sales team. Cooperation is cheap to encourage and expensive to get wrong.

Internal sales – simple messaging/volume
External sales – complex messaging/value
The daily tasks of the External Sales team is to proactively deliver information to a
prospect, consultatively understanding what information to provide and when. It is
identical to the Internal Sales role, the difference are in the number of the transactions the
team are managing and the value of the individual sales. The total revenue delivered
should ultimately be very similar, the costs are similar, the skills are similar and the tools
available are similar.
□ What was the source of the prospects that were high contact?
□ Which are most profitable?
22. Interact – Being proactive at all times
Summary
This chapter explains how to structure the interactions to optimize the time spent with
prospect and customers. This will cover how to structure interactions for both Internal
and External sales, and covers meetings, presentations and written communication.
Next chapter describes how to take be proactive in interactions and how to use these
tools to position competitively.
We must create an organization that understands prospects needs, delights customers, and
grows by constantly delivering greater value with every interaction. Exhibit a polite, hard-
working, customer-centric and businesslike manner both internally and externally, and do
so in a fashion that is superior to that of the competition. The following are techniques to
achieve this goal and relate to the conduct of interactions during the dialogue with
prospects and customers.
The first thing to do when interacting with a prospect is to show up. Create interaction
points early in the process. These can be requirements to provide data in return for
collateral or product demonstrations, webinars or on-line demonstrations.
As the goal is moving the process as rapidly as possible, create the technology
infrastructure and expectations of capturing the data to measure the speed of prospect
interactions. Measure the turnaround for prospect interactions. This delivers three key
benefits; the faster the response, the shorter the sales cycle progresses. More subtly, with
immediate response, the prospect sees they are important. Lastly, by interacting with the
prospect at the time they are expressing interest in your product, you can outmaneuver
your competitors. The probability is the prospect is contacting competing suppliers at the
same time and the first to contact the prospect can set expectations.
The step following showing up is to pay attention. Previously this meant listening before
providing information, being reactive rather than proactive. Providing you provide
information at the correct time, you will be reinforcing the ProSultative process.
Be so good they cannot ignore you.

The ProSultative process must provide the prospect with a consistent interaction of the best
practices across the business. Talk about the efficacy of professionalism when it comes to
competing, our objective with ProSultative selling is to become so compelling it is
impossible for the customer to ignore us.
Meetings and presentations

Presentations are a common method for interacting with the prospect; implement a process
for creating, preparing and managing the interactions the presentations involve.
Marketing must deliver a presentation providing a formalized approach for every

presentation with the same tenets of leading where possible and preparing in advance.
With a standard ProSultative template, there is a consistent and scalable approach across
the business.
Start each presentation with the following three slides:-
Prospect objectives for the meeting

Our objectives for the meeting
Proposed next steps
Timing
Start every meeting gaining agreement on the timing of the meeting, then stating the
presentation will finish on the agreed time. This is an opportunity to establish we do what
we say we will do, when we say we will do it. This will help establish credibility.
Seems obvious? Check the next five presentations you attend, do not state anything about
finish times before attending. How many run over? Sales must control the meeting, when
the time is complete; stop the meeting, making certain we have the time to discuss next
steps. Adhering to the objective of being proactive wherever possible, we have to
influence those aspects of the process that are in our control. The timing of a meeting at
which we are presenting is something we can control.

In the “Prospect objectives” section, detail the objectives the prospect wants to achieve
from the meeting.
By taking this approach, once there is a meeting agreed work with the prospect to
understand what they want to get from the time they are prepared to offer at the meeting.
A prospect is always prepared to help respect their time, and meet their needs. They will
give the information required to make the best use of their time.
As with other aspects of the ProSultative selling process, actively sell the process to the
prospect and show the presentation process is a part of the overall process.
Once there are agreed objectives, and at the end of the meeting agreement we have met
these objectives; there is a significantly increased probability of moving forward and
gaining agreement on next steps.
Starting the meeting clearly stating the prospect objectives ensures everyone in the room is
clear on the objectives. If anyone disagrees with the objectives capture the additional items
and ensure you address these items, ideally in the time allocated or at minimum follow-up
following the meeting.
Restating the prospect’s objectives, we demonstrate we have sought to understand them,

and we in turn have understood.

By declaring what we are asking for, we clarify if there are any objections to us meeting
our objectives. We demonstrate our time is of value, so increasing our perceived value in
the eyes of the customer and creating a relationship where there is an exchange of value.
We set the tone of a business relationship; we deliver value meeting their objectives and in
turn ask for a return on our efforts.
Proposed next steps

Always state at the beginning of the meeting the proposed next steps, selling the next steps
as part of the ProSultative selling process. The objective of this interaction is another step
in making the prospect a successful customer and their gaining return on their investment.
Putting the proposed next steps at this point in the meeting achieves a number of
objectives in the ProSultative selling process. Establish there is an expectation of next
steps, there is an action following the meeting. Establish the objective of discussing these
next steps at the conclusion of this meeting.
Finally, if there are any people in the room that do not want to move forward, this allows
them time to raise their objections in the meeting. This delivers the ability to debate the
next steps in open forum providing the opportunity to remove these objections.
By agreeing objectives prior to the meeting, the presentation will largely build itself.
Taking time to edit the base deck marketing provides and using only the minimum
number of slides to meet the objectives. Progressing through the meeting, there is a greater
ability to keep on time, and meet the prospect objectives.
Agreeing next steps

Concluding the meeting in a ProSultative selling process requires finishing with the same
three slides used to start the meeting.

Proposed next steps
Review the prospect objectives, gain agreement the meeting met these objectives; when the
time is managed correctly gaining agreement to this is significantly improved. This is
crucial in agreeing next steps. It is a Sales 101 technique, getting the prospect to agree to
this step will increase their propensity to agree to the next.
If at the end of the meeting, it has not been possible to achieve the objectives, establish next
steps to do so. Learn from whatever caused this meeting to miss its objectives and ensure
this does not occur in the future. Perhaps there was too much on the agenda, there was
insufficient time, or the team was under-prepared, above all, learn.
Based on successfully achieving the meeting objectives, gain agreement we understood the
prospect objectives and objectives met. Next, put up “Our objectives” and gain customer
agreement we met these objectives. This is easy, as we will confirm this.
Move to the proposal for next steps. This is a key part of the ProSultative process and is
one of the key roles of the sales people in the interaction. Ideally, the next steps should
have easy to agree to steps, and a stretch goal. It is the role of sales to try to move quickly
to the stretch goal.
If it is not possible to gain agreement to the proposed next steps, open the discussion about
what are reasonable next steps and strive to gain agreement.
Slides to avoid at all costs:-

Company overview
Leave this in the appendix of the deck. Only show it if the customer asks. The
majority of the time the prospect does not care how many offices a supplier has, who
are executive is and how long the supplier has been in business.
Mission statement
Prospects care about solving their problem not the mission statement of the supplier.
Company Culture and Values
Prospects do not care if a supplier behaves like the Viking raiders in their spare time if
the product solves their problem.
Responding to RFI’s/RFP’s
Another benefit of the ProSultative selling process is proactively leading the customer
through the sales process presents our business in the most positive light and increases the
probability of the prospect becoming a customer. It is not however a panacea, some
prospects will have formal purchasing processes and require a formal request for
information (RFI), followed by a request for proposal (RFP) process.
There is a long-held belief if a supplier is not early in the process and part of the writing of
the RFP they will not succeed in an RFP process. This is not absolute; I have been involved
in successful sales campaigns even when we have known the competition was involved in
defining the content of an RFP. The key to success is discovering the process the prospect
is following. They will create an internal scoring process against which they will measure
each supplier. In the event the response generates a sufficiently well scored response, the
next step is to move to requiring further proof; that is when you it is possible to move to
the supplier of choice. There are certain rules to follow when responding to any RFI or
RFP.
When possible to take the opportunity to help write the RFI/RFP, prepare a reverse
RFI/RFP with a list of questions supporting your USP’s and which creates a differentiable
advantage must be part of the marketing process. Provide this proactively when a prospect
states they need to move to RFI/RFP. This is a prime example of a process step that is
consultative; unless it is known a prospect is going to require an RFI/RFP, do not suggest it.
It extends sales cycles, increases risk and proactively introduces competition into the sale.
When there is an RFI/RFP to reply, there are certain rules that will improve the probability
of success and reduce the risk of failure.
Rule 1 – Feature/Function/Benefit
Every single question is answered in the following format; feature, function and benefits.
Demonstrate an understanding of technical and business issues; always ensure there are
detailed benefits.
Rule 2 – Earn the right to an opinion
Answer all the questions asked. Only when this is complete, offer additional information.
The RFI/RFP is effectively a test and with scores, like any test it is essential to answer the
questions asked. If there is additional information deemed pertinent to a response, add
this only when the answers to the questions asked are complete. People have limited time,
and they are scoring the response, clearly answer the question. Make it easy to gain a
positive score on each topic.
Rule 3 – Build a solution
Do not mention product names unless specifically asked. Use the capability of the
products to meet the prospect needs. Keep clear blue water between selling and
implementation. Adding unnecessary product names will only confuse the prospect. They
asked a question, answer it simply, and do not confuse the reader.
Rule 4 - Express the Unique Selling Points
Wrap the USP’s into every answer possible, use the USP Definition model to determine
which of the USP’s are appropriate and sell them to the prospect.
Rule 5 – Express the Customer’s Customer benefits
Focus on the ultimate benefit the customer gains from our solution. They are buying for a
reason; ultimately, this will add value to the customer of the customer. Understand what
ultimate value the product drives and articulate it clearly.
Rule 6 – Deliver prospect specific messaging Determine key messages; consistently weave
these messages in the response, e.g. if the determination is the requirements are ease-of-
use, fast, intelligent, etc. then ensure this messaging is included consistently throughout
the response.
Rule 7 – Quality shines through
Produce a fully bound, color, response. Deliver the most professional proposal of those
tendered.
Rule 8 – Deliver early
Deliver the response on the prospect site at least one full day earlier than the deadline.
Associate the response with efficiency and timeliness. Most vendors will leave delivery
until the last minute, sometimes asking for extensions. There is no need, get ahead of the
curve and let the prospect see you as being the most professional vendor and delivering
ahead of expectations.
These are the key positive actions to take when responding to an RFI/RFP, there are many
negative ones that are the opposite of the positive rules above. Replying late, slipshod
production, not answering the question, all are actions to avoid. Review prior responses
and learn from mistakes as well as successes.
I will withhold the name of the person who was involved in the following story, it is a
useful example of something to avoid. A UK Financial Services company sent a long
multi-page RFP for provision of services. The RFP went to a number of different vendors
and in a very typical process; the team working on the response let other tasks take
precedence until the last minute.(Please see above). Fortunately, one of the team members
started work on some of the questions, answering the questions they were easily able to
answer. For the questions requiring more thought, and in order to amuse them, they put
in light-hearted answers. Answers such as, “That feature will be in the next product
version along with the flying pigs and will be released in the snow-laden summer”; some
were less easy to deal with, “What sort of a geek asks questions like that?”. Probably my
favorite, “Never did, never will, never could, but we will say yes to win the bid.”
The assistant collating the response was pulling responses from multiple people, it was
their role once the proposal was complete to print it, bind it and send it to the customer.
As it was all at the last minute, pressure was high and people were sending answers right
up to the deadline for printing. Then the assistant’s PC crashed. Fortunately, they had a
backup and recreated the document, unfortunately, it was an old version and the assistant
was too close to the deadline. The assistant worked hard in completing the process,
printing the RFP and shipping it in time for the deadline. As is often the case, this was a
Friday at 5:00pm deadline. Monday morning the salesperson returned to the office with a
message from the customer stating they were rejecting the RFP and were not providing an
extension.
Seems obvious? While I am certain you will be hard-pressed to find an RFP of the quality
described above, I am also certain if you review a random selection of three recent RFP’s
you will not find adherence to the above rules. Did every question requiring a positive
response begin with a “Yes”? Does every answer follow the format
feature/function/benefit? Find out the delivery time, I suspect you will discover you can
improve your current processes.
Whether you are in control of the process sufficiently to be involved in the writing of the
RFI/RFP, or whether responding blind, it is possible to lose control with a sloppy response
and to improve a position and poise for success with a thorough and professional
response.
□ Do you currently have process in place designed to reduce the number of interactions,
or increase the number of interactions?
□ Do you have any slides in the standard presentation that are not there to articulate an
understanding of the prospect’s requirements? Why are they there?
□ Do you currently have process in place designed to reduce the number of interactions?
□ Is the objective of the sales process to move the customer through your process; does
each step lead them to your next step?
□ Find some recent RFP’s, score them as if you were the prospect. How did you do? Did
you move to the next round, did you come out on top?
23. Interact - Quantifying the value
Summary
In this chapter demonstrates the quantifying of the value of a product and articulating
this to the customer in a way meaningful to them.
Next chapter we learn how to simplify the types of prospect interactions.
Quantifying the value

Finding the right price is an equation between the cost of the product and the perceived
return it will provide. Articulating a return on investment is a task a supplier can own,
proactively helping the prospect justify the purchase of a product. The ROI evidently is
not a first step in the process, as it is unknown if there is a need and if a product meets it.
Typically, the timing of the ROI model comes after the prospect’s selection decision and
before a purchase decision. It is often a requirement of the purchasing process, to prove the
undertaking of a due diligence process.
There are three circumstances where the creation of ROI models occurs. It is seldom ROI
models discover the value of a product. A supplier-generated model will not convince a
customer to purchase. An ROI model’s creation is usually to support the selection
decision. Keep any ROI model easy to populate, easy to understand, and using aggregate
data from other customers wherever possible.
Vendor created. To justify a decision the vendor wants the prospect to make
Prospect created. To justify the decision the prospect has already made
Prospect created. To discover the value of a product
1. Vendor created
ROI models help a prospect justify and articulate they have performed due diligence on a
product. Not all businesses require ROI models to make purchases; however, every
prospect will accept an ROI model when created for them.
For each product, create a simple ROI model. Once created it is simple to populate if kept
keep simple, easy to understand and do not over-engineer it. Prospects may want an ROI
model; they will seldom make a decision to purchase because of any financial calculation.
2. Prospect created ROI models to justify a previously made decision
The majority of the time a prospect creates an ROI model is to justify a decision to
purchase, once the supplier selection is complete.
When a prospect requires an ROI model of their creation, if possible gain involvement in
helping create and populate the model. The prospect usually wants a model to justify the
decision to purchase and look neither negative nor too positive. There are typically
investment guidelines and the prospect will work to ensure their project is the one to gain
funding.
3. Prospect created ROI models to discover the value of a product

Fortunately, these are rare and understandably so. There are multiple variables to
consider when purchasing a product and so many assumptions the process is a
management accounting exercise and not a financial accounting exercise. While in
principle they should be financial exercises, when made in advance we are making
assumptions that are subject to testing only when the product is used. In the rare
occasion a prospect performs true value-based ROI’s, it is still possible to influence the
outcome with the proactive inclusion of a base model.
Constantly monitor when it is possible to provide more information to prospects, and

understanding where the provision of information is too much too soon and either
diminishing competitive advantage or value.
□ Do you have an ROI model?

□ Do you have an ROI model for each product?
□ If you do, is it simple to understand?
□ Is the ROI model available to your prospects to self-service?
□ When do you provide it?
□ Do you always provide it?
24. Interact - Competing to succeed
Summary
This chapter offers techniques for competitive success. To this point, the process has
been about proving you have the best product. Competitively succeeding ensures this is
sufficient.
Next chapter leads to the Transact phase. Taking the work invested to date, presenting
this in a low-cost, high-value format and in a way that is proactive in guiding the
prospect through the sale.
There are a few key elements to remember when competing to succeed. Begin with
turning your weakness into your strength, and as importantly, your competitor’s strength
into their weakness.
People buy something from you when they want what you are selling more than
something someone else is selling.
Strong competitors understand their weaknesses and have teams of people working to
both resolve these weaknesses and position around them. Trying to highlight these
weaknesses plays into your competition’s hands, if they are in any way prepared. Raising
objections your competition knows how to handle wastes time and sets them up for
delivering positive messages.
In the midst of the database competition, Sybase used this technique very ably against
Oracle. As previously mentioned one of Oracle’s core strengths was the number of
platforms on which its software ran. Oracle used the term “open” repeatedly in its
marketing and sales messaging. Another key selling point of Oracle was the breadth of
their offering; selling development tools, applications and all software required to create a
solution. It was a very successful “land and expand” strategy, as stated previously, as with
many Sales 2.0 ideas, we have seen this before.
Trying to attack Oracle for being open seemed fruitless. Trying to attack Oracle with their
breadth of offerings also seemed fruitless. Sybase came up with a simple messaging tool
that left Oracle tactically surprised. Sybase would compliment Oracle and state, “Yes,
Oracle is open, and has a broad range of tools. Do you know what OPEN stands for?
Oracle Provides Everything Now.” The Oracle sales rep would then try to sell the open,
end-to-end solution, playing to their strengths. While they were doing this, Sybase was
selling its database as best-of-breed technology. With this positioning, Sybase turned their
weakness, specifically a narrow footprint and a single product offering, as strength with
the narrowness of focus becoming an intentional design decision. This was not sufficient
for Sybase to become the dominant vendor, it takes more than messaging, it did however
help them gain market share at a critical time.
There are certain key elements to avoid when competing, always avoid openly negative
talk about the competition. When a prospect asks for information about a competitor, and
there is no way to focus on your solution, compliment the competition in a way that serves
you well. As example, if competing with a vendor with a lot of depth to their functionality,
you can state they have a functionally rich product, however your solution is more agile
and works on the existing infrastructure.
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon

Bonaparte (1769-1821)
There are times when competition is falling over running so fast in the wrong direction
they are helping you, usually because they are insufficiently nimble, or have missed a
market change. The advice at times like this is to let them get on with it.
The best way to compete and succeed in a business-to-business sale is to prove the best
solution to the prospect’s problems. It is up to your business to understand the prospect’s
requirements better than your competition and then position your product as being a
better fit for their needs using the USP Evaluation Model. Selling logic, and out-executing,
the competition is the best way for long-term competitive success.
I worked for a manager who told me they had never lost a deal to a competitor that had
approximately 40% market share. My response to this is, and then we are qualifying out to
justify our ratios, with 100% success we are not competing in enough deals. It is acceptable
to lose; it is a price of doing business. We do not have to like it and I personally hate it.
However, to justify a position we can create a culture where we do not learn from our
mistakes.
When always qualifying out the moment it looks like there is a risk of losing, the
opportunity to learn is lost. It is a delicate balance; it is wasteful to squander resources
chasing business that you will lose, however, we do not want to set qualification criteria so
tightly we run from opportunities we can close.
□ Is there documentation given to prospects that openly attacks the competition?

□ Can the sales team articulate the strengths of the competition as weaknesses?
□ Can the sales team articulate the weaknesses of your company as strengths?
□ Review your success/loss reviews. See where reasons attributed to the loss have
resulted in changes to product, pricing, promotion or process. If it is never, the likelihood
is you are not learning enough.
Transact
25. Transact – Customer Portal
Summary
This chapter describes how to deliver information to prospects and customers in a
scalable, low-cost and high-impact professional manner. Detailing the information a
prospect often requires in becoming a customer.
Next chapter; details a number of simple changes to the contracting process making the
transaction easier, simpler and faster.
I worked with a Sales Manager at Sequent Computers, a hardware vendor specializing in

high-performance computing. Chris Gomersall, exemplified the peak of professionalism.
When competing vendors were running their sales organizations fast and loose, competing
on price, Chris’ team behaved consistently and more professionally than his competition.
His team easily outperformed all the other vendor teams in the market. As a rookie
salesperson, I was able to watch Chris’ team and see the output of his team. One of the key
deliverables in their sales process was the production of professional proposals. At the
time, these were of the quality only vendors with the resources of IBM were taking the
effort to produce. It was apparent once I had seen more than one of these proposals there
was a lot of re-use within them. I looked to my colleagues and often all the teams
produced were simple order forms.
What Chris set in motion with his team was the expectation would behave more
professionally than the competition, demonstrating effort and commitment to the
customer’s success. The idea to convince the customer, if Sequent were going to put in that
much effort to the proposal, then they must put at least this much effort into the product.
It was a leading indicator of the quality of the relationship.
These proposals covered all aspects of the solution, technical and business benefits. They
were heavy-bound, and passed the weight test. They weighed a lot. They felt solid, high
quality and professional. The cost was trivial compared to the cost of the equipment
Sequent sold and it was a worthy investment.
In a ProSultative process, it is possible to create a significant amount of the information in

advance and re-use in every engagement. Only in high-value sales do you go to the effort
Chris Gomersall’s team went to; however, even in low value sales it is easy to create a
simple reusable document summarizing the value the product delivers. This may be as
simple as the collation of an order form, the ROI document, and a product overview.
Automatically generate the documentation s whenever possible; the value is significantly
greater than the cost if we automate as much as possible. It must be available to the
prospect in a guided portal they can log into and access.
A prospect and customer portal collates all the documents articulating how the product
demonstrably delivers the best return to the customer compared to other options and in
total creates a Value Summary Document. Note these competing products and projects are
seeking to acquire the budget required to purchase the product we are selling. In the
creation of a Value Summary Document, a single source for any questions related to the
solution, providing a document giving prospects all the information they require to move
to closing a transaction. The Value Summary Document is also the source that documents
all results delivered over time, ensuring delivery of consistent customer communication
and messaging to all parties within a prospect.
Below is a superset of the multiple sections that are potentially of value when creating a
document providing the prospect a single source for all the information they need to
transact business. At least sixty to eighty per cent of the following are boilerplate and are
created once and used repeatedly with no editing. Whether there is a need to use any of
them for a specific opportunity, whether they are drawn together into an electronic
document, or whether they are prepared in a physical document, depends on the average
sales price of your product.
Sections
1 - Executive summary
Provides an overview of the products proposed. This should be compelling as this section
and the order form will be all most people read.
2 – Vision
Detailing the future vision for use of the products, e.g. opportunities for cross-sell, up-sell,
improved customer satisfaction, etc.
3 - Solution
Description of all products proposed to the prospect.
4 - Project road map
Detail each phase of any project work, including estimated costs for whole project.
5 - People
Resumes of any staff planned to be on the project.
6 -ROI
Include an ROI model for the products proposed to the prospect, even in the event this is
an example from other customers.
7 – Visualization of our solution
Include graphics detailing the products.
8 - Technical section
Description of the technical elements and benefits of the products proposed to the
prospect.
9 – Product details
Product overviews of the products proposed to the prospect.
10 - Contract
Standard contract terms required to close the sale.
11 - Order form
Order form specific to close the sale.
12 - Customer examples
Offer customer examples specific to the proposed products, with a description of where,
and how, customers are using these products.
13 – Support
Details of the support services relevant to the sale of the products quoted to the prospect at
this time.
14 - Training
Description of the training services relevant to the sale of the products quoted to the
prospect at this time.
15 - Financial Statements
Current audited financials with any appropriate comments section.
16 – Company background
History and overview of the company providing the prospect with information in the
event it is required during due diligence.
17 - Contacts
Contact details for all members engaged in the opportunity, including the account team,
legal, and accounting.
As the prior list is a superset of all potential elements, the following are rules to adhere to
in the event there is a requirement of creating a customized proposal.
Build the Value Summary Document with the prospect’s help and try to make it their
document.
Support every statement with feature, function and benefits.
Express the unique benefits of the product and match them to the business
requirements.
Express the unique benefits of the product and match them to the technical
requirements.
Do not mention product names other than in the product section.
Determine the Unique Selling Points, wrap these into the document, and repeat them
wherever possible.
Determine key messages, consistently weave these messages into the response, e.g.
easy-to-use, rapid response times, reduces cost, etc.
For high-value sales, once a Value Summary Document is complete, print a fully
bound, color version. An extra $20-$50 per copy may be the difference between people
talking about a professional response, or not. Produce the best, most professional
looking proposal possible.
By placing the collection of these documents in a Prospect and Customer portal, it is
possible to gather data and understand when prospects and customers self-serve
documents, who they circulate them to in their teams, and better understand where the
delivery of these documents can be proactive in future.
□ Do you offer your prospects the ease of use of having all the information and
documents they require to do business with you in one place?
□ Look at what your team sent to the largest five prospects and determine if prepared the
best Value Summary possible.
□ Look at what your team sent to five random customers and find out what your team
sent. Ask yourself if you would have spent that same amount of money based on what you
sent.
26. Transact – Contracts
Summary
This chapter explains how to simplify the contracts process, and prove how easy it is to
do conduct business with your business. Discussing the steps required to minimize the
number of interactions, through proactively setting expectations.
Next chapter; details why getting a prospect to sign the contract is merely one more step
in the interaction.
Legal and contracts

Entering the Transact stage of the sales process, we often allow customers to abstract the
legal and contract negotiations as a separate piece of the process. All too often, treating
this process in the same way as discrete phase of “the close”, the senior sales team
members get involved with the senior management negotiating the key terms, volume,
discount, payment terms, and not focusing on the pages of the legal agreement the lawyers
or purchasing managers negotiate. The proof of this is prospects will increasingly often
engage a purchasing team that has been uninvolved in the sales process to this stage. The
prospect understands the acquisition of products is a contiguous process, and understands
how to get the best from a supplier. We need to understand the same and involve and
include the contracts team in the sales process.
Seems obvious? Ask the team involved in creation and negotiation of contracts when the
last time was they attended sales negotiation training, and more importantly purchasing
training. Professional purchasing managers attend both purchasing training and attend
sales training courses. They do this in order to prepare, and be proactive during the
negotiation process.
Proactively review the contracts, there is value in the terms and working with legal to
understand which ones have the greatest value, which ones are unnecessary, and which
are essential. As a method to diminish the importance of contracts, people trying to get a
contract closed will state there will be a lot more to be concerned about than legal minutia
if it is ever required to pull the contract out of the drawer. I fully agree with this; however,
the contract an insurance policy, thankfully you seldom need it. When you do need it, it is
worth every penny. In the ProSultative sales process it is essential to understand what
needs to be in the contract, and importantly what is unnecessary.
With this caveat, the goal is to be ProSultative wherever possible. If every customer objects
to the same items in every contract, look at whether this objection is reasonable and it is
acceptable to remove it. If determined essential, determine when to educate proactively
the prospect to expect it, why it is important, and sell the prospect on the benefits of its
inclusion. A supplier to customer relationship should be beneficial to both parties, if there
is a requirement for the supplier to need a term, there logically should be a benefit to the
customer, sales needs to take the time to understand it and sell the benefit.
All too often prospects try to insert terms to see how far they can push a supplier before
they will reject a sale, and in turn, vendors deliberately leave terms out, knowing the
prospect will ask to see it inserted and it then provides a bargaining chip. An obvious
example is escrow terms in a software agreement. It is patently reasonable if a customer is
buying perpetually licensed software that they own this software. For a customer to keep
up with the latest version is not always practical, therefore software vendors hold copies of
the latest version of their software in escrow in the event of a disruption to their business.
Customers pay software vendors maintenance fees every year to ensure access to this latest
version of the software. It is evidently fair and reasonable if a customer is paying for the
latest version, if in turn the vendor providing the software keeps the software current and
updated that in the event of the supplier going out of business the latest version the
customer paid for is available to them.
Despite this being evidently fair and reasonable, vendors either will leave the escrow
agreement out of their contract as a bargaining chip, or sometimes left out and justified due
to the costs of holding the software in escrow.
In a ProSultative process when it is known the customer will ask for a fair and reasonable
term, then be proactive about offering it. If the objection is driven by a desire for
bargaining leverage; explain before negotiations the contracts are designed to be easy to
negotiate, therefore the negotiable elements are the ones you define, sell this to the
prospect it is a benefit. In the example above of excluding escrow terms, in the event cost
is the driving issue, be ProSultative about selling this. Price the terms that have a hard cost
separately put them in as line items on the price list. This gives the ability to ascribe
appropriate value to the terms and provides for the customer to decide what value this
may have to them.
While it is likely these marginal costs be absorbed into the total average selling price of
your product, you have proactively addressed issues that were previously going to be
reactive. By pricing separately, the prospect has tools to justify the additional cost of these
terms. The more proactive you become, the easier it is to do business with your business.
The legal and contracts team will tell you what they see as common across the customers.
Further, gather empirical data by comparing existing customer contracts against the
standard boilerplate. The objective is to get the contract to act as an effective insurance
policy and be as easy to accept without changes as is possible.
□ Are there any missing terms in your contracts that you know most prospects require in
becoming a customer?
□ When was the last time someone in your businesses sat down with the legal counsel
and asked for their advice on how they would do improve sales and sales velocity?
□ Are you aware of what are frequently challenging terms?

□Do your sales or legal teams proactively bring challenging terms to the prospects
attention and set expectations accordingly?
□Do you send your sales team on purchasing training courses?

27. Transact – Closing the sale
This chapter explains why the closing process is an extension of the work that has gone
to date and part of the work of transitioning a prospect to a customer. We will discuss
how it is impossible to create value at this time; however, it is possible to maintain
future value.
Next chapter; proves that every customer interaction is a potential to understand more
about the customer.
As stated in the introduction, one of the most common mistakes is the belief every step in a
sales process is discrete. The step that everyone seems to like to jump into is the close; this
is not surprising as the close is the step with the glory. It is like flying in at the end of a
climb of Everest and planting the flag. When you allow this culture, I guarantee the result
is lower-value sales. A sale starts with the initial contact. It is at this early stage value is
established, when the vision of the entire relationship is sold to the customer.
If the vision sold is that of having the best ball bearings, persuading the customer we build
the best jet engine around those ball bearings is challenging. When the vision is that of
building jets, persuading a prospect we have great engines is much easier. At this point, it
is unnecessary to talk about the quality of the ball bearings or any other component. The
prospect will assume if a plane takes off and lands safely, the components, including the
ball bearings work.
Too many sales managers believe value creation occurs during the close; they are wrong.
The value begins with the vision set during the Contact phase, proving this value occurs
during the Interact phase, the Transact phase delivers very little present value.
Transact
10% effort delivering 5% value today
0% effort delivering 100% value tomorrow
However, the Transact stage is the time when we can maintain future potential value or
destroy it. My recommendation is, strive to preserve it. No prospect should enter this part
of the interaction surprised by the cost of the product. Therefore, whatever vision and
value sold during the Contact and proven during the Interact phase will set the pricing for
the product that is selling now. Therefore, to maintain immediate value, sell as much of the
product as the customer can consume in the reasonable future, and do so without any
concessions about future purchases.
To create a positive environment to negotiate within, I use a tested method taught to me by

Gary Kennedy when I worked at Tenfold. Many acknowledge Gary for being the person
who grew Oracle sales from less than a million dollars in sales to when Oracle was over a
billion dollars. I have immense respect for Gary. He taught me when negotiating; agree in
advance if you are going to negotiate using a baseline both parties agree to, that baseline
ideally being both parties will behave fair and reasonably. Once asked, I have never had
anyone enter negotiations of any description where they say they plan or want us to
negotiate in any other fashion. The alternative as a customer once said to me, is being
unfair and unreasonable; no one wants a relationship based on this as a negotiating tenet,
at least no one states it openly.
This approach fully supports the ProSultative process, be proactive in the elements it is
possible to be flexible on, and be proactive in the elements it is not. Explain why a decision
has been reached using logic, put the case forward for why the terms proposed are fair and
reasonable. Always take the time to articulate a case for why these terms have a benefit to
the prospect when they become a customer.
Like every other part of the ProSultative process, this requires planning. This requires
determining in advance, what is fair and reasonable, what is important and what value
these elements have. This will ensure the prospect is not surprises and ideally, keeping
their surprises to a minimum
There may be terms deemed fair and reasonable the prospect does not agree to, by
communicating these challenges in advance, if it is not possible to move on these points,
qualify the prospect out. If it is possible to move on these terms, understand in advance.
This it is possible to ascribe a value to them, and ultimately learn if these are unique to this
prospect or something to adapt for future sales.
Negotiations are more predictable, negotiations are faster, requiring less interaction giving
time to focus on delivering on the product, and the customer to focus on using the product.
Seems obvious? Is your sales process one contiguous process? Do you see deal values
fluctuate wildly as you do not understand the value until the close?
The process involves people. People have experience in certain areas, and as it should be,
the experience is in what they spend the majority of their time doing. It is seldom this job
is to acquire products. It is important to understand if the person at the prospect has
followed similar purchasing processes previously, and if so for similar products. In the
event this is a new process to them, helping the buyer find the process and the metrics that
have gained funding previously, will significantly improves the speed and probability of a
sale.
The close is not the end of the process, the prospect is now a customer, and the objective is
to make them a reference to persuade other prospects to make the same journey; nor is it
the beginning of the process in their becoming a customer. It is an opportunity to learn
from the customer to discover how to sell more to other prospects. It is another step
beginning with a Passive Contact , and resulting in their continuing use of your product.
□ When do you set the value of the product to your customers?

□ Do you ever offer discounts? Why?
28. Transact - Customer support
Summary
This chapter describes the opportunity to learn from customers, improving the product
and working back from what the vision that made the prospect what to become a
customer, to what they bought. The aim is to understand how to improve the product
and ProSultative process in the future.
Next chapter; details why getting a prospect to sign the contract is merely one more step
in the interaction.
Customer support / After-sales

The Transact stage begins with negotiations, upon completion of the contract; the customer
begins to use the product in earnest. It is common to see a drop-off in customer attention
and interaction. Working hard to get a prospect to become a customer, the urgency and
drive used to get to this point diverts to a new prospect. Put company resources into
acquiring new customers. This is a wasted opportunity for a number of reasons.
The opportunity to learn what aspects of the product the customer actually values is
available, by working with the customer in the early stages of product use it is possible to
discover which features are easy to use, which are not, and how to improve. What a
prospect thinks they will use the product for and what a customer actually uses it for is
often different.
Sometimes customers want something full-featured and are prepared to pay handsomely
for these features only to use a much smaller sub-set. This may not seem an issue and fall
into the category of caveat emptor. However, subsequently it is very likely to prove an
issue with other customers, as there is a cost in developing product features customers do
not value; the business is carrying unnecessary high costs. It is also likely to result in an
over-pricing of the product to those prospects who do not value this additional
functionality.
Understand the motivation for the original creation of the features and if other customers
were prepared to pay for them. If so, what has changed, it is possible the product did not
work as sold or is difficult to use. Understanding this will have an impact on how to sell
to other prospects in the future, how to train and how to do a better job of implementing
the product.
Watching, listening and learning as to what a customer use a product, when they use it,
and how they use it, all provides valuable feedback. Helping both with the acquisition of
future customers, and learning how to gain a return on the investment by selling more to
the customer that had resources spent on them, in the process of selling them to move from
prospect to customer.
It is easier and cheaper to sell to a customer than to a prospect. Dependant on the maturity
of the offering it may be the case there is a single product with a single function. Over
time, it is essential to optimize return through the development of broader product
offerings. A customer presents the opportunity to prove value and both cross-sell and up-
sell to the customer. Understanding this is part of the sales process, and feeding this data
into the future product direction is essential.
Seems obvious? Ask your team if they can answer the following questions. What is the
average time it takes the customer to accept delivery? How long does it take the average
customer to use the product? Is the customer using the product for the purpose expected at
time of sale? Is the product being used in the volumes it was sold? Are all features used?
How much training is required to make the product usable? How much is support
contacted? How many additional products of which type does the customer buy? When
was the last time someone from Product Management, Product Marketing or Sales was
talking with the Support team to understand how they can sell more? All provide valid
data points to learn and understand how to maximize future product sales.
□ How much do you listen to customers vs. prospects?

□ Do you have a process to understand what a customer purchased and map this against
what they thought they purchased?
□ Do you have process and programs to lead an existing customer to buy more of what
they have already purchased and to educate them on new products?
29. Transact – Payment
Summary
In this chapter, we learn there are many customer touch points, and it is possible to learn
from all customer contact.
Next chapter; we understand the importance of pricing, and evaluate models to optimize
the return on value for the product.
Accounts receivable
When everyone is selling, every customer interaction presents an opportunity for selling,
or learning how to sell more. How, when and why a customer pays may be a leading
indicator of the value the customer perceives they are gaining from the use of the product.
If every customer pays late, this is probably indicative of an issue that requires addressing.
Even if the only lesson is the target customer base is in a market that is struggling, it may
offer an opportunity to learn, affecting sales process in the future.
At the minimum, it is another element of demonstrating to the prospect how easy it is to

do business with your business. Being proactive about the collections process and taking
this aspect off the agenda of the user of the product delivers a positive message. The user
wants to use the product, not be concerned with the collections process. Buyers are never
happy with requests to involve themselves in the collections process. In a ProSultative
sales process, it is important to take this burden from them proactively.
□ What are you day’s sales outstanding?

□ Do you know why?
□ What are your ideas to lean from the collection process?
Operations
30. Process, metrics, process, and metrics
Summary
This chapter the benefit of using tools to automate customer interactions is the quantity
of data they produce. The benefits of this, and the use of this data, dictates the speed at
which it is possible to automate successfully more processes.
Next chapter we learn how to use these metrics to capture and articulate the value of our
product.
Process, metrics, process and metrics

A documented sales process is the description and instruction manual for the best practices
of your business improving the probability of your closing the business. Designing a
process requires an understanding of the product, knowledge of the organization and its
resources.
Actively sell the process to the prospect.

Make a point to sell the process-oriented nature of the business, from development, to
support, to sales. Explain to the prospect that customers who have successfully purchased
in the past have followed a particular path to learn about the product, its value, subsequent
delivery and use of the product. Delivering the message that ultimately the goal is
customer success is positive messaging. Selling the prospect on the benefits of the process
is a key element in getting the prospect to accept the required proactive elements of the
ProSultative process.
Be clear this is not a mandated process; the processes are flexible in line with prospect
processes to work within their requirements. It is not a deterrent to prospects in buying a
product because the supplier has considered customer success, and has built a process to
ensure this success.
Organizing is what you do before you do something so when you do it you don't
mess it up – A.A. Milne
Minimize the interactions to the least required to close the sale while maximizing the
value. In the drive to reduce sales steps, do not run so fast the result is the reduction in
value of the sale. Finding the perfect balance is the goal, constantly monitoring and
managing the process.
Having established there are three stages, Contact stage, Interact stage and Transact stage,
the steps through the sales process differ for every business. If every company is different,
every process to sell must be adapted to meet customer requirements. What should be a
free trial for one business is unlimited free usage for another, while a chargeable proof of
concept for another.
Adapt each process dependant not only on the business; look at each product and
determine the appropriate process to support its sale. Many factors affect this, familiarity
of the product by the prospect, product maturity in the market, product complexity, price;
all have an impact on the process required to support a sale; however, there are consistent
requirements from a prospect before becoming a customer for any product.
1. Articulate solving a requirement

2. Demonstrate solving a specific requirement
3. Perform better than any alternative
4. Solve it at the right price
Articulate solving a requirement

This first step is persuading the prospect there is a product meeting their requirement. If
the customer wants an engine, a product does not meet their need if the product is a disk
array. The next step is to demonstrate the product meets their needs. The details deepen
the more mature the market is for a given product.
A mature market grows to require pre-conceived expectations. Before there were VCR’s,
the desire to be able to tape television programs existed. Initially it was sufficient to
deliver the capability to tape television programs, the mechanism to do so mattering less
than the capability. Once the market matures and the customer becomes educated, a
customer creates a longer list of requirements. It is no longer sufficient to record a TV
program; the product must be capable of doing so without the need for consumable and
inflexible tape systems, requirements to record on disk with fully integrated programming
becomes the base requirement. Initially to deliver the message the possibility of recording
a program was sufficient, now how is the minimum requirement. If a vendor entered the
market with a list of features mapping directly onto a DVR, even if the product was free,
customers would not use a VCR.
The next step is to explain to the prospect a product meets a requirement.
Demonstrate the solving of a specific need

The next step in the process is demonstrating the product meets the prospect’s specific
requirements. The granularity depends on the maturity of the product and the market.
Early in the product lifecycle, it is sufficient to state meeting a need. With a more mature
product the requirement may be to explain why the product meets the needs of a
particular vertical market, a particular environment, a particular job function; ultimately it
may be all of these and more.
It is important to drive the granularity in line with the product maturity. Stating what the
product delivers by both stating it and ensuring what is not stated must be deliberate.
When stating a product works well for a specific requirement, the inverse is true and the
inference of what a product is unsuitable for by omitting details about how the product
addresses these needs.
Seems obvious? Speak to prospects with prior experience of your business and ask them
why they abandoned an interaction. All too often, they will tell you they did not think
your product met their needs as they could not find information about their needs.
Perform better than any alternative

A common mistake of many businesses is to believe they do not have any competition.
There is always competition, even if that competition is inferior. There is always an
alternative, and sometimes that alternative is merely to do nothing. Having articulated
there is a product to meet the requirement, then specifically the prospect requirement, the
next step is to prove the product meets prospect requirement better than the alternatives.
This is the time to explain the unique selling points to the prospect. This is one of the most
common areas for laziness in the sales force and must be monitored and managed
constantly. Monitor the sales team to ensure they do not default to the corporate
differentiators. Taking these corporate differentiators and understanding how to map
these uniquely onto the prospect requirement is the tactical benefit the consultative sales
techniques delivers.
As an example, at the latter stages of the Y2K explosion in IT spending, the emerging
companies with no legacy in client/server applications would differentiate themselves
through having Web-based applications. While this may have been a unique product
differentiation, and one worthy of expressing at the corporate level, it was not a feature
that proved to the prospect our product would be the best product for their requirements.
Working with a prospect who wanted to roll an application into multiple environments
with varying PC platforms we converted what was a feature to a Unique Selling Point.
Understanding the application would run centrally and only be rendered on the client PC
using a Web browser meant there was no PC upgrades required to roll the application into
production. This produced two major quantifiable benefits.
First, there was not a requirement to upgrade a number of PC’s. This reduced capital
acquisition costs, installation costs and maintenance costs. Secondly, it became possible to
accelerate speed of implementation, as there was no need to acquire hardware. The
prospect having a number of remote location and hardware upgrades were logistically
difficult and very expensive.
Translating these generic product features into customer specific benefits is a critical
element in the consultative process of the overall ProSultative process. Marketing supports
this process providing a series of generic benefits, sorting these and applying them
specifically to the customer requirements is the role of the consultative sales person.
□ Do you have a sales process?

□ Do you explain this process to the prospect?
□ Do you take your unique selling points and prove them to the prospect?
□ Ask your sales team to describe the Unique Selling Points of sales they have made and
failed to make.
□ Ask the failed prospects and successful customers what they think your USP’s are.
31. Pricing
Summary
In this chapter, we understand the importance of making our pricing a tool to ease the
relationship with the customer and as a tool to understand about how we can improve
our product.
Next chapter; we understand without a predictable pricing methodology it is not

possible to forecast accurately. Without accurate forecasting, we cannot perform
accurate planning/
In a ProSultative selling model the objective is to make it easy to do business with our
business. As part of this effort, it is important to make pricing easy to understand, easy to
consume, and reflecting the value in our product. If a product has a nominal market value
of $500,000, the customer will go through one set of decision-making criteria, if it is $1
another set of criteria. If the price is $10,000,000 this does not necessarily mean the price is
too expensive, it depends on the value the product delivers. The setting of the pricing at
an appropriate level is one of the criteria defining whom you qualify in to your process and
whom you qualify out of your process.
A simple tool to use when creating pricing models is to make the product granular.
Breaking pricing into discrete elements offers the best of both alternatives, these being
bundling the product on behalf of the customer, or making the product granular so the
customer can choose the elements they value. By using discrete elements, it remains
possible to bundle the elements together, while also discovering which elements
customers’ value. When executed correctly it ensures resources are spent building features
into products customers will pay for and delivers an accurate market feedback mechanism
to Product Management.
If you are closing every piece of business, you are selling too cheaply.
It is tempting to acquire customers by dropping pricing to a point where it is so low a

customer does not perceive meaningful risk in the product and so gain market share.
Market share can feel good. Many people using a product feels like traction. With the
definition of a customer being an entity that pays money for a product, it can also feel like
traction but look like cost.
Diagram 10 – Price to volume decision
It is very tempting to try to achieve both share and price. Especially in aggressive sales
cultures, there is a desire to drive toward both at the same time. Accept price elasticity,
decide which driver is most important and build the model accordingly.
There are many business models where a reduction in initial pricing is acceptable to gain
market share. Two immediate examples are Freemium and Open Source. There is
acceptance a way to monetize these customers is deferred until a later point in the business
cycle. However, the Merriam-Webster definition of a customer is “one that purchases a
commodity or service”. A number of PC vendors are including widgets and applications
making Linux easier to use, these extensions are proprietary and only available from the
PC vendor. These Linux extensions are only available from the PC vendor supplying the
PC, this is very similar to the model the mid-range vendors of the 1990’s offering UNIX-
based systems that ran their proprietary versions of UNIX.
There is merit in gaining users, and there is merit in the supporting pricing models, they
are tried and tested methods. With a ProSultative sales process we determine which
elements are going to be paid for, when, why and sell each at the appropriate time. Selling
free is not selling; find the appropriate price.
Early indicators of having too low a price are customers not using a product after
purchasing. Another is wildly enthusiastic users. A sales person at a business partner
once told me that his company had a tremendous value proposition; their customers were
getting a return on their investment in less than three months. He thought it was because
they were so compelling, I thought they were selling too cheaply. In both cases,
monitoring of the customer will provide guidance with how to tune the pricing.
Another leading indicator is customers buying a product once and never buying more of
the same product. I once inherited a sales team with a pipeline that had no additional
sales to any existing customers despite having a large customer base. In addition, every
customer had only purchased one product previously. This could have been ripe territory.
One of the core issues transpired to be the discounts set were of such magnitude the sales
team could not see merit in selling to the customers as the quantity they needed to sell was
so great, it was better to invest time in closing new customers.
However, these may not be indicators of poor pricing; it is possible they are indicators of
other issues such as poor product quality or over-selling. They may also be simply poor
pricing and watching for this may be a simple and immediate route to improving sales and
margins. Taking the time to get your pricing right will help accelerate the sales pipeline,
maintain the present value and improve the future value.
Too often businesses manage issues with pricing models through injudicious use of
discounts at the end of a financial period. Setting expectations with a customer a certain
price for a certain product is acceptable it is requires Herculean effort to convince a
customer to pay more money for the same product later in the relationship. The optimal
solution is resolving pricing proactively in advance. Negotiation may be required and is
part of the consultative element of the process.
At Epiphany, we were negotiating with a major Consumer Products Goods company and
were competing with SAP and Siebel. Charlie Everhart, the salesperson and I met with
the customer for the negotiation meeting and the key element the purchasing manager
cared about was price. The negotiating team was pushing hard for a discount, first with
the negotiator producing prices from other vendors where the discounts were significantly
in excess of our terms. Then they cited two major competitors were prepared to offer the
product for no money in order to get them as a beta customer and co-develop the solution.
Our price was significantly in excess of seven figures, in theory we had a seven-figure deal
from a niche vendor, competing with a free product from the market leader and one of the
World’s largest software vendors prepared to build the product to the customer’s
specifications. Due to the efforts of Charlie in selling the value earlier in the sales process,
my response was two-fold. First, I asked what the purchasing team wanted. The
response was, “The lowest price.” I countered and suggested they wanted the best value,
more importantly asking again, what they personally wanted, this time making it clear I
meant not the company but the people. I was open and honest about what we wanted. I
was clear what the metrics of my compensation and clear we wanted to close the business
within the Quarter and at a price that was fair for both sides. I stated what I could
negotiate, what I could not, and what I may be able to negotiate with subsequent approval.
At this point understanding we had been open with them, they were open with us and told
us their year-end bonus was based on discounts and MBO’s based upon user feedback.
Secondly, I simply asked why the competition were prepared to offer such major pricing
concessions, was it because the product was not yet ready for deployment, already
knowing they would be a design partner, I already knew the answer. Next, I asked how
much longer it would take to deliver the competitive solutions than our solution. The
answer was only three to six months. I finished by asking how user satisfaction would be
if the project was three to six months late. Essentially they were going to be able to gain
what they wanted if they got the product on time and at a low price. I highlighted that
was not both fair and reasonable. The purchasing manager acknowledging the point,
allowed me to offer a contractual commitment we would deliver our solution at time of
contract signing, and asking if this commitment would satisfy the user MBO. Receiving
confirmation this would meet objectives, we were able to close the sale. Our product
already existed; it had no cost to make the commitment, in fact for accounting purposes we
had to deliver the product. We were not required to commit to the delivery, by agreeing to
do so we demonstrated we listened to the purchasing manager, understood their issues,
and responded.
There is much we can make proactive in the selling process. There will always be aspects
requiring some level of consultation. Sometimes contractual negotiation will be part of this
process, and others it will be other aspects. Knowing the elements best resolved
proactively and which elements are best resolved in consultative manner, coupled with an
understanding of the true value of your product, ensures optimization of both velocity and
value.
Seems obvious? Review how granular your pricing is. Do you feel it reflects your value?
Do your customers? Do you feel your discounts are greater than they need to be? Are
you clear in advance what you terms are non-negotiable? Do you mean it?
□ What are your average discounts?

□ What is the correlation between discounts and deal value?
□ How granular is your price list?
□ What percentage of your sales involves professional purchasing?
□ How do you change your process with professional purchasing compared to a process
negotiated directly with the buyer?
32. Planning and Forecasting
Summary
In this chapter, we find a solution for accurate forecasting driving predictable planning.
In addition, we understand how to use a simple forecasting tool to be both predictable
and to understand more about customer requirements.
Next chapter; we understand how to draw on the strengths of the entire organization to
help sell.
Planning and forecasting

The financial management of the sales process and forecasting are two areas management
learns through on-the-job training; yet both are critical areas on which a business can thrive
or fail. John Herlihy, who was the CFO of a sister company where I was running sales
taught me a critical lesson in how best to plan a sales model. John is a seasoned executive
with a background at one of the major accounting firms; he is one of the best finance
executives I have worked with. He is someone who has a finance foundation and fully
understands sales.
John asked me to plan a budget forecast for the next three years, including revenue and
supporting costs. I did what I had seen before. Looking at historical growth trends, I
extrapolated those forward, ending up with a revenue number. I took the revenue
number, divided it by what I thought was an acceptable quota, then applied a level of
cover to take into account sales turnover, ramp up speed, and other variables to manage
the risk on not making the Quota. This created a headcount with a number of sales people,
I added infrastructure costs, supporting staff, and created what appeared to me to be a
viable financial model. When trying to chop a board in two, focus on the plank and you
will break your hand. To be successful, breaking the board and not your hand, you must
focus on a point some few inches beyond the plank. Aiming at the point beyond the plank
means when your hand hits the plank, it is still accelerating and breaks the plank. Aiming
at the plank means your hand is decelerating when it hits the plank and all you do is hit
your hand on the plank. I knew this yet had never applied it to budgeting.
John pointed out by performing the analysis the way I had; I was accelerating up to the
end of the third year and it was likely I would decelerate quickly at some point. The
bottoms up forecast I had built was valuable but was only half the picture. Instead he
asked me to focus on the forth year and what thought was the right number four years out
from where we were. Then instead of letting me break it into Quotas and regressing from
the end, he told me to split the revenue the way I thought it would break down. The first
task was breaking the revenue by product, then by region, then by deal value and volume,
and continuing to decompose it until I had granularity in the numbers that was something
more meaningful to measure against than headcount. Knowing there was a time delay in
ramping sales staff and sales cycle, I built the model that would deliver the pipeline for
year four revenues in year three. I continued to do this for years two and one until I had a
revenue plan, a pipeline plan and a cost plan to support this. Triangulating this with the
bottoms-up plan resulted in a refined model for managing against at multiple levels that
made more sense than a single model could ever provide.
This changed the way I thought about budgeting and has since served me well in the move
to business models with deferred revenue, such as SaaS-based subscription business
models. I have observed two critical cognitive changes that occur with sales executives
when moving from products recognizing revenue immediately and products that
recognize revenues over time. Each of these seems to take about a Quarter to assimilate,
resulting in the loss of nearly a year by the time these differences have an impact on the
sales operations.
This impact need not affect the sales people and managing through the issues with the
compensation plan is simple.
1. The first change is business booked today will be recognized over time and not
immediately. The closer you get to the end of each fiscal period, the less you can
do to add revenue to the immediate period.
2. Once understood the thinking about building pipeline changes, immediately add a
year to the planning cycle. The pipeline becomes additive, creating a pipeline for a
six-month sales cycle plus a twelve-month revenue cycle.
Understanding triangulating bottom-up and top-down forecasting provides a more solid

base for forecasting, and applying the same approach increases the probability of meeting
the forecast.
Diagram 11 – Cubing the forecast
Accurate forecasting is critical for the health of the business. The default position for many
sales people, sales managers and executives is to under-forecast and over-deliver. This
often feels good and using the boundary approach to solving problems, many people
would say it is better than over-forecasting and under-delivering. They are equally bad.
When sales build a record of accomplishment of consistently meeting commitments, the
business can plan ahead of the revenue and not behind it. If there is a six-month delay
between having cash and the effective use of that cash, you are holding your business back
by at least that time.
The following solution to forecasting has two core benefits, one immediate and one
building over time. Many sales forecasting methodologies rely upon sufficient volume to
create meaningful aggregate information based upon sales stages. There are many issues
with this approach.
• A small number of large deals dramatically influence the forecast.

• The statistical analysis driven off sales stages are typically simplistic algorithms
that do not consider individual customer behavior.
• To gain any accuracy, the sales team must perform consistent regular updates of
the forecast.
The first benefit of the following approach is gaining an accurate forecast of the state of the
sales pipeline. However, worthy of note, the state of the sales pipeline will look less
robust than it did before you use the following rules. This is because too often sales people
fall back on the forecasting methodology placed in their hands, relying on volume rather
than accuracy.
The second benefit takes time to assimilate into the sales team. Using the following, the
prospect becomes involved in the forecasting process. Your sales team is asking the
customer the questions required to understand how to increase sales effectiveness.
Using the ProSultative sales process categorize opportunities in one of only four states.
Commit - We can express the unique benefits of our product in terms the qualified
prospect understands. These benefits meet or exceed their needs better than any
alternative. The prospect has stated what steps we need to take to close the transaction
by an agreed date, who owns them, and the date by which we must complete them.
We are certain we can achieve these steps.
Upside - We can express the unique benefits of our solution in terms the qualified
prospect understands. The prospect has stated what steps we need to take to close the
transaction by an agreed date. If we deliver these steps we may close the business, or
the customer has stated what steps we need to take to close the transaction, who owns
them, and the date by which we must complete them and we are not certain we can
achieve these steps.
Work In Progress - We can express the unique benefits of our solution in terms the
qualified prospect understands. The prospect has stated what steps we need to take to
close the transaction but has not agreed to a firm date. If we deliver these steps we
may close the business, or the customer has stated what steps we need to take to close
the transaction, who owns them, and the date by which we must complete them and
we are not certain we can achieve these steps.
Pipeline – Any qualified prospect where we have an ongoing interaction with agreed
next steps.
When this adoption of this methodology is complete, I recommend ascribing the following
probabilities as a starting point when first creating a forecast, then modifying over time to
reflect the unique nature of any business.
Commit – 90%
WIP – 50%
Upside – 10%
Pipeline – 5%
The changes this engenders in the sales process start with Proactive discussion the sales
team has with the prospect to confirm understanding of the requirements and gaining the
prospects’ understanding, we have the best product to meet these requirements.
Next, we ask does this mean we will close the business. Please refer back to the “Dollar”
question as to the importance of asking this question.
We ask for the detailed process required to close the business, and for details as to how
long this process will take, giving the data to approach the people required to meet the
objectives.
Finally, asking internally, are the internal resources required to close the business available
and able to execute. The requirements may be as complex as an enhancement or as simple
as raising an invoice and providing password access.
As we move to zero-friction selling, embed these questions into the interaction process,
and rely more on the data these processes produce. Even in a zero touch environment,
qualifying the prospect about their intent to proceed is a fair and reasonable exchange of
information in return for delivering a product
Seems obvious? Go through your current forecast deals and discover if the prospect agrees
with the following statements.
Can they express the unique benefits of your product?

What are the steps to close the transaction by an agreed date?
Who owns them?
If we deliver these steps, will we close the business?
If not, what could we do to close the business by this date?
Then a final forecasting question for the internal team, where “certain” is an absolute and
not peppered with caveats.
Are we certain we can achieve these steps?

□ How accurate is your current forecasting methodology?

□ Is planning based on forecasts, or are forecasts inserted into planning?
□ Does your current forecasting involve the customer in a dialog or are you basing it
upon the actions and steps they have taken?
33. There’s no “I” in revenue stupid
Summary
In this chapter, we learn the power of everyone in the organization selling,
understanding individual contribution in the greater whole and how to encourage all
employees to support sales/
No “I” in revenue
I used to row when I was at school; it provides a very simple, immediate test bed for
teamwork. When you have eight people, all pulling at the same time, in the same
direction, with the same amount of power, the boat slips through the water at an incredible
pace. The effort you need to put in is even, and in balance, with the effort of the others in
the team. When one or more people are not harmonious, it can be one of the ugliest sights
in the world. Worse than not moving, you can be heading for the bank with no room or
time to turn.
With sales as the daily interface between the customer and the organization, sales lead the
company as it questions, listens and understands to its customers. However, when sales
are the only department selling, a business will fail, offering no room or time to turn. It is
only possible to achieve success when embedding the ProSultative sales process into every
aspect of the business. Strive for an environment in which everybody sells. Every
employee must be singularly focusing on making the prospect acquisition of your product
as easy as possible. Everybody sells.
There are only three parts to a business, make, sell and manage. Every business makes
something, whether an automotive manufacturer making cars, an insurance company
producing policies, a consulting firm delivering a service. All have the same elements;
customers are paying money as they see themselves getting greater value from your
business than they do from that of your competition. No part of business is discrete;
everything must be part of a contiguous relationship the customer is buying. There is no
point in making things people do not value no matter how clever they are; there is no point
in supporting a customer’s use of a product they are not using, they are not a customer;
there is no point in spending resources marketing a product you cannot deliver.
Every company with customers has been successful at having a sales culture at some time;
otherwise, it would never have made it out of the starting gate. The question is how has
this scaled and replicated over time as the organization has grown. A one-person business
selling their own service finds their own customers, working with friends, former
colleagues, working all hours to get their business moving. They embed the three phases
of the sales process, contact, interact and transact, into the three elements of the business,
make, sell and manage, every day in every thing they do.
Critical for the success of this culture is every group seeing themselves as part of a whole
organization, with no one group having any greater importance than any other group.
Every group must be part of the sales process, understand this, and understand the
businesses expectations. All too often, the default solution is to hold sales people up as the
icons of the company, shower them with financial rewards, ignore bad behavior when they
are performing well and remove them when they fail to perform.
While these actions can be part of the management of the company, they are not a
substitute for creating a culture of everybody selling, and when delivered in a vacuum can
produce the opposite effect where resentment builds up between other company members
and people wait to see sales fail. It is the responsibility of sales leadership to ensure the
culture within the sales team is both ethical and professional and everybody wants sales to
succeed, because the sales team is merely the human interface to the people paying the
money, your customers.
I have worked at companies with great product and no sales team; they do not sell very
much for very long. I have also worked at companies with an over-sold product and a
great sales team, they can sell for a time, ultimately failing when the customers find the
product is below expectations.
A prospect becomes, and stays, a customers when you prove your product will add
value to their business
Too many organizations go out of their way to complicate what is a very simple process.
There are three parts to any organization; the sales group who get the customer to pay for
the product the manufacturing group creates; the manufacturing group who build the
products that customers pay for, and; the management group who create and manage the
company resources the sales and product groups use to make and sell products. There are
three groups to touch the customer.
Whether competition is another company selling the same product or a consulting

company selling someone’s time with similar skills, manufacturing creates something with
features, functions and unique benefits. The articulation of these and matching them to a
customer’s needs is why your business has a customer and the competition does not.
Everyone must understand their role in helping a prospect become a customer, a

customer spending more or a customer staying a customer
It is important the sales team help other team members understand how they help the sales
effort, why their role is important, and why it is important to the sales person will start the
process of everybody selling. When a sales person can get everyone selling for them, then
everyone is helping the salesperson be more successful.
Seems obvious? Take a look around the office, when was the last time you saw a sales
person sitting with someone in the accounts department, working with someone in the
product team, or vice versa. Often the executives will communicate this intent, but it does
not filter all the way to the daily tasks of the employees.
□ Ask employees if they understand how their role maps to the customer.
□ Ask employees to describe their last interaction with a customer; ask what they did
with any learning they performed when talking to the customer.
□ Ask employees to describe what would happen to future customers, and existing
customers, if they were not there performing their role.

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Prosultative Selling - Mike Pilcher

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Making business sales Ultra-competitive

Cover design by Ti Jedlinski

All rights reserved.

First Printing: July 2008

There is a significant change taking shape in business-to-business selling. As we see a

The objective of a ProSultative Business is to minimize the consultative elements of the

A ProSultative Business sells as proactively as possible while proving to the

ProSultative Selling is not:

Minimizes customer interactions

Implements best practices

Accelerates the sales pipeline

Landing more often

I have personally experienced the long expensive supplier-funded lunches, typifying

Prospect and Customer tools

Easier to use products

Faster time to value

Reduced cost of sales

The product is the process

Everybody sells – Especially salespeople

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

□ How many stages are there in your sales process?

Next chapter demonstrates how to express the unique benefits of a product.

• Sell new things to new customers.

This leads to the following summary, the Customer Interaction Definition:-

New products to new customers

This breakdown of interactions is critical in the understanding of when and how to be

In a ProSultative sales environment the interconnectivity of the multiple interactions

□ Do you qualify in as well as qualifying out?

Why are they buying?

Pain - something they feel and don’t want to

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

Next chapter understand if we need people to help in prospect positioning.

Why are they buying from you?

When a product is a pure commodity, differentiation is determined predominantly on

Diagram 5 – USP Definition model

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

□ Do you consider your product a commodity?

Creating a ProSultative sales approach requires an understanding of which features the

An example of where it is possible to be proactive in the provision of information is in the

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

□ Do you even need sales people?

Next chapter; we learn the importance of an Active Contact in business-to-business sales

1. There is not an agreed next step

Diagram 6 – Passive Contact / Active Contact transition

Passive Contact is a technique honed in the business-to-consumer market and comes in

Diagram 7 – Risk transference

Social media marketing

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

□ Do you qualify prospects in or simply hope your current messaging is sufficient to

If the product were a dollar, would you buy it today?

It is not that there is no budget it is that there is no budget for you

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

Prove you solve a need

Contact 20% effort - delivering 10% of the ultimate value

It is important to create a messaging program that is an end-to-end dialogue. As we

Using boundary decision-making, if we the amount of touch was directly proportional to

Features - What does our product do?

How secure is the solution?

Seems obvious? Go check this out:

□ Do you train all employees on these terms?

It is essential to distinguish between the different types of inter-personal contacts and

Contact marketing - direction/high-volume