Monthly Archives: July 2013

James walked past the overgrown front lawn and didn’t even notice the front door was already open. His 14 year old daughter was on her way out yet again to a friend’s house.

Loosening his tie, he whispered to his wife in the kitchen ‘Have you paid the school fees yet?’

It was the third time in 2 years he had failed to win the new accounts he had forecast to his APAC boss. It’s not just baseball that has a three strikes policy. He despaired at the thought of yet another bloody round of soul destroying conversations with recruiters.

James opened the fridge looking for the remnants of the previous night’s bottle of wine and found an Asahi instead. As the brew soothed the back of his throat he agonised again as to why he lost yet another deal.

He had 15 years experience, won awards and even went on Safari as a top achiever just 3 years ago.

He had managed the CRM, followed the sales methodology he’d been taught, discussed the value proposition and politics of the account with his boss. The technical consultants spent weeks proving the solution worked and he was pretty sure the client had budget. So, what went wrong…again?

He couldn’t write this one off as ‘you win some, lose some’

What James didn’t know was that the decision maker, Steve was a CIO who was more out of his depth than he imagined. He hadn’t delivered on three previous projects, was over budget and just had two key resources depart on maternity leave. In addition, he had a child at home who needed more time as he was behind at school with a learning difficulty.

James uncovered the business drivers, budgets, buying processes but he hadn’t really had the frank discussion about two key things. Transition and Steve’s personal situation.

In the end, as much as Steve wanted new systems, he couldn’t commit to the time, headspace, process change and responsibility of something new.

He stayed with the status quo and allocated all of his remaining budget to the incumbent.

So, what could James have done?

• Asked the hard questions early and often to uncover Steve’s predicament, rather than gloss over the apparent niggling lack of assuredness Steve exhibited.
• Spent less time using the pre-sales resources and more time using his own CFO or CEO to create peer to peer relationships and understanding.
• Presented transition in a way that Steve would have seen as easier than he thought with the risk transferred to the vendor as opposed to the scary 19 point transition and assumptions check list that was in the proposal

 He could have simply seen Steve and his business for what they really were, rather than what he hoped they’d be.

What would you have done if you were James?

Written by Elliot Epstein, CEO, Salient Communication

Elliot has trained and coached over 3000 people throughout the Asia Pacific Region and is a sought after keynote speaker on Sales, Negotiation, Leadership and Presentations

E: elliote@salientcommunication.com.au