by Arnie Valenzuela

It was a familiar feeling that I was all too used to. That feeling of getting ready to attempt to perform a death defying feat in front of a crowd when I had little or no confidence in accomplishing the feat. To make things worse the crowd was my peers, my fellow sales executives and my clients. What I was facing was that formidable act of teeing off with a driver to start the company golf tournament. To make matters worse we were playing this tournament at one of the most prestigious golf courses in the country and I had no business attempting to execute a descent tee shot with a driver. I was conflicted with the knowledge that I knew I shouldn’t be attempting this shot with the driver because my ability to execute a good golf shot had been proven to dismal over my many years of golf the length of the hole was so long that the only way to get to the green was to use the club that provided the longest shot available. The result was the same as most of my other attempts at using a driver on the tee, I duffed it.

Now what does this pitiful golf story have to do with the title of this article? It is because all successfully selling engagements result with a specific problem being solved in such a way that provides such as unique set of value that the client is willing to pay what the product or service is worth. If the problem is solved through a unique or one of a kind selling/buying experience the client may pay list price.

Now back to golf for a moment. My problem was my inability to successfully hit a driver from the tee and was so acute that it had destroyed my confidence as well as took to joy out of playing golf. Notice that I said it was, not is my problem any more. How did I solve this problem? You are going to laugh but it was just this simple, I got a new driver. The new driver solved my problem due to the much larger club head and higher degree of loft and the combination of these two components solved a 20 plus year problem, it was that simple.

Once again what does this have to do with Rapid Revenue Acceleration in your business? After 23 years in your industry I have concluded that more is not better. What I mean is that more is not better when it comes to more features, multifunctional capability, finishing or software programs. What this proliferation of features has created is a focus on the bells and whistle of such features instead of solving business process problems that exist within ever business you encounter on daily basis. Your customers want solutions to their problems. They don’t want your bells and whistles. The fastest method of achieving Rapid Revenue Acceleration is to become very simple minded in your daily selling efforts. Become an expert at discovering the problem; look for the obvious and you may find that the solution to their business problem (not their copying, printing for faxing problem) be as simple as buying a new driver.

Now how to do that in an industry that demands your mind share and constantly pushes the requirement to sell features instead of becoming intimate with specific business problems. Instead of becoming an expert at the bells and whistle of your wizbang document delivery device, become an expert at discovering the most significant problems in your clients document delivery processes. This is not to say that you can go about selling your products or services without any product knowledge but don’t spend your time trying to sell features from the start. I know your industry well enough to know that you have an over abundance of product expertise available to you through your vendors as well as your professional or technical services staff. What you need to do is invest your time discovering the business process problems and quantifying them in terms of the negative impact they have on the organization whether that impact is a slowed down production process, a delay in billing, delivery of documents to the wrong client or a document production process that is riddled with error.

Here are 5 quick steps to get you on the right track in every sales engagement.

1. Locate 3 to 4 departments inside the organization where the money is handled or revenue is the core focus.

The most common departments where this is a priority are finance (accounts payable, receivable, credits, buyer financing) executive (reporting on the production and retention of revenue), production (producing what they sell), delivery (proof of delivery to start the billing process), warranty (credits and debits), and sales/ecommerce (the speed and accuracy of processing sales orders). Submit a request to your main contact to set up a brief interview with the department manager regarding his/her satisfaction with the current document delivery process that exists in his/her department.

2. Ask them to rate their satisfaction of their current document delivery system on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being perfect.

The answer to this question will determine if you should invest additional time with them or not. If they answer a 7 or above, go find another manager to interview. If they give a rating of less than 7 ask them what would have to be different for them to give a 10. Record their answers and then request a 45 minute meeting to further discover the impact of those missing pieces to the puzzle that makes up a perfect 10. The statements they make about what would have to change to make a 10 are from hereon referred to as EIOP indicators or “Economic Impact of Processes” indicators. In most cases you will find 1-3 EIOP indicators with how documents are delivered that could be solved by one of your solutions. Ask them to rank the priority of the EIOPs based on the amount of money it would take to fix the problem as well as the amount of company resources they would have to invest to fix it. Assure them that you will need only 45 minutes and then hold yourself to it.

3. At the meeting start with the number one EIOP he is concerned with and ask them to describe how the deliveries of documents are involved in the business process that needs fixing.

Make sure that you quantify the impact in terms of the problem’s context such as lost income, lost revenue, delayed production etc. The problems must be specific and measurable like dollar amounts; hours of lost production time and lost orders and they must mean enough to the decision maker for them to sponsor your solution up the line of command. He will stake his own reputation on your negative findings and your solution so make sure it is accurate and meaningful to the company.

4. Ask them if they could have access to a solution, would they be willing to pay the same or more than they are already paying for the insufficient services they are receiving now.

Their answer is the first indication whether they believe they are receiving unique value or not and if it is yes then you are on your way to a highly profitable sale. If the answer is no then go back and find out why they won’t and the answers will provide the roadmap to the sale. Another possibility is that you are at the wrong level of decision making and need to find another contact to present your findings and solution.

5. Once you have a commitment that they want to solve the problem and will spend the money to solve it, assembly your support team (product specialist, manufacturers, professional and technical services) and review the findings of your EIOP meetings.

Make sure that you don’t let quotas or personal agendas of your team influence the recommendation because if you do you will likely lose the engagement to a competitor (traditional or non-traditional) whose sales model is solution driven versus product or quota driven like your business. Be especially careful of software providers (VARs or business process integrators) as their sales model is grounded in business process problem discovering and creating a solution instead of selling a product.

If you use these 5 steps as a guideline you will create a competitive advantage, improve your focus, deliver what customers want by discovering real business problems and create solutions that speed up the buying cycle. Implementing these steps can improve your conversion ratio of leads to sales much like the purchase of a new driver did for my golf game. In addition to providing a much larger sweet spot and greater loft what my driver has done for me has allowed me he the confidence to swing naturally and the result is that I feel more relaxed and confident at the tee so much that my last tournament included a drive nearly 300 yards long, straight down the middle. My hope is that you will achieve similar results in your daily selling efforts, good selling!

Photo via flickr