Never Say Sell by Tom McMakin & Jacob Parks

Author:Tom McMakin & Jacob Parks [McMakin, Tom & Parks, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119683803
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Then just before the meeting closes, we say, “Thank you. We're really excited about the progress we're making. Just quickly to review, we said we would recruit 25 CIOs in the first 90 days and interview at least half of those CIOs to uncover their agenda interests. We've done that and, now, according to our schedule, we're going to take a week to incorporate the feedback you gave us and iterate a draft agenda for the first roundtable discussion.”

In meeting four, we do it again, only this time with more enthusiasm. “This is great. We are on a roll. We love working with your team.”

L The Lagniappe: Now we start looking for opportunities to give our client a baker's dozen in meetings five and beyond. We might offer to fly out to visit our client and give their boss a briefing on the project to date, or maybe we send a book on business development we were discussing at our last meeting.

If we find ourselves nickeling and diming a client (like the ubiquitous copying charge found at the bottom of a $700/hour attorney's bill), we try to remember to ask, “Why are we doing this? Have we lost the forest for the trees?”

I Initiate feedback: Now, the project is winding down. This is when we ask for feedback in what could be our last meeting or a renewal meeting if the project has potential to be ongoing. We say, “When we started this project, we said our goal was to delight you. We all hammered out a plan we thought would achieve that end. Over the last six months, we have hit our marks and tried to over-deliver on all the metrics you said were important. We know sometimes our plans aren't perfectly conceived. Were you delighted with the project? What have we learned if we continue this program or do another project together?”

E Elevate the conversation: Later in this final or renewal meeting, we pivot to a brainstorm around strategy. We say, “I've kept track of the nice-to-haves you've mentioned over the last few months. For example, you said having a way to track all the opportunities that come up during our 1:1 CIO interviews and roundtable discussions would help your sales team capitalize on those interactions. We do that work all the time and I thought I would share with you a couple of the dashboards we've developed for other clients as well as a recommendation on how we might help with this.” This is the moment to venture across the Diamond of Opportunity, but to do so in the context of offering strategic advice. Writes Stephan Schiffman, sales coach and sales trainer, “We cannot assume that our client's plan or reason revolves around our own preconceptions; we must do the work necessary to identify what was originally most important to this decision maker. And, as long as that decision maker remains in the same place, is facing the same situation, and is focusing on the same goals, that plan or reason is what should drive our efforts to retain and upsell to the customer.

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