How To: Focus Power, Daniel-san!

In this installment, we concentrate on moving the transaction forward. Having successfully broken down the transaction into bite-size chunks, it’s time to focus on the areas of weakness or threats to our successful sale.

In a complex sale, every buyer, user and influencer must be taken into consideration. Too often, the giddy sales pro starts counting commission dollars after a slight buying sign from the economic or principal buyer, leaving his flanks exposed to the dreaded Mad Competitor Disease.

Assuming the transaction is closing is the greatest flaw for strategic salesmen. The sale is NEVER complete. When your client goes out of business, the sale is closed. Until then, assume the transaction, the relationship and the lifetime client value ALL hang in the balance.

Check and recheck everyone in the buying chain on a regular basis for change. This is one area of business life where change is NOT good. Usually new decisions are made based on new information or changes in your client’s business or business model. NEVER ASSUME everything is the same today as yesterday.

Keeping an ‘inventory’ of your buyers’ and influencers’ leanings toward your solution is more vital as the transaction proceeds. If the number of ‘yes’ men/women you have in stock is running low and the number of ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ buyers has grown, guess which way the transaction is headed?

Assuming that your solution is the only one in consideration is laughable. But, even after licking the competition, remain cautious of ‘intercept marketers’ that will try to swoop in after you’ve done all the hard work in selling the solution, only to low ball you with a similar solution in the final hours.

The key to keeping the competition ‘wolves’ away from your client’s door is consistent communication; reiteration of the ‘win’ for each buyer/influencer. Only consistently reminding each of his ‘win’ can effectively beat off the ‘me-too’s’.

Review your SWOT analysis on a daily or weekly basis. Add any new weaknesses or threats to your analysis, as well as any newly discovered strengths. Keep alert for any previously uncovered ‘deal assassins’--buyers or influencers that have been ‘crouching tigers, hidden dragons’ in the sales process up to now. It’s remarkable how often a key decisionmaker will be unearthed right at the point of getting authorization on an order or engagement. Be unafraid to ask and re-ask if there is ‘anyone else in the organization’ that I should be talking to about our proposed solution? Often the boys upstairs who actually sign off on larger engagements or contracts don’t soil their hands in the sourcing/procurement/proposal phase.

In the next installment we’ll examine the use of internal ‘Coaches’.


1. Introduction, Empathy Selling
2. Adjustments
3. Break down the transaction
4. Focus Power, Daniel-san!
5. Sell an Asteroid to Captain Kirk
6. Can’t build a bridge? Build a pipeline--Can’t tear down a wall? Build a ramp.
7. Employ Empathy Marketing for Biz Dev
8. Empathy Selling, Mastery is Transparency
9. Empathy Selling, Stir of Echoes
10. Empathy Selling – Why Empathy Works
11. Empathy Selling: How Do The Other Guy’s Shoes Fit?