Transitioning from successful small to medium sized opportunity selling – to big – requires a lot more than an organisational directive instruction to “go chase some bigger fish”.
Whenever an organisation has significant revenue growth objectives, identifying, developing and completing major opportunity wins is one of the most direct paths to success, or so you may think.
The reality is that the sales process and the skills required to tackle $50,000 – $150,000 deals are typically very different to those required to win $2 million to $10 million opportunities. This is one of the major factors we see inhibiting small to medium size enterprises making the transition to Top 500 companies; and similarly for privately owned companies delivering on revenue expectations in post takeover and or post IPO settings.
Let’s look at the 5 key reasons for the added degree of difficulty in successfully executing major opportunities:
1. Sales Cycle Length
The longer sales cycles associated with major opportunities require a different sales mindset to that of smaller more transactional selling. Our assessment and selection experience has shown that more than 67% of sales people have a psychological need for short term versus long term gratification; as opposed to the eagle major opportunity focused sales professionals we train and coach, who have little need for immediate gratification; and the patience and ability to consistently and systematically work through long term sales cycles of anywhere between 6 and 36 months.
2. Power and Sponsorship Dynamics
The need to understand and possessing a best practice process as well as the execution skills to work through the sponsorship and power dynamics that exist within major organisations and that are critical to major deal success is often underestimated. The best sales organisations posses specific models and a common language that facilitate this, supported by the capability to objectively assess and validate opportunity and key player status at any juncture. Related to this fact, but more broadly across all business to business selling, the single major contributing to lost and / or stalled deals is a lack of attention to, understanding of or lack of access to genuine sponsors and power sponsors within individual sales opportunities.
3. Value Proposition and ROI Development
To put it simply, the larger the opportunity, the more significant the buyer investment and the more compelling the business case needs to be. In major opportunity selling, a value justification model needs to be utilised to document and present the projected benefits associated with your products and services after implementation. Successful value propositions and ROI models can only be achieved when the metrics of the analysis are derived from and owned by the buyer and where they create a compelling reason for the buyer to act. Exploring, developing and gaining commitment around these concepts and getting to the granularity required is a specific and well honed skilled possessed by eagle Major Account and Business Development Managers.
4. Diagnostic Complexity
The inherent additional complexity of major deals demands superior diagnostic consultative selling skills. The breadth and depth of organisational stakeholders varying from the power sponsor all the way down to end-users, means that major opportunity focused salespeople require a model as well as the skills to execute questioning at the strategic level, the causal level and the tactical or”drill-down” level. These diagnostic skills enable the best major opportunity sellers to establish cause, effect and impact both across and down the organisational structure, which builds broad stakeholder engagement and buy-in, from which they use to build a business case which will often require investment budget contribution from typically a small number of key stakeholders, justified by quantified business benefits to the broader customer organisation.
5. Leveraging Sales Organisation Capability and Resources
It is never possible for a sales organisation to achieve any level of consistent and sustainable major opportunity success, without the support and contribution (and often the blessing) of a broad variety of internal cross-functional stakeholders. In fact, what successful key and major account sellers have to do is conduct what is to some extent a parallel internal sales process within their own organisation. They need to liaise, influence and co-ordinate with functions which may include product management, pricing, logistics, marketing and manufacturing amongst others. This requires consultative, commercial and negotiation skills of a high order.
Given the above, we can see it is unlikely and too much to expect your salespeople to all of a sudden develop and be able to exhibit and execute these skills, just because your organisation wants them to do bigger deals – and now!
Managing large scale opportunities also usually requires the selling organisation to invest in the adoption of a proven high end sales methodology that facilitates effective major opportunity sales execution. In these environments, we do see organisations attempting to use cobbled together sales systems which may be an amalgam of things used in the past. These only work if they are truly cohesive and importantly, if they provide a roadmap for dealing with major opportunities on an end to end (i.e. create through to implement) basis.
Finally, what are the typical attributes of these eagle major opportunity salespeople we are talking about?
Firstly they are usually self motivated and have a problem solving inclination. In this sense, they often share common attributes with successful professional services sector consultants.
Next, they are interested in how businesses work and they can make sense of how the various business functions connect and are interdependent. On this point, they are therefore capable of conversing comfortably with “C Level” executives and business unit managers; and can tailor their conversations to be relevant and engaging irrespective of role function.
A level of analytical capability is a final common capability. Top flight major sales practitioners are able to be self analytical and to objectively analyse their competitive position and probability of success at regular points throughout the sales cycle. Furthermore, the very best are able to pragmatically disengage from low probability opportunities and / or to focus on alternative priority opportunities where other opportunities may be stalled beyond control at particular points in time; and to then successfully re-engage at an appropriately productive point in time.
In closing, what all of this means is that to successfully transition to a sales organisation capable of effectively winning and implementing large scale opportunities, there are sales methodology, sales process and sales skills requirements that need to be harnessed in tandem – and this is not something that can be orchestrated overnight; and in terms of the individual sales people you require to win big, it is unlikely they are the same salespeople you have managing your small to medium sized opportunities.
If you have a need or motivation to scale up to winning bigger, there will be a lead time of at least 12 months that you will need to allow for to get the pieces of the puzzle in place; and another 6 – 9 months for significant results to start to be realised. A best practice we recommend therefore, is to implement these pieces around real opportunities, which enables practical contextual learning; and in the majority of cases, this delivers an earlier big win to celebrate – and to drive additional momentum.
