Six Keys to Winning the Swift Tactical Purchase

Typical enterprise software sales take six to nine months, if not longer. But not all sales are typical. Some can move very quickly from initial discovery to closure. I call these Swift Tactical Sales. The customer interaction and sales process for Swift Tactical Sales are different enough from typical sales, to warrant their own chapter in a sales manual. Here is a quick summary.

Think Long Term Act Short Term

In many instances the Swift Tactical Sale is not really a complete sale. It is the beginning of a complete sale with revenue attached, such as a paid pilot. The customer wants to address a short term need. But behind that short term need is a long term need. The customer lacks something (time, budget, concensus, etc.) to address the long term need at this time, and therefore chooses the short term solution which is your Swift Tactical Sale. To win the customer’s business in both the short term and the long term, you must absolutely address the short term need. But in so doing, you should set the stage to address the long term need. The long term should always be discussed during any kind of discovery interaction as a secondary to the short term need. By the time you close the Swift Tactical Sale, you should have a clear path in mind to winning the customer’s long term business.

There is no Recovering

In the Swift Tactical Sale, the buyer is pressed for time. During this short sales window, there is no time to recover from setbacks. Rather than waiting for you to recover, the buyer will simply move forward with your competition, even if the competition falls short in other ways. To avoid this, the entire sales process needs to be about building credibility by delivering value. In my most recent Swift Tactical Sale, I negotiated the “kick-off” meeting for the project start long before the details had been finalized. All scheduling on my side was then based on when the client wanted to start, rather than upon when the client could get all internal approvals—which ended up taking longer than planned.

Same Effort Compressed into Less Time

While the elapsed time between discovery and closure is very short, the time and effort required to close the deal are nearly the same. As such, it is essential to devote your own time as well as secure and deploy the necessary internal resources to deploy to complete the sales process.

Collaboration Closes the Deal

While collaboration is required in all enterprise sales, it is particularly important in the Swift Tactical Sale. Your customer must experience you and your company as a partner in solving their problem. During collaborative interactions, you establish credibility with your customer by providing input from your experience while simultaneously accepting input from the customer’s unique business situation.

Their Lawyers and Accountants Still Don’t Care

While the ultimate buyer needs to act quickly, do not expect the rest of the organization to behave with any urgency. In my most recent Swift Tactical Sale, the client’s finance department had my company’sW-9 for three weeks prior to the U.S. government shut-down but delayed sending the purchase order for an additional two weeks because they could not verify our tax ID number with the IRS during the U.S. government shut-down.

Start Before the Deal is Inked

Because speed is essential for success, avoiding the typical process of waiting for every part of the deal to be resolved before taking action. As described in my example above, schedule the project start date and operate in good faith as long as the customer is moving forward at a reasonable rate and keeps the lines of communication open regarding official approvals from other departments such as finance or legal.