The Four Enemies of Excellence

Assuming the sales executive has qualified a strong business case, calculated a high ROI using conservative estimates, determined the target company has the funding and even outflanked all the competition, why wouldn’t a sale that has progressed this far be a shoe-in for a close? There can be any number of reasons, of course. But the most common are what I call the Four Enemies of Excellence.

Corporate Blame Culture

While a company might publicly claim its leadership is gutsy and willing to take well-calculated risks, in most cases reality is quite different. More often than not, somebody gets fired every time an initiative does not work out as planned. This mindset is the basis of well-worn phrases like “Nobody has ever been fired for buying from IBM.” Typically, people do not want to be fired. Income plummets. The nest egg dwindles. Debts pile up. One’s routine and comfort are annihilated. And the future is suddenly uncertain. Is it really a surprise few are willing to stick their necks out to make a project happen? And the “gutsy” leaders always require someone to stick their neck out before they give the proverbial thumbs-up to a solution. Near the end of every sales cycle, the sales executive must pivot from continually communicating the value of the proposition to instead continually communicating the safety of the proposition and must get the target company champions—especially the lead champion—thinking and speaking in the same manner.

Problems and Chaos Have Stakeholders

Young professionals naively believe the majority of professionals and all successful professionals are team players. Reality is quite different. The corporate world is chronically infected by those who would harm the company and their coworkers for their own benefit. In environments where heroes reign and all others cower in fear, chaos creates an easy means for so-called heroes to continually save the day by solving the same problem over and over. In such environments, permanent solutions are hotly contested by those who benefit most from the problems. If you offer a permanent solution to a common recurring problem, then you will encounter one corporate culture after another that celebrates the expertise and hard work of those who solve the recurring problem over and over. To overcome this difficult challenge, you must confront the lie directly. The most insidious lies are always based on partial truth. The value of these so-called heroes is a partial truth that needs to be confronted directly and with the political skill worthy of a business school case study. And since you cannot do this alone from outside the organization, you must inform and enlist internal champions who can see and articulate this problem clearly, and who have the courage to speak out in favor of what is best for the company.

Resistance to Change

No matter how painful the problem and compelling the solution, there is a short term cost and reduction in productivity associated with change. Additionally, for every champion with the leadership skills to fight for change, there are at least five vocal, charismatic plodders who will fight for the status quo. The masses as well as senior management are often more convinced by the chorus rather than the lone voice. While buying organizations will want to limit your interactions to the few who are already champions, it is important to take advantage of every opportunity to interact with stakeholders to win them over. At the same time, it is important to continually remind your champions of this common obstacle and what they need to do to ensure it is overcome.

It Can Wait

While perhaps the least insidious, lack of urgency is also the most common problem. No time is ever perfect to pull the proverbial trigger. People have always too many responsibilities on existing projects and budgets are always difficult to get approved. The problem your solution addresses has been tolerated for years if not decades. Another three months easily sounds trivial. But for the selling organization a delay not only means not making a quarterly number, it also means re-paying the sales expense again at every future date the cycle begins again as buyers need to be re-educated and new buying stakeholders need to hear the pitch for the first time. The solution to this problem is simple. Price your solution assuming it will take multiple sales cycles before the close actually happens so you can offer a compelling discount if they are prepared to buy at the end of their first (and only) evaluation cycle.

The overall lesson to be learned is that more and more, the sale is not closed by you the salesperson but by internal champions. The role of the sales executive is now more than ever that of an equipper. You must provide your champions with high quality, customized collateral that they would never assemble themselves. You must engage them on their own internal buying process, the politics behind what actually opposes your solution and how to win the day. Many will want to do only what they think is just enough. Reality will show that what seems like just enough will fall far short. So you must convince your champions to go above and beyond for their cause to prevail, and that you will help them every step of the way. I wish you every success!