Landing New Clients - It's about "value-based positioning"

Part 2
Here are nine proven strategies that can help you create a viable pipeline of new clients while tending to current relationships: 

6. See more to win more: 
In sales, pipeline math can be sobering. Recent research is takes 6-7 touches to create a meaningful sales opportunity (hence the need to sell more meetings). Add to that not all sales opportunities close as planned. They key is to use past client behavior to assess the percentage of opportunities that have closed and along what time frame (close ratio and sales cycle). It's also important to look at the dollar value of those past sales to create a pro forma forecast. For example, if your goal is $500,000 and your average close rate is 25% you actually need $2,000,000 in your pipeline. If your average deal size is $50,000, you'll need 40 opportunities in your pipeline throughout the year. These easy metrics can help you understand how many opportunities you'll need to meet your goal and when you'll need them to close. 

7. Understand the types of meetings required to close business. 
In sales, there are typically three meetings that lead to a high level of client or prospect engagement and eventually the closed sale. The point - each meeting has its own emotional quotient. These three meetings take the shape of coffee talk, discovery, and playback. In coffee talk meetings, the focus is on building rapport and anchoring your value. Rapport gets created in the small talk that establishes common interests and challenges. The key is to playback key themes to "sell" the next meeting, Discovery. Discovery meetings should be initiated off some burning platform, aspiration not met, or constructive discontent. Questions are not to educate, but more designed to clarify key goals. The playback meeting is a meeting that validates and affirms the client or prospect, pulls key themes forward and paints a picture of possibility prior to going to proposal. This meeting is all about confirming the value of taking action. 

8. Never send proposals without a commitment to review. 
Early in my career I can remember how many times I responded to her request for proposal thinking that the client needed to have this proposal to review over the weekend. Nine times out of 10 they didn't need it for the weekend and never read it. The additional bad news, the client never got back to me. The key to closing more business is to maintain and grow client engagement throughout the entire process. Proposal should reflect the client situation, their need and their articulated goals and visions. The response is the solution to the problem almost like it hurt and rescue mission. Clients love to see their name in lights, and thus it makes it more important to schedule time to review your recommendations based on the context of the client need, your conversations, and the business issue that your solution will address.

9. Stay loyal to current clients but move upstream in the business strategy. 
If you live and die by the next SOW, you may be relying too heavily on your current contacts. This is risky for several reasons. One, they may not be strategically linked to the business strategy; two, they may get promoted or leave the organization, or three; they may not be universally well thought of across the organization. There are "ifs" for sure but demand their own risk management strategy. Build relationships with senior economic buyers in the C-suite. Communicate your understanding how your services or products fit into the overall context of business strategies and goals. Leadership wants to know if and how you can help them achieve their business goals. You need to bring value fast, share robust examples and provide a vision for what it would be like to work together.

10. At some point you need to ask for the business. 
For many, this the hardest part. Whether willing to not appear pushy or fearing rejection, more deals get lost or stall because of a lack of commitment...to ask! There are two ways of doing this. First, if you sense the client is committed, use a summarize and suggest approach. Here is an actual client example: “Tom, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you and your business intelligence team. Based on what you’ve shared with us and the recommendations we’ve reviewed together, we pledge our commitment to enhance your ability to provide actionable insights to your sales organization that nets new prospect meetings. With that, we’d be remiss in not asking for your commitment. We would be honored to have you as an ACME client.”

For more information or to make Bill Walton Sales Training insights a reality for your organization, send us a note at bwalton@billwaltonsalestraining.com.