It's been niggling at the back of my brain for something like 15 - 17 years. It came out the other day and reminded me of the birth of the thing from the good guys chest in the movie Alien. In this case though, it is the answer to something valuable for all of us sales folks. It started when I met a man who sold generators. I am not talking about your basic generator that you go to Sears to buy you understand, I am talking about dam generators. That isn't an epithet. That is a complex sale.
You see his job was to sell those monstrous hydro electric generators that live at the bottom of dams across the world. Water flows through the dam, powers the turbine in the generator and the generator sends power to millions of people anywhere close. The thing is, how many of those generators do you suppose someone wants to buy? For that matter, what do you think the sales cycle is on that kind of thing? And on an only marginally related note, how do you suppose they get those things in the dam after it's built anyways?
Well, I never found the answer to questions one and three but I can tell you the sales cycle on that generator is 3 years. Yes. 365 x 3 = 1,095 days to make a sale. That seems to me like a long time to go without a paycheck but then he reassured me that the commission on the sale of one of those things certainly covered him for the next 3 years. Also that he generally only worked on one sale at a time. Wow. Interesting market space.
Now when I went to lunch with him in Tucson, the waitress asked us if we wanted dessert after the meal. It was a good restaurant and I was in a fine mood so I accepted. Not that complex really. She offered and without a second thought closed the sale. That was for me, the birth to understanding the question of complexity in a sales cycle.
Miller-Heiman has long made a training practice of teaching Strategic Selling or understanding the complex sale. In their world, a complex sale is any sale in which two or more buyers are involved in making the choice to accept something new. I think however, that to really understand the complex sale, you have to factor in a number of other items. Frankly dear reader, I heartily challenge you to challenge this notion. It is a conversation well worth having and I intend to have it repeatedly.
It is worth having for a few simple and valuable reasons. The single most important one is that understanding complexity in both the product/service and the person doing the selling creates a much higher likelihood of success for everyone. If I as a salesperson don't know how to handle the complexities of a product I am selling than clearly I wont have as successful a time moving my goods. It is important also because if I am a business and I am hiring a sales person, I want to make sure the salesperson has the greatest likelihood of success. If not and I have to lose that salesperson, I have lost significant productivity, dollars and opportunity in the turnover. Thirdly, If I am a sales professional and I have multiple products/services to sell, and I understand the complexity of each and of the buyers who want them, than I know better how to go about connecting and closing the sale in that environment.
I know. A mouthful huh?
Well, here are some thoughts on how to do this then.
Number one, the level of complexity of sale of any product is based on the buyer not the seller. What do the greatest number of target product buyers operate like? Target as in specifically who I am trying to sell to. Number two, don't confuse complexity of a sale with the process needed to close the sale. The process of a sales cycle relates to what you do and when. The complexity of a sale relates to why you do those things.
In my humble opinion then, the elements of complexity of a sale are threefold. They are;
1. Length of the sales cycle. That is what unit of time measure does it normally take for this company to make a choice about moving ahead or not.
2. Dollars in the deal. How many dollars is this going to cost the company and can they afford it. The more dollars it costs them, the more intensely they will need to scrutinize the transaction in order to make it worthwhile for them.
3. How many people are involved in this choice? We have all seen this repeatedly I am certain. The more people expressing opinions in a decision, the more work it takes to get to the decision itself. On a side note, most of the people expressing opinions are really no-sayers much more than yes-sayers. We are not so much getting them to say yes but to stop saying no. On another side note, the more people in the process, the more different ways the decision is examined and consequently the greater likelihood of a good decision for the company. (not an absolute by any means)
So my challenge is this, am I missing any of the levels of complexity in why we make the activity choices we make to close a sale? I know there are hundreds of sales thinkers out there and I am really looking forward to understanding this more effectively.
Next time my gentle reader; I will share the formula I have come up with for indexing this complexity. It was exciting to realize it could be done and fun to figure out how to do it. But you know, maybe I am just kind of weird that way....
Respectfully submitted,
Michael Goodman
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