If you’ve been around sales long enough chances are you’ve been exposed to a variety of sales methodologies. There’s Holden, there’s Challenger, and then you have Sandler…the list goes on and on. So which of these is the best? The answer is all of them and none of them. It really depends on what your goals are and what you want get out of each one. What I’ve done is take little tidbits out out each one and have created my own hybrid sales methodology that meets my specific sales objectives. The one common thread I’ve found with all of them is that none of them really focus on the power of partnerships. Almost all sales methodologies I’ve been exposed to are geared toward a direct sales rep selling a product or service. I’ve yet to find a sales methodology geared specifically toward partnerships and strategic alliances.
I refer to my hybrid sales methodology as The Power of Influence. The Power of Influence incorporates channel and all other forms of partnerships into a sales strategy. This is the missing component that I’ve observed in almost every sales training I’ve participated in. Everything is geared around selling a product or service, and there’s little or no focus on leveraging the influence of a strategic partnership.
I can remember attending a sales training and patiently waiting for the trainer to address the value of partnerships. This was a seasoned sales professional with many years of experience, yet she never incorporated the power of partnerships into her sales training. I even pitched her a few softball comments to see if she would take a swing, but she took strikes right down the middle. She proceeded to navigate us through the common dialog of taking a prospect down a pain funnel. Nearly all sales methodologies incorporate “pain” into their sales system in one way or the other. If you can’t identify pain, then the typical objective is to create pain in the area you’re selling to.
As I sat through this sales training I had a couple of mental images pop into my head. The first one was an image of where I’m in some sort of chess match with the trainer and she’s thinking two moves ahead while I’m thinking six moves ahead. As she was discussing strategies to create pain in the area she was selling to, I was thinking about all the pain that already exists within an organization — it just may not be relevant to the product or service being pitched. The pain discovery so often stops short of where the real pain exists. There is absolutely no need to create pain or the perception of pain; it already exists. It’s your job to diagnose it and prescribe a remedy.
I had another mental picture during this training that represented a doctor/patient consultation. The trainer actually referenced this scenario, but she missed the point once again. The mental picture I had was me as a doctor with a patient standing before me with obvious symptoms of psoriasis. I assumed this is why the patient had scheduled time with me and I proceeded down the path of diagnosing and treating the patient for psoriasis. It didn’t occur to me to ask why the patient came to see me or if there were any other more pressing issues the patient was concerned with. In reality what was weighing heavy on the patient’s mind wasn’t the psoriasis (although it is something that the patient would like to eventually address), but rather frequent and worrisome chest pains that was causing a great deal of concern and anxiety. Had I done the proper discovery up front, I would have brought in a specialist to diagnose and treat the patient’s condition. The point being is that the greatest pain with a prospect may not be the most obvious. There are varying degrees of pain. You don’t need to spend time creating pain as pain always exists; you just have to know where to look.
Tying this back to business, a good sales professional doesn’t have to create pain, but associate themselves to existing pain. The pain may not be related to the product or service the sale professional is selling, but it would be important for the sale professional to identify and associate themselves to the pain regardless of where it is found (provided they have a solution that relieves the pain). For example, If I’m selling a shipping solution I naturally look for pain in the shipping department. I may find pain or I could create pain in that area of the business, but what truly keeps the CEO up at night is how he’s going to pay for a new ERP platform that is mission critical to his business. This has nothing to do with shipping or the product or service I’m selling, so why would I care? Why I care is because my shipping solution generates significant hard dollar savings that could be used to fund this mission critical strategic initiative. The benefits of my shipping platform has become a feature that will solve a significant pain point for the CEO. Ask yourself what pain does your solution solve outside of the area you’re selling to? Here are couple of discovery questions you could ask to find where the pain exists within an organization (even if it’s outside the area you normally sell into):
- When you think of your business, what keeps you up at night?
- What are your top 3 strategic initiatives over the next three years?
- Are you currently working with a systems integrator?
- What projects are they supporting?
Regardless of what the top 3 strategic initiatives are, it’s an almost certainty that there is a cost component to each of them. It could be a departmental or company-wide hardware or software upgrade, or maybe a facilities expansion. It could be the need to hire more people in a specific department. These all represent “pain”. You don’t need to create it, you just need to find and associate yourself to it (if it makes sense). In my example, the “feature” of cost savings can reduce or eliminate the CEO’s greatest pain. It also leads to other areas of influence tied to this pain – ERP sales person carrying a quota or implementation partner looking to secure the contract. Each of these personas have their own pain you could solve; hence, turning them into influencers or advocates of your solution. For more information read my post titled “It’s Like Finding Couch Money“. There are multiple layers of pain tied to these strategic initiatives.
Moving off of pain, the other area that is often missed in professional sales training is understanding what you’re selling. The focus is almost always on the product or service, but we fail to recognize that potential partners are not interested in your mousetrap. You might like to think your mousetrap is the best (and it may very well be), but what the partner really is evaluating are the following:
- Trust – they have to trust you and the organization you represent will take care of their valued clients
- Risk – they will not partner with anyone that will potentially introduce unnecessary risk to their business
- Stickiness – your solution enhances and brings additional value to their core offerings
- Competitive Advantage – your solution differentiates them from their competitors
- Revenue – your offering creates additional revenue streams for their business
- Sales – your solution accelerates sales cycles and increases sales of their core offerings
Did you notice how none of these “features” are product or service oriented? In the partner world, you’re not selling a product or service in the traditional sense. As a Partner Manager, the product you are selling is you. You are the face of the partnership and the organization you represent. If you haven’t sold your prospective partner on the above value points you leave the door open for a competitor that may have an inferior product or service, but 80% may be good enough if they have a solid partner strategy and focus on the above value points. This is why the role of Partner Manager is so very important. It’s a function of sales, but very different than what traditional professional sales training tend to focus on. I mentioned this in my featured reading category, but the best book and program I’ve found on this topic to date is PARTNERNOMICS by Mark Brigman, Ph.D.