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The Black HoleEven the world's greatest salesperson can relate at least one story of their journey into the "black hole"—the point in the sales cycle when all of a sudden, there's radio silence with your prospect. Things seemed to be going so well, but for some reason, the prospect isn't returning your calls and you don't know what is going on in the account. It's a horrible feeling to say the least.
Hitting the black hole is always bad news. The good news: There's often a way to avoid it. There are two things that often contribute to the black hole dilemma: lack of alignment between the buying and selling cycles; and lack of a solid relationship with the right people. We'll address both of them here. Buying and Selling Cycle Alignment Somewhere along the way, we fooled ourselves into thinking we can control the sales cycle. Not true. If you don't already know this, you probably need a quick reality check. Think about it. When you stop in your favorite store at the mall, does the salesperson ever force you to buy something? No way! Most people buy things when they are darn good and ready. So let's start by admitting that the buyer IS actually in control whether we like it or not. One of the keys to successful selling—and avoiding the black hole—is aligning your sales activities with the customer's buying process. Trying to force buyers to go through some rigid process you've developed is rarely effective. Rather than creating a point-to-point, linear sales process, you should start by understanding the customer's buying process. What are the key steps they'll take? Who will be involved at each step? What criteria will they use to select/eliminate options? Then map your activities around their buying process. Create a set of key milestones—identified need, all decision-makers and their buying criteria identified, etc. Once the milestones are identified, develop a set of activities and materials that can be used to accomplish each milestone. Taking a milestone approach and aligning your sales activities with the buying cycle will save you a lot of headaches and keep you from irritating the buyer. It is critical to remember that you need to ask the hard questions to get alignment and accomplish your milestones. Without asking the hard questions, there is no way to align your sales activities with the buying process...and no way to avoid the black hole. Relationships Companies don't buy things...people do. You've probably heard that before but how often do you think about it? Success or failure on any sales opportunity is often determined by how well you manage the relationship aspect of the sales cycle. Analyzing and working the internal politics should be one of your primary areas of focus. We tend to spend too much time focused on how to pitch our product and not enough time building relationships in the account. The best way to build relationships is by asking questions, not by talking. And definitely not by "pitching". There's more to knowing which relationships to focus on than looking at the organization chart. For big ticket purchases there are people at all levels and across different departments that will affect your deal. A great way to figure out who they are is by asking who was involved in previous purchases of similar size & type. It's often hard to establish relationships with people at all levels if you start with someone at the bottom. A good way to avoid having to go over someone's head is by initiating relationships at all levels early on. There are creative ways (drop a personal note, have a 2 minute phone call) of making initial contact with people so you already "officially" have doors open at all levels and therefore can't be forced down to lower levels. If you don't play the relationship card right, it will almost always come back to haunt you. While you're spending time with the wrong people who are making you feel good about your chances of making a sale, your competitor is spending time with the right people—the people who can get the deal signed. If your contacts in an account go silent on you, it's probably because someone has ordered that silence. Spending time with the right people can keep that from happening. Closing There's no foolproof way of avoiding the black hole 100% of the time. But, if you get alignment between the buying process and sales activities and establish relationships with the right people, you'll definitely help your cause |
