Salespeople have many erroneous beliefs. One of the most pervasive and damaging beliefs they have is that they should schedule appointment with every prospect or buyer that will agree to see them. It’s this mistaken belief that causes them to run helter-skelter throughout their territory wasting hours and hours meeting with any and every potential buyer in hopes that their efforts will result in finding sufficient numbers of buyers who will do business with them.

The reality of this process is that less than half - considerably less - of the prospects that they have initial appointments with do not end up becoming clients. There is something terribly wrong with a process that fails 60% to 70% of the time. And even though salespeople admit to the high failure rate of this process, they continue to do the same behavior over and over and over again. They do so because they don’t know any better and because they do not have a more effective process.

A more effective approach and process would require that the prospect earn the right to receive a visit from the salesperson. One of the ways of doing this is to have the prospect complete what we at New School Selling call an Uncovery Worksheet. This Uncovery Worksheet contains a series of questions that the prospect is asked to complete and fax or e-mail to the sales person prior to the first face to face to meeting.  

Requiring the prospect to complete this worksheet prior to the first face-to-face meeting does two things: number one, it determines the prospects level of commitment and reveals their willingness to be open and truthful; secondly, it gives the salesperson some basic understanding of the problems, issues and concerns that the prospect has. Knowing these issues ahead of time the salesperson is able to ascertain whether it makes any sense or not for both parties to commit their time to meet with each other. In some cases the answers from the Uncovery Worksheet will disqualify the prospect as someone that the salesperson should meet with. If the prospect balks, resists or fails to complete the Uncovery Worksheet they have simply disqualified themselves as a serious prospect with which the salesperson should spend their time.

This unorthodox and nontraditional approach is often met with great resistance by sales people who, incorrectly, believe that this approach will lead to fewer closed sales. It will not. What it will do is reduce the number of first-time appointments and proposals that are generated by the sales team. The number of closed sales will remain the same or increase and closing percentages will skyrocket. The end result is fewer wasted appointments, fewer wasted proposals being generated, and more deals closed in less time.

Most salespeople operate from an entirely self-destructive paradigm. They operate with the mistaken belief that it is their job to present proposals and quotes to any potential buyer that requests that they do so. They unilaterally give proposals and quotes without requiring the buyer to make any commitments or decisions. They willingly give away free and proprietary information in hopes that the buyer may commit to doing business together. They make no requirement of the buyer to do anything at all once they received the proposal. The end result for the sellers are huge numbers of put offs, stalls and think it over’s.

To prevent this from happening sellers must have the courage and fortitude to extract the commitments and obligations from the buyers in order to receive a proposal, quote or presentation. No other profession willingly gives away free information at no cost or no obligation to their customers. Attorneys don’t give free advice. CPAs don’t give free advice. Physicians don’t give free advice. Only salespeople give free advice in hopes that the buyer will be somehow impressed with their presentation, proposal or quote and want to move forward.

There are a number of ways sellers can qualify and extract commitments and obligations from buyers prior to giving a proposal or presentation. They can get the buyer to agree prior to giving proposal that the buyer will agree to what if anything the next step will be when the proposal or presentation is presented. Doing this requires the seller to have a very strong upfront conversation with the buyer about what’ll happen at the time the presentation or proposal is presented. The seller must be willing to straighten their backbone and have the guts to extract a commitment for a decision about the next step from the buyer prior to giving a presentation or proposal. Failing to do this will almost certainly guarantee a stall or put off when the presentation or proposal is made.

Another courageous but seldom used tactic that should be employed by the seller is to require that the buyer pay for the proposal upfront. In this scenario, the seller agrees to give a full-blown presentation and proposal and in return the buyer agrees to pay for the proposal. In this case the seller will take possession of the proposal and will be allowed to use the information contained in the proposal in any manner that he or she sees fit. The seller gets paid for their efforts in making the proposal and the buyer gets a customized solution. This is a win-win for both parties and eliminates one party from extracting an unfair concession from the other. This requires skills, guts, a new belief system and abundant mentality on the part of the seller. It also positions the seller as someone whose service is in great demand and minimizes or eliminates the perception that he is a beggar. Employing this strategy does not guarantee that the seller will make a sale. It does, however, increase the buyer’s respect for the salesperson and the self image of the salesperson.

Another strategy to be used by the seller is to quit leaving written proposals with prospects and potential buyers. This involves having a very frank and open discussion with a potential buyer before a presentation or proposal is given and explaining to the buyer that contrary to how most companies operate that the seller’s company policy is not to leave presentations and proposals that contain proprietary information. Adopting this policy will minimize or eliminate the ability of the buyer to use the seller’s information to negotiate a better deal from a competitor. Again, this requires guts, discipline and a change in beliefs that somehow potential buyers will balk at this approach.

Most salespeople think that the key to sales success is to relentlessly and persistently get in front of as many prospects as possible and to present proposals to anyone who is willing to listen. Ignorant and misguided sales managers reinforce this mindset by pressuring salespeople to give more proposals and present more solutions. This throw a lot of mud on the wall and see how much sticks approach results in salespeople wasting tons of their time, having a low closing percentages, experiencing massive amounts of rejection and frustration, hours of wasted staff time preparing proposals that never close, lousy sales forecasting, poor staff morale, high sales staff turnover and a myriad of other problems.

The key to eliminating these problems requires a fundamental mindset change on the part of the owners and managers about selling. This mindset change is more than positive thinking. It requires the managers and owners to ruthlessly analyze their beliefs and attitudes about what works and what doesn’t, what can and cannot be done and how much they are willing to change the way they do business. The reality is that the problems that are being experienced within the company relative to the sales process are merely a reflection of the owners and managers skills attitudes and beliefs about selling.  Only when the owners and managers change their mindset and attitude will there be a change in the sales force.

Managers, owners and salespeople need to analyze how much it cost them to prepare a proposal. When I asked business owners, managers and salespeople how much it cost to prepare a proposal, most of them looked at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language. Not only do they not know the answer to the question, they have never even considered the question. They are blindly following their approach because they’ve never taken the time to stop and think about this issue.

Recently in a coaching session, I dug deep into this rabbit hole with a client by asking how much time and money was invested to get to the proposal step? Their answer was, “I don’t know”. I continued to probe further by asking, “Including driving time to and from the appointments how much time has been invested meeting with this prospect”? “Based on how much your time is worth per hour how much do you personally have invested at this point”? Who else besides you has been involved in presenting or preparing this proposal”? “How many hours of their time have been involved putting the proposal together”? Based on their hourly pay scale how many dollars does that represent”? How much has it cost your company in payroll for these people to prepare the proposal for you”? “When you add up everyone’s time how much did it cost your company to prepare and present this proposal”? “How many times each week or each month is your company doing this”? “On a monthly basis what is the cost of preparing proposals”? “What percentage of these proposals end up closing”?

When I forced them to give me answers to these questions they were shocked with their answers. They had never considered the cost of going to market. They simply considered giving proposals and hoping for the best the excepted way of doing business in their industry. Doing what everyone else in the industry does is a sure prescription for mediocrity at best and failure at worst. In order to excel and thrive, businesses must do something different than everyone else in their industry.  Failure to do that reduces your company offering to a commodity and gives the perception that you’re no different than anyone else.