4 Steps To Everyone’s Favorite Answer in Sales: D Is For Decision Making

March 3, 2010 on 8:00 am | In Getting to "Yes", sales process | 3 Comments

Each day that passes, we’re getting closer to “Yes”.  Are you excited?  Great! Let’s move on to Step 2 in the Getting to “Yes” series: understanding how your prospects make decisions.

Yesterday we discussed the first three questions of the NEADS analysis: what does the prospect do Now, what do they Enjoy about what they do now, and What would they like to Alter or change about what they do now?  That brings us to the D in NEADS, and the spot where I modify this Tom Hopkins piece a bit.

Tom suggests that the D stands for Decision maker, as in make sure at this point that you’re talking to a person who can actually sign on the dotted line when the time for conversion comes. I disagree for two reasons: first, this is a little late in the process to be finding out if you’re talking to the right person; you really should be trying to take care of that while you’re in Getting to “No” mode.

The second, more important reason is simply my belief that the only way you’re ever going to know whether the person you’re talking to is the decision maker is to ask them to make a decision. It’s true: we’ve all had the experience of asking the right question (“So if we’re fortunate enough today to find a solution that fits your needs, who else will be involved in making the final decision?”), getting the right answer (“Oh, no one else will be involved…this is my decision to make!”) and still hearing at the conclusion of the meeting, “Everything looks great! I just need to get my supervisor’s approval so we can move forward.”

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Want Results? Better Get Moving!

May 21, 2009 on 6:29 am | In Motivation, activity, goals, sales process | 5 Comments

Question: What have you done this week to move yourself closer to your goals? Do you have a clearly defined, written plan to get you where you want to be? If not, what are you waiting for?!

We’ve all heard that what gets written down gets done, yet the majority of us don’t do it. It really amazes me how many salespeople I talk to who have no idea what they need to accomplish on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis to help them achieve their goals; in fact, I still encounter many people who have no idea what their goals are! I only have one question: if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? More importantly, how will you even know if you’re on the right course to get there?

Specific written goals are vital to your success. You know that. If you haven’t written out your goals for this year, stop reading and go do it now. Don’t come back until you’re done, because what I’m going to suggest next will require you to have your written goals in front of you. This is a powerful tool that will help you achieve any goal you set, and it is actually very easy to do. Unfortunately, anything that’s easy to do is also easy not to to do, so I want you to make a commitment, here and now, to try this method out for the next seven days. If it doesn’t work for you, you can stop; but you have to try it for at least seven consecutive days before passing judgment. Ready?

Looking at your list of goals, I want you to think of the six most important things you could do tomorrow to move you closer to their accomplishment. Limit your list to only six things, the six most critical. Now, prioritize the list in order of highest impact; in other words, the most impactful thing you could do becomes number one and so on. Now comes the hard part.

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