Sales. Startup, define it or the prospect will

A startup wants to test the market appetite, tolerance, pricing.

They are unsure of exactly what ‘it’ is. Marketing makes a slick but not specific website. Low quality big talking sales reps are hired to go into the market, do reconnaissance and sell ‘it’

Without a rigidly defined product and processes a salesperson has to resort to persuasion and charm to get meetings, pitch and maybe close deals.

Inconsistent pricing

It becomes the burden of the prospect to compute how much it’s worth. Every client is a one-off. The sales pipeline will peak and valley.

High attrition of sales reps.

The best salespeople are disciplined hoplites who stay in formation. If  are asked to improvise, to compromise their livelihood, they will leave.

The sales reps that remain are the ones who have no place to go, you’re stuck with sales adverse selection.

We need to fix this and get alignment with all those other stations on a sales assembly line.

A startup has to define

  • Exact use case
  • Testimonials (if available)
  • How it is implemented
  • How it is priced
  • How it will make their lives better
  • The enrollment fee and what is included and why
  • The value creation (Savings is not value creation)
  • How the marketing and education will be rolled out to the client’s employees
  • How it interacts with each department
  • Where to expect disruptions in implementation and how to mitigate
  • Process if the client decides to unroll the relationship
  • Who on both sides will have ownership of the relationship.

The startup has to answer the questions before the product meets the prospect. Or else, the prospect will tell the startup the answers. That’s a bad thing.

What’s happening in a meeting:

The sales rep makes a cold call, they get some interest from the other side, a meeting is booked. That person becomes the advocate. The meeting includes other participants from the prospect, maybe several departments are present.

The advocate will most likely be generous and forgiving.

When they hear they pitch they are projecting their most optimistic scenario. 

But, that’s not how the other participants will see it. Its a blank screen and they will project their worst case scenario. Their internal dialogue is looking at disruption, failure, embarrassment, upset employees, a threat to their career..

This is the problem when you let the market tell you ‘what it is’ and ‘what its worth‘.

The advocate within the prospect will give ‘it’ a premium. Their optimistic scenario envisions the product working ideally. The other participants are going down their checklist and the unknowns and uncertainties stop the sale from progressing.

Don’t give the sceptics any opportunities 

To move them into the advocate column we need to have their concerns allayed before they are even articulated. We cannot risk giving them a blank screen to project onto. This way their questions won’t validate their fears, but will resolve them.

The End?