As your business grows many people ignore the obvious. When selling a deal it can take a long time and may never happen for many reasons to include
- Timing - Yes I can save you a ton of money but your focus is somewhere else. I have one company I can put 120 million dollars annually into their pocket (the CEO knows this) and i was fighting turf wars for over 12 months then i gave up. He does not have the strength to do what is needed. He has a high paying job and delivers a body in a chair to that company.
- I can't have savings like that on my watch - How come you can find and fix what my team can't is what usually happens.
- You don't know enough about me and my company
- You have unions to deal with and change is blocked
- You have silos and Turf Wars - companies are little silos and each manager guards their silo from progress.
- People are compensated by not what good they do but by how many report report to them.
- You are cold calling and having to prove yourself over and over to different people with different agendas.
- People have friends that are the vendors
- You are Educating them for free and they have zero interest except to pick your brain.
I used to spend 6-18 months on a deal and probably saw 25-50% happen. Today those deals would be much harder to get with corporate re-orgs. When I figured out the time, effort and everything else I realized it was time for a change and here is what I did.
First I wanted to roll the rock down the hill. I want the hungry fish that realizes they have a problem and need results now. I want free reign to get the job done and not have my hands tied.
Also I started attending networking events outside my industry which is a huge door opener. What is the effect I received
- Referrals are ready to act and move without all the due diligence
- Referrals will trust you almost immediately
- People will usually refer me to where i can help the most.
- The deals close in as short as 1 meeting to 1 month.
- Some referrals are commissioned so they use their base to feed me hot leads and receive reoccurring revenue.
I took my Rolodex and really looked it over. Who do i work with, who do i know from being out and about then what can I bring to them was defined and then I got to work.
I realized I could cut out 90% of the above BS. Wow
I realized one of my connections had access to the white house and 2
different presidents and others had access to many C-Level corporate
executives. Create an exercise to look over your network and
connections. When you do this exercise you will see where you can best
tap your network.
I never let potential sales drag on. I give them 2-4 meetings and either we move forward or I say next. If they can't make a decision now what happens when I am trying to get things moving
They have an old saying the smartest business people make decisions quickly and are slow to change them.
So position yourself so your sale/offering is a ROZI (Return on Zero Investment) no-brainier to get started and go find those hungry fish by connecting with the people you already know.
Remember to build Back End Revenue - a blog coming soon about how i cover all my overhead with back end revenue.