Growth Dynamics Get Down

Symptoms:

Diane returned from the product demo certain that the features and benefits she shared with her prospect had wowed them. The buyer nodded when Diane asked if the product fit into the product categories they offered to their customer base, and everyone else that sat in on the meeting told her how much they liked what she had presented. She felt as good about this call as she had in a long time, but now six weeks later there was still no purchase order and the prospect had gone radio silent. How did their excitement turn into Diane's frustration?

Symptoms:

Carrie looked at her calendar and started to worry. She was near the end of the 3rd quarter and at only 60% of her annual sales goal. As she reviewed what she had done over the first nine months, she saw lots of cold calls and follow-ups on the leads she had generated at the two trade shows her company targeted.

My topic today is something that I think anybody in business development, and frankly, anyone that's into communication, in a way they think they just got to get better at it, and they're tired of having conversations that might not be the real conversations they should have.

Symptoms:

Abby prided herself on the level of customer service she delivered after the sale, and loved the loyalty her customers expressed to her. That loyalty also had a troubling side and it was beginning to show.

Situation:

Friday afternoon and Julia’s mind was already on the vacation she had coming up in three weeks. The past week she dealt with the one sales challenge that constantly caused her frustration, and no matter what rebuttals her manager told her to throw back at the prospect the result remained the same; no sales because her price was too high.

I really want to throw something at you. If you're in business development, I know that there's a lot of pressure and there's that old phrase, ABC, Always Be Closing. And there's a lot of pressure, a lot of people that maybe your managers, your mentors, even the people you respect the most, that are saying, "you've got to learn how to close, you should always learn how to close, always be closing, a lot of pressure to close, get that decision, close the deal".

Symptoms: 

With her best customer looking for something creative to solve his inventory issues, Ginny realized that none of her immediate ideas sounded likely to impress the customer.

Good afternoon, welcome to another fast tip for Friday. Today's topic is one where it's the end of the week, I hope everybody's had some success prospecting. I hope someone has advanced the opportunities in their pipeline to the point where you can expect to collect a decision on the next call, you've done enough fact finding, you've done enough discovery or diagnostic interview and work and now you're at that step in the process where it's either time to fish or cut bait, or we're gonna get a yes or no, but either way, we're going home for a decision.