Let’s face facts.
Sales people love to close sales, because that is how they are
incentivized, through sales commissions.
Call it the thrill of the hunt. And,
most sales teams, sales managers and sales pipeline reports are all built up
around closing the sale. But, the sad
reality is, closing the sale is only the first step in hopefully maintaining a
long-term recurring relationship with that customer, which is going to require
impressing them time-and-time-again throughout the course of the
relationship. Which means: you never really end the sales process at all. Let me further explain.
Getting from Pilot
Programs to Long Term Contracts
Most enterprise scale contracts never start at the full
level. Customers typically like to “try
before they buy”. As an example, maybe
they will commit to running a $50,000 pilot program with you, before handing
over $500,000 for the full cost of the annual license. So, what does that mean? Your salesperson most likely got the
adrenaline lift from closing the pilot program, and they are on to hunting the
next big deal.
But, that is a huge mistake.
This customer needs their hands held more than ever during the pilot
program. It is critical the tests go
well. And, customers don’t feel like their
primary sales executive has disappeared.
The sales executive needs to stay all over the fulfillment team to make
sure everything goes perfectly “as advertised”.
Because if they don’t, they are risking the customer not pulling the
trigger on the bigger ticket multi-year contract, based on dissatisfaction with
their first experience with your company.
So, the pilot is not the finish line for the first sale, the long-term
contract is. Especially, since most VC’s
won’t give you credit for clients, until they are out of pilot stage and into
long-term relationships.
Fending Off Hungry
Competitors
And, just because you closed a long-term contract with a
customer doesn’t mean you own that relationship in perpetuity. Your competitors will be continuing to fire
bullets in your direction. Their sales
people will be pitching and romancing your customers over and over again, until
they ultimately win the business. Which
you need to prevent, as best as you can.
Your sales team needs to “protect your turf” at all
times. Figure out which competitors are
sniffing around the accounts. Learn what
they are pitching your customers. Pitch
your similar solutions. And, if you
don’t have similar solutions, tell your product team, so they can add the
request into their future product roadmaps.
And, maintain great personal relationships with your customers. Because, at the end of the day, you are in
the “people business”, and the happier you keep the “people”, especially at the
personal level, the more they are going to want to keep working with you.
Putting in Required
Face Time Throughout the Year
At the time of the sale, you need to put your annual plan of
attack in place on what you need to be doing with these customers over the
course of the year. Think about setting
up quarterly business reviews with your customers—not to “sell” them anything,
but to inform them of key industry trends and to provide updates on how
everything is going with the relationship.
Provide suggestions for areas of improvement and be open with them on
how things are progressing. Show that
you “have their back”, and are more interested in seeing them succeed with your
product, as opposed to simply trying to sell them something. Of course, you will be intently listening
for upsell opportunities, but don’t sell them during those meetings.
For quarterly business reviews, I would vary up the breadth
and depth of those meetings based on the relationship’s importance to your
business. So, think $100,000 accounts
gets the updates from their sales executive once a quarter. And, $500,000 accounts, add in key executives
from the company, in rotation, to those meetings (to show the company’s cares
enough to send them). And, $1,000,000
accounts, gets a visit from the CEO at least once a year. That kind of stuff.
Getting Customers to
Renew
And, as I have said many times in the past: closing the first sale is less important than
closing the repeat sale. The repeat sale
proves customers like your product and are happy with their experience with
your business. And, it is materially
more economical to drive revenue growth through customer retention, than it is
to try to drum up new customers in the first place.
Imagine if you were a $5MM revenue business and you were
losing half of your customers each year.
Instead of adding $2.5MM in sales for 50% growth in year two, your sales
team is spinning its wheels just to see revenues stay flat. So, track
your customer churn, and keep it to an absolute minimum.
The key message here: never take off your “sales hats”. Selling is an ongoing process, and needs to
be built into your companies DNA throughout the entire customer lifecycle—over
and over again! But, in a way, that the
customer doesn’t feel like they are being “sold” anything at all. So, carefully walk that line. And, don’t forget, selling responsibilities doesn’t
start and stop solely with the sales team.
Make sure you create an “everyone
sells culture” throughout your entire employee base, for maximum success
here.
For future posts, please follow me on Twitter at: @georgedeeb.