marketing | BigSwiftKick

Landing Big Sales – When Should You Let Go and Try Later

A painful decision:

As a small-midsize company, some of your attempts at landing big sales will not turn into deals despite your best efforts. In such cases, the best choice is to temporarily abandon this effort and look for other opportunities to go after the big sales. Some small-midsize companies desperately try to salvage the deal by offering incentives and concessions to the buyer even when the buyer is not in a position to move forward. This is a very bad move because it hurts your credibility and set you up to make even more concessions in future deals. More likely trust between the two companies will falter and further business will be difficult.

Though giving up on prospective big sales may be a painful decision for the small-midsize company, it is better to spend your time, energy and resources on companies who have problems they want to fix today.

In order to ensure that you clinch the big sales at the next attempt, your company should do its homework and start preparing itself now. Here are some suggestions that will help in landing big sales.

Analyze the big sales you have lost this year and identify the probable reasons for your failure, as well as counter-measures to avoid their recurrence.
Revisit the buyer’s requirements, their buying policies and methods, and other pertinent details.
Look out for any advance signals that the big company is about to start their buying operations and plan for appropriate action.
Use Google alerts to monitor changes in the company that signal a chance to re-engage.
Identify the potential decision makers and other members of the buyers’ purchase team and get as much information about them as possible for eventual use.

Building up confidence levels:

As you start landing big sales it is natural to expand your products, services and capabilities to meet the needs of bigger companies. It is a good strategy to keep big companies you are not doing business with informed about your expanded offerings, capabilities and new clients that demonstrate your expertise and credibility. By sharing relevant information with key contacts you can enhance relationship and see if there are mutual interests worth exploring.

The wrecking crew:

Whenever a smaller company is doing business with a larger company it is important to take adequate precautions to protect the deal from sabotage by other interested parties. The risks will mainly be from three sources:

The first wrecker will be the current supplier who will be displaced by you. As soon as your new deal is signed and sealed, this supplier will start fighting for regaining his lost business by offering all kinds of promises and concessions to the large company.
The second wrecker will be from within the large company itself. There will be some disgruntled elements that felt slighted or ignored by the decision makers when the new deal was confirmed and have their own axe to grind.
The third type of wrecker is other small businesses who are your competitors in the field. They will try to find an entry for themselves in the newly concluded big sales and eat into your business.

You should exercise extreme vigilance and caution to ward off these threats to your business and protect your own interests.

Great Questions to Ask When You Are Selling To Large Companies

Small companies/Large companies:

A large company, for our purpose, is defined as one that is 5 to 20 times the size of your company in terms of revenue potential. Many small companies dream of big growth but it takes time and effort. There are 3 ways to get growth: make your sales people stronger through training, hire sales superstars or land big deals. If you want to grow at double the industry average the only way to do it is by landing big deals!

In these circumstances, the small company should focus on selling to large companies. The basic premise is that large deals can transform a small company. Selling to large companies presents many benefits and will pave the way for more revenue, higher profit margins and accelerated growth.

Select your targets:

As a first step, you should make a short list of potential large companies which meet your criteria. Your sales personnel who are handling this project should seek interviews with company executives and collect as much information as possible. They may use the following list of great questions as guidelines during fact finding interviews.

Great questions are open-ended questions which will lead people to provide more information than a simple “Yes” or “No” answer. These questions are in random order and designed to get you thinking about what questions you should be asking.

What are the key initiatives your CEO has put in place for this year?
How have the recent changes in the market affected your business?
How have the recent technological changes affected your company?
What needs to happen for your company to establish the pre-eminent position in the industry?
What changes can be made in your industry which will improve the profitability of your company?
What specific changes would you propose if your company were to grow at double the industry average this year?
What major changes does your company plan to make in the next 6-12 months?
If you accomplish your goal will you get a promotion?
What are the important steps you have taken for improving _____ area in your business?
On a scale of 1—5 (5 being the best), what rating would you give your company in the area of ______?
If you were going to do business with us, what would we need to have, be or do to get a rating of a 5 on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being highest?
Does the executive staff have membership in any professional associations, charities or other social groups?
What is the procedure you currently use for selecting your suppliers?

These questions are intended to make the large company open up and for you to get more insight into what drives their business and important initiatives. The key is asking good thought provoking questions that shows you have done your homework and understand their world. If you selected companies that are a good match for your criteria you should expect a very productive meeting.

This exercise will give you a fair idea about where to place the company in your final short list of large companies and whether you should pursue your target of selling to large companies.