Tomicide Solutions April 2007: Meeting Prospects From Smaller Organisations

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

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When technology salespeople meet buyers from larger organisations, they hardly ever meet the owner of the company. The person they meet is usually one of the vice presidents or senior executives who is also a skilled buyer of consulting services.

But as the size of client's company is goes down, salespeople are likely to meet the founder and the owner. And this change can be a problem for salespeople who've just been invited to strut their stuff.

But what causes difference?

Basically meeting a small business buyer is similar to a B2C sale not a true B2B one. So, let's see the differences and then discuss what to do to meet the B2B buyer.

Small Business Buyers Have Emotional Ties To The Investment

They are 100% emotionally tied to the money they're about to invest, especially because they often have to "steal" it from the next mortgage payment, the savings for that long-wished-for European vacation, the pension fund or the money saved up for replacing the roof.

Buyers at larger corporations are somewhat skilled at acquiring technology services, and they use the company's money not their own. That makes a huge difference in terms of emotional involvement.

Business Buyers Are Ready To Buy

While buyers from large companies are ready to buy, small business buyers are often just shopping around. One reason for that is that buyers from larger companies have accountabilities. They've been given the task of improving technology and they have to report back to the board of directors of some superiors.

For small business owners, there is no accountability, so there is no urgency to solve the problem (small business owners in general are notorious for asking for external help too late), only checking what's available on the market.

In many cases they are looking for some ideas they can implement own their own in-house. To do that, they often meet several consultants, request piles upon piles of proposals, mountains of references and lists of previous projects, but often wiggle out at the last moment, saying, "I have to think about it. Don't call me, I call you when I'm ready."

For corporate buyers, meeting salespeople is a practical event to solve a specific problem, and they want to complete their purchases as quickly as possible. After all, they have other work to do too. They can't spend a lifetime pondering upon one single purchase. Since they are accountable to other people in the chain of command, they have to act.

Small business owners have no accountability to produce results, so they can ponder forever even over the smallest purchase.

For larger clients, since the purchase contributes to improving a specific metric in the company, until the purchase takes place and the situation is improved, the metric is the same. For small business buyers, meeting consultants is more of a social event with no intention to buy but only brain-picking.

Also, corporate buyers buy what the company needs not what they personally want. Small business buyers may subscribe to over 100 TV channels in their homes not because they need them but because they want them. And they exhibit the same buying patterns in their businesses. Most of them don't give up the 100-channel TV subscription to finance an initiative to improve their businesses.

Corporate Buyers Read And Absorb All Relevant Information

Small business buyers are more impulsive in their buying habits. But when it comes to more significant decisions, like engaging consultants, they often get overwhelmed and paralysed to make yes/no decisions. They often don't read all the relevant information they receive from consultants, but decide on an ad hoc basis who to meet, based on their own, often erroneous, criteria.

Corporate buyers want to make the best decision so they usually read all the information they receive from consultants. Their mantra is, "The more I know, the better decision I can make, and the bigger bang I get for my buck!"

Many small business buyers have never hired or worked with consultants, so they don't know what to expect of and to do at meetings.

But even before we get to meetings, we have to prepare for meetings with small business buyers differently.

By the time corporate buyers decide to meet consultants, they know something is off kilter in their organisations, so they have to find someone with the solution. That means they are ready, willing and able to buy from the right consultant.

B2B Purchasing is a Multi-Step Process Involving Several People

With small business buyers one meeting usually makes or breaks the deal. In corporate buying processes there are multiple meetings with multiple decision-makers.

Considering these differences between corporate and small business buyers' buying habits, we have to prepare for meetings with small business buyers a bit differently.

Considering small business buyers' lower level of commitment and higher level of overall allergy to change, we have to make sure that we meet only the truly committed buyers.

Using The Disqualification Model To Protect Ourselves Against Tyre-Kickers? While in traditional sales we talk about qualifying prospects, I think it's even better to start disqualifying prospects.

I can't remember the exact words of Gill Wagner of Honest Selling, but the essence of his article was that "Throughout our interactions with buyers, we're looking for a reasons why we can't do business together. The sooner we find the reason, the sooner we can go home." He even used the phrase with prospects, "I guess we've just found a reason not to do business together. Would you agree?"

I loved his approach and being true to his company's name, Gill's approach sounded honest to me. Disqualification is a great way of finding committed buyers, but only if we can detach ourselves from the outcome. Of course this is easy for independent consultants but an uphill struggle for consultants who work for companies where greedy sales managers expect them to turn every piece of warm meat with pulse beat into paying clients.

So, what is disqualification? I believe it's the opposite of hundreds of memorised closing techniques, pushing hot buttons, overcoming objections and asking manipulative questions.

Disqualification helps us to weed out tyre-kickers and plate-lickers who would take any amount of value for free but would have a serious problem with making even conditional commitments to work with us. In the traditional qualification model, we "escort" prospects all the way to the end of the sales funnel to discover whether or not they are serious about their intentions to hire us. It's a long and costly process, involving proposals, multiple modifications to proposals, several telephone calls and in-person meetings.

The way I see it, the qualification model is about tricking our ways through the roadblocks prospects have erected to protect themselves from new knowledge and improvement (well, this is what good technology salespeople bring to their clients) entering their organisations. And yes, it's possible to penetrate but we may bleed to death in the process.

The disqualification model is the exact opposite. Since we're looking for a reason for NOT doing business, in many cases we will find one. After all, most prospects are not "Ready to Act" buyers, but collectors of information. And while I'm all for sharing information, I want to make sure that the sharing process doesn't involve my personal time and effort. We can share information through informative websites, reports, white papers and other sources, but they are all parts of an automated lead generation and lead nurturing process.

It's your automated lead nurturing process that will discover that some buyers are tyre-kickers, and these people can't even get to the point of requesting meetings or even telephone calls with you.

When Requesting Your Personal Time...

As some prospects come through your lead nurturing process, some of them decide to want to meet you in person or on the phone to move to the next stage. For a few of them the next stage is a strong possibility of doing business with you. But for many of them it's some personal brain-picking to gather information for internal implementation.

And I believe this is the point where you have to erect some strong barriers, so only committed buyers can have access to your personal time.

So a while ago, I started setting some strong conditions for in-person meetings.

  1. Bring all your business documents

  2. Bring a signed cheque of $1-5,000

  3. Make a yes/no decision by the end of the meeting

These are three serious requests, and they create drastically different responses from people: Tyre-kickers start gasping for air and get outraged and sometimes verbally abusive: "Who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the right to talk to me like that?"

Real buyers respond differently, "All right. I accept your terms. Let me know where and when to meet."

Bring All Your Business Documents

When we start working together, I want to review clients' documents, including business plan, marketing plan, financial documents and all other bits and bob that is relevant to the project clients intend to engage me in.

I know these are confidential documents, so I explain to buyers that I don't look at these documents until and unless we decide to proceed to work together. But when we do, I'd like to move fast and bring myself up to speed on clients' issues and company matters. These documents give me a pretty good start, and then I can start speaking with individual members in clients' organisations to learn more about their operations.

Bring A Signed Cheque Of $1-5,000

This is a good-faith commitment deposit and an indication of being serious. The way I see it is that money is the walk of the talk. When you ask people to invest in their own futures and successes, you will quickly learn how serious and committed they really are. People vote with their purses depending whether or not they truly believe in their initiatives their own abilities to pull it off. And this message becomes crystal clear whether or not they cough up the dough.

No investment => No commitment => No improvement. And this summarises so many small business buyers.

So, when we start our Sample Session, during which we both experience what it feels like working together, we put the check on the desk.

After 1-2 hours we stop and two things can happen:

  1. If we decide we do not want to work together, buyers take the cheque and their business documents and leave.

  2. If we decide we do want to work with together, we start the project, and I will take the cheque and lump it into the last payment of the buyer's investment for the project the buyer has just sampled. I also take the business documents and start learning more about the company.

Make A Yes/No Decision By The End Of The Meeting

I'm all right with an honest "No", but what I can't tolerate at this point is a "I have to think about it." One of Napoleon Hill's Success Principles is to be decisive in nature. So, I think I'm reasonable to expect buyers to make a decision by the end of our Sample Session.

If they can't make a simple decision like this, how can I expect them to make major decisions that can make or break the success of our engagements? This criterion screens out procrastinators.

What Does This Approach Achieve?

Since I work with technology companies, I often run the sample gigs for several executives and senior managers of the prospective client's firm.

During our sessions buyers establish whether I'm an idiot or someone knowledgeable who can help them to go through the change process with higher speed and probability to succeed.

Similarly, I establish whether or not prospects fit into my Ideal Client profile. Under "Ideal Client", I assess the buyer(s) as a person(s), the company and the overall project. If either of them is not to my liking, I walk away.

With this approach I also want to avoid "Show me what you have, hotshot!" scenario.

I've recently had an email from a consulting firm's partner who was outraged about my "meeting criteria", and basically demanded that I provided him with a detailed and guaranteed roadmap to doubling their revenue within 6 months. When I emailed him a few questions, he refused to answer them and retorted: "Well, you're the expert, aren't you?"

Just imagine the disaster of wasted time and energy when a buyer would like to meet you in-person. What I've found that most buyers who reach this point are ready and willing to proceed. I've been using it since 1999, and so far I've never had a buyer who has back-pedalled.

I don't say this is the best approach and I keep perfecting it, but it's a good start. At least it's a better start than investing our time and effort in all Tom, Dick and Harry who want to meet us but haven't yet made even a conditional commitment to proceed.

so what is the lesson here?

I think one lesson is stepping up to prospecting to larger organisations. They don't have to be giants, but if your current target market is businesses with 10-25 computers, then step up to the 50-100 range. In my experience, the more businesses have on the line, the more open they become to inputs from external professionals.


Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who helps privately held information technology companies to develop high leverage client acquisition systems and business development teams in order to sell their products and services to premium clients at premium fees and prices. Visit Tom's website at http://www.varjan.com.