Jul 8 (edited) • General discussion
Failure from FRICTION
I just had the most productive meeting with a client in cybersecurity. Their product, which we agreed was an absolute no-brainer for the prospect we were discussing, hadn't sold. The sales team told me that this was the second time they'd had this issue and implored, "We MUST reduce the price"
"I agree", said the CEO
"Really?" I said, "Tell me why."
There was silence.
"It's not price, is it?" I said, "There are other clues, and we're just hoping they are going away."
We talked about the OTHER issues that were stopping the prospect from buying.
Why am I telling you this? You might suffer from some of these issues and are too ready to drop your price, which won't help you sell more.
We went through a brainstorming session similar to the pre-project brainstorming session I run, which is called the pre-mortem. In the pre-mortem process, we look for all the reasons why a project FAILED and then draw up a list of risks.
In brainstorming about this sales process, we looked for all the bad stuff that might stop a prospect from buying.
We discussed :
- What uncomfortable reality do they need to acknowledge? For example, does the IT Director need to tell the CEO that he's buying the product because they might get hacked? What lessons from the insurance industry might we use?
- Do they feel out of their depth making this decision?
- Whose respect do they risk losing?
- Whose buy-in do they need to get? Have we met them?
- What other hard conversations do they need to have?
- What scarce resource do they need to reallocate?
- What other projects do they need to deprioritise?
- What sunk cost do they need to abandon?
- What assumptions do they need to rethink?
This is just a small selection of the discussion, but you get the idea.
After getting the list of issues with the sales process and this prospect, we moved to reframing the discussion with the prospect, and a price cut wasn't even on the table.
Want to have a similar brainstorm or pre-mortem? Check out systemise.me
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Failure from FRICTION
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