The Technobabble Sale

In addition to selling technology itself, more and more selling involves complex products with technological aspects or components. With complexity comes multiple steps in the sales process. So today, if you want to make sales, you can forget about instant gratification. Or, as Adam Bishop, CEO of Vistula, Ltd., a United Kingdom-based telecommunications company, says, “We often will have six meetings before closing the sale.” Then, too, the selling cycle has expanded – 12 months is about normal for a technical business sale, says Brian Berger, EVP of Watchfire, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based online risk-management firm. And the era of one-on-one selling just may be at an end. “So many people are involved in the buying on the customer’s side today,” says Rob Garrigan, vice president of sales for Avistar, a Redwood Shores, CA developer of desktop video tools. Selling companies have responded by bringing in more support players, such as engineers, when calling on prospects.

The upshot: Selling today is a lengthier, more complex process than ever before – particularly as sales organizations sell products and services that are complicated.

What’s to explain about how a typewriter works (a classic 1950 sale) – but how many words does it take to explain the advantages of storing a company’s information in a Bangalore data center? The latter might seem to require a book-length presentation – and yet an emerging twenty-first century sales reality is this: Simple selling is still the best. Many companies complicate their way into blowing opportunities, say the top sales reps, who insist that buying in many ways has remained unchanged. “It’s easy to let yourself be overcome by the complexities,” says Garrigan.

“Salespeople who go in talking technology usually get shot down,” warns CeCe Morgan, senior vice president for sales at Calabasas, California-based Digital Insight, a provider of online banking tools and architecture to financial institutions. “Don’t get too focused on the technology because the prospect isn’t interested in it. Prospects want to know how this technology will help their business.”

“You cannot focus exclusively on the technology,” agrees Rahul Bakshi, sales director for the Pacific region at Vericenter, a provider of outsourced IT services. “To make any deal you have to focus on the business side.”

The stakes quickly get enormous. What kills many sales calls: confusion. So says Greg Timmons, vice president for North America sales at Borderware, an Irving, Texas-based developer of Internet security tools. A confused customer won’t buy, says Timmons, and in the twenty-first century it frankly sometimes is difficult not to get confused because of the very nature of complex product and service offerings.

Just how are companies that sell complicated products and services finding shortcuts through the maze? Many strategies emerge – but a reality is that almost all companies are finding that purely technology-based sales approaches won’t work. Why? Decisions, particularly on big ticket items, nowadays are kicked up to increasingly high corporate levels. Face it: C-level executives rarely understand all the technical nuances and that’s true even for CIOs and CTOs (in part because technology changes so fast – it is a full-time job just keeping abreast of developments).
What will keep the sale moving forward? Top sales leadership readily share their secrets that unlock deals. Such as?

Build on Prestige Partnerships. Avistar, for instance, leverages some sales of its desktop video tools by building on the integration of the company’s wares with top-selling Lotus Notes. That relationship with an entrenched leader helps assuage potential worries, says Garrigan. At New York-based M5 Networks, a provider of outsourced VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony, the company, as a matter of strategy, “works with partners who are very well known,” says Jeff Silbert, vice president of sales and marketing. For instance, M5 builds many of its installations around top-selling Cisco handsets and, because Cisco is so respected, this reduces the number of technical questions that get hurled at M5 reps, says Silbert. “We are a Cisco-powered network provider and many prospects have confidence in what Cisco does.” Does anyone need to minutely question Cisco’s tech specs? Maybe not, because a fair assumption is that the wares work. A bottom line, particularly for small- and middle-market companies, is that high-powered alliances with name partners save words.

Endorsements Matter. Closely related to power partnerships are prestige endorsements. Sometimes the right pedigree lets everybody quickly slice through complexities. Online banking provider Digital Insight often has been able to fast-track conversations with prospects by pointing to the company’s exclusive endorsement by the American Bankers Association, says Morken. She adds that references and testimonials from well-known customers accomplish that same end.
Never underestimate the value of case studies and testimonials in speeding along the sale. Tony Florence, vice president of sales at Boston-based VFA, a developer of facility management software, says that he once closed a customer inside 20 minutes (the typical VFA sale is $400,000). The quick close happened because the technically savvy prospect immediately grasped how VFA’s tools would save him time and, crucially, the prospect personally knew a key VFA reference. Florence admits that his selling cycle usually is six months – but with the right alignment of customer needs and credentials on the part of the seller, lightning fast deals can still come together.

Education Is Key. With some sales, there just is no fast track to simplification. The product is complicated and that’s that. Kevin Quilty, senior vice president for sales at Irvine, California-based Endocare, says his company’s Cryocare – a technique that treats prostate cancer by freezing it – takes many hours to explain to the urologists who would suggest it to patients. That is why Quilty says the key to making Cryocare sales is persuading the physician – typically in a one-hour, fact-filled introductory meeting – that it is worth the doctor’s time to commit to the multiple, hands-on educational sessions (led by physicians with experience using the technique) needed to gain expertise in the treatment. “This is a complex sale. It cannot be otherwise,” says Quilty, who says his reps have themselves completed extensive coursework in prostate cancer and who position themselves as information resources for urologists. “Many healthcare-related sales have to be complex,” adds Quilty, who says that nonetheless, in an era of dwindling physician time, he is forever watchful for ways to fast-track the selling process. “My goal, always, is to streamline the selling process.” But, he adds, in some sectors, sales leaders just have to accept that the push to simplify can only go so far.

Snuff Out Misconceptions. One way to keep a complicated sales process from getting more so is to stay alert to customer misconceptions about what you are selling and snuff them out pronto, says Domenick Lionetti, vice president, sales for Solsoft, a Mountain View, CA provider of computer network security solutions. Don’t let customers’ imaginations run wild or in the wrong directions. These sales are hard enough to keep simple without letting erroneous ideas intrude. Keep checking in with the prospect to gauge how well he or she understands the offering and, as misconceptions arise, swiftly correct that thinking.

Stay Patient. A mantra that needs to be in every rep’s head today: Go slow. “I have seen instances where the process took three years to close a deal,” says Lionetti. More typical for Solsoft, says Lionetti, is a nine-month process – but that still requires patience on the part of the rep. With Solsoft, there may in fact be as many as five significant, usually in-person contacts with a prospect, says Lionetti, who ticks them off:
• Contact 1: where the product and service set are introduced.
• Contact 2: a presentation to a team of middle management and technical people to the prospect.
• Contact 3: proof of concept, a meeting where Solsoft demonstrates how and why its services definitively work.
• Contact 4: a presentation to a vice president.
• Contact 5: working out contractual details, the money talk.

That may seem many contacts – and some companies indeed report they get to the close in just two or three contacts – but an emerging rule is that big-ticket sales require going in front of the prospect multiple times. Different levels of the prospect’s organization get involved at each session, from high-level executives down to technical and financial support staff.

One key: “Maintain respect for everyone who gets involved in the process,” says Garrigan. Lose respect, even if it is for a lower-level accounting person on the prospect’s team, and that may trigger the unraveling of the sale. “Respect is the one word I stress to my sales team,” says Garrigan.

In every interaction, adds Vistula’s Bishop, ask yourself: What am I trying to accomplish with this individual? Knowing what the other person hopes to get out of this interaction and also knowing one’s own goals helps keep even a complex conversation on course, says Bishop.

A related rule: Make a lot of bodies available to participate in the selling because they all will touch different levels within the prospect. At MBX Systems in Wauconda, IL, a developer of appliances for delivery of enterprise software, Vice President of Sales Jill Bellak says “a lot of our people get involved in every sale. The initial contact is through one of our account managers. Usually I get involved early on, to show management involvement. Our engineers and technicians will also talk with the prospect, as will our marketing and branding experts who will talk about the look and feel of the customized appliance we will use to deliver the software that is developed by our customer. In the average sale, the prospect will talk with five or six different MBX experts.” While that might seem to complicate the sale, in fact it may simplify it because this strategy of multiple contact points may result in delivering exactly the right information to the right executives within the prospect.

Multiply Touchpoints. “Our selling involves telephone calls, Webinars, face to-face-meetings. You have to do it all ways,” says Watchfire’s Berger. Customers contemplating a big ticket purchase of a complex product or service increasingly expect answers and input to be available to them as they want it. A crucial rule today is don’t force how the customer makes contact. Some want face-to-face, others prefer online interactions on their own timetables. The big rule today: The customer is still always right when it comes to setting the pace and place of contacts.

Use New Processes, New Reps. Five years ago, techno-savvy reps who could talk the techie talk were the rage. Are they still hot? Not at Avaya, the leading VOIP provider based in Basking Ridge, NJ. Avaya Vice President of Sales Kevin Cook says: “You need a different kind of rep today. Somebody with business acumen. They have to be able to understand customer financials. There has been a major shift in rep personalities. We want reps who can read a 10-K financial report, speak with C-level executives at a prospect, and take a holistic view of the customer and his needs. Today’s reps need much, much broader skill.”

At the same time, Cook says, there’s much more demand for industry-specific knowledge, so a rep calling on, say, big pharmas will be expected to bring to the sales call intimate knowledge of both the industry and this specific company. Five years ago it might have been enough to know the product details of the product that was being sold. Now, customer-specific knowledge has become crucial.

But the irony is that part of that complexity is knowing how to stay focused on executing a simple sales plan. “You won’t make a sale today unless you can clearly communicate the value of making the deal to this customer,” stresses Lionetti. Ultimately, he says, no matter how complex the value proposition, matters actually get very simple when decision times nears. “If you have shown a clear ROI in a fairly short timeframe – six months is what many of our companies look for – you probably will close.”

“The real complexity of our sale is uncovering the prospect’s critical needs – what do they really want?” says Scott Bleczinski, vice president of sales at ExactTarget, an Indianapolis-based developer of permission-based email marketing tools. “Once we know the customer’s critical requirements and can map them against our service offerings, even the complex sale becomes straightforward.” •