On a recent phone call I had a painful exchange. A friend of mine wanted me to help him wave a magic wand and start driving deals overnight. However, he could not see any value in spending time or effort solving the problem that created crisis. He just wanted "help" closing more deals. It took only a few minutes to discover the deals were not just "slow to close" but the whole pipeline was almost empty as well. That said, he could not see why "wasting his time and energy" on marketing, lead generation or pre-sales activities and resources, was going to help help him "close" more deals.
And after several attempts at explaining how deals come easier when you have the important early engagement sales pieces in place (called marketing) and a strategy to grow the opportunity pipeline; I found myself throwing in the towel, his blinders were glued too tight to this guy’s head. The reason were no "deals" to close, was that parts of his business process were missing; there was no scalable or sustainable sales process creating interest, demand, or systematic opportunities. The early part of the sales process was either missing or not funded.
Deals flow when you have the necessary pieces in place. Relevant products and services will always struggle when one or more of the needed parts is missing. In this case, dramatic changes to the marketing, sales team and the partner community earlier that year, created the crisis. Re-discovering and fixing the process was NOT the answer he wanted to hear. And its no fum being the messenger that gets to state the obvious to guy who just can't see a holistic sales process in the first place.
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