These can be used by sales people to understand where there are gaps in their knowledge and ask questions to get a more complete picture of the customer situation.  They can also be used by sales managers to see if the sales person has control of the account.  Personally, I would often start a sales review by asking “Why us?” and “Why now?”  All the rest of the qualification flows from these two questions.  I would be looking for a crisp response to demonstrate understanding and control, and I would drill down as appropriate.  So here are a few I have thought of:

SCOTSMAN

Solution – Do we have a product or service that directly addresses their business need or do they want something that we don’t sell
Competition – Are there many competitors on this deal or are we in on our own
Only Me – Is there something that the prospect can only get from me that is critical to his decision or are we selling a “me too” solution?
Timescale – What is the prospects timescale? Will we get a rapid decision?
Size – Is the opportunity big enough to be interesting?
Money – Has the prospect got the money to afford the solution?
Authority – Are we talking to the decision maker?
Need – Why do they NEED to do this NOW, and why can’t they just wait.

MEDDIC

Metrics – What KPIs / drivers will we be contributing to – revenue, productivity, time to market?
Economic Buyer – Who will sign the contract and/or who owns the budget?
Decision Criteria – Technical and commercial criteria; their priority and our position versus competition?
Decision Process – What is The Sequence of Events?
Identified Goal – What is the Compelling Event. What is the individual or group objective? Are their serious consequences if not achieved?
Champion – Who is the Individual who has a personal win associated with the success of this project? She provides easy access to MEDDI.

TRAM BURP

Timing
Requirements
Action
Money
Budget
Uniqueness
Relationship
Priority

And two shorter ones:

BANT

Budget
Authority
Need
Timeline

£AWN

Money
Authority
Willingness
Need

Let me know any others that you use and I will add them to the resource.

Here are some examples of what questions you can ask yourself prior to a call (either face to face or telephone) together with some debrief questions to help you move the sales forward. These are also detailed in the Instant Sales Guides tab together with an actual call plan for you to download and use.

Key Points

• Objectives will help you improve your performance over time
• Always be asking yourself
  “What do I need to do/have to move the sale forward?”

Pre-Call
Questions to consider before calling on a new prospect or an existing customer:
☐ What is my call objective(s) – only 1 or 2 SMART objectives?
☐ Who do I need to speak to in this business/division/department?
☐ Who is the key decision maker(s)?
☐ Who is a main influence(s)?
☐ What specific actions do you want the prospect to take at the end of the call?
☐ What potential obstacles exist that will threaten the sale?
☐ What stage am I at in the sales cycle?
☐ How will I open the call?
☐ What information do I have?
☐ What information do I need to find out?
☐ What sort of objections emerge out and how will I handle them?

Post Call
Questions to consider when reviewing your customer sales interaction:
☐ Did I achieve my objective?
☐ What went right/what went wrong?
☐ What does the customer think about me/my company/our offer?
☐ What information did I gather?
☐ What evidence do I have that this is still a viable sales opportunity?
☐ Did I advance the sale to the next stage?
☐ Who else needs to be involved in the process?
☐ What else do I need to do to progress the sale to the next stage?
☐ When am I next going to see or speak to this customer?
☐ What will be my next call objective?

Please comment if you have any feedback – note that you can download a printable pdf version of the checklist together with a call plan and more information regarding call planning from the instant sales guides tab.

One thing I quickly realised as a sales person is that all sales people tend to ask their customers the same situational questions.  By situational I mean questions that ask for purely factual information around their current situation e.g. who is your current supplier, how many years have you owned XXXX, etc.  These are questions you need to know, but just think how boring this is for the customer!

So, the idea of SMARTER questions is to ask questions that make the customer think, evaluate or speculate and offer an opinion, after all we all love to offer opinions.  This helps you position yourself higher up the food chain than other sales people, enhancing the customer’s opinion of the value of your call.  I will talk about the vendor – preferred supplier – problem solver – trusted advisor curve in a later post, but the aim of SMARTER questions is to get you to the problem solver level.

SMARTER questions invite customer involvement, asking them to focus on the most important business issues and will often expose underlying issues and produce high-quality information.  Dare to be different, ask SMARTER questions and get ahead of the sales pack!

The SMARTER Question Checklist

For a detailed description of what SMARTER questions are, and why they are a great aid to selling, please visit the website page.  Here are some examples, and as they have to be specific to a customer, I have used examples that IT sales people can relate to – but these are easily modified for other industries.

Strategic Customer
(i.e.: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operational Officer, VP Sales, etc…anyone who has a strategic focus)

☐ What are your top 2/3 priorities for the coming year?
☐ What do you have to accomplish this year in order to be successful?
☐ What challenges will you have in getting there?
☐ What is the worst thing that could happen if you don’t achieve these goals?
☐ How will technology support your strategy?
☐ How could it hinder it?
☐ How will you beat your competition?
☐ How will you succeed given the current state of the market?
☐ What, in your opinion, can we do to contribute to your success?
☐ What types of solutions would we have to be working on now in order to be a viable partner for your company next year, and why?

IT Manager (or influencer for network)
☐ What are your 3 most important criteria in choosing a server?
☐ If you could improve one thing about your current network operation (relationship with us, server setup, storage, etc…) what would it be? Why?
☐ What effect would that have?
☐ In order to help design the best networking solution for you and your company could you describe your growth plans for this year?
☐ What impact will those plans have on your department?
☐ What will it take for you to be successful this year?
☐ So that I can get a better idea of what is most important to you, what are your top 2-3 goals for this year?
☐ What are the potential obstacles you face in getting there?
☐ What impact will it have on your organization if you can’t achieve these goals?
☐ What specifications will your system need to have to meet your goals?
☐ What would the ideal communication between us look like?  What impact would it have on you if I were not able to meet those expectations?  What options would be acceptable to you?
☐ What will be important to you in implementing your IT strategy?
☐ What would your ideal network look like?  How would that differ from today?
☐ What impact does that have on your company? Time, cost etc…
☐ What benefit would there be to solving that problem?
☐ What plans do you have in place to make improvements?
☐ What is your company’s growth plan?  How does that affect you and your department?
☐ I want to make sure that you are able to access information and reach me when it is convenient for you. What would be the best way to accommodate your schedule?
☐ Who, besides yourself, will be involved in making the decision
☐ If you could implement your current infrastructure again, what would you do differently?
☐ What are the 2/3 key issues that this project must address to be considered successful by the business?
☐ What is the impact on your business if this project deadline is missed?
☐ What business issues are driving the project timescales?
☐ Looking at our solution, what things we can do differently to better meet your needs?
☐ To ensure we match your needs, can you give me an idea of the budgets involved?
☐ How will you measure the success of the project, what does it mean to you personally?

Try developing your own SMARTER questions and use 2 or 3 in every customer conversation – please comment if you have any feedback – note that you can download a printable pdf version of the guide together with more information regarding SMARTER questions from the instant sales guides tab.

The Negotiation Checklist

Understanding the Customer
☐ What is the business issue they want to solve? (What’s their ROI?)
☐ Who is involved, who are the buying influences and how do they view us?
(Executive Sponsor, User, Technical, Coach, Third Parties)
☐ Who are we actually negotiating with, what do we know about them?
☐ What are the key negotiation points for the buyer?
☐ Do we know the competition and their proposed solutions?
☐ Have we a record of discussions and objections raised to date? What does this say about the customer’s “hot buttons” and concerns?
☐ What tactics do you expect the customer to use during the negotiation?
☐ Do we know their BATNA?

Our Solution
☐ Do we have a clear statement of how we solve their business issue?
☐ Does the customer understand and agree with this? (Have we asked them?)
☐ Can we articulate our value and differentiators over the competition?
☐ Do we have the proof (to reduce risk) to show that we can do this?
☐ Have we defined our Optimum and Fallback positions?
☐ Besides price, what can we negotiate on?
(maintenance, training, payment terms, delivery, installation, support, volume discounts, account status, etc.)

The Negotiation
☐ Have we had an opportunity to fully present our value proposition?
☐ What do the BATNAs mean to out negotiation strategy?
☐ Do we understand where the power and leverage is for each side?
(Timing, information, power base, location, EQ, history, titles)
☐ Have we developed our questioning strategy?
☐ Have we got a clear opening statement? (How does our solution fully meet their business needs and ROI)
☐ What do we do if we cannot reach an agreement?

Your Attitude
☐ Do not assume you have to negotiate
☐ Don’t negotiate until the customer acknowledges that their needs can be met by our solution
☐ Prepare thoroughly, they will!
☐ Demonstrate a Win-Win attitude
☐ Be confident in the value your product or service will return
☐ Listen – Don’t rush to fill pauses – be comfortable with moments of silence
☐ Work on exchanging, not giving
☐ Work on all the possible variables
☐ Be prepared to walk away at this time

The 4 Stages of Negotiation

Good Negotiating – please comment if you have any feedback – note that you can download a printable pdf version of the guide together with more information regarding negotiation from the instant sales guides tab.

In conjunction with this initative, I have launched a mobile version of the site (same URL but a different rendering for the various different devices) and I will post all the guides under the “sales guides” category so that they can be accesses on the move (yes, 5 minutes prior to meeting the customer!).  All the pictures in the guides can be clickedon to enable you to view them at full size.  Each guide will also be reproduced in full on the website under the “Sales Guide” tab.

A word of warning – I cannot train you to use these guides in the guides themselves, they are a short hand that hopefully you will understand and know how to apply.  If you don’t maybe I can sell your company some sales training – ha, no free lunches here – have fun and let me know what you think.